Even when the grenades exploded, he passed directly through the middle of its fierce exploding heart, feeling for the first time how truly brutal these grenades were.
Yet that didn't matter to him. He came here to retrieve this crystal, and he'd not allow himself to lose thanks to the grenades. "Come here, give it to me!" the moment he caught up with that dark master, and everything was over for that dude.
Sloth held the crystal and didn't have time to examine it carefully. He hadn't seen any crystal before, but he heard about its description from William, and this one just looked the same.
He stored it away, before turning towards the group of enraged dark masters. Few were already killed in the middle of the explosions, many got wounds, but the survivors moved at once to stop him.
"Do you think you can stop a pinnacle stage master like myself? Hmph! I wish to see you try!" Even if he was outnumbered, Sloth stood erect, tall like a mountain, before taking out a sword, the same sword he placed its cold blade over his neck in front of the king's tent, "Let's dance!"
He didn't stand in his place and started to move around. He goes on to admit to himself that he learnt such a tactic from William. Before that, he used to fight like a steady bull, moving forward step by step, leaving behind a trail of dead bodies.
Yet when he accompanied William, he couldn't help but get infected by that youngster's love to dash around. This way, he was able to deal with lots of enemies fast, evade tons of attacks, and end up harming them more than getting harmed.
As he already secured the crystal, he felt like a huge burden was lifted off his shoulders. He started to fight better than before, killing the enemies while evading their attacks brilliantly.
The fight lasted for an hour, and the main reason for it to last this long was the noises that attracted many monsters here. Sloth had to take care of those seemingly endless monsters in the middle of the fight, something that kept distracting him and delayed the end of this battle.
"You did great," When Sloth finished, he went back towards the entrance where Thomas was there, "You ran when you should have stuck with me and fought against them… What a man!"
"I know the limit of my abilities," Thomas didn't get offended or feel annoyed or anything, "What's the use in overestimating myself and ending up getting killed?"
"Good point…" Sloth didn't like Thomas the more he interacted with him, "Let's go, we secured that crystal, and we need to rush back to that battle."
As the two went out and left the city, things were going smoothly to the masters favour inside that fort.
They kept fighting and managed to push the dark masters back for a long distance. Yet the problem still was in the monsters. Even with the grenades that kept getting made by the Fox guild masters, these monsters still came like they had no end to them.
The masters here were familiar with this pattern. They experienced it before when the monster tide hit the city. Monsters would keep coming till the last one of them, and they wouldn't show a single moment of weakness or anything during the entire assault!
The main problem they had now was the lack of proper defences. Yet William already instructed the extra masters in his guild, the ones who weren't either artisans or alchemists, to start building trenches, rudimentary walls, and even small towers that were built by many low-level ores.
William didn't have high standards for these fortifications, and he asked the guild members to build them all across the grand area under their control right now.
Soon enough, the masters fighting at the frontline started to use these roughly built defences to their support. They helped, not that much, but they at least gave these masters a place to rest a little bit in the middle of all this.
Everyone here knew they'd take a long time to deal with the monster tides. A single monster tide took days, even more than a week from the city masters back then. So it was expected for such a battle to last even longer than that.
William and other high-end masters knew this wasn't the right place to fight for this long here. Not to mention they just had a handful of strong masters. Even if they got lots of them, they weren't enough to stop the incoming onslaught of monsters and dark masters.
To balance the odds, William had to relocate, select another batch of masters and perform his support formation again. This helped a lot in reducing the losses and pressure on the masters, helping them to kill many more enemies in a short time.
But he couldn't do it for longer than one hour every day. He sent the masters exhausted from the formation to the rear to recuperate and heal themselves. Yet even with using potions, they didn't get on their feet quite fast and weren't able to help in using the formation again.
When things looked like they were heading towards retreating from here and losing this place, news spread about the incoming large number of masters from the city.
It happened because Sloth already found the crystal. Before he left with Thomas, he sent a message over to the leaders staying in the city. They kept all these masters there fearing the last crystal. And as it was found, there was no need to keep such a force here.
The news reached the masters' ears long before Sloth and Thomas arrived at that fort. And with such news, everyone started to regain confidence and high morale again.
"I'm here with the crystal," and if good news wouldn't stop raining over him, William received the message from Sloth using his scroll.
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