Adrian
Isis was enjoying herself. It was such a little thing but it helped Adrian relax.
They were floating well above a border fortress and Adrian was doing his best to scout it out. Unlike the other three that Adrian had destroyed this one was clearly under high alert. It actually had a barrier of some sort active.
Still, that hardly mattered, Adrian had a full-powered Sword Beam ready to wreck both the barrier and the gemstone array that was its' core. It wasn't going to be a concern.
The Sword Hero noted the food storage sites, the stables where Dragons, Filolials and Horses were housed, the infirmaries and most importantly the communication arrays and the areas where the soldiers were located. He wanted to utterly annihilate every one of those areas, save for the last.
It was a little tempting to be through and simply wipe out the whole fortress and the walls that it commanded but Adrian wasn't willing to kill hundreds of people who were nothing more than tools in the hands of their corrupt and foolish masters. He was well aware that he might have already killed innocents back in the previous fortresses despite his best efforts, sure none had died when he had been there and he hadn't received any experience notifications from them but he had injured a lot of them it wasn't hard to imagine that some of them would end up dead.
The thought was frustrating, but Adrian didn't see any way around it. He needed to make sure that he found Naofumi first, the problem lay in the fact that while he had an area he was meant to search that area was massive. Plus, while his hunting and tracking skills were quite useful, they weren't as helpful as they should have been. Someone, probably the Queen's shadows and several Adventures, had placed a lot of false trails.
He could tell that they weren't anymore and he hadn't found any of them nearby and really didn't have the time to track them down but all this meant that he had basically zero direct leads to Naofumi and he would need a fair amount of time to track him down. Lesser time than almost anybody else, he was sure, but a lot of time nonetheless.
Adrian didn't have any practical options to narrow down his search. He was not experienced at interrogations and after Rabier he really didn't want to try it again unless he was in control and had the time to try. Adrian had been so furious at the man that he had effectively killed him before he had fully finished interrogating him.
It worried him that he might be very close to getting killed by Fitoria. If Itsuki died in captivity and Naofumi died today then she had a lot of incentive to kill him and Motoyasu. Sure, Isis' ability to block her vision would be a godsend...but that wouldn't be anywhere near enough given that she could track him down and find him. He took a deep breath to stop thinking about just how dangerous that bird was.
He needed to focus so that he didn't have to worry about her. Keeping Naofumi safe was just step one but it was critical.
So, here he was, limiting Melromarc's ability to find him instead. Sure, absolutely ruining the border wouldn't stop the people already on the field but it would cripple their communications and that would prevent Naofumi from being swarmed. A single squad should be within Naofumi's capabilities to counter.
Not to mention crushing a fortress-like this was pretty simple. The first fortress had taken him nearly five minutes to ruin as he carefully tested out that things durability, he wanted to stop these people not kill them all. The second and third had been over in less than a minute.
This one might take a little longer given that the barrier was up.
"I'm starting Isis," he said, his voice a little loud to be heard above the cold, howling wind.
"Yes, father," she said, then closed her eyes and flared her mana. Adrian smiled at the feel of it, even as his mana sight let him see the beauty of it. Akin to a Kaleidoscope bursting from her skin. She looked amazing.
They synchronized their powers and began to chant in unison, "We command the elements to force the world to be torn apart by the trinity of Fire, Lightning and Wind. Let all between the heavens and earth be brought to ruin. Blade Storm!"
Mana Sight allowed him to see the immense amount of mana flowing in and around the massive structure. Every inch of the border was saturated in mana which was coming from a number of gemstones embedded into the stone that the border was made out of. He made sure that he could see communication rooms, food stores, water storage facilities, literally dozens of Filolials and Dragons and the carriages they pulled, hundreds of men and women and many armouries.
It was quite a sight, and it was one that was almost identical to the previous three, it must have taken a long time to build this defence network.
Unfortunately for them, Adrian had a lot of incentive to destroy this place. Since he couldn't help the Shield Hero directly, the obvious solution was to destroy the Shield's enemies.
The thousand blades that manifested around him in less than a second would be his tools...but first.
"Sword Beam," he said, his voice barely a whisper, as he held the boosted Sword in one hand, the other carefully holding onto his daughter.
The attack had no recoil. It emerged from the tip of his sword that was pointed directly downwards, right at the core of the defensive barrier. He ignored the existence of the barrier itself, rightly, as it turned out. It simply failed the instant the beam touched it. No resistance, no dramatic moment where the question of 'which one would win?' came into play.
For the fortress, however, the beam was catastrophic and a huge portion of it was simply removed. Adrian kept the beam active for another three seconds before moving it through a very small angle. He stopped it only because he would have killed a couple of people otherwise. Though he doubted that anyone down there would appreciate it given that their fortress just had a fair portion of it annihilated.
He could see some of them looking up and then going still as they spied the hundreds of swords covered in electricity bearing down on them.
Adrian showed the highest-ranking members, identified by their equipment, no mercy. He smashed half a dozen electrified swords near them and watched with pity as they were electrocuted. The other, significantly less important soldiers, got a lesser dose but they were still shocked slightly even if Adrian made sure to limit the current flow.
His other targets were not so lucky. Adrian had no reason to hold back against inanimate objects and so the communications room, food storages and kitchens, equipment stores, enchantment anchors and most importantly transportation systems were annihilated
Adrian felt a surge of pity for the animals in the stables as they died but he welcomed the experience nonetheless. It was a little odd to kill filolials when he had one in his arms but it was apparently not a problem, Isis' reaction to his question about whether or not she was okay with him killing filolials had been a shrug and nothing more. Her apathy had been a welcome surprise.
It had taken no more than 15 seconds since he had fired the Sword Beam.
He carefully looked around as he gauged their response and condition. Adrian felt an odd combination of satisfaction and horror, a familiar emotion after his fourth assault, as he smelled the smoke, observed the many fires and witnessed the many soldiers who were either unconscious, whimpering in pain or begging for help.
"Done?" asked Isis, while casually observing the devastation below, her silver hair moving wildly thanks to the wind.
Adrian nodded, then double-check to be certain and confirmed, "Done. Ready to go?"
A nod and then they started moving. He didn't go at his full speed, instead, he moved only moderately fast and made sure to destroy the many gemstones based enchantment anchors and rest stops along the border. It slowed him down a bit but it would hurt his enemies a lot more. He suppressed his frustration at being forced to waste time and potentially lives like this due to the greed and stupidity of humans.
It took the Sword Hero only two hours to raze most of Melromarc's Eastern border. He still found it unbearably slow and inefficient. Even if most of his time was spent making sure that Naofumi was not anywhere near the border, he hadn't wanted to risk just missing the Shield Hero.
