Adil saw through the war table the priest walking down the tunnels leading the other "elite" troops behind him. The rest of the force appearing to hang behind, the major appearing to grumble under his breath.

The rogue type again waited back just before another batch of goblins fell in from the sky. Crossbow bolts shooting through the darkness as the goblins dove in. The major was taken by surprise at the sudden ambush, but the priest only angrily stared the goblins down. The bolts that whizzed past appeared to be all aimed for the priest, but the few that hit seemed to bounce off some sort of invisible shield around him. This left the goblins charging in to lose hope as their fate became clear.

The priest moved past the ice as the goblins crumbled to white dust. There he saw one of the goblins having fallen on their back in fear. The goblin quickly got up and started running before the priest lazily held up a hand and shot a blast of cold air freezing the goblin, the body soon again collapsing into shards of ice.

"Fuck!" Adil shouted.

The goblins had been trying to lead the crusaders away from the base and into Swift's dungeon but to no avail. No matter the side they appeared from, or the way they started running the troops carried on along the same path. Adil saw the goblins respawn again, a few of them still shivering from the cold and gave a look of despair at what they would be pushed to face, over and over again.

"Just get to the back," Adil said towards him.

The remaining forces visible in on Adil's war-map were held up in the final cavern. The collective reincarnated armies huddled together against the others previously not sent out to fight due to weakness or age. Children and ones incapable of fighting stuck without anywhere to go. Even some of the experienced warriors stood without weapons as Adil struggled to manufacture more or retrieve enough from the deceased.

Aku stood facing a place in the wall that the drones seemed to be exiting. He was awaiting the potential arrival of his weapons and armour. As what seemed like his armour and shield coming through he seemed to gain a burst of hope. His armour appeared with the remains of his frozen dead body, popping out with a thud, followed by the shield. The sword, however, was nowhere to be seen; it appeared that one of the crusaders had taken it from his corpse. A few fingers missing where it was pried from his hand. Then something small round and shiny appeared to fall through the area, pushed out by a drone. Aku picked the object up and gazed into it, waved it around.

"Careful!" Adil shouted from across the room. He had seemingly abandoned the war table to join everyone in this cavern. He quickly walked over there and grabbed the object out of Aku's hand and then walked over to Swift. Swift was trying a conversation with a couple of armoured goblins.

"So you guys were just hading in caves," Swift said to the goblin.

"We mostly just got drunk on mushroom beer" the goblin replied

Adil butted in.

"Shoot me with fire," he said to Swift. Swift looked to the armoured goblin who shrugged.

"you mean, shoot me with fire, please?" Swift requested,

"Yes, shoot me with fire please," Adil added.

Swift cracked some Nuckles then held out his hands. Adil just looked towards him and focused down on the crystal seeming to insert his mana into the underlying mechanism which drove whatever was inside. Swift shot out a steady stream of fire; from his perspective, it was coating Adil and covering him entierly with flames. The goblins around seemed to look towards them in utter confusion.

"Why did you do that?" Asked one of the armoured goblins, generally in confusion before Swift had a chance to reply he saw the fire rescind. There Adil was with the crystal in his hands. The fire seemed to have not been able to pass an area, a theoretical forcefield over the area.

"Cool," Swift said.

Adil let out a gasp for air. Having focused so much, he forgot to breathe for a moment. He looked impressed at the item he held.

"Holy shit, you have a forcefield," Swift announced.

"Obviously, did you think I was just asking for you to set me on fire?"

~"Don't answer that." Adil added quickly, a notification appearing over his vision.

Adil had inspected the intricacies of the construct, seeing how it converts the user's mana into a sort of energy. As it is passed through the mechanisms to fuel a kind of transference, obstructing mana in a select space or if enough is passed through, creating a sort of forcefield which if touched uses manna to repel whatever attacked it.

notification

Magic Artificer I

Your ability to see exact distances has been combined with your sense of mana to help you better understand the workings of magical constructs.

You are now capable of understanding and creating manna based on-off switch.

You are now capable of understanding and creating unrefined manna shields.

You are now capable of understanding and creating unrefined elemental mana conversions.

