Part 48: Chapter 34 – The Sword of Canaan

Chapter 34 – The Sword of Canaan



Welcome back. Today we are going to face the hardest challenge yet and what might be the hardest map in the game. So there will be plenty to cover therefore let’s get started.









: You have obtained many proud victories. Despite that, today’s ardeous sitiuation happened because of I, Barka. Because of my lack of capacity your blood, sweat and tears, everything is about to turn to nothingness. I wish to offer my apologies. Furthermore I want you to hear my last request. For the sons of Canaan, for the future of Canaan, Here and now I want you to fight for the motherland.

*cheers*



This dude is Ernst, the Sword of Canaan and a massive pain in the ass as this map will show.

: This resolution is what the soldiers here are longing for with all their hearts. To help Lord Barka we have to defend the city of Leeve. Entrust all your lives to me! Our motherlands salvation or ruin depends on this battle. Let us believe in the future of Canaan and fight till the very end!!

*cheers*





Seems Est is still upset about us killing Barbossa (who was the Shield of Canaan)





: It appears you are of ill humor. You cannot make peace with Lady Enteh?

: …

: My bad, I overstepped my bounds. How imprudent I was before such a large battle. My apologies.

: No the one with an uncertain heart before battle is me. You’re always like that, Eugen. You deliberately make me angry to loosen me up, you guide me on the right path. The reason why my lord father put you as my warden… I finally understood it as of lately.

: No sir, I do not know what I possess. Rather than that it seems that the “wooden horses” of the enemy have started to move. Do pay attention, Lord Runan.



Let’s talk about the enemy on this map. For starters there is this asshole that stands more or less behind the boss and is quite a pain in this chapter.



Est herself is useless but that doesn’t stop her from attacking Runan on sight and killing herself on him since even with a charm a single attack of him is enough (I learned that the hard way) so position yourself carefully and talk to her before she does anything foolish.





Of these two infinitely respawning units the dragon riders are by far the more threatening. They have great range and power and their spawn cannot be blocked unless you have a very tanky flier and even then it’s risky.



There are also a ton of those running around all with defense scores in the twenties thx to their shields. Not shown are the 2 cavalary spawns since they are largely non threatening.



This leaves us with the boss asshole himself. He has Narrons class which means the absurd caps and promotion bonus (for this game at least). He hits like a truck and has an avoid of almost 90 meaning good luck hitting him with anything behind on their skill score. Should he use his shield sword and proc Mighty Guard he could achieve a defense of almost 70 if he wanted and a respectable 50 even without his shields. On top of that he can also leach HP with Sol, has a 30% chance of critting and doubles almost your entire team.

The easiest ways to deal with him are unfortunately on Holmes’ team in form of Rishel’s tome and the bow Arvanrast (both 3 range weapons). Therefore we have to duke it out the old fashioned way.





Rebecca start off with conjuring up some golems to create some target practice in the „No-Fly-Zone”, I mean just look at the number or archers and ballistas…





Sierra goes under the profession of dragon killer for this map and gets and empty level





Attrom kill the cavalary spawing to out right and Lionel occupies it to stop the spawns.







Attrom, Sun and Narron block the tank armada from advancing.





This is where I split the teams in half having Runan move towards Est and send some help along to clean up the side. Rina should be able to get some levels in this less dense area.



The priest starts his work…







Rina gets attacked and retaliates for pitiful damage and a great level.







Some more skirmishes happen and the first batch of reinforcements spawns in their respective positions unless blocked.



Sun grabs a level from fighting a tank and still refuses to gain strength.



Vega kills the cavalry that was attacking Rina with a Dragon proc.





Sierra repositions herself to not become a victim of the archers on top of the map and resumes her dragon killing duty.





Another tank dies and another bad level as a result.





The golems continue to get hit instead of my dudes performing admirably.



After another failed attempt to get further than this I decided that I needed Sierra to kill the ballistas as they were becoming a real nuisance to my non tanky members.



Better than nothing I guess.









Our frontliners kill a few more tanks and Sun continues to amaze me in her inability to gain strength at a decent pace.



Priest is still a gigantic asshole…



Zach can still tank up these “lesser” dudes.







Runan murders a unit he was supposed to weaken for Rina and Rennie picks off a great level from killing a dragon that went after one of the golems.



At the end of the turn we’re almost through the tank barricade. Sun occupies another spawn point.



The breakthrough might take a bit longer as long as he lives.



