Chapter 209: 209. Tower Capture – 1

The flames of war were difficult to hide, even from people who were not involved in the conflict, and now even the training camp for first years, which was isolated from the whole world, knew about the war raging on the academy’s soil.

But despite this shocking news, the ruthless, unforgiving military training did not stop at all.

William, right now, stood at the forefront of his group as they were being briefed about the pattern of today’s mock battle.

After the first month, while the unit had been trained individually in terms of raw endurance, their bodies and minds were hardened properly.

Newer training schedules with various objectives had been introduced after that.

The first week of the second month had focused on mana control exercises. The week after that, they had focused on tempering mindset, mentality and pain resistance.

Right now, a new week was on, and the militiary officers in charge of the group had decided to shift the focus.

The basic morning drills continued like before, but the rest of the time was now being invested in making the students learn the value of teamwork and coordination.

Various exercises were being introduced to instill the skill of teamwork.

Even though William had anticipated this at first, the truth was far harsher: these people were still quite poor at working together. Their racial divides were too great for them to collaborate.

The professors had split the unit 1 into two groups based on rank: the Blue group was made up of odd ranks (1, 3, 5, etc.) and the Red group was made up of even ranks (2, 4, 6, etc.).

These groups were competing against each other in multi-format mock battles to strengthen their ability to coordinate and work together.

William, being in the Blue group, took charge of it and suppressed any type of unrest between the students.

Along with him, Galeion had a similar nature, and these two were able to force the students to work together.

Fiona Ashfall, the Phoenix princess, had initially tried to instill some separatist thoughts among the Phoenix-kin, but William had swiftly handled the situation with the use of force and words.

In the Blue group, his commands were now unquestionable, but William was aware of the harsh reality that, if Galeion and the other more powerful members were eliminated in a simulated battle, the Blue group would disintegrate and the cooperation he had imposed by force on them would break.

In the meantime, there was a disagreement among the members of the Red team.

Ethan declined to follow Dino when he offered to lead the Red group, claiming that he would favor dragons and that Ethan was of a higher rank.

The humans were on Ethan’s side already.

Katherine being 4th rank had remained silent and offered her support to Ethan.

The beast folk were also won over with Kara’s help, but neither the phoenixes nor dragons agreed to back Ethan.

Since there was no clear leader among elves and dwarves, everyone had their own preferences and selected the leaders on their own will.

Ethan was having a headache as he tried making everyone coordinate.

Currently, the Red group was divided into two factions and such internal division between them was already holding the group back.

Today’s mock battle was more of a game in William’s opinion than a war practice. The game was called ’tower capture’.

The objective was clear: capture the enemy tower and defend your own.

The rules of this mock battle was simple: given a 10-mile radius of forest land, with the borders heavily fenced, cadets were not allowed to leave that area, and the battle would be carried out in this designated perimeter.

Everyone’s cultivation was suppressed, and each cadet was given a bracelet with a set of 10 preloaded spells that could be used, each for once.

Along with that, they were also given a one cold weapon of their choice.

A participant would be eliminated if their bracelet were hit by an attack from an offensive spell or a cold weapon.

To capture a tower, the opposition team needed to make five cadets stand together inside the tower for about 5 minutes continuously while defending themselves.

The virtual spells released by the bracelet would avoid injuring cadets and only work on the bracelets, while the cold weapons would be blunt enough to be healed by potions.

Each group had 50 participants; well, since Seraphine was absent, there were 49 in William’s group, but he didn’t complain.

In fact, their group was already dominating every wargame they had participated in till now.

The groups were moved immediately after the briefing and were led to their respective towers by different officers.

A few minutes passed…

Leila stood at the top of the Red group’s tower, looking at the enemy Blue tower.

Special individual spells were prohibited unless they came from the bracelet, but there were no clear instructions about the use of talents, and even if she did use her talent, there was no way to detect that for others.

She had been frustrated at all the mess that was happening in the red group from the start.

Those proud dragons and phoenixes had refused to cooperate.

Right now, the arguments and disagreements were going on behind her between the students, even after the leaders had come to a truce.

Yet Leila did not let her be distracted and remained focused on the enemy Blue tower.

