Chp.16: Start the attack

Once again, Haku had proof of how huge his luck had been. He had resisted and survived until that point using his intellect, but only a particular and completely random circumstance had allowed him to plan so much and therefore live for so long.

Within weeks of his birth, Haku had come across four humans. Four humans who, most likely, were the first newcomers to enter the Neytiri's valley after several decades, if not hundreds of years. Such an event was already an extremely rare opportunity. But one of those four humans had turned out to be a qualified spy sent to spy on the inhabitants of the territory bordering the Neytiri's valley, and he had with him a journal in which he had recorded everything he had discovered. The odds of such an event occurring were so low that even just calculating them would have seemed silly.

Thanks to the information he obtained from that human's diary, Haku was able to build his master plan. He had used the weaknesses of ogres and faeries to his advantage, resulting in an enormous amount of benefit for himself and his siblings. Very soon, these benefits would allow them to leave the Karbraland Great Forest and go into hiding in the center of a giant desert, where they could grow quietly until they became apex predators. All this thanks to that fateful meeting with Ethan, an absolutely random event due only to luck.

And now, Ethan's diary was again coming to his aid, for in it were recorded several ways to be able to enter the city of the Bolvek tribe without being noticed. Sure, he and his siblings were dragons and Ethan's research was based on humans, but it also had to be said that Ethan's research was based on the assumption that the city would have been vigorously defended by the entire ogre army, so in the end the situation wasn't so different. The dragons were bigger than the humans, but there were far fewer guards this time.

The wall that surrounded the city was about five kilometers long, but there were only 300 soldiers defending the city. Which meant that each soldier would have had to control an area more than sixteen meters in diameter. In addition, about a third of the soldiers had to remain to patrol the streets of the city, since otherwise there could have been riots due to thieves, criminals or even just drunkards. As a result, the number of soldiers who could actually guard the wall was just 200 and so each of them would have had to control an area twenty-five meters in diameter. But not only that: about fifty other soldiers had to be left to guard the important structures of the city, such as the warehouses, the armories or the chieftain's house. As a result, the total number of guards on the wall didn't exceed 150, and each of them had to guard an area more than thirty-three meters in diameter. If these soldiers had been at level gold, they might have been able to use their mana to enhance their senses; but in this case, they were nothing more than recruits and most of them didn't pass the level iron. There was no way they could be a good defense.

Thanks to Ethan's diary, Haku knew exactly where to go to enter the city: the most obvious weak point of the wall. It was a small drainage channel through which the sewage produced by the inhabitants passed, so that they poured out and did not contaminate the city by spreading diseases and excessive stench. The drain wasn't actually in the wall, but under it: the ground was dug to form a hole through which the water flowed. It was small, but wide enough for even a small dragon to pass through.

In reality, that way was easily defensible: in the event of siege or assault, the ogres would in fact have closed and sealed it, preventing anyone from passing through it. Indeed, Ethan had noted it down only for intellectual scruple, but he didn't think it could actually be used to facilitate the conquest of the city; at most, he wrote in his notes, the humans could have used the small drop to set explosives to bring down the wall, but since the wall was made of wood it was much easier to use magic to burn it down and leave the ogres to die inside.

However, this time what was taking place wasn't a siege by the humans, but an attack by the fairies; as a result, no one had thought to close the drainage ditch or monitor it. After all, fairies could fly, so why should anyone look down? It was just silly. And indeed, the drain turned out to be open just as the dragons had expected.

Haku smiled. Yes, he was definitely very lucky. But after all, that was how the world worked: no matter how smart someone might be, without a little luck, they were going nowhere.

He looked at the sentinels above the wall. There were only two of them, and they paced back and forth across their allotted area. As expected, they were easy to fool: as soon as they looked away, Haku took off and in a flash he reached the drain and entered it. After that it was Darbi's turn, and finally Rheagal. And so, the three brothers entered the ogre city.

"Wow. That was easy" Darbi said elatedly.

"Shut up, you idiot!" Rhaegal put a paw over his mouth, just in time: an ogre passed a few meters away from the drain. Rhaegal waited for him to go away, then finally he let go of Darbi: "You want us all to be killed? We're not done yet!"

"Rhaegal is right. The hard part starts now" Haku whispered. "We're going to have to move silently, so don't talk unless absolutely necessary. Use gestures if you have to communicate. Let's go!"

Darbi snorted, then he glared at Rhaegal: "Fine, but don't try to shut me up again!"

"Then you don't force me to do it" Rhaegal replied peevishly. Clearly he was speaking so rudely mostly from the stress, but there's no telling he wasn't right in berating Darbi like that: he was letting his guard down far too quickly.

