Chapter 1923: Athena
Chapter 1923: Athena
Sam arrived at the Emerald City and looked at the vast layout.
The whole city is surrounded by the mines and there are way too many soldiers guarding this whole place. All the important mines are connected to the city through Spatial gates. There is even a formation around every single mine within the area.
Sam doesn't know which Olympian god is going to come here this time, but he sure as hell knows that they are going to use all the minerals and mines to their advantage. He needs to find a way to neutralize that advantage somehow if he needs to have a chance.
He already came across someone using energy attacks before, so if he is in the place of that god, he would use a large energy cannon-style attack with one of the mines and almost ninety nine percent of the formations he could make would be destroyed.
Even if they are not disintegrated to nothing, there would at least be a large hole within the formation which would be enough for the god to take care of the rest.
He would have to think outside the box for this a bit more.
But of course, he couldn't let the time go to waste. He simply gave instructions to everyone involved in the construction of the formation to build one for the base.
This blueprint is mostly used for defending against the energy attacks only. It creates a layer around the city that would disintegrate the energy and disperse it into a large cluster of loose energy particiles.
Of course, he added a few layers of physical defense formation as well.
While they are constructing that, Sam took the help of the shadow mice to investigate the whole area thoroughly. He needs to know exactly what kind of energy is abundant in what area and how to use these mines effectively.
After some though, he decided to take out a few energy cannons this time. These energy cannons are part of the puppets that he used back in the previous mission when he was dealing with the giants.
What he did is to remove the resonance and imitation part of the attacks and only kept the cannon part.
The main job of this cannon is to condense energy from the elemental energy mines to launch energy beam attacks. These could be powerful if they are made in a gigantic scale, but Sam is now focusing more on the quantity and less on the quality and lethality of the attack.
After all, he is going to fight the god's form directly by himself and he still has his beasts.
Also, if he wants to deal such a large attack, he would need a lot of time to construct this one thing.
Sam placed these energy cannon puppets on many areas within the territory. Every place that has a decent enough concentrated energy he placed them there.
After that was done, he went back and focused on the formation. He spread out his beasts a bit and made them cover the large area. They are in charge of defending against any minions that might come for the city and also interrupt any large scale attacks that might stem from these energy mines.
Sam was pretty decisive about all the moves he made and this time he has no annoyance from Sandhya.
She stayed silent for the whole time and just stood there. She received his orders and conveyed them to the young masters and their subordinates.
She got their feedback and delivered it to Sam.
Everything is so smooth. To the point, Sam felt a bit superstitious and assumed that the next one might be a tough challenge to crack.
Time passed as the preparations went in full swing.
On the middle of the second day, Sam decided to add an extra layer of defense just in case. Since the ground is full of mineral-rich soil, he and Dia worked together to create a few pillars around the city. They also raised a few pillars in the rest of the territory.
Sam then drew a bunch of inscriptions on all of them. These pillars do have a formation, but their purpose is to supply energy to beasts and Sam and if it is not possible to create energy shields as well as energy attacks when an enemy poses a threat.
He prepared everything until the time of disaster and waited along with the rest.
All the miners are also currently staying within the city and they are all eagerly waiting for this disaster to pass.
On the time of the disaster, everyone noticed a dazzling light appear all of their territories.
Sam noticed that the energy is indeed being drawn from all the mines and this energy is taking two forms.
One of them is the form of a humanoid. For some reason, this humanoid figure is actually a bit smaller than the ones Sam encountered before.
The figure looked like it was carefully crafted out of metal. But Sam could sense that it is the manifestation of the essence from the many mineral mines. It is coupled with massive condensed energy.
This time the figure didn't manifest from a tangible substance like water, magma, or wood and it didn't manifest from the condensation of air. Instead, it is the pure energy of various forms solidified.
Sam looked at the humanoid figure. It is another goddess. He is surprised by that figure that appeared immediately just like how it happened with Hermes.
But of course, that is not the only thing that appeared. The condensed energy took the shape of a large formation that covered the whole territory.
Including the mines and the city, the formation fell on everything. Sam was surprised to see that even the nodes are being formed with the condensed energy only and the formation was laid down in seconds.
He activated his energy vision and even came out of the city on the hoverboard as he looked at the condensed energy around the city. And he was surprised to see that the energy state is very similar to the mist-like state of wood elemental energy during Artemis' attack.
Apart from that the formation structure itself surprised him a lot.
This is one of the most intricate formations that Sam has ever seen and he couldn't even identify its purpose instantly.
As he thought about this point, he noticed something else, the formation started extracting very fine metal and rock in the powdered form. These minerals joined together under the pressure of the condensed energy and in front of his naked eyes, they joined together to form a puppet. Meanwhile, the rest of the formation morphed into something like a maze.
The puppet didn't even take thirty seconds from starting as a large cluster of powder to being a full-fledged formation.
This is the first time that Sam was so amazed by someone's abilities. Even when Poseidon came down with those water dragons and Hermes threw those winged creatures, Sam was still unimpressed.
But these puppets, he felt like he is looking at a brand-new toy.
The puppet structure and design itself is not that complicated. In fact it is a bit too simple, but to think that it could be made from the minerals in the ground just like that, he couldn't help but feel a bit jealous.
His mind was about to lose its way.
But of course, he is in the middle of the battle, he has to bring himself back to focus on.
While he was doing that, the puppets started running toward the city formation.
The nearest beast is Yanwu and he just threw a tongue of golden flames onto the nearest puppet.
The puppet on the other hand just jumped into the wall of the formation maze.
Sam clearly saw that two limbs of the puppet were destroyed, but to his surprise, the wall shielded the remaining puppet, extracted the destroyed parts into powder, and released the puppet on the other side of the wall after it was repaired.
This puppet once again made its move toward the city.
Sam was amazed by this.
This might not be something that he would do personally, but the technique is impeccable.
Sam didn't stop using his energy vision and just stared at them.
As for worrying about these puppets reaching the city and destroying it? He didn't bother too much, even if push comes to shove and the worst thing happens, Sam can handle it for now.
As Sam is watching the whole thing in awe, the goddess called him out.
"Are you Sam?"
Sam turned to her and said.
"Yes."
"I am Athena. I heard that you are quite strong. I would like to see it for myself."
Sam raised an eyebrow, for some reason this goddess is much better than the rest.
Seeing that Sam didn't answer, she continued.
"I won't beat around the bush, the puppets are after the city and I am after you. If you can win against me, you win against the disaster. It's that simple.