Chapter 187 187 On The Offensive
The drivers each brought out one of the lightly armoured personnel carriers that the mundane army used to move troops. To Wolfe, they looked like a regular cargo truck, except that there was a tarp over the bed to keep rain and bullets off their soldiers, neither of which was a factor inside a fortress City.
But they did the job, and they were easy to get in and out of, so the witches loaded up as fast as they could and started heading for the lines.
Wolfe brought the smallest of the six groups with him, just the twenty witches who had been here before the mass influx, and they headed for the second position from the west, with the Morgana officer and her group on one side and the Colonel from Myrrh Coven on the other.
"Alright, once we get there, I will block Mio\'s team from the source so that my casting doesn\'t cause a backlash. I\'ve had time to modify the spells on my rifles, and I\'ll try to lock the mundane army down with a gravity array to make them easier to target.
Don\'t worry about loot, we get what we get, and there are five other teams to make up for anything that we miss. Just make sure that no threats survive.
Once the gravity array is in place, I\'ve got the option of a [Lightning Array] or [Cluster Grenades Array]. The rest of you have [Fireball] spells on your ammunition, so go for short bursts until you\'re familiar with the effect.
Keep low, fire at anything that moves and try not to get shot."
The witches chuckled at his instructions, but they only had a vague description of the enemy unit to go on, so they had no idea how this fight was going to go or even if they were going to get any helpers from among the locals. The scouts said they would send people, but there was no time to coordinate.
Everyone in the truck was becoming more tense as they reached the estimated location of the mundane army unit and realized that it looked hauntingly familiar.
The army had stopped at a former front line camp, with stone walls built by witches, and dug in their artillery to face the witches from the covens. It was just like the one that Wolfe and the others had built. Only this time, the Witches were the ones fighting their way in.
The battle was ongoing, and Wolfe saw the occasional flash as bullets hit magical armour and a small dome barrier in the distance.
"That\'s our cue, ladies. Everyone out and get down. Dig yourself a safe spot with earth magic if you need it. I will begin the attack in ten seconds." Wolfe ordered as the truck came to a stop nearly a kilometre from the battle.
As soon as he exited the vehicle, dozens of heads popped up from hiding spots around them. Every form of mutation could be seen, from animal ears to horns and even extra limbs and twisted bodies. These fighters definitely weren\'t among the scouts from their village, and many looked like they didn\'t have long to live due to their mutations, but they all had guns.
Wolfe raised his hand and dropped his fingers as he counted down from five, informing them all of the timeline for his attack before he numbed the senses of the Servants and activated the [Gravity Array] over the camp.
If the army had prisoners, hopefully, they could escape and make their presence known because a split second later, twenty witches and fifty villagers began shooting into the camp, filling the area with explosions and silencing most of the battle.
Wolfe sensed the change in the mana flow as his [Gravity Array] broke, but he couldn\'t tell what was causing it until a flying shard of glimmering stone caught his eye. The soldiers were wearing null stone necklaces, which weakened or broke the incoming spells from the witches, and the combined effect had disabled the array.
The destabilizing effects of the null stone weren\'t stopping the bullets, though, and most of the explosions were still going off, tearing the camp apart like an artillery barrage.
Since a sustained array was out of the question, Wolfe began targeting the tanks with [Lightning Bolts], using all the mana that he could draw. Thunder rolled through the air as the first bolt hit, turning a tank to molten slag. Another quickly followed it into oblivion as Wolfe picked out the targets for priority extermination.
The ruined walls of the camp made it hard to target anything inside and gave the army lots of places to hide, but the tanks enjoyed no such luxury.
"There are gas masks in the box. Everyone put them on if we have to advance. Your armour spell only protects you if it\'s still active." Priya reminded the witches as the battle fell silent.
"I think they\'re both confused about what to do now. They don\'t know whose side we are on or if we\'re just going to attack them all." Ella whispered to Wolfe while they waited for signs of movement in the camp.
"You\'ve got a point. I\'ll take it from here, I guess." He agreed.
"Locals, hold your positions. Witches, grab your masks and come with me. The Coven force should recognize your armour spells, and we will breach the back wall of the camp to clear out the army. Priya, I need you on the radio to the coven.
Let them know who we are and that we\'re here to help. We don\'t need any friendly fire incidents."
[Coven Forces, this is Priya Company. We are at the back of your target and moving in on the walls. All attacks should be considered a mixed melee situation.] She informed the witches, then put on her gas mask and mounted the radio to the side.
[It\'s good to see you, Priya Company. We will meet you soon.]
The villagers kept up the suppressive fire, targeting anything that moved or might hold a soldier, while Wolfe and his team moved forward to the walls. [Detect Hidden] didn\'t show many survivors nearby, but further forward there was a section of the camps that his spell still couldn\'t see through.
"There is a section up ahead that is even blocking my [Detect Hidden] spell. I will try hitting it with an Array, but we might have to storm it with mundane weapons due to the amount of null stone in the area." He warned the unit and began mentally forming a [Cluster Grenades] array for maximum damage.