More dragon spawn and they start to get dangerous as Sierra is almost done mopping up the ballistas.





Vega meanwhile takes his new weapon for a spin. Base 80% crit is quite good I hear.



Runan crits another unit he was supposed to weaken…





Narron gets another good level despite how far he already got. Keep on trucking…





If you want to stay in the team then get strength please.





Rebecca heals Rennie for an ok level.







We kill the last tanks and ballistas and have finally broken through the chokepoint.





Runan clearly doesn’t want Rina to get any experience. Still at least he gets an ok level from it.



Luckily we finished killing the ballistas as one of the dragon riders breaks through and one shots Enteh. Thank god I had put a charm on her (this time at least )





And this is the story of how everyone on my team critted to prevent Rina from getting kills.











Her levels get slightly better at least.





Zach kills one of the spawning siege weapons but gets in range of the boss.



We area approaching the boss on the western team while the eastern team has a few more enemies to deal with (and talk to Est). Lastly Sierra is back in position to resume her dragon slaying ways.









The healer does his thing and Ernst puts a dent into Zach.



More reinforcements spawn.



We cleaned them up and Narron tries to make his way through to the healer to silence him for good.



Finally one dragon survives and I can get Rina some experience.



And it was worth it 10% strength growth procs quite often for her.



Runan makes her way over to Est to prevent her from killing herself.





: Because this is war. Killing, being killed… there is no helping it.

: Ok, then you might as well kill me too! Why don’t you kill me!?

: …

: Lord Runan, This girl is Prince Barka’s daughter. One of the soldiers who surrendered recognized her. Why do you not capture her as a hostage?

: Capture her as a hostage… that will do. Let’s do as you said, Eugen.

: Oh? This was unexpected…

: Sometimes suppressing all your emotions is necessary to win. You always say that, Eugen. Capture this girl and send her to the back.

: Kh… So that’s how it is. You beast! Why don’t you just die?!

: Beast…?





And we’re back to our regular dragon killing with Sierra.





I forgive Narron for this since he was so good to us so far.



And now he starts running away while people block Narrons path. Asshole





Zach gets a level and a recruitable character appears.



Haggar or Hagaru sucks major ass. He is a wood shooter like Thomas (who?) meaning he got a whooping 3 movement and the disadvantages of being an archer. Even worse while his special weapon has 20 mt and up to seven range it also is completely useless because after using it you can no longer move for the entirety of the map! Who thought this was a good idea?







I decided to promote Rina since it didn’t look like she gets some more xp and she probably won’t reach lvl 30 anyhow even with Elite in what little remains.





He attacks us and shows his uselessness by inflicting almost no damage on Zach.



Rennie continues on strong while getting a level from killing a tank.



And the Physic asshole makes sure he remains undisturbed…





Sierra continues to burn through her tomes and murder the never ending stream of dragon riders.







Business as usual and Mintz finally made it over to recruit Hagaru’s worthless ass.





: Don’t worry about me. But you surprise me! I didn’t know you had some patriotic spirit inside you. Looking at you chasing skirts all the time, your big bro was worried, you know?

The “Big bro” here is most likely a direct translation of aniki since I can’t find any source stating they are related.

: Heh, listen to you. Your irresponsibility beats mine by lengths! But this isn’t good. If your escape becomes known then I’m going to get dragged into all of this… I might even get the death penalty! What are you gonna do about this?

: Why don’t cha join us then? Pretty ladies everywhere!

90% of my army is probably underaged! Bad Mintz, bad!

: Are you serious? Hmm Maybe I do just that…



Since he was rooted down anyhow I tried to burn away a shield use of the boss but he sucks to much to ever hit him without a severe case of luck…



So Narron had to do it.







We pick up a few more levels until we find us in quite a bind…



You see Sierra literally burned through all of her tomes and now is incapable of stopping the spawning dragons who will without a fault go after Enteh and oneshot her. I know this because it happened once where the boss activated his dmg reduction ability and I wasn’t able to finish him off.



So it’s all in on my part. I need to hit (only a 60% chance even with Vega’s sky high skill) and I need a crit on top of it (luckily I got 80 % of that) and lastly Ernst has to activate neither Mighty Guard or Sol.





I was lucky and could finish it with Runan and Rennie following up however if Rennie missed or didn’t crit she would have died to Ernst. I really dislike the amount of luck needed on this mission if you don’t have the right pieces present.













