Chapter 576 One in five hundred
The ground below became a fiery spectacle as magic and skills rained down upon the falling creatures, unleashing a devastating onslaught that ended their existences with explosive bursts.
The Senior member and her mount, however, did not crash down to the ground, but this was within Eliza's expectations.
She manipulated her airborne ethereal spears and launched them towards the woman. Even so, the battle priestess was surprised that the woman was able to still fire five arrows in quick succession to deflect the spears.
Too bad this prevented her from reacting to a small three-pronged shadowy energy projectile that slashed past the side of her neck and cut open a few vital blood vessels.
Kuro had compressed his Shadow Claw skill's projectiles, making them smaller, faster and deadlier.
Adding to the fact that the cat had actually teleported using the shadow the woman cast on the back of the monster she was riding on and launched it at such a close range, there was nothing she could do.
As her hand reflexively went to cover her wounded neck, Eliza clapped her hands and activated Lethality Manipulation, causing the already serious wound to turn even worse.
She then kicked off the ward she was standing on and boosted forward with a speed buff, stabbing her spear into the woman's chest, whilst making the other Ethereal spears pierce into her body from all over.
With six polearms sticking into her body and every vital blood vessel in her neck blasted to oblivion, it'd need the direct intervention of a god for her to survive.
Sadly, said god wasn't exactly on the Demonic Hand's side.
"Thanks, Kuro."
Eliza voiced her gratitude for the shadow spirit's help as she ended the life of the winged serpent that was already half dead after Eliza stole its life force, riding its falling corpse back to the ground.
**BAMM!!
As the winged serpent's corpse crashed onto the body of a lizard man and squashed it to death, Eliza jumped off the body and switched her skill's mode.
"Support Mode."
Her appearance shifted once more and by the time her feet touched the ground, she was now adorned in a graceful floor-length grey robe crafted from a delicate, lightweight fabric that seemed to move with a life of its own.
"Support Magic: Boon of Enhanced Assaults. Physical and Elemental Damage Bonus: Positive."
She infused magic power into her voice as she spoke, activating the two advanced buffs with just her words. The Radiant Codex floating beside her whirred lightly, granting its 50% increased efficiency effect to the buffs she cast through it.
"Hmm?"
The girl stopped her movements and then retrieved a band from her spatial ring, using it to tie up her hair that had scattered earlier into a ponytail.
But while doing this, she could not help but notice the transfixed gazes of some of the combatants whom she had just buffed on her, and after she was done, she turned to them and spoke with a raised brow.
"What? You guys can handle the rest of the monsters, can you not?"
It was her words that snapped those ones back into action and they rushed forward to assist their still fighting comrades, while Eliza continued her movement towards the shelter's entrance that had been blasted open, frowning lightly as she saw the number of injured combatants, and civilians.
'Was it the Demonic Hand that blew up the entrance? From the size of the hole and the debris on the ground, I would not be surprised If there are casualties.'
Just as she was steeling her mind for this grim possibility, Artemisia sent a message of good news.
[The goddess 'Artemisia' says there were no casualties as some of the A rank level combatants present sensed the impending explosion and took actions to protect the civilians from fatal wounds, at the cost of incurring those injuries themselves.
And since these A ranks are beings durable enough to withstand attacks capable of flattening entire towns, this explosion was not enough to kill them either.]
'That's good to know.'
Eliza visibly heaved a sigh of relief as she got closer to the scene with the injured people on the floor, only to suddenly hear someone scream out.
"Who said the S-rank adventurers disappeared?! Look, this lady's clearly an S-rank adventurer!"
"Yeah! Where's that guy?!"
The battle priestess turned her gaze in the direction of the shout and saw some police officers holding back some civilians who were about to get into an altercation about whether S rankers disappeared or not.
"If S rankers really did disappear, then I wonder, how am I here?"
Her voice captured their attention and turned their gazes towards her, after which she slammed the butt of the Memoria into the ground and activated her Breath of Life skill.
A wave of ether rushed out of Eliza's body and spread forward, generating a large three-ringed magic circle centred under her feet, with lines of green light and a misty white haze with a few gold-lamé sparkles hanging in the air within the circumference of the magic circle.
It lasted a few seconds and when the light died down, the wounds of all those who had been injured, civilians and combatants were healed.
'It's a lot easier to convert Life Energy I absorb into ether than magic power.'
Eliza thought to herself as she proceeded with this conversion process on the life energy she had stolen from the airborne monsters earlier.
As for the two who were about to fight, they had suddenly calmed down and were no longer acting as aggressive as before, much to the relief of the police officers restraining them.
"Hmm?"
Eliza's gaze suddenly turned sharp as she noticed something strange giving off 'demonic vibes' within her perception; using her Life Ice to freeze it in a chunk of green ice before walking towards it.
The people present parted ways for her as she moved towards the wall of the shelter, bending down a bit to pick up the frozen item that was sticking out of the ground.
With a bit of strength, she unearthed the thing, revealing it to be a device that looked like a tent pin.
It had a crystalline surface, and intricate patterns across its surface that pulsated with light.
"What is this?"
When she turned around and asked that question, the nearby police Sergeant quickly instructed one of his subordinates to get someone from the inside of the building before walking up to Eliza.
"Thank you for your help, Miss?"
"Eliza."
"Eliza…?"
The man repeated her name with an expression of realisation flashing through his eyes, and from that, the girl could tell he had realised she was the 'Battle Priestess Eliza'.
Kuro's presence here didn't give him much room to be mistaken.
A few moments later, the policemen returned with a man who was dressed in a uniform she did not recognize, the same time that the last of the monsters nearby had been vanquished.
"He's one of the magic engineers responsible for maintaining the shelter's barrier. He would know more about that item than we would."
Eliza thawed the ice and tossed the thing to the man, but after looking it over with his analysis skill, all he could tell was that it was some kind of complex spell node.
"A Node? Perhaps…"
[I believe it's most likely one of the ones Master spoke about.]
Kuro emerged from her shadow and jumped onto her shoulder, peeking at the device as he spoke, and making Eliza's eyes narrow lightly.
"If I were to destroy this now…"
[The goddess 'Artemisia' states that the effect of destroying just one node would be too minuscule to make a difference, given this is just 1 out of over 500 nodes placed across the city.
At least 10% of them have to be destroyed for there to be any substantial effects.]
Artemisia replied to the question she was about to ask before she could voice it out, making the teenager sigh softly.
She collected the node back from the man and before he could even ask her anything, she tossed it into her spatial ring and then asked about the shelter's barrier generator's status.
Together with the City Defence Force commander present and the highest-ranked soldiers, they led her into the shelter and showed her where the device was, though she noticed that they stylishly kept her a certain distance away from it.
Eliza wasn't bothered by this and asked them if there was anything she could help with, even pointing out the node of the World Isolation Barrier they had found and If it could be engineered to help them repair it.
The technicians said they had succeeded in doing temporary repairs, but they lacked a power source as our dearest Demonic hand Members made sure to destroy all power sources and backups.
What's more, due to the rushed nature of the repairs, the barrier would not be optimized and consume around 1.5x to 2x as much energy as normal.
"Can these work as power sources?"
"Hmm? Can what wo-OAH!!"
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