"When you said we would be fighting against crows, I didn't expect that it was going to be that many," Alex gasped.
The black mass was getting close, and now it wasn't just a cloud but a heavy storm that was about to blot out the sun.
"Yeah, that is a bit more than I expected. But they are still too far for me to hit them," Hera looked at Daskka, who was already floating around her, wanting to attack, but she also knew that the monsters were too far away. Any spells that either of them tried to use right now would dissipate before reaching the flying creatures.
That being said, Hera still could use one skill to gather more information.
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Pitch-Black Crow - Level 8 - (Night affinity)
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Pitch-Black Crow - Level 7 - (Night affinity)
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Pitch-Black Crow - Level 9 - (Night affinity)
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"They all seem to be between levels 7 and 9, but be careful of any who look bigger," Hera warned everyone.
"Can you observe them from that far away?" Cris asked.
"Yeah, my observe is rank 3 already," Hera explained.
"There is nothing in the quest that says we can't use water here, right?" Amanda asked.
"Not that I'm aware. Water would even help the plants, wouldn't it?" Alex tried to cast a wind blade at the crows, but the spell couldn't reach it before losing all its strength.
"OK then," Amanda smiled and placed both hands on the ground. Around her, a small coat of snow was formed, and it began to grow in five separate mounds. After a few seconds, these freshly made piles of snow started to move and became four two-meter tall golems. They all walked behind Amanda and used the last mound to make snowballs and get ready to use it as ammunition to attack the birds.
Cris was using earth and some twigs to make a trap to catch the birds, but it was clear that dealing with flying creatures wasn't her forte. Hera tried to look around and find Tim, but the man had vanished completely. His [Stealth] skill was clearly active.
"Tim, can you do something at range?" Hera was still looking at the monsters.
"Medium to short range. I don't have anything that can take those things out," Tim's voice came as if from the ether.
"Right," Hera turned to her pet, "Daskka, that circle thing you were doing, did you ever figure it out?" Daskka nodded in reply, "Do you think I can put a spell inside it?" the snake didn't have shoulders, but her response could only be described as a shrug.
"Isn't that just a mana construct? I mean, it was in your necklace. How can it figure something out?" Amanda asked.
"Daskka is a bit special. I'll explain the whole thing later, but she can grow by herself," Hera replied while the snake was already creating a spell circle on the ground in front of them.
"What is she doing?" Cris asked.
"A while back, we started to learn about spell circles, and she was trying to make what is basically a trap that triggers any spell you put inside it. If it is up to her it would be something that would only grab, confuse or poison the monsters. These are spells that she knows, and since we are connected, I thought I might be able to use a spell on the trap myself. I have a couple that can really help here," Hera explained.
"Your pet is doing all that? So are you like, always a two-man team?" Amanda gasped.
"She does have a point. Like, isn't that kind of what Leo did in the lake? The explosion thing?" Alex added.
"Well, yeah, but if I go down, Daskka goes down with me."
"I mean, if you die, what's the point?" Cris rolled her eyes.
"No, I meant that if I get unconscious, Daskka goes a bit crazy and jumps back on the necklace," Hera scratched the back of her head.
"By the way, did you ever figure out why Daskka freaked out in the rampage? Back on the wendigo nest, I mean," Alex asked.
"Ah, yeah. She was sad. Remember the thing I told you about Chika? About how the ground was black because of her blood? It was the same feeling that Chika had when she did that," Hera walked over to Daskka and petted the snake while it worked in a spell circle.
"Oh… some sort of lingering memory then? Could she have more?" Alex continued.
"It's a possibility, but I think it's more about evolutional trauma than memories. Like how an animal knows that something is dangerous even if they never experienced it themselves," Hera said.
"Guys, I don't mean to interrupt, but the crows are acting weird," Amanda called, breaking the conversation.
Hera looked up, and the monsters now had stopped advancing. Instead, they were spreading while keeping an empty circle in the sky. It was almost like a hurricane of birds was starting to form. Hera tried to send a poison needle to the monsters, hoping they were close enough to get hit, but that wasn't the case. She felt her spell losing strength around 20 meters above the group, but it was still far away from the monsters.
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As time went by, the crows completed their circle, but they were still just there waiting for something. Hera and the others were starting to get impatient. Fighting against monsters was one thing, but this was something else. It was more a test of mental fortitude, a trial to see if they could withstand the pressure of a constant threat that seemed to be preparing something big. However, to Hera, this wasn't that much of an issue. After fighting a wendigo on her own, having to run from lava while carrying her friend, and attacking a giant creature that stopped an entire civilization with its barriers, she was considerably jaded to this feeling. Still, it gave her a good glimpse of how the rest of the group would behave under pressure.
Alex was calm, just looking at the crows, waiting for her chance to strike. Cris was in a frenzy, trying to make even more traps, she had given up on the birdcage idea and was now doing something that would attack them at long ranges. It was hard to say if the traps were going to do much, but at least she was keeping herself busy. Amanda was almost frozen in place with all the golems she created melting slowly. They were also ready to attack, but it seemed like their effectiveness had already dropped considerably. Looking around, Hera had no clue what Tim was doing or even where he was. Out of curiosity, Hera used her pulse spell to see if she could find him. When the mana left her body, it started spreading for a few meters until it hit a humanoid presence. The moment that happened, he became visible to her. It seemed like his skill only worked if someone didn't know where he was, but the moment he was revealed, his seeming invisibility was gone.
