“Demons!” Alissa heard someone yell, one of the other fourth tiers sent to help chaperone them, she thought. She herself wasn’t paying as much attention to the shouts around her, as her focus was in her attempt to move her injured arm to lift her shield so she could block the next pair of arrows that flew towards her, or rather, towards Leda behind her. Alissa managed to block the shots, if just barely, one of the shots striking so hard her arm was almost wrenched around by the force of the impact.
Alissa saw that there were around thirty of the demons, suddenly appearing not unlike what she did when she emerged from her shadows on a nearby hill, around half of which were pelting the group with arrows. Fortunately, now that the threat was obvious, few of the arrows managed to score a hit, as they were blocked or deflected by the now alerted humans.
Still, she couldn’t help but notice that two of the second tiers sent along with them were down, as were several of the harvesters, not counting Joshua.
It was a rather bad situation all considered. The party Alissa and Ethan was in was caught off guard, with most of the party having their active skills on cooldown, even if they still had some time left on their buffs. Their mage was down, and their healer was out of mana. Many of them – Alissa herself included – were also carrying injuries of various severity, which worsened their performance.
The twenty second tiers they brought along and the harvesters were pretty much useless in front of the demons, who Alissa saw were all third tiers other than the few fourth tier ones. That left only their higher level chaperones. Cerilla and Vesta were both healers, and Alissa noticed them running towards the party while Magus Drummond guarded them from arrows shot towards them, while Sir Inolet led three of the fourth tiers to form a line aimed towards the demons, the other one left to guard the second tiers and harvesters who were trailing behind Magus Drummond.
As it turned out, having both Magus Drummond and the other fourth tier – one from the temple guards who wielded a massive shield and a short sword – to guard their healers were wise as a figure suddenly emerged from the shadows and struck towards Cerilla. Fortunately, the temple guard reacted on time and invoked one of his skills which created a translucent floating shield to block the blow before it could hit the priestess.
Then Magus Drummond swung his left hand backwards towards the figure and a vicious gust of wind blew towards the shadowy demon. The demon managed to block the magic attack with either his weapons or a skill, and instead of cleaving him into pieces, the blades of wind merely sent him hurtling over the plains into the distance.
Even so, Alissa managed to get a glimpse at the demon and noticed with a sinking feeling that it too was also a fourth tier combatant. That put the demons on equal footing with them when it came to the number of fourth tiers.
Time was running short for them, as the demons in the distance were rushing towards their position, but fortunately Cerilla and Vesta reached Alissa’s group just then. The two priestesses quickly went to work to heal the injured. Alissa felt how Vesta yanked the arrow out of her arm before the priestess went to heal her injuries. The feeling of exposed flesh knitting itself closed was still as disturbing as always, but she bore with it.
Alissa got back up to her feet once her wounds closed up, ignoring the dull ache that healing always left behind. She saw that the rest of the party had similarly gathered up, their injuries healed by the priestesses, with Ethan, Bronwen, and Glenn once more taking their place at the front. Cerilla even transferred some of her ample mana to Leda to allow the younger healer to get back into the fight.
They quickly reformed their formation, with Sir Inolet’s group of three standing in front next to Ethan’s and the other defenders, while the rest of Alissa’s party spread out behind them, with the healers and Magus Drummond further behind. The remaining second tiers – visibly nervous now – were at their sides, corralling in the harvesters to prevent them from panicking and breaking formation, while the shield-bearing temple guard held their rear to keep guard against the shadowy demon.
“Girl,” said Sir Inolet with a more serious look than any Alissa had seen prior. “You will have to tackle most of those third tiers on your own, together with the rest. Think you’re up for it?”
“I don’t know, Sir,” replied Alissa honestly, with a tinge of nervousness in her voice. Fighting and killing monsters was one thing. Fighting and killing other people was something she was uncertain she was prepared to do, however. “I really don’t know.”
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“Well, do your best, either way,” said the old knight with a shake of his head. “You and the boy would face no danger to your life. We won’t allow them to take you captive no matter what, and we can ensure that at the very least, but for the rest of the people behind you… they don’t have the luxury of seeing death as a mere inconvenience as you do.”
“Understood, sir,” replied Alissa as she hardened her resolve to fight. Sir Inolet brought a point that reminded her that everyone else in the group beside her and Ethan was very much in mortal danger, and that her group was most of what stood before them and a likely grisly fate. “What will you do?”
“I’ll try to keep their fourth tiers occupied. I don’t know how strong they are, so I can’t promise a thing yet, but I’ll do my damndest to keep them off your backs while you deal with the rest,” replied the old knight. “Hey, Murdock, give us some fire support!”
