Weed’s animated sculptures (more than 50+ of them) are watching the fighting. Rover comments how there’s going to be fighting again today and how that means it’s going to be harder for him to live to an old age. The Golden man agrees and blames it all on Weed. Bach comments on how the rain looks bad (or it has a dampening effect on fire) and the Hydra heads squabble among themselves (one of them says that it’s hungry, another one points out that they all share the same stomach so they are all hungry (?), and a lot more stuff that I can’t understand).
The Arpen army continues pushing at the Haven Army. (There’s several pages of stuff that’s hard to understand. Something about the Arpen players not caring that much for their lives, sharing the best ways to bum rush the Haven soldiers, and using movement speed increasing magic to run away from the AoE magics that the Haven mages have). Suddenly, many of the soldiers on both sides start feeling cold. The Haven commanders simply explain it away with the logic that it is the Northern continent and a rainstorm so it’s natural to feel cold. The Arpen players wonder if it’s a new magic that the Haven army has prepared. The cold increases to a severe chill which has a significant (12%) decrease in physical ability as well as a 42% reduction in regeneration (not sure of health, mana, stamina, or all three). One Arpen player shouts that the Hermes guild are dirty bastards, seeing such a significant stat drain is lethal to the low leveled players that are fighting right now. The Avians are also affected by the rain, which drenches their wings and forces them to land (although some high level players managed to escape). The Haven army was also affected, although not as much. The only trouble that the rain and the cold caused for them was a decreased in their ranged magic and arrow attacks (the soldiers all possess cloaks that can keep the body warm to some extent). The temperature has now reached the level where a person’s exhalation is foggy, and where the cold is sapping all body heat away. However, the temperature continues dropping. In the next two minutes, hail the size of ice cubes are crashing down onto the earth, and arctic winds are battering the soldiers.
A Haven soldier slips, and bringsdown an entire 10 meter section of the army with him, which was hugely embarrassing for the Hermes guild. One of the Hermes players asks how mere winds could cause such a fall, and another notes that the entire battlefield has been covered in ice. A Haven commander orders the troops to slow their advance, and to watch their footing. The Hermes guild-chat is abuzz, and they conclude that this was Weed causing a natural disaster. A player remarks how the cold is virtually harmless . Another one points out that the cold actually dropped the fighting ability of the soldiers by a fairly large amount and this will cause more soldiers to die. The first player (the one who identified it as a disaster) says that they must wary of Weed’s disasters and orders the wizards in the Haven’s Second Corps to cast warmth magic over the entire army.
Scene switches to the Arpen army, where a player is cautioning the others to avoid the ice chunks, saying that it’s definitely a disaster caused by King Weed. It mentions that all of the players are essentially brainwashed by Weed so they have no negative feelings towards Weed treating them as collateral damage (there’s a lot of people spouting their beliefs at Weed’s greatness but it’s hard for me to understand what they’re saying). The Arpen army continues to charge forward but more than half of the entire army (that’s hundreds of thousands if not millions of people) slip and fall. However, they don’t blame Weed but instead, tell the ones that didn’t fall to go forwards. The fallen players try to advance but some of them discovered that they were frozen to the ground.
The Hermes players laugh at the Arpen army, saying how Weed screwed up. Because of the magic of the spellcasters, they are mostly safe from the cold while the Arpen players are making a fool of themselves. What’s more, the cold has diminished Hess Tiger’s fire abilities. They start cheering , shouting out that the Haven Empire has won again, when suddenly large tremors shake the frozen earth. One player wonders if it’s a large monster, while another player disagrees, pointing out it’s more like an earthquake. Before they can speculate any further, a giant tidal way rushes in from the East (the same direction as a lake) and surges towards the battlefield. One player yells that it’s a tsunami on land and a commanders gives the order for the soldiers to brace themselves. Deuraka asks if it’s really a tsunami and a player in the Second Army Corps yells that’s it’s a tidal wave before the communication is cut by the player’s scream. One of the Hermes players panics (?) at the destruction that Weed has caused, but another one tells him to calm down because Weed can only use Catastrophe Sculpting once a day. The tsunami engulfs the soldiers, smashing apart the Haven formation. A player tries to run from the tsunami but is swept up and sent tumbling for hundreds of meters. To his surprise he manages to survive, thanks to his high level armor. It turns out that the tsunami has essentially wiped out about 20% of the Haven forces. The Hermes commanders judge this to be an unfortunate but manageable problem, seeing they still held a power advantage over the Arpen forces and they can also replenish the NPC troops by increasing conscription from occupied territories. However the full effects of the natural disaster didn’t end there. The water soaked survivors promptly started to freeze in the cold temperatures, and the tsunami also scattered debris everywhere on the battlefield, making it harder for the Haven army to get back into formation. Deuraka is irritated because over 30,000 (or 80,000) troops have been killed. However, he dismisses it as an unavoidable misfortune, and praises (?) Weed for his tactical skills. He orders the elite troops of the Haven army to take this chance and target Hess Tiger (half of the Arpen troops following Hess Tiger have already been killed or disable due to the battle and tsunami).
In the back line of the Arpen army, Marfan’s large voice was booming out, telling everybody how he is having a huge sale on spiked boots and dog sleds (he claims that he is a conscientious merchant and wouldn’t even earn a penny from the sales) with no refunds or returns. He is immediately flocked by players who want the equipment to go fight the Haven army and quickly sells out. Marfan has a large grin on his face and he thinks to himself that “of course it’s a lie” and how although the gear is really cheap, they are also made from the lowest quality materials possible (they have super low durability). While Marfan is thinking about his sales (I believe it says that he paid Weed for the information and it also mentions something about a conscience being extremely expensive for a merchant lol), thousands of dog sleds are rushing towards the Haven army across the ice. In the sky, the Avian forces led by Golden Bird (I guess Weed ordered some to hang back? Either that or the first wave was players and this one was NPCs) take off, heading towards the Haven army from the sky.