“Thanks,” Allen said after Amelia had refilled his stamina.
The remaining low leveled enemies had been taken out quickly, leaving just the three mid-leveled enemies that Shoam was dealing with and the two nobles rampaging in the sky. Each one of them could probably be killed by just Iana or Clara, but they were supposed to be kept alive for questioning.
Allen also couldn’t forget about Phantom. The spider needed experience too, so Allen had him switch out with Meredith. The lightning Mage noble was starting to flag, and Allen hoped Phantom could get some experience from the kill.
“You’re surrounded,” Shoam said, standing atop a speeder carriage. “Please surrender. You could spare yourselves a lot of unnecessary pain and potentially even leave with your souls intact.”
The elf’s voice wasn’t very forceful, but as usual, it was firm and precise. Standing opposite the group of eight combatants, were the three remaining guards working for the company. Two of them were Warriors leveled in the mid four-hundreds, while one in the back was a Mage at level three thirty-four, according to Shoam.
“This is all on Shoam and Meredith, none of us will be much more than a distraction,” Allen thought, watching as their enemies quickly realized they wouldn’t be escaping. “At this level, fifty levels higher is all any of us could manage by ourselves, maybe a hundred and fifty if we work together perfectly. Thresholds just matter more than raw levels. The Mage though… if we can get an opening.”
The Warrior on the left shouted out in anger and brandished his double-bladed axe. The ground around him split open and encased him in an armored shell of stone. Then the earth around him started to churn as a deep red Power aura came to life around him.
The other Warrior cursed and lifted his sword. Both he and his weapon burst into flames. “Go fuck yourselves, brigands!” he roared. His aggression might have worked a little better if it weren’t for how hesitant the Mage behind them seemed, yet he still summoned a set of Light magic arrows and floated up into the air.
“It was your choice,” Shoam said simply. A dagger of nearly-solid, black and violet flames appeared in the elf’s hand as the space around him seemed to turn dark.
The Mage released his spells and the axe Warrior rose into he sky on a column of earth, stones sent flying out in all directions. Ty leaned in an caught many of them on his shield. The swordsman sunk into a sprint start with his sword to the side, blazing even hotter. Allen hadn’t reacted yet, but he had Chaotic Destruction fully overcharged and Mana Shroud covering the weaker parts of his amor. His armor was probably at the same level of what the two Warriors were wearing, but that didn’t mean he could just dive in. Meredith’s passive healing was good, but it wasn’t that good.
“I’m afraid we are not bandits, gentlemen,” Meredith said. She didn’t move, but dozens of ribbons of light magic lashed out from the long sleeves of her robe. Each light arrow that came from the Mage was caught by ribbons and absorbed before they could reach anything.
Allen felt several buffs settle in, some of which increased his physical stats, but also others that improved his magic. He figured Christopher was going all-in on buffs, but he didn’t have time to think about it before the flaming sword Warrior moved.
A burst of speed propelled the Warrior forward, leaving a trail of fire in his wake. Although he hadn’t gone for Meredith or Shoam, he went straight for where Allen and Nora were standing behind Ty. At the same time, the axe Warrior’s pillar of stone lurched forward, bringing him down at Meredith like a giant pouncing ground worm.
Unfortunately for the fire Warrior, Shoam possessed one of the rarest skills for a non-mage: rapid short range teleportation.
The elf appeared directly in front of the charging Warrior. He fired a ball of purple fire, and with a flick of his wrist, made it explode right as the Warrior dodged out of the way at the last second. The explosion sent the Warrior stumbling before Shoam appeared right of top of him to palm his head into the ground. Fire burst forth from the two before the elf was forced to jump away from a flaming sword. The Warrior got back to his feet, mostly unharmed.
Meredith had formed a barrier of light between herself and the axe Warrior’s earth magic pillar. She was a Healer, but she could still do a lot of damage to the much lower leveled Warrior with her threads of light, they just had to be able to catch the axe wielder.
Christopher’s voice came through the sound of spells going off in every direction. “The six of us should go for the Mage. He’s pure Light by what I can tell, I have a few tricks for that. Allen and Camila, I’ve buffed your chaotic mana to dangerous levels, but it should be fine with the healing field.”
