I Refused To Be Reincarnated-Chapter 855: Hollow Bastion, Solid Strategy

From stone bleachers carrying the scent of soil freshly hardened by mana, Teacher Maxwell and the hundreds of students watched Desmond’s noisy charge with a slow, emphatic headshake.

"A prime example of what you should never do on a battlefield." Though Maxwell sighed, his voice cut through the plain.

"Now, that’s what you should do." He pointed at the opposing team, who glided like shadows from two different sides. Skintight barriers pulsed around them, muffling their mana and refracting light away. Just as he had taught them.

"In a real strike against a fortified outpost, they’ll have detecting devices, patrols, watchmen manning the walls. Surprise, trained teamwork, and clever strategy will let a team of ten capture the same outpost where thousands failed."

Students took notes of their teacher’s explanation, drawing Adam’s bastion with charcoal in the center of their parchment, then tracing two arrows that converged on it in a pincer movement. On another parchment, they drew the tower set up by their classmates.

Unlike Adam’s behemoth bastion, it was short—reinforced with transmuted plates of heavy metal studded with drills every few centimeters—and surrounded by a barrier of raging winds.

"Smaller targets are easier to defend; less expenditure for maximum concentration of mana." Maxwell nodded. "Excellent choice. On the other hand... Adam hides in a threatening but empty shell."

Inside his "shell," Adam leaned on his throne’s armrest, sliding a white rook toward three dark pawns over a chessboard and snickering at the feedback from his echolocation spell—nothing. Whatever the enemies used hid them well, perhaps enough for even his spatial detection technique to fail, even if he unsealed his dantian.

Didn’t matter.

Strategy, as he understood it, wasn’t a set of rigid protocols or steps to follow. Rather, this was the lowest level anyone could reach. He, however blind to the outside he was, knew what his adversaries would do.

He knew they would try a pincer attack on his bastion, or at the very least would try to preserve their surprise. That was precisely why he hadn’t told Desmond to avoid the empty center.

The size? For style, of course, but also because they’d perceive it as the symbol of his arrogance, something they would want to strike down first.

He moved seven dark pawns around his white king, smirking. Strategy was just like this game: counters, anticipations, based not on situations but on your adversary’s intention.

The difference between a true strategy and footsoldier tactics.

Just as the sound of the seventh pawn’s fall echoed across Adam’s hall, Bismarck, the leader of the second strike force, raised his fist in the shade of the western walls.

Bismarck made eye contact with Tristan and the two students under his command at the other side of the bastion, received his nod, then lowered his fist. "Take that monstrosity down and the crystal with it. Combined strike in thirty seconds."

The three students behind him flipped their sashes across their chests, pulling out one item after another. War staves crowned by fist-sized elemental gems and metallic parts engraved with pulsing symbols that they assembled with practised ease, fell from the spatial containers.

Thirty seconds later, sharp, they stood behind four groaning mana cannons, light condensing in their muzzles. Clutched in their hands were alchemical solutions that swirled violently in transparent vials, reflecting the color of contained explosions begging for freedom.

"Fire!" Bismarck roared a single command, echoed by Tristan from the other side of the bastion.

And on the first syllable, all hell broke loose.

The blasts from the cannon shoved air to the distant bleachers, ruffling Maxwell’s robes. He nodded when the brilliant discharge of mana crashed against the base of the walls, and as his students hurled vials of scorching ruin to set them ablaze. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

Dust drowned their targets, scents of burnt stones strangling the plain’s floral scents. Tremors shook the ground, the cannons sinking into pits carved by their own recoil.

"Good," he commented with an approving tone. "Weakening the foundation with artefacts, ending the job with spells."

Simultaneously, the seven archmages struck their staffs on the ground. Three students channelled wind and water into a storm that hammered the weakened walls like battering rams. Before the raging water could still, Bismarck transformed its flow into jagged ice spikes aimed at infiltrating and widening cracks.

Tristan was the last to act. Soft soil stirred like quicksand under his control, turning into hulking stone hammers. Each strike made the earth cry, but the viciousness of his assault came from beneath, where quicksand hardened to push the walls upward.

"It’s over," Maxwell smirked without bothering to wait for the dust to settle. "Take notes, students. We’ll have a test about this textbook example of synergised assault next lesson."

"Yes, Teacher!" The students answered as they drew the positions of both teams, and pointed out where their strikes landed.

Before the walls, Bismarck roared. "Keep firing until we hear the bastion crumble!"

And as he did, Adam tapped a finger on his armrest.

"Wood controls earth."

Roots erupted beneath the walls, constricting and feeding off Tristan’s spell until the stones turned into decrepit sand. Overground, his massive hammers sprouted mottled flowers that became more vibrant with each second they spent devouring the spells.

"Earth controls water."

The soil rose in the storm, channelling the water in snaking bridges.

"Water controls fire."

The bridges poured his enemies’ water onto the flames ravaging the walls, suffocating most of them with loud sizzles.

"Fire controls metal."

The remaining fire plunged into the walls, melting the ice burgeoning through the cracks like a plague, while restoring them to pristine condition.

"They don’t have wood. That’s fine." He pushed his palm upward.

At his gesture, reinforced roots burst from the ground. Like earthly tentacles, they wrapped around the seven cannons. Before the students could react, the roots dragged their artillery underground, then resurfaced in Adam’s hall. They lined the seven cannons before his throne, vanishing with their tasks done.

He couldn’t use qi, but the teachings remained, and even though cultivators’ use of elements was more brutal than mages, their understanding of their interaction wasn’t any worse.

He grinned at the cannons. Exactly what he needed. Not now, though.

Instead, he tapped his forefinger on his armrest again.

The bastion’s doors flung open, dispersing the dust to let its pristine walls reflect sunlight on the attackers’ befuddled faces.

"Our cannons... No, the walls... What is happening?!" Bismarck let out a strangled gasp.

But no one answered him but Adam’s playful voice. "You’ve lost your cannons and have limited vials. Your spell can’t break my defenses. So, would you rather wring yourselves dry in a futile assault, or wager everything on destroying the crystal from the inside?"