Chapter 89: Artificial “sun”
The dock area of Cliff City is very small, densely packed with dozens of ships, many of which bear bloodstains and signs of combat.
Salian ordered the crew to stow the cloud sail, secure the cabin door, and squeeze the 【Quesser】 into a corner. After the crew disembarked with their bags, he “decorated” the deck and ship’s hull with pre-prepared miscellaneous items and trash.
In no time, the elf ship was transformed into a battered wreck, as if it had been plundered multiple times.
Of course, this was just superficial work, unlikely to fool anyone paying attention.
With everything done, the crew gathered together and headed straight along the extremely steep road toward that castle.
No one lit lamps; many in the group had darkvision and helped each other, so it had little impact.
Anse looked up and scanned around, spotting no wyvern tracks—a piece of good news.
“Why is there no one here?” Kalenno asked doubtfully.
“There are, but not many.” Anse pointed to the patches of residential buildings.
“They’ve probably all gone into the castle,” Salian speculated.
Cliff City is very special; the cliff top is the castle, the only passage in and out from the land direction. In emergencies, the cliff fortress seals the road and holds to the death.
After advancing a few hundred meters, the noise ahead grew louder, with faint dog barking coming through.
Anse and Salian exchanged a glance, both sensing a bad omen.
Nolnos quickened his pace for a few steps, then leaped to the cliff top.
So-called cliff top was actually a flat ground several hundred meters wide, where the castle stood.
The castle’s back door facing the port direction was tightly shut, while refugees crowded beneath the outer city wall, packed shoulder to shoulder—at least a thousand.
But these refugees were extremely quiet; adults covered the children’s mouths, making even cries very suppressed.
“What happened?” Anse asked in a low voice.
Hearing his standard Faerun Common Tongue, the alarmed refugees finally calmed down.
A young man quietly pointed toward the front, saying nothing.
Anse rode forward, circled around the city wall, and looked out—his scalp instantly went numb.
Ahead of the castle, in the dim night, countless “little lanterns” dotted the darkness—pairs of them, in every color.
Kobolds, an uncountable horde of kobolds!
Calls resembling puppy barks rose one after another, sounding cute but visually terrifying.
Kobolds aren’t very strong individually, but there are vast numbers of them; they like ganging up and excel at group fights.
Anse had good eyesight; he noticed a cliff over ten meters wide ahead of the castle, where a bridge once stood but had been completely destroyed, keeping the kobolds at bay.
But they were trying to build a bridge, and among the kobold crowd were a few winged kobolds!
Suddenly, a volley of arrows rained down from the city wall, mixed with several rockets.
“Whizz whizz whizz—”
The kobolds building the bridge scattered in panic; many wooden boards and logs caught fire but were quickly extinguished, plunging the wilderness back into darkness.
‘Isn’t this a dead end?’
The cliff fortress looks high from the dock, but relative to the land, it has almost no elevation drop. The cliff blocks the kobolds but leaves the entire cliff fortress isolated and helpless, nowhere to flee.
The long night had only just begun, and time was not on the humans’ side.
“Whizz whizz whizz—”
Another volley of arrows, this time mixed with several fire gels.
The logs just pushed forward by the kobolds burst into flames instantly; even covering them with dirt couldn’t extinguish them, leaving little behind in the end.
Anse noticed a large pile of burned wood accumulated at the bridgehead; this back-and-forth struggle had clearly been going on for a while.
One side had no other options, the other was stubborn—they were locked in.
Salian and the others quietly came to Anse’s side, their expressions grave.
“Should we leave?” Kalenno hesitated.
“We can’t; the peninsula is very narrow, not even ten miles at its widest,” Salian said coldly.
Claw Peninsula stretches long north-south; if cut off by kobolds or dragonborn, there’s no way out.
Now the hills and wilds were probably swarming with kobolds; getting trapped in the wilderness meant certain death.
“Who is the lord here? How strong are they?” Anse rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
“A few years ago it was Sir Casanova, an elite warrior; his family has decent strength, mainly from fishing and dock trade…” Salian recalled.
Cliff City is an independent city-state, belonging to no one, so naturally no formal title—usually addressed as Sir.
“Sounds like a smart guy, so why didn’t he leave?” Anse asked doubtfully.
From the incident in Dusk City until now, at least a day had passed; the distance wasn’t far, plenty of time to escape.
“Probably… caught off guard,” Salian said, his mood low and somewhat self-blaming.
“It’s fine; worst case we go back—visiting Giant Tail wouldn’t be bad, just don’t know what swamp specialties they have for food,” Anse said jokingly.
Salian tugged at the corner of his mouth but didn’t smile.
At that moment, shouts came from the castle, the arrow volleys suddenly intensified, and the kobold calls grew urgent.
Anse focused his gaze: a large group of winged kobolds dragged several iron chains across the cliff, braving the arrows to wrap the chains around the broken bridge’s stone base and wooden stakes.
Though suffering heavy casualties, they achieved their goal.
Several fire gels were thrown from atop the city wall, barely burning through one wooden stake and snapping one chain—still four iron chains spanned the cliff.
Fire gel is a common adventure supply, great for starting fires but poor for attack, at best scorching some wood.
The kobolds excitedly yipped and barked, their woofs and hisses mixed with a few mangled dragon speech words.
They crowded at the bridgehead, scrambling along the iron chains like ants on a tree, fearless.
“Prepare to withdraw; I’ll hold them off,” Anse said urgently.
“Stay safe; we’ll wait for you,” Salian replied without fuss, pulling the others away.
Anse rode around the crowd and stopped sixty or seventy meters from the broken bridge.
He focused on spellcasting, mana surging around him; in the night, only a red glow danced about him, occasionally outlining his black silhouette.
“
「Metamagic: Empowered Spell」+「Fireball」!
An elemental orb lit up; an unremarkable flash shot from his fingertip, streaking through the night sky and instantly landing at the opposite bridgehead.
“Boom—”
A fireball nearly twenty meters in diameter erupted at the bridgehead; the night sky seemed to birth a red-yellow sun, filling everyone’s gaze with red light. Even as it faded, the red outline lingered on their retinas.
Flames swept over all the kobolds, leaving charred corpses everywhere; they didn’t even whimper, let alone flee.
Their bodies and the wood burned steadily; even the slender iron chains were wrapped in magma-like flames, smoldering for several seconds before gradually extinguishing.
The battlefield fell instantly silent as everyone stared dumbfounded.
“Snap snap snap…”
The iron chains glowed red and softened, snapping one after another.
After a brief stupor, the front kobolds fled wildly backward, the rear ones following in a chaotic rout.
Kalenno, withdrawing, paused and muttered, “Do we… even need to run anymore?”