Allen nodded. Dead Calm could help deal with the momentary pain, probably. He and the others circled around where the Warriors were fighting. The Mage was in the back, occasionally shooting light magic arrows, but mostly forming barriers to intercept Shoam’s and Meredith’s attacks.
He noticed them as soon as Allen sprinted off ahead, jumping off of Christopher’s barriers to get to him. The professor had gotten very good at pulling Allen’s miasma in the direction of where the next barrier pad would appear, but he almost didn’t even need to. They just always seemed to appear at the perfect spot. That was good since Allen really had to put Slip Step and Killer Instinct to the test in air-dodging all of the light arrows sent his way.
A spinning front flip brought Allen through six different furiously-shot light arrows, while two more were split apart by some kind of magical prism constructs Christopher had thrown together. Allen was getting closer to the mage, but he could just fly away.
That wasn’t the point though, he was just a distraction to keep the Mage from throwing up his barriers to protect the two Warriors. When Camila and Nora showed up as well, bouncing off of barriers and getting dangerously close, the Mage put a spherical barrier around himself.
Camila’s hammer left a crack in the surface while Nora and Allen just jumped off, somersaulting in the air.
The Mage shouted in frustration, his attention fully on Allen and his group. Suddenly, many barriers flickered to life around the three of them, both Christopher’s blue and the Mage’s golden-white. The light barriers flew at Allen, Camila, and Nora as if to box them off or slice them in half, but each time, they seemed to run into one of Christopher’s spells and lose their hardness or split into multiple rays of light.
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“He’s a supporter,” Allen thought, noticing the Mage was beginning to lose his patience. Many of the barrier Mage’s weaker arrows had hit Allen, leaving burns under his armor that quickly healed, but none of those spells had the power of an attack Mage.
Just when Allen figured they had done enough to distract their enemy, ribbons of light descended on the barrier Mage’s spherical shell. They passed right through it as if it wasn’t even there and curled around their victim in the blink of an eye. Meredith came down from above with the axe Warrior trailing after her, bound by more threads of light.
The barrier Mage struggled against the Healer’s magic. He futility put all of his power into resisting the bindings with bursts of light, but there wasn’t anything he could do. Allen watched from his floating pad as Meredith slammed him into the ground like a ragdoll, then all the golden barriers went out.
“Well there’s an opening.” Allen jumped off Christopher’s barrier. Thanks to a few of his skills, he weighed as much as a five-year-old and wouldn’t take fall damage as long as he landed on his feet. The barrier Mage, weakened and immobilized by Meredith’s magic, was barely able to react before Allen fell on him from above. Multiple skills activated along with Chaotic Destruction, signaling that Allen had taken at least eighty percent of the Mage’s remaining health. He wasn’t paralyzed, but he was sufficiently immobilized. Allen’s legs were also broken by the backlash from his skill, but they healed before he even fell over.
A heart beats passed before Meredith dropped the unmoving axe Warrior next to the Mage and put her hands on her hips. “Shoam, finish up please!” An explosion from above punctuated her sentence, followed by the fire Warrior dashing at the group from behind one of the nearby speeders.
Ty lunged forward to intercept him. A fiery sword left a deep gash in the Defender’s thick armor, but the Warrior was forced into the air to doge Ty’s shield bash.
Shoam appeared right next to the Warrior and kicked him into the ground with a wave of scourge fire. It burned and rotted at the Warrior’s defenses, and by that point, half of the man’s body was burnt and blackened by blight. The left side of his face looked like it was melted, and he was struggling to stay standing. Shoam also had a few injuries, but a one-on-one was no contest.
“GO TO HELL!” The sword Warrior shouted, engulfing his sword in flames again and charging forward.
Not moving from where he stood, Shoam raised his hands into a simple hand sign. A violet glyph flashed on the sword Warrior’s forehead before violet flames shot out from his eyes and mouth for a solid five seconds. It was like somebody had set off fireworks inside his head, the slow burning kind. The whole time, he screamed and convulsed before dropping to the ground, smoldering and unmoving.
“Oops, is he dead?” the elf asked. “I must have charged that hex for too long.”
Meredith’s magic was already dragging the third and final enemy over. “He was for a moment, don’t worry about it, darling.”