Her talent as a ’celestial archer’ provided her with a ’sharp eye’ effect, with the help of which she could see long distances quite clearly.

She wanted to use it today so that she could launch a clear shot from her bow towards the enemy tower.

For the past few days, the red team had been getting defeated repeatedly by the blue team, and today she was determined to turn the tables.

She decided to use her talent and take out the top leadership of the enemies so that their order of command would be in shambles.

Then it would be easier for her group to segregate the enemy and finish them off one at a time.

Even Dino and Ethan had come to a truce today. They had realized that their internal fights were only a weak point for the enemy to exploit.

With that plan in mind, Leila clutched the bow she had chosen as her cold weapon, her ’sharp sight’ activated, and her vision zoomed in on the top of the enemy tower.

A figure came into view.

It was William. She noticed him standing with a bow of his own and passing on orders to the other cadets of his group.”

The sight of a bow in William’s hands made her sneer.

“Sure, he must be strong in terms of cultivation and swords, but to think he decides to use a bow when I am still standing here is like an ant trying to crush a mountain,” she thought.

She looked at Ethan and Dino, who were discussing their own.

“I want to commence the attack,” Leila said to Ethan, who gave her a thumbs-up.

Dino’s brows tightened. “Are you sure this will work?”

Ethan nodded. “Once Leila takes out Galeion and William, you and your people can go and conquer the tower, while 10 of us will protect the tower, and the rest will clear out the incoming attackers while hiding in major defensive positions.”

“Leila would provide the required cover for your group.”

Dino nodded and proceeded to climb down the tower, readying his followers for an attack.

Leila, meanwhile, had already drawn her bow, and her target was set on William’s bracelet.

She stretched the bow to its last inch and released the arrow with great momentum; her shot left a swishing sound as the arrow cut through the air.

The arrow, though normal, under the influence of Leila’s celestial archer talent, blasted with great speed and closed the distance between William and itself.

“Good shot!” Leila exclaimed, confident that her arrow would reach the target in a few seconds.

But before her shot could connect on the other side, the arrow exploded mid-air.

Immediately, her head turned, and she looked at William’s still-raised bow like he had just shot an arrow from it to counter the incoming one.

The smile vanished from her face as she looked at William’s smirk, while he looked straight at her as if he could see her as clearly as she could see him.

Her heart beat like a drum as she witnessed William take out an arrow from the back and raise the bow to aim at them.

“What happened, Lia?” Ethan asked as he saw her nervous expression.

“Ethan!!” Leila took his name, about to say something, but words refused to come out as her focus remained on the arrow that William was aiming.

She wanted to confirm her fears.

Surely the arrow would die down midway to the tower, right?!

Surely William’s aim is not as good as hers, right??.

Unfortunately, her delusions were broken the moment the arrow launched from William’s bow.

It approached with a colossal force behind it, and before Leila could even realize its trajectory, the arrow was head-on visible above them.

Fortunately, Leila’s instincts flared, and she sensed the target was Ethan.

She immediately pushed him to the side, but came in the way of the arrow, her breath almost stopping from dread as she expected the arrow to strike some of her vital organs.

But the real despair came when the arrow changed its direction mid-air in front of her eyes.

Her head turned as she realized that the arrow had turned towards Ethan, who had just been pushed a few steps aside.

She wanted to push him again, but the arrow was much faster.

Luckily, Ethan had his own instincts; he swiftly activated a defensive spell from his bracelet, and a translucent barrier appeared around him.

The arrow collided with the barrier and shattered it with huge force; the impact sent Ethan slamming towards the wall while Leila and a few other witnesses saw the aftermath of that single arrow in horror.

How could a single arrowhead cause such an impact? was what everyone thought. Unfortunately, they did not get time to process many of those thoughts.

A volley of William’s target-locked arrows was already in mid-air.

The members of the Red group did not get time to react, and almost six of them got directly eliminated as the arrows hit their bracelets.

Surprisingly, the bracelets absorbed all the shock of the arrows, and they did not cause an impact like earlier.

Ethan stood up after stabilizing himself and witnessed the ruthless elimination of his group members.

He gritted his teeth and led Leila and everyone else to climb down the tower into the shade of thick forest, where they wouldn’t be visible.

Ethan had to devise a new strategy now.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep