I Can Copy And Evolve Talents

Chapter 1345: Opening Salvo

Toward the lower slopes of the mountain, a massive wall rose where metal fused with blue gemstone, the barrier climbing from the rock as though it had grown there rather than been built. The gate looked like an extension of the mountain itself, not something imposed upon it.

The Ryuganas had created something astonishing: a structure towering over fifty meters, its shadow stretching long across the vast forest that carpeted the slopes below.

The sun had set hours ago. Two moons hung in its place, pale and distant, their light barely cutting through the darkness. The real illumination came from the gate itself. Runic patterns carved into the metal and gem pulsed with faint blue light, casting their glow far into the night, reaching into the treeline below. The patterns were not decoration, they were purpose.

The season of snow was ending. Tonight, unlike every night for the past months, the air held less bite and less white drifted from the sky. The forest canopy below shifted with the wind, branches swaying against one another in constant, restless motion, as though the trees themselves could sense something the sentries could not.

From the massive stone outcroppings that flanked the gate, surveillance towers rose toward the sky, their heights climbing well above the treeline. Each tower commanded vast sight lines, able to see deep into the forest and far across the approaches behind the wall. Cones of blue light rotated in slow circles, sweeping across the trees in methodical patterns.

The surveillance lights were triggered by unregistered movement within a hundred feet. Additional towers stood at the northern and western reaches of the mountain base, positioned for overlapping coverage. Six towers in total. All of them defense positions. All of them active.

All of them waiting for an attack.

If something was coming, they would have detected it hours ago.

Or so they believed.

The peace of the night continued undisturbed. Soldiers stationed atop the towers had begun dozing at their posts, lulled by the quiet and the cold.

For an opening salvo, tonight seemed disappointingly calm.

Then the lights screamed.

Blue became red. The surveillance beams spun ten times faster than before, whipping across the forest in frantic arcs.

Before the soldiers could rise from their posts, before hands could reach the ballistas, a sound split the night. A massive tearing whistle, cold and fast, cutting through the air like the breath of something enormous.

Then impact.

The mountain base shook so hard that men stumbled on their platforms. A giant javelin had struck the gate, red lightning dancing and crackling across its black metal body. The structure held, but the tremor ran through stone and metal alike, rattling teeth and making the towers sway.

Soldiers paled. Their shouts erupted across the defensive line.

"We’re under attack! We’re under attack! The Empires!"

Despite the shock, training took hold. They scrambled to their ballistas, all six towers swinging their weapons toward the forest. Massive bolts locked into position. Essence began flooding into the mechanisms.

For several long heartbeats, they found nothing.

The treeline was dark and mpty. No formations advanced through the trees. No siege engines rolled forward. No massed ranks of soldiers or beasts. The forest offered nothing to aim at, nothing to target, nothing to destroy.

Confusion rippled through the towers. Where was the enemy? Where had the javelin come from?

The blue lights had barely flickered back to normal when they screamed again. Red beams. Spinning wildly. The alarm shrieked across the mountain base.

Before anyone could process the warning, another black rod whistled through the night, its speed like a meteor falling from the heavens. It struck the gate with a thunderous crash, and the entire mountain base trembled a second time. Dust shook loose from the stone. The towers swayed again.

The Master in charge of the Tower Squad did not wait for his men. He climbed to the right-wing platform, shoved the soldier there aside, and took the ballista himself.

Captain Danma narrowed his brown eyes against the wind. His grey hair fluttered across his weathered face, but his expression remained locked, focused, calculating. His gaze cut through the darkness toward the forest below.

He poured his soul essence into the weapon. Normally, the crew would load a physical bolt into the groove. This ballista was different. It had been crafted from aetherium and built in collaboration with the Kingdom of Sassex, incorporating their unique ironwood and runic spellwork. It did not require ammunition.

Another javelin screamed through the air and struck the gate. The tower shuddered beneath his feet, stone groaning against the impact.

Captain Danma did not flinch.

At the center groove of the ballista, a blue arrow materialized from nothing, shimmering with essence as it solidified into a bolt of fearsome size and density. The light of it reflected in Captain Danma’s eyes. He shifted the weapon fractionally to the right, his brown eyes glowing faint with concentration as he calculated the angle.

He released the trigger.

The bolt exploded from the right-wing tower with a sound like thunder cracking. Less than a heartbeat later, it collided with the forest.

What followed was devastation.

Everything within a four-hundred-foot radius vanished into blue fire. The explosive force ripped tree trunks to splinters in an instant, uprooted entire groves, and sent the shattered remains cartwheeling through the surrounding forest. The annihilating shockwave expanded outward, razing everything in its path, flattening brush and breaking branches half a mile from the impact point. Blue flames licked at the destruction, consuming what remained.

The other soldiers witnessed the strike. They screamed with a mixture of terror and desperate hope.

"Captain Danma! Captain Danma!"

"Aim to the forest!" The command echoed across the towers. Ballistas swung into position across all remaining platforms, essence flooding their mechanisms as soldiers prepared to fire.

Captain Danma straightened from the ballista. His weathered face showed no satisfaction, only cold calculation.

"If we don’t know their location, destroy the entire forest."

The soldier behind him nodded quickly, his face pale but determined.

"Yes sir!" He saluted sharply. As Captain Danma stepped back, the man assumed position and began charging the ballista with his own essence.

But while he poured power into the weapon, while blue light gathered in the groove, another javelin whistled through the air.

This one did not aim for the gate.

It struck the stone pillar that held the tower aloft.

The pillar exploded in a spray of shattered rock and twisted metal. The tower tilted. Groaned. Crumbled. Captain Danma went down with it, the platform collapsing beneath him as the entire structure folded toward the earth.

The strike had been so brutally fast that the detection alarm only screamed after the stones were already falling. Debris slammed into the mountain base, scattering rubble across the approach, the crash of collapsing masonry echoing across the defensive line.

The tower was gone in seconds. Nothing but ruin remained where it had stood.

Soldiers in the remaining towers stared in horror. That was their Captain’s tower. The enemy had targeted it specifically, had waited for him to reveal himself, and had brought it down with a single devastating strike.

The tower had been reinforced. Aetherium ran through the stone pillar, strengthening it against assault. It was supposed to hold against siege weapons, against magical bombardment, against anything short of a sustained assault.

One javelin had been enough.

Shaken as they were, the remaining soldiers did not freeze. More blue bolts launched from the surviving towers, streaking toward the forest, exploding different sections of the treeline. Fire and concussive force tore through the trees, leaving craters and burning wreckage in their wake. The night lit up with destruction.

It did not stop the next javelin.

Black metal whistled through the wind, cold and certain.

It struck the left-wing tower.