Behind Tim, something else caught Hera's eye. In the middle of the farmland, a small mound of dirt was formed, almost like a tiny volcano being born. The dirt started to open, no, it wasn't the dirt, but something from inside that was breaking through the ground. A small sprout appeared with green leaves and a long shaft. In less than a minute, that small plant kept growing until it was about 3 meters tall. Now the stem was looking more like the trunk of a tree, with several massive leaves coming out as its branches. At the top, there was a large green flower trying to bloom. When the petals opened enough, they changed from green to yellow, taking the shape of a massive sunflower that should be at least two times the size of Hera's head.
When the disk florets were completely open, revealing the seed, the crows started to caw and close the circle while moving down towards the flower.
"Light them up!" Amanda cried the moment the crows were in the range of the snowballs.
When she first created the golems, that might have worked, but now that they spent almost 20 minutes melting, the constructs didn't have enough strength to reach the crows with a strong impact. Most of the monsters just dodged the snow boulders and kept going. The few who got caught fell for a few meters before managing to bat their wings enough to get rid of the snow.
Cris activated a few of her traps. Using her spells, she made a rudimentary large-scale slingshot. She placed several pellets with a sticky purple substance which was something she learned to make by mixing the snow Amanda created with some mud and a specific type of mana. The projectiles hit the crows, and some of them started to fall to the ground, unable to keep flying with their wings stuck to their bodies. Even in that situation, the monsters were still aiming at the sunflower. Diving as suicide bombers, they tried to reach the plant but were stopped by Alex's wind wall. It was a relatively new spell she had, but she still lacked some of the fine-tuning to use it on closed spaces like Boothudurn. Here, however, was another story entirely. She created a massive wind barrier that covered an area 10 meters wide, right above the sunflower. It was almost like an umbrella protecting the plant from the rain of crows.
On the other hand, Tim was still completely still. At first glance, it seemed like the assassin was frozen in fear, but when Hera focused on the man's eyes, they told a different story. If one were to describe his expression in a single word, it would be concentrating, like a master chess player looks at the board. While on the outside, he wasn't doing anything. Hundreds of scenarios were playing in his mind as he watched the monsters get closer and closer.
Hera glanced up, and it didn't take long for her to notice that the monsters were trying to trick them. That insane number of creatures that could block out the sun was mostly an illusion covering the sky. Only a handful of the monsters were real. What was even more impressive was that even the fake ones would react to the attacks and fall to the ground. Hera only realized that when one of the monsters hit by the weird sticky goo slammed against Alex's wind wall, none of the purple ooze fell out. Controlling such a massive spell wasn't easy, and it wasn't like the monsters had the notion of projectile physics.
A few meters to the left of the sunflower, Daskka had set up the spell circle, but Hera wasn't able to put her own spell on it. Instead, the trap triggered, and a whip of mist came out, slapping some of the crows away from the plant. Every couple of seconds, the mist would shoot out small poison needles at the flying monsters. Hera could feel that poison almost like it was her own, but unfortunately, the [Ailment Master] skill wouldn't trigger only with spells that came from Daskka. Despite their connection, the system still considered Hera and her snake as two separate beings. Still, her skill now was able to trigger when the poison from both of them were present in the monsters.
Amanda was able to deal some damage, but it was clear that her attacks weren't hitting at full strength. Now, she was preparing something bigger. Anyone could see the amount of mana she was putting on a single spell. Realizing that whatever she was doing should probably obscure some of the crows, Hera created four spots of poison rain pointing up and started firing at the monsters before she lost sight of them. At the same time, some dirt started to float around the area. Hera found it odd at first, but she quickly realized that the dust was being controlled by Tim, who moved the particles at high speeds, almost as if they were inside a hurricane. Each pellet of dirt was like a cannonball, peppering the crows with holes.
The poison Hera had sent towards the monsters started to spread to more of the crows, and in just a few moments, most of the creatures were poisoned, and the [Ailment Mastery] skill triggered several times. In fights like this, the bracelet Risli made for Hera would help her so much that it almost felt unfair.
Suddenly, a crow much larger than all the others, about the size of a pickup truck, appeared in the middle of that tornado of black feathers and dove towards the sunflower. Before it could reach it, Alex pulled her dagger from a wooden scabbard, and a massive glowing green blade of solid wind flashed across the sky, splitting the monster in half. The body dissolved before it even hit the ground, and the blade kept going, piercing the black sky and dispelling the illusion. Now only a couple dozen crows were around, and due to the spell being broken, they were easy pickings for the rest of the group. In less than five minutes after the crows attacked, they were all gone.
"Don't let your guard down, everyone. This can't be the end of it!" Amanda called while making another set of snow golems.
"That's a good idea, but we can relax. This should be it for the monsters," Hera replied.
"What?" Alex asked.
"Yeah. According to the compendium, we should try to repel the crows in this dungeon. When we thin their numbers enough, they will run away, regroup and come back. Another way to beat the dungeon is to kill the boss and the rest of the crows and disperse the cloud. When it is gone, no more monsters should appear," Hera explained.
"Are you sure?" Cris asked.
"Positive. Monsters only come out when there is a dark cloud in the sky, and they never come from behind that big tree. That's what the compendium says and I got it from the guild," Hera nodded.
"Then… Can we leave?" Alex asked.
"We can, but the quest is not over. We need to wait for the sunflower to finish its growth," Hera looked at the large plant. Even with all the crows and spells, the sunflower didn't seem bothered at all.
"So… what do we do until then?" Tim asked.
"I don't know about you, but I wanted to read and sunbathe," Hera created a small beach chair using her stone walls and sat down, opening a book on her tablet.