Rennie got an ok level but honestly I’m just glad to have this behind me.







: Yet, we cannot let things go this way. I will go!

: I shall accompany you, my lord.

: Th.. this is….!?

: hmm, it appears he has already passed away. To block our advance even in death… As expected of Canaan’s sword, General Ernst though you were our enemy, you were truly formidable.

: In this battle even the ordinary soldiers had a terribly high morale. If such a general was giving orders I can understand why.

: Possibly, Yet I feel that there might be another reason why the morale was this high. I cannot express it clearly, but…

: Let’s go Eugen. Let us think about it after we took back the palace.

: Yes sir!







Before finishing the map I give Rina another level. Not the best but servicable. But now we got a few more words to cover before we’re done for today.







: You are?

: I am Verna.

: Verna? Then you are Claris’…

: Yes, Claris is my mother. But today I’m here as an envoy of the Free Canaan Army.

: Free Canaan Army?

: Yes. It is an anti-empire group with Prince Sennet as it’s leader. By collaborationg with Canaan’s citizens and soldiers, we have already taken all of northern Zoa.

: Wait please. Who is this Prince Sennet? In the kingdom of Canaan there should only be 3 princes in Ares, Barka and Julius.

: Lord Sennet is the son of Prince Ares. As a direct descendent of the crown prince he is the first in line for the throne.

: Prince Ares had two children but, when the younger princess was just born she was attacked and killed by someone… I heard that no one knows what happened to the other child after that, but for him to be alive is such a surprise!

: He hid in the Kingdom of Ariel for certain reasons. My grandfather Oktobas, Elder Eisenbach and other protected him in secret.

: So that’s what happened. And now he is back to his kingdom.

: Because Prince Ares had immense popularity under the citizens. Especially after his death, in the hearts of the people he became a hero equal to the divine hero Karyuon. If his child returns as the bringer of freedom, the people of Canaan will be excited like never before.

: I grasped the circumstances. What do you want from me then?

: Lord Sennet wishes to make peace with the kingdom of Leeve. This time the Norzeria peace treaty must be completed, he said.

: The Norzeria peace treaty…

: Yes. It’s something from two years ago but Lord Glamdr and Prince Ares were having peace talks in the city of Norzeria. Lord Runan I’m sure you know what transpired later…

: Obviously.

: Lord Sennet, following his father’s will, wishes to conclude the Norzeria peace treaty with you, Lord Runan.

: If Prince Sennet said so then I have no objections but I’m sure the Emperor and those two princes will. If they do not wish for peace as well then this war will never end.

: We have already begun to move but there is no response as of yet. Thinking about Princess Reshie’s suffering pains my heart deeply.

: Princess Reshie?

: No I… it is nothing important.

: How much time does Prince Sennet need to return to the royal castle of Canaan?

: With our present momentum it shouldn’t take too long… Lord Runan the battle beneath the castle is causing grave damage to both sides. Could you stop your advance until Lord Sennet reaches the royal castle?

: Lady Verna, this is impossible. If they wish for a truce, the first thing they should do is to retreat from Leeve’s royal palace. Forcefully entering in someone’s house and then saying “we are busy so come back later”? We Leevians cannot accept this. Even if Lord Runan agrees, other soldiers and nobles would certainly not.

: That’s true. For now let’s send a messenger to the enemy commander and tell them to surrender the palace. IF they refuse then we have no choice but to retake it with all our strength. Verna please don’t forget. This castle is the Leeve’s kingdom sacred capital.. Pride of all Leevians. We cannot allow a truce as long as it’s brutally usurped.

: Understood. Then I shall return to the Free Canaan army and convey Lord Runan’s feelings.

: Verna, another thing. I have a request to ask of you. Could you take this girl to Prince Sennet? I saved her when she was caught in battle, but it appears she is Lord Barka’s daughter.

: Is that true!? If she’s Lord Barka’s daughter then she must be Princess Estephane! She is a cousin of Prince Sennet so they should be glad to meet again. Understood I will take care of Lady Estephane and bring her back.







: Is there still no word from Barka?

: Not yet.

: And Estephane? Any word on her whereabouts?

: When I last saw her she was heading in the enemies direction. Judging from her state she may have gone to settle a score with General Barbossa’s murderer.

And why didn’t you stop her

: Damn… I should have known. How am I going to explain this to Brother..?



And that’s it for the chapter. Next time we are going to retake the castle. I’ll add Hagaru’s stats later for those interested…