Chapter 948: Puppet City
Legend has it, the Gray Orcs aren't native to the Blazeforge Realm. Their ancestors wandered in from somewhere else, and after countless years of squatting here, they've blended in so thoroughly that even the other orc tribes forget they were ever outsiders. Funny how time turns invaders into locals—if you have enough patience and enough alchemical resources to last through the centuries.
This fortress—Puppet City—was a glaring misfit among orcish architecture. The Gray Orcs built it as a perfect square, all sharp lines and obsessive order. If you squint, you can almost see the anxiety of a race that survives by outsmarting everyone else.
From afar, the walls looked like they’d been carved from a single slab of gray stone, their surfaces gleaming with magical metal plating. Waves of mana pulsed outward—so strong, you could sense them from kilometers away. Subtlety clearly wasn’t on the budget.
Even Leon had to admit, he was impressed. Who knew what kind of junk was crammed inside those walls, but outside, everything was sheathed in a layer of magically forged metal. The Gray Orcs really weren’t afraid to burn through their treasury when their necks were on the line.
Each metal plate was etched with a miniature alchemical array—dense, tangled glyphwork combining into a defensive nightmare. It was the kind of engineering only a paranoid alchemist could love.
On top of the walls, massive and bizarre Alchemical Golems lurked—each one like a mana crystal cannon gone rogue, complete with legs. The Gray Orcs had a knack for turning battlefield anxiety into hardware.
Sure enough, when the fleeing Gray Orcs scrambled into the fortress, those enormous Alchemical Golems atop the walls began to pulse with violent magical energy—so intense, you could feel it even from a safe distance.
From the cannon-like barrel, blinding fire began to gather. Five seconds later, a deafening blast sent a fireball—at least ten meters across—hurtling toward the pursuing Alchemical Golem Army. The Gray Orcs might not be swift, but they sure knew how to make an entrance.
Each Alchemical Golem unleashed a fireball, ten meters wide, smashing into the ground hundreds of meters in front of the fortress.
Thunder rumbled across the battlefield.
The earth split open as if struck by rolling thunder, leaving a massive chasm right in front of the Blade Alchemical Golems.
The moment those Alchemical Golems started casting, Leon had already signaled for the Mage Legion and the Alchemical Golem Army to halt their pursuit.
Otherwise, those fireballs would have taken out at least a dozen Blade Alchemical Golems. Not exactly a bargain for a siege.
"Archmage Leon, what now?"
Shuban glanced at Leon, worry written all over his face. The Gray Orcs were so fragile—one careless move and they'd get flattened.
Leon waved his hand.
"Surround them for now..."
No sooner had Leon spoken than squads of Alchemical Golems and Gray Orcs appeared atop those metal-plated walls.
The mirrored, glyph-covered walls revealed dark openings, and from each, another cannon-legged Alchemical Golem emerged—like some fever dream of paranoid engineers.
Suddenly, Gray Orcs swarmed the ramparts, casting spells in every direction. The sky lit up in a rain of four-colored magic—if you ever wondered what an orcish light show looked like, this was it.
Those legged mana crystal cannons—Alchemical Golems—kept casting, joined by more constructs poking out from the wall’s hidden alcoves. The Gray Orcs really did love their redundancy.
Blinding fire blossomed, and a barrage of massive fireballs—each over ten meters wide—came hurtling toward Leon’s position. Subtlety, as always, was not their strong suit.
Using the fortress to their advantage, the Gray Orcs’ counterattack was unexpectedly fierce.
On Leon’s side, the Alchemical Golems and Mage Legion retaliated. Spell torrents crashed against the fortress walls, causing the intricate glyphwork on the metal plating to flare to life.
A faint magical membrane shimmered over the walls. Spells rained down, but all they managed was to expand the glowing glyphwork—no real damage, just a brighter show.
Meanwhile, the Gray Orcs threw spells without restraint. After half a minute of magical bombardment, Leon signaled a retreat, pulling back five or six hundred meters before the enemy finally slowed their assault.
At this range, only a Title Archmage could cast spells wide enough to hit. As for the Alchemical Golems, only the biggest—those five or six meters tall, with cannon legs—could manage such reach.
