The leader of the enemy’s third division shouted with all her might,
"Attack the arrows with everything you have. They must not land on us or the bridge."
Everyone on her division shot magic spells one after another, most of them did not work, so they attacked in such a way that most of their trajectories diverted, and they landed on the water. But some of them still landed on them; they had enough defensive artifacts on them that they were not harmed by it too much, but the fire in the arrows was extremely potent and scorching. Some landed on the bridge, and those sections caught on fire, which they extinguished as fast as possible.
The arrows from high in the fortress shot out again just as the previous wave was taken care of, similar to before, Lucien again chanted his spell, and the ballistic arrows caught fire again in mid-air. Then a sudden thought popped into her, seeing the potent effects of that strange fire on the fibers that held the bridge.
Her voice thundered again with prevalent warning, "Don’t hold back and destroy them in mid-air, they must not touch the bridge, those fires, they are likely to burn down the bridge."
Another division member of hers asked skeptically,
"But burning down the bridge shouldn’t guarantee them a win, though?"
She shook her head and rebuked, "Look, two-thirds of our section is pretty much on the bridge. If it breaks down, my third division will pretty much be eliminated at once, and our 1st division alone wouldn’t survive on that side. They will also be eliminated."
"Four days later, when the bridge is rebuilt, it will only be our fortifiers division vs all 300 of them."
She also relayed this information to their own fortress commander, Jaden Redmar, who ordered her as expected,
[Don’t hold back, destroy the arrows, use the potions when you’re mana reserves dwindle.]
She nodded and relayed her orders, and everyone, without holding back, destroyed every single arrow that was rained down on them. As a result, none of them could keep attacking the 1st division of the defenders; with that, the pressure on Heinz’s division decreased significantly.
Meanwhile, Lumina and her small team of 20 mage branch specialists prepared all of their powerful spells, specially selected and designed for the current situation, capable of stopping that enormous and heavy arrow-shaped artifact filled with immense destructive power.
Lumina herself fired a water-type arcane spell, something that would slow it down tremendously, then cast the engraved spell on her wooden wand, embedded in it was a large mana stone. She targeted the ability embedded in it, right at the siege arrow. She fired the water spell on the right one before; now, to fire on the other one, she uttered, "Metal Decomposition."
It was an ability from a pseudo rune of the "Metal" rune. It basically weakens the base structure of any artifact, unless there are proper protective-type runes engraved in it.
The others on her team similarly fired their own spells and attacks. With their efforts, the 2 siege arrows had lost their attack power and initial speed. And the moment this was done, Thorian Blackvale, holding a new rune-engraved sword given to him by Axel, stepped forward. He was standing at the back of Lumina’s team, waiting for them to finish their part.
Thorian jumped high in the sky, his mana went into the sword, and the pseudo rune in it shimmered brightly, the ability in it being activated. He slashed upward at the first siege arrow, its trajectory deflected, and a powerful shockwave of sound spread out from the point of impact.
Thorian was falling down, his hand was injured from stopping the 3-meter-long siege arrow, but he couldn’t fall now; he had to redirect the other arrow as well.
Lumina, at that moment, gave the timely save. She cast a wind-infused spell that stopped Thorian from falling and propelled him higher instead. He smiled at that and slashed sideways again with all of his energy, and the 2nd siege arrow was redirected as well.
The redirected siege arrows both crashed into the fortress walls, as two more loud metallic explosions reverberated everywhere. The fortress was made up of high-quality marble substances, and could not be broken. The steel door of the fortress was the only weak point that could be exploited. Thorian, after deflecting the 2nd siege arrow, felt utterly exhausted as the mana of his was drained by the weapon. Lumina controlled the wind with her wand artifact as she brought him down.
As Thorian landed, he gulped down a bunch of potions to recover himself as fast as possible. More siege arrows would be fired, and he would need to make sure the gate is not hit by even one of the arrows.
Jaden Redmar, on the other side, gritted his teeth as he received one report after another, each continuously delivering bad news. Everything was going wrong as expected. There was barely any chance to turn things around.
High in the sky, Sections A and B were both witnessing this spectacle of bloody mayhem with apparent unease. The overwhelming prowess and out-of-the-box thinking of the Gold Section was winning them a tremendous advantage. Section-C started off pretty strong, but they were on the backlog now, with no apparent way to gain any advantage.
Section-B commander Conner Ravenspire was thinking about how he would tackle the situation if it were himself. Well, he had some ideas, but they were all too risky. With very little to almost no chance of working.
Section-A commander Enrick on the other hand was thinking about something else, those fire arrows, the fires on them were strange, while it did seem like a good strategy to try and burn down the bridge while most of the enemies were on it, but that conflicted with what he knew about the Gold Section in general, specially about the valkyrie since she is the commander.
Burning down the bridge will cost them a lot in terms of negative evaluation since it’s a kind of suicide tactic, something the professors disapprove of doing. So, she would never do that, she would never take a half ass win like that, she is too arrogant, she will aim for nothing but a perfect victory in every possible term.
So, with that in mind, he was moderately sure that they were not in fact trying to burn down the bridge, but they were trying to make the enemy think that they were. And the Gold Section was quite successful in making Section-C think that. Even he would fall for it, if he were down there, it was only because he could see everything from up here at one glance, that the situation became so clear to him.