“On it!” replied Magus Drummond from the middle of the pack as he raised an arm and conjured a massive ball of fire the size of a house, which he hurled towards the demons. The attack forced the demons to break formation in order to avoid the blast, while it also neatly forced the fourth tiers – who had leaned to one side in preparation to engage Sir Inolet’s group – to separate from the third tiers.
Sir Inolet had explained it to Alissa and Ethan before, that unless they were in a messy, chaotic battlefield, the fourth tiers would typically look for other fourth tiers to tackle, because the consequences of allowing a fourth tier to freely rampage amongst third tiers was akin to loosing a lion in the midst of a pack of sheep. For that reason, the higher-tier combatants typically gravitated towards each other in battle.
Deaths amongst such duels were also rare, as those in the fourth tier had great vitality and many tricks to save their life, but generally, should one side’s higher tier combatants manage to gain an advantage, the battle was generally won. It was possible to drive away or even defeat a weaker fourth tier combatant with a strong group of third tiers, however, so the situation often depends on the individuals involved.
The fact that an early third tier [Hero] or [Champion] was often capable of handling a fourth tier combatant a whole tier above them also threw a spanner into the equation.
Even as Sir Inolet’s group advanced, Magus Drummond followed close behind them, while the shield-bearing temple guard fourth tier kept himself positioned between Magus Drummond and Alissa’s group. Fortunately the demons seemed to lack a mage of their own, so they had to scramble everytime Magus Drummond sent an attack their way, which helped even out the numerical disparity between the fighting fourth tiers. The shield-bearing temple guard remained on alert in the back, prepared to defend should the shadowy demon return once more.
Meanwhile, Alissa’s group clashed with the remaining third-tier demons, with the remaining second tiers on their side as their sole backup. The party took the main brunt of the clash, as they were the ones with the best chance of holding their own against the demons, while the second tiers had to fight them two or three against one to even stand a chance.
It was an ugly fight regardless, one that pushed the human side on the backfoot almost immediately. There were only thirteen third tiers – or equivalent, as Alissa and Ethan could each handle a third tier without issue – that were of a combative bent on the human side, and out of those, three were healers. Leda, Cerilla, and Vesta did their best to keep those on the frontlines healed from their injuries, which they inevitably incurred as they tackled the demons that outnumbered them greatly.
At that point, the value of having higher grade classes really showed.
Ethan, thanks to his defensively focused class and skills that allowed him to be more durable as he was hurt worse, kept four of the demons occupied by himself, even if he was at most capable of tying them up, rather than being able to threaten them much. Alissa herself held her ground against three of the demons by doing her damndest.
Those with the [Hero’s Companion] classes also showed why the class was so valued. Bronwen followed Ethan’s footsteps as she kept three demons – all higher leveled then her – occupied, while Moira and Nadine tackled two each, their fights more a dance of blades and blood where they earnestly tried to kill the other side before they were killed than any sort of defensive stalling.
The rest of the party occupied at least one demon each, Osmond and Benedictus having run out of projectiles joining the line like the rest. The party fought recklessly and pushed as hard as they could. They noticed that the demons seemed to only bring one healer with them, which meant compared to them, the demons couldn’t afford to get injured as much.
On the other hand, trading a wound for a wound was a feasible tactic for the humans to adopt since they had three healers behind them that kept their injuries healed within moments. It was in that manner that Alissa and the rest managed to keep the balance going against the numerically superior demons, as the demons rotated those who were injured to the back for healing frequently.
It was a precarious balance, and all of them knew it. The main reason the party managed to hold on against the higher level demons was because their buffs were still active, which also meant that the time they could put up such a resistance was finite, which made them strike more recklessly as they were determined to make the best use out of the time they had left.
Such a vicious counterattack caught the demons by surprise, as they were pushed on the backfoot for a change. Alissa even managed to take a demon out, a hewing strike of her spear slicing through half of a demon’s throat even as the same demon’s spear stabbed her in the gut. She just grit her teeth and pulled the spear out even as Cerilla behind her healed her injury, all as she stared into the fading light of her dying opponent’s eyes.
Seeing one of theirs die like that seemed to have unnerved a couple of the demons, and Ethan took the opening that presented. At that point, his shield was broken and useless, so he relied entirely on his armor and the passive skills that reinforced his body, taking a few cuts and stabs to push aside one sword aimed at his eye and grab the front of a demon’s tunic with his other hand.
Then he slammed his forehead against the surprised demon’s nose as hard as he could, hard enough to break bones and send the demon falling limply to the ground. Ethan ground his heel against the demon’s neck for good measure, and to be sure that the demon was finished off.
Of course, just as they gained that second wind, the shadowy demon chose to strike once more.