Chapter 149: Marbas (2)
Noah and his group remained there.
Not knowing what to do.
"Should we attack?" Mary asked from beside him. Her voice was low. Something that only Noah could hear.
But Noah was himself not sure what to do.
This was a really messed-up situation.
Crackling.
Ophelia, who was standing with them, started to use her mana wildly. Lightning covered her whole blade and even her body. Crackling sounds left her body. Her eyes shone bright blue.
"If we are going to die... then we should fight them." Her voice was cold and sharp.
It was as if she was really furious at the demon. As if there was some hatred hidden within her for that demon... or maybe for demons.
Noah sighed.
He knew the reason why Ophelia was showing such hatred toward demons.
It was nothing new, just a cliché backstory.
Which was a little sad.
And also she was not wrong. Either way, they were dead because of this demon. The only hope he possessed was Damien, who was trying to get up.
’Well, fuck it. Let’s fight.’
"Alright guys. We have no choice but to fight," Noah declared.
Everyone looked at him except Ophelia. She was focused on the demon.
Before Noah could say anything further, Ophelia dashed.
She kicked off the ground and vanished from her spot, leaving behind blue crackling lights.
"Ophelia!! No!!" he screamed loudly.
But she was not listening to him.
She moved through the hall with lightning speed and was already upon Marbas.
Marbas raised his brow, slightly impressed. Despite seeing how he had beaten so many of her classmates easily, she still had the guts to attack him.
"You asked for this."
Marbas’s hand shot forward. His fingers clenched into a fist, ready to strike Ophelia.
BOOM!!
Her lightning-coated katana and the demon’s fist collided with a booming sound.
It sent shockwaves through the air.
But as Noah and everyone had expected, the demon Marbas took no damage. Rather, Ophelia’s body shot backward through the air.
"Dammit!" Noah also dashed forward.
His spear was tightly clenched in his hand.
His arms opened to catch Ophelia.
Thud!
"Fuck!" Noah cursed as her body slammed hard against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her as even his body slid backward a little.
"Ophelia!!" Marina and the others ran toward them.
"Are you okay?" Myra asked in a worried tone.
Ophelia, who was in Noah’s arms, shook her head, trying to come to her senses.
"I am okay."
She felt a strong body against hers, so she raised her head to see who had caught her.
Unexpectedly, it was Noah.
She pulled away from him. She didn’t say anything, but her eyes moved toward Marbas, who was shaking the hand with which he had landed a punch on her sword.
Noah also looked at the enemy.
But this time someone attacked the demon from the side.
A golden line formed in the dim hall.
The horizontal trajectory moved toward Marbas from the side to kill him.
It was Damien, holding a sword that glowed with bright golden light.
He clashed against the demon.
Noah also spoke.
"I will go and help Damien."
The temperature dropped around Noah, and his spear gained a thin coating of blue transparent ice, which was sharp and filled with mana. Noah ran toward the fighting demon and Damien.
"I will support you," Mary said from behind. Her wand glowed with white light.
A magic circle expanded from her wand in rings of white light. Noah felt the buff land across his body like a wave of warmth moving against the cold. His muscles lightened, his perception sharpened at the edges, and his grip on the spear felt more certain.
"Thanks."
He pushed off the floor and ran.
Behind him, Marina raised her wand and began casting.
The air around her stirred first, then moved with intention, spiraling inward toward the tip of the wand as she pulled wind mana together in quantities that made her blonde hair stream backward from her face.
Two separate constructs took shape simultaneously.
A volley of compressed wind arrows and a single enormous spear of concentrated air, both of them rotating as they charged.
High-level work, the kind that took real ability to hold in both hands at once.
Ken drew his sword from its scabbard in one clean pull.
He said nothing, as was his way, but the mana that wrapped his blade was dense and precise, a thin sharp line of it along the cutting edge that made the steel look like it was outlined in light.
Ryan’s earth mana rose through his weapon from the ground up, and the head of his mace grew heavier and wider, layered with compressed stone until it was nearly half again its original size.
Four ice weapons materialized in the air above Noah as he ran. Two swords and two spears, conjured and held in formation with the part of his focus he could spare for it.
