Chapter 63: Chapter 63 - Flaming Barricade
My mind had still been pretty much mixed up when the chaos suddenly broke out around us.
Since my chat with Julia, my mind had been completely occupied, trying to figure out what I actually felt.
For the entire time we travelled since that afternoon, I had stayed at the back of the group.
Putting as much space between me, Julia, and Daniel as I could.
And now we were standing in the clearing where we had intended to spend the night, with what sounded like hundreds of beasts surrounding us.
"Everyone, huddle up!" Daniel called out.
An order that at the time didn’t make any sense to me.
A huddle of people made a much larger target for the beasts than if we each found a place to hide.
And yet, along with everyone else, I followed his order without a thought.
As soon as we had gathered together around Daniel and Julia, he stepped next to me.
"I’m going to need your help." He said.
"With what?" I asked.
He didn’t say anything else, he simply pulled me closer to him with an arm around my waist.
I completely froze at that.
My mind went completely blank for a moment, and then my first thought was to get out of that embrace no matter the cost.
"Just trust me," Daniel whispered, just as I had balled my fist, ready to launch my attack.
I mean what was he thinking grabbing me like that when we were clearly going to be under attack in moments.
The ground had started to shake more and more, the noises growing louder with each second.
Suddenly the ground had started to shake even more.
I could immediately feel that this had nothing to do with the approaching horde of beasts.
Everyone started to look around at their feet, trying to find the source of the newest quake.
Until the earth around them started to rise.
Walls of earth rose all around the group, connecting to each other in the perfect triangle, with the group of mercenaries, and Julia still standing in the middle.
Daniel and I however, had been standing on the exact spot one of these walls rose up from.
Lifting us up to the very top of it.
"I want you to help me create a wall of flame around the entire barricade," Danie said. "That should drive them away, those it doesn’t drive away, we can pick off from here."
I couldn’t help but stare at him wide eyed.
The simplicity, yet effectiveness, of his plan was actually... brilliant.
I reached out to my fire, and summoned a wall of flame that was about half as high as the Earth wall he had summoned.
Keeping the space between the flames and earth wall large enough so the heat wouldn’t seep through the earth and start affecting everyone inside.
Moments later, the first beasts started to burst through the trees.
There were boars, tigers, deer, almost every mid-level beast in this forest had a representative there.
The moment most of them saw the massive, flaming, barricade we had created for ourselves, they immediately changed direction and kept going past us into the forest at the other side of the clearing.
Daniel and I simply stood atop the wall looking down at them as they passed by us, not making a move to stop or kill them.
"What could be causing all of these beasts to stampede like this?" Daniel asked. "They’re clearly running from something."
"Probably a high-level beast." I answered.
"High-level?" Daniel asked.
"Beasts are divided into, low-, mid-, and high-level, depending on their strength." I answered, turning so I could look up at him. "All of the beasts down there are either low-level, or mid-level."
"Which would suggest that either there is a massive army of humans hunting them down, a natural disaster, or a group of high level predators hunting them."
"So you’re saying that a group of high-level beasts could be compared to a massive human army?" Daniel asked, turning a gaze filled with worry down to me.
"Definitely not," I smiled. "But beasts naturally fear other beasts a lot more than they do humans, no matter the number of us."
"Good," Daniel sighed in relief. "Because I don’t think our defenses here would be enough to stand up to beasts that could be compared to armies."
I couldn’t help the low laugh from escaping me at that time.
"They’re still pretty strong though, and depending on what kind of beasts they are they could be real threats." I said.
"How are they compared to one of those?" Daniel asked, pointing down at an Earth Boar.
"That depends, Earth Boars are known for their strong defenses, and stampeding threats, but they have various weaknesses." I answered. "A High-level Earth Boar should be approximately ten times stronger than a mid-level one, however there are other high-level beasts that would be a lot more threatening."
"Okay," Daniel nodded. "So the levels aren’t really a general rank within a level, there are different rankings within levels depending on the type of beast."
"Exactly," I answered, smiling at how quickly he had grasped it. "We just don’t have names or specific ranks for each beast."
"Understandable," Daniel nodded again. "It would have been quite the undertaking to rank every beast within a level."
At that point, none of the stampeding beasts had even stopped at our walls, they had simply changed their directions, and kept going.
Slowly the number of beasts that kept bursting through the trees started to thin, as the ground started to shake less as they made their way away from us.
"It looks like it’s almost over," Daniel said, his arm around me tightening slightly.
Which was also when I finally noticed that he had never let go of my waist throughout the entire ordeal.
Once again a blush rose to my cheeks.
It was starting to become a habit that I disliked quite a bit.
But I didn’t dislike his arm around me at all.
"We should probably talk," Daniel said, tightening his arm even more.
I couldn’t meet those green eyes of his at all, my gaze drifting everywhere and anywhere that wasn’t those eyes.
"Julia said that I should ju—" Daniel’s words were interrupted by a roar that reverberated down to the bones.
One that could shake a person to their core.
’Ah hell," Daniel mumbled. "You’ve got to be kidding me."
