During the time William was away meeting the leaders of different forces, Stark was fighting desperately and bravely with thousands of high-end masters.
They were doing a great job actually. Any one of these masters was enough to shake an entire city or battlefield. The only problem was that their foes weren't that easy to handle and weren't normal at all.
Monsters received all the attacks and didn't flinch. The most they showed was for them to retreat a few steps back with every violent explosion. Stark and others weren't trying to kill these hounds but buying time for the masters in the city to run safely away.
But when they heard the loud cheers and shouts coming from the walls, heard the defying words and tone of the masters there, refusing to leave and run away, they felt their blood boil.
They didn't feel themselves when they jumped at the hounds, fighting fiercely while doing their best to push them away. At these moments, they didn't care about anything else, only wanted to take down as many hounds as they could.
Amidst all this, Lara got the news about the agreement between William and the new forces joining the city. She saw the floods of masters coming to their aid, and instantly she delivered the news over to Stark.
The latter took a few minutes to jolt awake, understanding what she was trying to tell him.
"Are you telling me we got reinforcements? Few forces are coming here? When?"
[No, they are already here! And they aren't few, they are large armies of masters coming here… Pull back, withdraw and return to the walls now!]
Stark didn't believe his ears at first. He then spread out his spirit sense, covered the entire city and soon enough he knew Lara was telling the truth.
Swarms of masters came in waves from the direction of the portals. They looked like they were formed of different forces, but they looked as if they were ready to fight and put their lives on the line.
Seeing this made all the overwhelming suicidal feelings to wash away. He hurriedly shouted at the masters around, urged them to use their spirit sense and examine the city.
The masters mistook his words at first, thinking that enemies invaded the city. But when they looked closer, thought clearer, they realised that these masters were here to help.
"Let's go back, let's start defending the city from the walls," Stark didn't need but to tell a few words, briefing what happened before leading them away.
They broke away from the monsters and ran back to the city walls. Despite failing to kill a single hound, they managed to push them for hundreds of metres away from the city. And there they got bombarded again by the landmines William planted.
The leaders of forces who came here didn't notice who did the landmines, and their forces never knew of anything like this. Watching how the monsters stepped on the ground, ending up for fierce waves of explosions to erupt, fierce enough to push away these scary hounds back for hundreds of metres was something they never imagined.
William didn't care about any of that. The moment the new masters arrived at the walls, he turned to Lara and asked her to handle things.
The city's original masters fought for a long time without having a chance to rest. And with the presence of such fresh forces, much more in numbers and had much higher-grade masters in their ranks, it was time to let the original city masters rest.
Lara was more busy dealing with the new leaders than the current war. In her eyes, things were going to end quite well, and the war didn't need her full attention like before.
Yet William didn't feel like that. He knew their odds just grew better, but it wasn't enough to make him feel absolute confidence in their victory.
The hounds were poisoned, but there was no telling when that toxin would take effect and kill them. Until that'd happen, they weren't safe yet.
"Sure," Lara got his meaning, and instantly she relayed the orders.
William took such a chance and started to speak with Zin about something else.
"You want us to use earth-based masters, turn the ground into some sort of a big trench to trap these hounds? But you can see they are very agile, able to jump out from any holes."
William just asked him to move all the earth-based masters and work together to form a deep trench around the city.
"Alone it won't do," William agreed on Zin's words, "but we are going to use something else…" he turned to Lara before adding, "you made lots of that substance, right?"
"What?" Lara was already feeling like she crushed the monsters and won the entire war. She wasn't concentrating on anything right now, only thinking how blessed she was about all of this, "you told me before to let all the alchemists work even in the middle of the war. So, I let them work, and they are inside the Spar Arena, or what's left of it."
"At the tower? Great," William turned towards the direction of the Spar Arena, "send people there, let them bring all the barrels they made so far."
"Barrels? Are these the ones that exploded just minutes ago?" Zin mistook William's meaning. And the latter simply explained what this substance was supposed to do, including the efforts of the mysterious master.
"Hmm… I heard legends before about such folks," Zin said something out of the blue when he heard what William said, "old legends speak about angels walking among us, intervening at the direst situations, helping masters to do things beyond our imagination or knowledge."
"Angels?" Lara said in doubt, and William didn't hear about such a name before.
"That's what I heard," Zin didn't add anything, but William felt he knew little more than what he just said, "anyway, what will we do anyway with these barrels?"
