Chapter 114.1: A Battle’s Beginning
Astintash charged.
Of course the Dragon was the one to move first—not only was it easily the most confident and motivated of anyone involved in this fight, but it was also the only one not sustaining serious injuries.
Several soldiers fled the moment Astintash took a step toward them, some of them stood their ground, but most were still trying to dig themselves out of the rubble of the wall.
The two soldiers leading the defense—calling for everyone else to stand their ground—were the royal guards. Asmo had her bow drawn, arrow notched and ready to loose, and the axe-wielding woman held her bloodied blade, prepared to strike.
I, on the other hand, felt not quite as ready to attack. There were probably fifty paces between me and the shattered wall’s remains, and that was a lot of paces to clear when up against enemies with ranged weaponry. I watched as Astintash took a dozen shots to the face from its bow-wielding opponents, uncaring of the twigs poking its scales, and wished I had the ability to just ignore things like that.
But at least Astintash made for a good distraction. I glanced over to Erani and Aina—oh. Ainash had already dashed forward, right behind the rampaging Dragon and whip ablaze, ready to strike down her enemies.
“You stay back,” I said to Erani. “You can use your last invisibility ring if you need to. Just try to stay safe.”
“You’re going in?”
“I don’t have much of a choice. Astintash’ll kill me if I don’t.”
She pursed her lips and nodded, and, with a couple stacks of Expedite on myself, I charged forward behind Ainash and her Dragon friend. Fortunately, Astintash’s body was so massive that, by running behind it, basically nobody ahead had sight of me, so I didn’t yet have to worry about being shot.
But as we approached the enemy forces, several Infernals circled around Astintash to come and attack me. There was a clear difference of interest between the Humans and Infernals here, since the Humans were the only ones risking their lives. As such, the Humans focused on surviving—either fleeing or trying to kill Astintash—and the Infernals focused on the primary objective—killing me.
So I was forced to slow down as the Infernals closed in to block my passage. They were all pretty severely damaged—as was I—but clearly they were ready to fight regardless.
A couple Firebolts flew out from behind me, Erani shooting at the crowd of Infernals to slow them down and thin them out before they could attack, which I was extremely grateful for.
Level 29 Draconiad has offered moderate contribution toward the slaying of Level 27 Infernal.
Due to having a Bond with Draconiad, you have earned 4 XP. Your XP is 897.
I was suddenly distracted by a few notifications coming in about Ainash’s exploits in slaying her enemies. I tried to just ignore them as they came in, which was pretty easy, but I had to imagine Erani had a much harder time ignoring hers. She got so much more XP from Ainash’s killings that it was likely she’d randomly get Level-ups at some point, which would definitely be a distraction.
“Arlan, below!” Index’s voice snapped me out of my head.
Below? What could be below—
I felt a rumbling, one that reminded me of something.
Hellions! I’d completely forgotten that they also had Hellions crawling the ground beneath the wall!
As quickly as I could, I leapt backward just as a massive, toothy worm burst from the gravely dirt below me. I’d barely gotten out of the way in time to avoid the rows of spines lining its maw, bursting up right where I’d been.
In an instant, I raised my hand and shot it with as many Rays of Frost as I could before it burrowed back into the ground. Unfortunately, the total 200 damage I dealt to it didn’t seem to be enough to kill the monster before it could burrow back into the ground, hidden from my sight.
Spell casting speed was one of the stranger factors when it came to Magic-Types. For the other types of Classes, their limiting factor time-wise was the physical speed they could move their bodies at. Whether they were fighting normally or using Martial Arts to enhance their abilities, they could still only do one thing at a time, on a fundamental level. They couldn’t swing their sword twice at the same time, even if they had the Stamina available to activate a sword-swinging Martial Art twice.
As Magic-Types, we didn’t have those physical limitations. Theoretically it was possible for me to cast 1000 Mana’s worth of Spells in a split second. However, we did have mental limitations. And that was what prevented me from doing just that in a fight. When I cast a Spell, I had to mentally push the Mana in my body to form the Spell.
Back when I was first lost in the woods, I’d struggled to figure out how to do that with Noxious Grasp, leading to me taking full seconds just to toggle the Spell on and off, but at this point, I’d gotten quite adept at doing that, both with Noxious Grasp and generally with any new Spell I got. It took a bit of time to learn any new Spell’s form, but I could figure it out pretty quickly, with my practice.
But still, I could fundamentally only form one Spell at a time with my mind. So, when I went to cast several Rays of Frost at a time, it wasn’t as easy as just thinking “I would like to cast ten of this Spell, please,” and it would happen. It was going through and manually, one-by-one, forming and casting each Spell.
This limitation could be sped up in a few ways, though. As I mentioned before, there was always practice. The more I cast Ray of Frost—or practiced my Spellcasting in general, for that matter—the more quickly I’d be able to push my Mana into that familiar pattern. However, just like how increasing my physical Stats could make my body move faster, increasing Conjuration could help my mind move faster when shaping Mana.
At its new value of 100, my Conjuration was certainly helping me cast my Spells at record speed, but it didn’t seem to be enough to cast enough Rays of Frost to kill a Hellion in the little time they stayed above-ground.
At least, it wasn’t enough to kill them without me putting in some effort to keep them above-ground against their wills.
With Erani still helping to hold back the Infernals, I could focus for a bit more time on fighting off these Hellions below me.
And there were multiple below me. I didn’t need Index to inform me of that. Even after the initial attacker burrowed under the ground, I could still feel a few more, each moving upward toward my feet.
“Now!” Index shouted, and I leapt out of the way just in time to avoid another monster bursting from the ground. It was obviously a new Hellion, without the frost coating of the one I’d just damaged and let go. But for this one, I wanted to kill it while it was vulnerable.
The moment it reached the peak of its arc midair, I activated Gravity Well on the monster, completely ruining its angled attempt to burrow straight back into the dirt. Instead, it fell with a flop onto the gravel, writhing in an attempt to burrow back into the ground under its newly-enhanced gravitational pull.
I didn’t let it escape this time, though. I tackled it, wrapping my arms around the surprisingly-rough skin of the monster, at least as wide as my own waist, and activated Noxious Grasp while also pumping as many Rays of Frost as my mind allowed point-blank into its body.
You have struck Level 17 Hellion for 62 damage using Ray of Frost.
You have cursed Level 17 Hellion with Ray of Frost. For the next 5 seconds, its Dexterity score is lowered by 7.77.
14.2 Mana Cost. Your Mana is 971.
You have slain Level 17 Hellion.
You have earned 94 XP. Your XP is 1.01k.
The moment the Hellion was dead, I backed away from its limp corpse, aware that staying still in any area would only invite more of them to attack. Sure, I could handle one at a time, but the moment several attacked at the same time—or they started coming for me when I was in the middle of fighting off the Infernals—I’d start having issues.
And speaking of Infernals, a few of them were finally approaching. Off ahead of me, I could see Ainash and Astintash rampaging through the main rubble of the wall, killing indiscriminately—whether someone was fighting back or running away, they died all the same, it seemed. But that didn’t prevent some of the Infernals from getting to me, despite Erani’s best efforts.
Okay, I thought, not exactly an ideal situation, but let’s do this.
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