But the attack frequency of these Alchemical Golems was abysmal. After firing off a fireball the size of a carriage, they’d need nearly a full minute to recharge, and every spell took ages to wind up.
Once the attack direction was set, those Alchemical Golems couldn’t adapt. Flaws everywhere—powerful, yes, but compared to a true mana crystal cannon, they were laughably limited. The Gray Orcs knew it too; only a dozen or so of these clunky monstrosities guarded the walls.
Each fireball, ten meters across, packed the punch of a top-tier seventh-level spell. Against a mob, the blast radius was terrifying—covering dozens of meters. Intimidation was its real purpose, not precision.
Leon pulled his forces back, abandoning the assault and settling in to surround the Gray Orcs’ fortress.
Leon had expected the Gray Orcs’ fortress to be a tough nut to crack, but their fear of death was almost impressive. Paranoia made for excellent engineering, apparently.
The walls soared over thirty meters high, their surfaces sheathed in a continuous layer of magic-resistant metal.
That metal was top-grade magical alloy. In the human kingdoms, it’d be reserved for enchanted plate armor—sold at a premium in any alchemist’s shop. Here, the Gray Orcs used it as bricks.
To get this effect, the alloy plates had to be far thicker than armor, alchemically treated, etched with arrays and runes, and linked together into a seamless whole. Only a formally trained alchemist could even attempt it.
Each wall stretched for thousands of meters. The number of metal plates required was staggering. Even with every Gray Orc dabbling in alchemy, and an army of alchemists at their disposal, it would take decades—assuming endless supplies—to finish just the outer shell.
In reality, it was centuries of obsessive accumulation that built this fortress. The Gray Orcs were nothing if not patient.
Leon couldn’t help but sigh. So extravagant...
The resources the Gray Orcs poured into these walls could bankrupt a noble house overnight. If you pooled every faction in the Andalusia Kingdom, maybe—just maybe—they’d scrape together enough for a single stretch of this fortress.
Those alchemical arrays were rare—formally ‘level-less’ arrays. Each metal plate held a basic pattern, but with enough plates, the combined array grew stronger and stronger.
In theory, the bigger the array, the higher its rank and the greater its power. Give the Gray Orcs a few more centuries, and they’d keep expanding their turtle shell until the whole fortress was covered in arrays fit for a Sky Rank alchemist.
At that point, not even a Sky Rank powerhouse could punch through these walls.
The stronger the attack, the more metal plates would activate their arrays. Unless you exceeded the plates’ reaction or load limits, you couldn’t even chip a single brick.
This kind of madness was rare even at the height of Northrend’s development. How terrified of death do you have to be to build something like this?
Granted, the Gray Orcs’ frail bodies meant they valued defense above all else. Their obsession with alchemical golems was practically genetic, but even Leon hadn’t expected them to build such a fortress-shell.
Leon withdrew, refusing to waste lives on pointless assaults. The mana array scanner captured the glyphwork on the walls, and his team began piecing together the patterns, searching for a way to crack the array.
Leon stopped attacking; the Gray Orcs didn’t dare sally out. The siege settled into a stalemate.
Two days later, nothing had changed. The moment Leon’s troops got close, the Gray Orcs patrolling the walls would unleash spells like rabid dogs.
Unless they broke through the fortress gate, a frontal assault was pointless—just more casualties. Flying over was a joke; every few hundred meters, a massive anti-air tower hummed with power, ready to blast anything that entered its range out of the sky.
Those towers were built for aerial defense—ground targets barely registered. The Gray Orcs were thorough, if nothing else.
So much for flying. The walls were impregnable from the ground, too. The only option was the gate.
By the third day, the Gray Orcs had settled in for a siege, refusing to come out. Leon started circling the fortress, looking for a crack in their shell.
The city was enormous, and every Gray Orc was versed in puppet alchemy. Their water needs were staggering—beyond drinking and washing, their workshops devoured water by the ton.
With the fortress sealed off, how did they get their water?
The fortress sat at the junction of two rivers. Under normal circumstances, water was never a problem. Even with the siege, the Gray Orcs weren’t worried; smoke poured from the workshops’ chimneys, proof they were churning out Alchemical Golems around the clock.