Darbi was about to said something, but Haku stopped them both: "Silence! If you have so much energy, use it to move!" he growled. Despite reluctantly, the two brothers stopped bickering and followed him.

The three dragons moved rapidly through the city. Fortunately, ogres were diurnal creatures and preferred to sleep at night; therefore, there was hardly anyone on the streets. Using their excellent sense of smell, the three brothers were also able to identify the position of the more than one hundred guards who patrolled the city. Which really wasn't too difficult given the small amount of the aforementioned guards.

Since the city was surrounded by a wall five kilometers long and circular in shape, the area of ​​land it occupied was no more than two square kilometers, barely enough to hold its 10,000 inhabitants. Since there were only one hundred ogres patrolling the streets, each of them had to patrol an area of ​​more than twenty square meters alone. Also, according to the information Sarpa had given Haku, the patrols consisted of three or four ogres, so there might have been a little over thirty patrols in total; and each patrol would then have to survey an area of ​​more than sixty-six square meters. Of course, there were also the fifty soldiers posted to guard the important structures, but they had to guard those structures and could not move from their position, thus leaving everything else to the others. With such numbers, it was easy for Haku, Darbi and Rhaegal to avoid the patrols.

It took them just about ten minutes before they reached their goal. Thanks to Ethan's diary, Haku knew the topography of the city by heart. The place was a small square in the south of the city. Calling it a 'square' was a compliment: it was nothing more than a clearing where the land had been flattened and widened. The reason they had chosen that place was that there were only three streets that connected it to the rest of the city and they had no alleys or openings for several meters; therefore, the ogres would all come in the direction the dragons wanted.

Once they arrived, they immediately began to get into position: Rhaegal and Darbi went to the opposite side of the square from each other, and there they clambered up the houses using their powerful claws. Despite their weight, they were able to move very fast and the wood was quite solid, so they reached the roofs without problems. Once up there, they hid from view, aided by the darkness of the night and the square shape of the roofs. As soon as they were sure no one would be able to see them, they signaled for Haku to proceed with his part.

Haku nodded, then he walked over to one of the houses. At that point, he pointed his left elbow towards the wood, where a fire rune was engraved that days before he had charged using water from a spring. And then, he pressed the rune.

A gigantic flame erupted from it, so strong that Haku had to turn away to avoid hurting his own eyes. The fire engulfed the wood and began to expand rapidly. Haku climbed onto the rooftops in turn, watching the flames flare up.

As he watched the rapidly expanding fire, Haku thought about a detail of the runes: where did they get their energy? According to his 'mana theory', energy was needed to generate a spell. Runes could absorb and release mana, but where did they find the energy to do so? Since items that used runes didn't need the energy of the user, they had to have another source. Even the invisibility rune engraved on the ninja's heart didn't seem to contradict this principle: according to Haku's hypothesis, that strange artificial parasite killed its host because it absorbed mana faster than the body could absorb it, leading it to collapse, but it didn't use the user's energy to activate its spell. So the runes must have had another source of energy. But what? Maybe there were details that Haku still didn't know?

Every time he thought he had found an answer, new questions arose in his mind. Haku had to admit that his ignorance was really unnerving. He really wanted to ask someone to teach him about magic, or at least how mana actually worked, but doing it using torture was proving more complicated than expected. The tortured prisoners only answered the questions he asked them, they did not continue with their explanations in more detail. Haku wished he had something more, a real teacher. But sadly, that was impossible due to his nature as a dragon.

He shook his head. This was not the time to think about knowledge. He shouldn't have been distracted in such a delicate moment. Below him, chaos was beginning to reign. Entire families of ogres leapt out of their homes and fled. Some guards came running and started throwing buckets of water at the fire.

But Haku wasn't going to let them. Very slowly, he pulled from his dimensional bag an arrow that he had stolen from the fairies days before. He took aim, and then he threw the arrow at one of the guards. He couldn't shoot the arrow with the force of a bow, but he could still achieve a certain speed. Dragons' muscles were the strongest in existence and they could transfer enormous force to the objects they threw. The arrow crossed the square and lodged in the skull of one of the guards. The ogre fell dead as a doornail.

His companions yelped in fear and looked in all directions, but the fire and smoke made difficult for them to see. Darbi and Rhaegal in turn shot more arrows, hitting more ogres. In less than a minute, all the ogres in and around the square fled, and the guards ran away screaming that the city was under attack. "Good" Haku thought satisfied. "Go. Call your little army and bring it to me!"