You are now capable of understanding and creating %%" manna. "£$$%$%.

Fuck, Adil thought. It had been so long since he had seen a bug like that.

"So, can it help with the freezy guy?" swift asked, he seemed to have been given information from the resurrected goblins.

"Better than that, we can equip everyone with their personal manna shield," Adil said back with a broad smile.

suddenly one of the goblins came running through; he looked frantically around at all the people standing around. 

"There-," the goblin was frozen. Everyone in the cavern looked around to see the approaching priest. He came in with the cold, the air around him coming with him into the cavern. The priest looked around the cavern in disgust. 

"Pitiful." the priest said. 

The goblins roared and charged forward, a cascading cold resonated from around the priest seemingly rolling through the ground towards the charging goblin horde. Adil focused on the crystal in his hand and tried to disrupt the mana constructed cold. Adil felt a pull as his mana was stretched to its limits, the cold was held back only a thin layer coating the goblins as they charged forward tinting their skin and frosting their weapons. 

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"No!" the priest exclaimed. Blasting out a wave of cold, it did not penetrate far but blasted away a few of the goblins shattering a couple and grazing another; the goblin struggled to move away as he found his leg frozen to the ground. 

"Miserable creatures." The priest muttered again.

Adil looked towards Swift and saw his acknowledgement. They shot out a burst of intertwined fire and air towards the religious figure. As the manna infused air caught the infused fire, the blast shot out in a blazing superheated spiral; the priest braced, a hand of his clenched around the symbol hanging by his neck. When the fire appeared to be dissipating the flame rescinded to show that the priest was unharmed, only surrounded by the flickers of flames caught on the ground around him. 

"How novel." The mage stated. 

"They said not to take you lightly. Well, we expected the breaker of the orc's curse to have some strength." 

The man opened his hand and generated a focused amount fo cold in one area, as the air glistened with frost and ice began to form a solid javelin of ice took shape, hovering next to the priest.

The priest launched it towards Adil.  Focusing on the crystal Adil tried to push back the cold, but to little avail, he only managed to take away a slight amount of its momentum. Just before it crashed into him, he gave up on area protections and created a focused solid wall, closer to him.

 As the spike penetrated the shield, the kinetic energy transferred to him pushing him backwards. The javelin began slowly penetrating the shield, as it broke through it seemed to accelerate, connecting with Adil it jabbed into his shoulder breaking off its tip before being bouncing off into the distance

Adil was pushed back a couple of meters. He was running low on manna. Another goblin charged towards the priest but was frozen by the seemingly ever-present cold resonating around him. The priest gazed at the corpse as it passed through and then fell into white dust. He looked towards it in uncaring disapproval.

"Primitives," he said

 Adil walked forward past the goblins, getting between them and the priest, suppressing the cold from reaching them as the children and unarmed goblins sought refuge on the far side. Something seemed to click inside him, as though he realised something unusual.

"Why the fuck are you even here?" Adil asked the priest. It didn't seem right; they must have known they were peaceful by now.

"You don't know?" The priest asked,

The major was behind them and moved into vision,

"Aye, ye attacked the village. Nearly killed everyone there," the major said. 

"Your idiocy disgraces the clothes you wear," The priest said to the major.

"Removing the curse was never meant to happen. We have to get rid of any trace of orc or orc civilisation from here," he added*/

 Adil charged electricity between his hands as Swift focused his fire. Adil shot the electricity, and a bolt of lightning seemed to hit his shield and then spray onto the ground around him.

"That was pathetic."

He pushed forward with the creeping cold enveloping the space around Adil, his shield chipping and flaking as the pressure of the priest's manna increased. Another volley of crossbow bolts was shown to be useless, hitting ice in the air they froze, collapsed and shattered into shards of ice, the odd hit deflected off his manna shield. The priest took a few steps forward. Ice spikes started forming around him before Swift let out a force of fire, searcing chains shot out pierced the cold, coating the priest's shield, the chains fizzing as they pressed against the manna shield.

"Not strong enough." The priest stated, seeing the chains with disapproval.

