The corrupt mage slightly panicked as he looked at Alfred. I was wracking my brains for someone given the title Demonic Butler but the only person that came to mind was an early-game secret boss I fought with that name, but even then he looked like a rotten tomato crossed with a hairless cat. Alfred looked nothing like him so I was a bit confused, but before I could finish piecing together everything the corrupt mage made a move. He created a dozen balls of green mana and flung them at Alfred and Grangar. Grangar was still too injured to move properly but was receiving ample amounts of healing and was already taking another blood red potion to heal. Alfred raised his palm and struck his hands at a rapid pace in front of him. Palm sized blasts of wind flew forward with each strike, neutralizing the dozen attacks, but he didn't stop there and continued to send more flying towards the corrupt mage.
"I'll cover you while you rest, but you best hurry! I won't be able to hold him off for too long. It's going to take the both of us to finish him." With that said Alfred dashed forwards after tossing an orb into the air. It hovered in the air and created a 5 layered shield around the guild master. The device quietly hummed as it made the shield and hovered in place.
Grangar looked up as the spear of green energy dissipated and said "An Orb of Valas I see."
He looked to everyone else and yelled out "This shield artifact won't last longer than 10 minutes so we need to quicken the pace of the healing!" He then pulled out yet another blood red potion and drank it down while saying "Man I'm going to have a sore body after drinking so many of these damn things. I'm going to be walking around like a god damn old man for a while but screw it." He chugged it and got another one out and drank it with shaking hands.
The ogre's meanwhile, had started to act weird. They started to look agitated and angry before going back to looking braindead. There was the occasional green offshoot of mana leaking out of their eyes and mouth whenever the corrupt mage took a bucketload of damage. While I had a break in the fighting I decided to speak up with my theory.
I waved my hands and got the attention of the guild master, then spoke up saying "Hey Guild master! Whenever that corrupt mage gets heavily injured, the monsters start to run rampant before calming down. Do you think it's possible to get the monsters to flee the city if we beat the snot out of the corrupt bastard?"
That made the guild master's eyes go wide. He then looked around and sure enough there was signs of the monsters starting to go rampant and trying to run away before they returned to being good little soldiers and steamrolling towards the defence line. He seemed to be calculating something while scanning the crowd of humans and monsters. I didn't get to hear a response as I heard "Zane, breaktimes over! Take over for me so I can go get some rest!" I looked to Ray and nodded while readying my sword and heading back to the front lines.
While fighting I heard loud booms coming from where the 2 bigshots were fighting but It was rather different from Grangar's fight. Instead of a couple of devastating explosive blows, there were several smaller but more consecutive and rapid blasts. The fighting seemed to be rather intense and wasn't letting up. Everyone had set up a sort of routine at this point to get a break and relieve themselves or eat something before getting back into action. We couldn't fight forever after all.
After the Orb of Valas ran out of juice and plonked onto the ground inert, the guild master got up and dashed into action in an instant. I was fortunately on my break and got to see the action. Grangar charged at the corrupt mage from behind while Alfred kept pummeling his hastily formed barrier as the corrupt mage simply shoved a pure wave of green mana at Alfred. This forced Alfred backwards and gave him some breathing room. Unfortunately Grangar was right behind him and let loose his pent up frustration on the corrupt mage.
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Dust billowed as the impact from the fist shattered all of the barriers and sent the corrupt mage tumbling. He flew into a wall and slammed into it. He seemed to have simply stopped responding for a second before he finally got back to reality.
That one second was enough for the Demonic Butler to show why he was called by such a vicious title. He let loose a massive amount of bloodlust, causing all of the monsters to freeze, as well as some of the lower leveled humans that were too close to the battle. The mage was also immobilized for a brief moment and was turned into a punching bag by the butler. He was now pouring purple mana with a small wisp of red in it. The mana was spewing everywhere and he kept punching at an ever increasing rate. The punches kept slamming into the body of the limp mage as more and more punches slammed into his body.
The corrupt mage finally managed to retaliate with a sudden burst of green mana so intense that it blinded those nearby for a few seconds. Alfred's purple mana protected him by forming a loose barrier of gasious mana to shield him, but he was still injured from that blast, with him coughing up a bit of blood and wobbling on his feet. The corrupt mage on the other hand was simply going nuts. His mana was running rampant and he started violently coughing. No one could get near as he was pouring too much mana out at once. His hand started to crack along with his chest, with a green glow emitting from it.
He looked frustrated and screamed in anger "God damnit! You forced this on me! I'm not going to shatter from an overload before taking you down with me!" As he screamed that he pulled out a green gem and shoved it into his cracking chest while his hand broke apart. Grangar tried to get close while various mages tried firing spells and other such projectiles but to no avail.
Grangar was stopped in his tracks by the mana while the magical attacks broke apart on the sheer amount of mana pouring from the corrupt mage. The mage started to groan in pain and kept mumbling something while he slowly lowered the amount of mana, with most of it pouring into the green gem on his chest, causing it to glow brighter as time went on.
Needless to say, the monsters that were fighting us during this were let loose from whatever control the corrupt mage had and started to panic. Some continued to attack the humans nearby, while others attacked other ogres nearby. Most of them simply fled for the blown open gates to flee with their lives. Several didn't make it and died on the way. It was chaos to say the least but it eased the burden on the adventurers and city guard who had been keeping the rest of the monsters outside the city from pouring inside. Grangar roared "Let the monsters running away flee! Don't stop them! It'll save us the time to hunt them down and besides, we don't have the manpower to spare!"
The adventurers and city guards who heard his booming voice gladly obliged and stepped aside to let the monsters flee, simply glad that the fighting was seemingly ending. What they didn't pay attention to was the sole major threat left. The corrupt mage. He was still pulsing with mana but it was vastly shrunken down in magnitude and he was now somewhat approachable. Grangar simply let loose with devestating punches but surprisingly, they didnt do anything. They were blocked by a very thick gaseous green mana pouring from the gem. No matter how many punches he released they were all stopped. Alfred joined in and let loose a machine gun flurry only to achieve similar results.
"What is that damn gem?! Where is it drawing all of that mana from?? Surely that thing can't be an endless source of mana, thats ridiculous!" Yelled Grangar as he let loose blow after blow on the corrupt mage who was still shaking and glowing more and more vibrantly.
I was sweating buckets as I recognized what that was. I stared in shock as I said "Thats no simple gem. Its a Demon Hearth Crystal... Its a literal BOMB! That bastards going to blow the whole city up using his life force as fuel for the crystal!" I panicked because that thing shouldn't be atainable in the mortal world. It was only an item that could be gained from the demonic world. Somehow, that bastard had gotten his hands on a demonic crystal, and we were on the receiving end of the damn thing.