They spread out as they moved with him, flanking his approach from different angles.
Marbas watched them all come.
He exhaled once through his nose, and then he moved.
He crossed the distance to Damien in two steps and swung.
Not at full power.
Because Noah could somehow tell, but at whatever fraction of his strength Marbas felt was appropriate for the situation.
Damien got his blade up in time, and the block held, but the force behind the hit drove him back a few meters, his boots scraping across the stone before he caught himself.
Noah drove in from the left and thrust his ice-coated spear at the demon’s side while Marbas was extended from the swing at Damien.
The ice spear hit, and the cold mana detonated on contact, a burst of freezing energy spreading across the demon’s ribs.
Marbas turned to look at him.
"What the? This is new."
The frost had formed across about a handspan of his coat but wasn’t visibly slowing him.
"It’s cold... but not enough," Marbas observed.
He backhanded Noah.
It wasn’t a full swing. It was a casual, redirecting backhand, and it still sent Noah sliding across the stone on his feet for two meters before he found his footing and stopped himself.
Thud!
’His casual hit hits like a building,’ Noah thought.
The four ice weapons he had been holding in the air shot forward on his command, all four driving at Marbas from different angles simultaneously.
Two of them hit, one shattering across his shoulder, one driving into his upper back, and the demon stepped to the side to let the other two pass him and shatter against the floor.
Marina released her spell.
The wind arrows came first. Seven of them punched across the chamber in rapid sequence and hit Marbas across the chest and arms in a tight grouping.
Each one detonated on impact with a sharp crack.
And then the wind spear came behind them, the full compressed weight of it screaming across the hall.
Marbas raised one hand, and the wind spear hit his open palm and dispersed outward in a ring that blew hair, dust, and loose debris across the entire chamber.
He looked at his palm, where the skin had reddened slightly from the impact.
Ken came in under the disappearing wind with his blade already swinging, mana edge first.
And landed two clean cuts across Marbas’s side in rapid succession before the demon caught his wrist and stopped the third strike cold.
"Not bad, boy."
He looked down at Ken with an expression of mild curiosity.
Then Ryan hit him from the other side with the earth-enhanced mace.
The impact sounded like a boulder hitting a wall.
Marbas shifted half a step sideways from it.
The first time his feet had actually moved in response to a hit.
He released Ken’s wrist.
He looked at Ryan.
"You are strong physically."
Then he looked across all of them.
Noah recovering his footing.
Damien still standing with his blade raised.
Ken already resetting.
Ryan’s mace already coming back around.
Marina charging another spell.
Mary’s buffs still cycling.
Something in the demon’s expression changed.
Something more like the reluctant acknowledgment of someone realizing this was going to take slightly more effort than anticipated.
"You’re all going to exhaust yourselves and also me," he said.
He raised both hands, and dark violet energy gathered around them.
The same color as his eyes, dense and heavy, pulling the shadows in the chamber toward it as if it were consuming the available darkness.
"But if you want to go that way."
The energy released.
It didn’t move like a projectile.
It expanded outward from him in every direction at once like a pressure wave, and it hit everything in the chamber simultaneously.
Noah, Damien, Ken, Ryan, Marina, all of them caught the edge of it and were driven back across the stone floor in a single moment.
"Arrrghh!!" Noah screamed in pain.
He hit the ground on one knee, spear down, and held there against the force of it until it passed.
The chamber went quiet again.
He looked up at Marbas through the dissipating violet energy.
Around him, the others were in various states of having absorbed the same wave, getting back to their feet with expressions that ranged from grim to furious.
Marbas stood at the center of it all, his coat slightly worse for wear, a few burns and frost marks distributed across his arms and torso.
Otherwise entirely functional.
Noah got back to his feet and gripped his spear.
’We’re not beating him.’
The thought was clear and practical rather than despairing.
’We’re not beating him right now. But we’re making him work. And every second we keep him working is a second closer to Morgana finding us.’
He set his jaw.
’So we keep going.’
His mana started to circulate faster.
The temperature around Noah dropped slightly.
