Fred clenched his fist and lined up his arm at a spider on the ceiling, within a second the wires strapped to his arm was shot out and stabbed into the spider, albeit shallowly, then sent a bolt of lightning straight up the wires, frying the creature from the inside, “I don’t think this will be fast enough, but if you have any long-range weapons, we best start using them,” Fred said and then after, fired his right-hand wire while reeling in the wires from his left hand.
Peter brought out a crossbow, “I have this, but I don’t think it would piece much,”
“Do you have any fire affinity, you could apply it to the tips,” Fred said,
“No, how would you apply it to the tips, you would need to enchant it,” Peter commented,
Oh, was that exclusively for Espers, “Ok, who else has crossbows?” Fred looked around to his team member’s and the party behind him, 6 of them had crossbows, “Right, load up your crossbows, give the bolts to me.”
They handed over the bolts to him, but they had all loaded the crossbow in advance. Holding six bolts, Fred started applying his fire Esper and lightning Esper to the tips of the bolts, the group was amazed as they saw the bolts light up from the heat, Fred managed to get the tips to about 100 degrees above meting point for iron, this gave a white glow to them, however, this meant that he had to apply some metal Esper to condense the metal to prevent it going into a liquid state.
“Right, load these, Quickly, they will melt soon,” he handed them out fast, to which they all loaded and started aiming at the spiders, his Esper control over the bolts was weakening rapidly, especially as he started working on the next round.
Fred heard the staggard twangs of the crossbows going off, as whistles sounded out above his head, the bolts had pierced the spiders, causing them to squeal in pain as their inner flesh started cooking rapidly. They had managed to knock down three spiders, who were the closest on the walls and ceilings.
Fred was done with the next round a few seconds before the group reloaded. Another group of spiders managed to climb over in the meantime, however, the crossbows had given the second rank enough time to finish off their quarry, keeping the front rank safe for now.
With 12 dead, they were more than a third of the way through, and once the crossbowmen killed another three the spiders started retreating fast, leaving only the three that was blocked between the first and second rank, which were dealt with in quick succession.
Two people in the front rank suffered punctures in their armours and drew blood, but nothing life-threatening, Harold’s team would probably have to sit out for half a day, with their body’s fast regeneration, and medical herbs and potions available, it shouldn’t take that long,
They rested up for 5 minutes, and then resumed the march, with Harold’s team taking up the rear this time.
“If this is going to be a normally expected engagement, wouldn’t it be dangerous to split up at the cavern?” Fred asked, his group had been talking in almost whispers, just like every other team, so only his team heard him properly.
“This seemed like a larger than normal group, usually, they go round in packs of 4-6 spiders, we will have to see when we get to the end. Furthermore, we will be in a wider area, allowing us to fight more effectively. It was only because of the narrow tunnels that were they able to use the walls and ceilings more effectively.” Peter explained.
Fred didn’t agree with Peter’s assessment, if they get outnumbered, a wider cavern will allow the spiders a greater ability to overrun them, this engagement was effective because they could keep the enemy in front of them to a great degree, and the front rank didn’t have to worry as much from the outflanking spiders due to the extra ranks.
They continued deeper down the tunnel which was rapidly widening until they found the spiders again, this time there was about 40 of them, however, 3 of them were as big as a man, with another filling out the entire tunnel,
“This is bad, no wonder there was so many, look” Peter pointed at what looked like silvery grey smooth round stones littering the place, “This is a forward nest, she must be a princess,”
“Forward nest? Princess?” Fred asked, the group was preparing for combat,
“First, we need your molten bolts, if we can kill the princess, they may abandon it and run, I’ll explain later what this is?” Peter said, “Alright men, bruisers at the front, Crossbowmen, your next start loading them, give your ammo to Fred here so he can prep them,
Fred started heating up the bolts, Harold and the last uninjured man from his party moved up to the front to fill in the first rank that now needed 5 people, however, there was now another two people available with crossbows.
These two, who were originally in the second rank in the previous fight were sceptical about Fred until they saw the bolts glowing from the heat and then handed over theirs.
“Wouldn’t it be better to thin out the crowd before aiming for the princess, those larger soldiers may be able to protect her while the little one’s rush over,” Fred pointed out.
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As Fred said this, the smaller ones swarmed over, “Alright, first-round aim for the front rank,” Peter called out, 4 twangs rang out in succession, due to the narrow spacing, that was the maximum that could fire, this round killed one spider and injured two more, they quickly changed positions with the next rank to load,
This worked out better for Fred as he could just charge 4 at a time, that and him being faster than the reloading, shortly after the second round was shot, Fred could make out the sounds of spiders clashing against the shields.
“Right, first rank, fire at the smaller spiders, second rank, we will aim at the princess,” Peter called out to the crossbow ranks, the front rank was now fighting in melee after stabilising themselves from the charge. Unfortunately, the two injured ones were the only reserves they had at the moment, meaning the front rank couldn’t afford to suffer injuries.