Adil shot in his mana infused wind together with Adils fire, their powers combining again in a futile attempt to bat away the cold. As Adil pushed in the air, he aimed to get closer.

"I had hoped to see something interesting. Not this futile attempt" The priest said, seeing Adil struggle to get closer against the force of cold.

Now just close enough to the priest, he saw an opening and tried a desperate move. Adil launched his tendrils of manna towards the man and tried to connect, focusing lightning energy through it he managed to weasel past the immense pressure of mana and onto the shield. Using his new knowledge of its mechanisms he shot in and though the construct, latching onto the priest's immense manna.

"What the!" The priest exclaimed, now under the influence of Adil. Adil was trying to hold on and pull the priest under with him; the Priest felt his consciousness slipping away. He increased the pressure of ice over the forces ahead of him.

An arrow zoomed through the air and hit Adil in the side of the head. Breaking the attempt and putting Adil down for good. Swift waved around and tried to whip his spray of fire around. But three shots impaled his body and quickly put him down. The mercs had arrived. The force that Adil had forgotten about, so focused on the priest he had little time left.

"Hey, boss." One of the archers said, waving to the ex merc leader who was casually resting against the wall, avoiding interfering with the fight. He gave a wave, the major disgruntled at their focus of the rogue type still as their leader. 

"At least some here show promise." The priest said. Admiring the clean kill and genuinely surprised that other soldiers had made it this far. 

"Kill them all," the priest added, waving his hand for the others to finish the job. He then walked away to recharge his mana whilst he admired what was about to happen.

The mercs mover forward, seeing all the large goblinoids had been killed. Some were not carrying weapons and some half-frozen a lot of them seemed to be pushing themselves against the wall. The mercs walked into the middle of the cavern swords, axes, spears and bows drawn. Walking toward the first combatants, the goblins shifted to defend the little ones, looking at them to make sure they were alright but hope lost in their eyes. The knowledge that they might be continuously killed in the back of their minds. 

"Boss,"

"Yeah,"

"This don't feel right."

"Tell me about it."

"Didn't we stop being mercs to get rid of this feeling?"

"yep,"

the mercs looked back to their boss who had just gotten off the wall. The boss soon joined the rest of them. 

"There are kids here." one of them said looked towards a cowering group in the corner of the cavern, their childlike appearances were alien to the mercs, having known goblins as only bloodthirsty murderers. 

"You heathenous degenerate fools. Finish them off before I charge you with treason" The priest said.

"Look at them, are they even goblins?" One of the mercs added, seeming to ignore the priest. 

The priest walked from the wall and said to everyone there

"You wear the armour of the high church, do your duty as you have been told. Even such a small task is beneath you. Or else your lives will be the ones taken."

"You would intentionally kill yer own men?" The major said in disgust. 

"You were to die by my hand regardless of your actions." The priest said before a shocked silence was left amongst the cavern.

"You mean?"

"Did you really think you were worthy of a crusade, mercenaries. Your expendable lives are only good for one purpose lest you defile our good name."

The armies looked towards the priest and raised their weapons. The priestly mage walked in between the goblins and sellswords charging ice with each hand, he formed spikes of ice and a cascading cold, whilst he bore the most sinister of expressions. 

"To think that mercenaries thought themselves good enough to-"

The ceiling seemed to collapse, and two men fell down, The manna-shield tried to repel falling debris and a sword that appeared to be digging into him, but his manna was low, even spread amongst the ice spikes he had just formed, and his shield damaged taking the collapsing rocks against it. The sword broke through, strange electricity pouring through it and then embedded itself in the mage. 

With the rocks, another man collapsed to the ground having also fallen with the rocks. Struggling to get up, they only managed to see the cheers of goblin and soldier alike. Then, suddenly the priest exploded along with the sword, lightning and bits of meerkat? Scattered amongst the debris. 

The man who fell with the sword had been hit by one of the rocks and seemed to pass out, but the other man was just getting up. The crowd cheered, goblin and soldier alike. The major blinked a few times unsure at what he had just witnessed.

"Steve?" The major said. looking towards the man beginning to get up in utter confusion