Inheritor Of Magic: The Magi King

Wolfe's intervention in the attack had been the talk of the Palace all day and into the evening, when he was called to the Palace's main dining room for dinner. He didn't need to be psychic to see how everyone was staring at him, or hear the Nobles who had "discretely" tried to sneak their way into his quarters all day long, so it was no mystery what the topic of the day was going to be.

Risa and the twins took their spots at the back of the room, while Wolfe and his entourage were assigned their own round table near the corner, with the King's table and the War Council's assigned seating blocking the majority of the crowd from getting close enough to talk to him.

That was the prerogative of the War Council, and they had some serious questions for the innovative Magi.

"So, tell me, Patriarch. Would it be possible to block that fusillade with conventional magic?" One of the Generals asked.

"But of course. All you need to do is put up an array, and it's not really an issue to stop the bullets. If you do it right, you won't even trigger the secondary spells, and you won't have to deal with the worst of the magic." Wolfe agreed.

"Really? How is that?"

"If you use Gravity or wind barriers to stop the bullets instead of a solid barrier, the explosions won't be triggered, unless I deliberately set them to go off. So you will only have to deal with the wind blades, and not the activated on contact portion of the attack.

Then you let them drop to the ground and go off there, under your barrier, but away from the army.

A good barrier array is quite efficient, and it takes many times the equivalent number of attackers to break. So, if you had perhaps fifty of these being used by Rank three line soldiers, you would only need about ten rank three defenders to hold an efficient defensive array.

It wouldn't last forever, you would exhaust the defenders' magic in fairly short order, but the barrier would hold long enough to counterattack, and that's the part that really matters."

The General nodded in understanding. "Yes, that's the great advantage of an array. They require more mana to break than they do to uphold. If they weren't such a pain to create, I would imagine that more armies would use them for their defences."

Another of the Generals sipped his bubbly neon green beverage and smiled. "Seventy-five to twenty-five. One quarter of your mana goes to defending and three quarters to attacking. It's our standard procedure for combat. In practice, it leads to incredibly drawn out battles, unless one fighter is much better than the other, but one shot kills are quite uncommon among our force."

Wolfe was familiar with the concept. Battles between witches often went that way, with one side restraining or distracting the other to break their defences and stop the battle from turning into a stalemate. But more commonly, they just fought until they were exhausted and couldn't keep replenishing the mana in their spells.

"It's a different sort of warfare. You need to keep a layer of defence up at all times because you can't rely on your reaction time after the volley of arrows begins. That was how the Phalanx fell so easily, I only had to penetrate their shields, and it was all over.

If they had seen a volley of arrows flying their way, they would have erected some sort of secondary barrier to defend themselves."

"Ranged assassins." The General with the bubbly green beverage agreed.

"Well, isn't that horrifying. If they weren't so loud, they would be even worse." The first General agreed.

"You can make them quieter, but they're still far from silent. It's not like the twang of a bowstring that can be easily dampened, and won't be heard from a few dozen metres away." Wolfe agreed.

"Is there an option like that?" The General asked.

"We usually use bows or crossbows for that if they're not going to just cast the spell themselves. It's the best way that we've found to attack from a distance while hiding, and until there is an even better replacement, there is no good reason to change that."

The General made a quick note before responding. "I suppose that the real issue would be the ammunition, which seemed to be much more complex than arrows, but with the weapons enchanted, most of the damage would come down to the stamina of the users. A long fight would make it difficult to keep them from overexerting themselves."

"Yes, for the female Demons, it's one thing, as they'll need to draw as they cast, but for the men, who can rapid fire by emptying their Mana Cores, it's a whole new level of mana exhaustion."

The table full of Military Council Members frowned at that reminder. Emptying your mana cores in a few seconds to cast fifty spells in quick succession was likely to make most people pass out.

"How did you manage it then? You didn't even seem to be a bit stressed." A woman with a birdlike head asked.

"I didn't empty my mana cores. I have an exceptional ability to channel mana, and I enchanted the bullets before they were fired. The spells are identical on all of them, with no variables that need to be set, so I just create the spells in a batch and then channel mana into them until they're ready. In my case, five seconds or so is enough with the help of my lovely assistants."

"Ah, yes, three Wrath Demon bodyguards, all at Rank Six. I must say that I'm a bit envious, even though I know that they're just your bodyguards." The General with the neon drink laughed.

"I've been told that I hold some unfair advantages in this life. But none quite so fine as whoever is cooking these meals. I must say, I thought that we had an incredible chef at home, but this is on another level." Wolfe replied.

"In that case, I could recommend you one from the agency. My family runs the chef's academy here, and we do job placement for all of our graduates. They might be less experienced, but we do have a few incredibly well-trained chefs looking for work." The bird woman suggested.