This led them to a more conservative fighting style, meaning most of the damage would be coming from the crossbows, the second rank of crossbowmen was taking their first shot against the princess, however as predicted from Fred, the three bigger spiders managed to block the bolts, taking little damage in return.
“Fred was right, both crossbow ranks, aim at the little ones,” with a rate of fire of4 per minute, it was a slow process and had put a heavy burden on the front rank after they had killed eight of them and injured a dozen or so, the front rank looked bruised and battered, luckily with the high rate of fire, the spiders failed to flank them by going over.
“We need to retreat,” Peter called out, “Crossbowmen, take positions 4 meters back,” with this the crossbowmen made a sizable gap between them and the front rank, “Front rank fall back.”
The front rank quickly ran back and ducked, “First rank, loose and kneel,” twangs shot through the sides of the front rank as they ran past, and slammed into the front rank of spiders, stopping them for a second, “Second rank, loose, first rank, fall behind,” Peter ordered as the front rank slipped past them, Fred was just behind the second rank,
“Alright, everyone, fall back,” Peter ordered, the whole group started running back while the spiders were tripping up over themselves, “we make a stance 50 meters forwards, front rank, be prepared to form up.”
The crossbowmen were pulling the strings back as they ran, this would take longer, but should be finished once they got there, Fred continued to charge eight rounds for them as well. Fred looked back to see a dozen or so chasing, it looked like they weren’t committed to killing and was content with forcing the scouts to flee.
“Make stance,” Harold commented, they had roughly reached the desired distance, the front rank turned around and prepared to form a shield formation as soon as the crossbowmen were through, this took a matter of seconds and they were able to form up, this time, however, the tunnel had narrowed, and now the rank could only fit four people,
“Crossbowmen, first rank, take aim, second rank prepare,” Peter called out, Fred handed out all of the ready bolts, twangs flew down at the spiders, in rapid succession which was caught off guard from their enemy’s sudden halt, the second rank of crossbowmen quickly got into position and fired. This had finally caused the spiders to flee, but not before losing another 3 spiders.
“What’s our damage looking like?” Peter asked, most of them backed up against the sidewalls and slid down to rest.
“Damaged armour mostly, a few cuts and wounds amongst us,” Harold responded, he was speaking on behalf of the front rank,
“Do we have any people with the smith skills to repair the armour,” Peter asked, he looked at Fred, mainly, with what Fred had told them about back at the house, as well as what he did to the arrows, he should be able to help out.
Fred looked at Harold, he would have to fix Harold’s armour if he volunteered. “I can make fast repairs now, but you guys would have to seek a professional when you get out,”
“I’m a smith, but we don’t have the proper tools to repair them here,” Jackson said,
“Then how can you repair them if we don’t have the tools?” Harold shot an accusation glare at Fred,
“Because I won’t be using smithing to repair them as I said, I can repair them for now, but you would have to seek a smithy once we got out of here,” Fred responded.
“Just let the kid try, worst case scenario we would have to leave here anyway to get fixed,” one of the others who were on the front line spoke up, he removed his torso armour, “Can you fix this,” his armour was all scratched, with a few holes here and there,
“Sure, do you have any spare metal?” Fred asked.
“Unfortunately, not,” the person said dejectedly, he thought this would mean Fred couldn’t do it.
However, Fred still took the armour and walked over to the side of the wall took off his gauntlet leaving his hand and forearm bare, he placed his hand on it and used mana sense through his palm and moved over to the side carefully to a particular position. A few seconds after he stopped moving his hand, the rock wall where his hand was started glowing in heat until it was liquified. Scooping up a glob of white-hot molten sludge.
He allowed some of it to trop through his fingers, and then a split second, the glob in his hand suddenly solidified and turned into a dark silvery metal, “This is pure iron, your armour is steel so as I said it’s a temporary solution, but it’s just to cover this hole.” Fred commented, he turned around to see the crowd in stunned silence, “what?”
“Erm, you just melted iron straight out of the rock with your bare hands and cooled it in seconds,” Peter exasperated.
“It’s just heat manipulation, you should be able to do that, especially if you are on the de Ansul side,” Fred explained with a lack of understanding to their common sense,
“Erm, I am from that side, but we can’t do that, even my father would struggle to do that,” one person pointed out, “Plus, don’t you need to have a cooler elemental affinity to cool metal that fast, like Ice or something.”
“Yeah,” “Yeah” a lot of them nodded their heads in agreement.
“Well, the fire affinity allows you to add heat to something, it also allows you to take it away as well,” he placed his other hand on the wall, which quickly started melting, “See, I didn’t ‘cool’ the metal, I simply moved all of the heat from it to my other hand.”
“But forget all that, mana manipulation isn’t that easy, you didn’t even chant a spell or anything to control it,” the same person said.
“Oh, I don’t know then, I thought this was normal, plus this was what I was doing to the bolts, you didn’t think it was weird, then” Fred just realised that it was the benefit of Esper that allowed him more control over the mana, however, he had to play it dumb just to hide that fact.
“I did, and I pointed it out, and as you said then, we were in the midst of combat,” Peter commented.