Allen hummed while a few curses filtered in from his teammates. He was watching Iana and Clara fight the basilisk abomination in the sky again, but most of what he saw was just smoke and snow with the occasional explosion or tail whipping around. “They should just kill that bastard already,” he said. “If he’s willing to use a transmog, which usually soul-kills its host, then he’s just not worth talking to.”
“You were going to save that thing?” Camila asked, looking up too.
“I agree for once,” Ty added, “I’ve seen this shit happen before. He’s already dead, and if not then he should be put down because anybody willing to use a transmogrification serum like that is a menace.”
“He might have had something to say,” Shoam said.
“Sure, like ‘eat my shit you peasant rats’ or something like that,” Allen replied.
Christopher hummed to himself, but he didn’t say anything. Amelia and Nora were the same, though the latter just seemed to be in a state of shock. Allen was about to say something cynical yet supportive to her, but a loud scream and a lightning strike cut him off.
“Stay down, final warning!” Jack shouted.
The lightning noble had been pinned to the ground by a huge arrow shrouded by darkness. His eyes were glowing blue, and he was screaming and pushing at the arrow stuck through his chest. Everyone else just watched from a few dozen meters away, Camila was even on her second bottle of whiskey.
More wind and shadow blades tore into the noble while he healed himself with some kind of blood magic. Eventually, he managed to get himself off the ground so he could pull out the arrow. The space around him shifted to deflect the incoming shadows while he charged another lightning attack.
Then a streak of white light shot past the noble, lopping off his left arm before he could launch his spell. He cursed as the streak bounced around him even faster than Allen could follow with Expanded Awareness.
The Mage snarled at Phantom while his arm regrew from bubbling tendrils of blood. Two wyverns landed and sent lighting his way, which he ignored completely. Instead, he reacted to another huge arrow shot at him from the sky. He dodged and the two meter long arrow embedded itself halfway into the dirt.
Phantom shot at the noble again and left a hole straight through his abdomen. He screamed in pain again and staggered back, though yet again the hole was quickly healed with the same blood magic.
The noble tried to get back into the air, but an arm reached out from the shadowy arrow and grabbed a hold of his neck. The hold itself was not a problem for the Mage, but the finger-sized parasitic worms that slithered down Jack’s arm and into every hole on the noble’s face were a different matter.
“Oh, it’s over,” Allen said, raising his voice above the agonized, gurgling screams of the lightning Mage. “Meredith, you should stop him from regenerating.”
“Yes, quite,” the Healer replied. She extended her magic ribbons over to the man writhing on the ground in pain. There were so many worms in his body that his flesh was already starting to deform and mutate; the blood magic viciously trying to counteract the damage only made it more grotesque to look at. Meredith just did her part to stabilize the now pile of roiling flesh while the worms made their way back into Jack’s shadow.
Jack let out a massive sigh. He looked burnt and roughed up, but most of his injuries had probably healed. “Gods fucking damnit,” he cursed, sending another small spell into the butchered Mage. Phantom did the same after appearing on the Ranger’s shoulder. “This asshole kept popping blood bulbs like fucking candy. The Rich bastard probably has plenty more, and each bulb is a human sacrifice.”
Allen snorted. “Tell Iana to kill that basilisk guy already.”
Jack hummed and looked up. His voice resonated loudly in everyone’s ears again. “We’re done down here, go ahead and kill him… permanently just to be sure.”
“Okay, just a moment,” Iana’s voice replied. Only the monstrous roars of the creature that the noble had turned himself into could be heard from above.
An instant later, the air turned frigid. A thin layer of frost formed on everything, from the grass to the speeders. Thanks to Meredith’s magic, only the people were spared from the cold, including the enemies and the most likely the slaves as well. Then the wind started to pick up, quickly whipping into hurricane speeds.
Allen looked up. It was even colder in the sky, where the dark storm clouds blotted out all the light from the sun and spun around like a cyclone. In the center of the storm was the basilisk monster, and above that was Iana’s angel of ice. The former was broken and bloodied, but it still thrashed in the sky and breathed out fire against the blizzard around it.
Ice was starting to form on the former noble’s monstrous body even before Iana brought her massive halberd down on it. The basilisk was sliced in two despite how much it resisted the cold. Ice crystals took over both halves of its body before it fell to the ground and shattered like glass.
Allen stretched out his shoulders while the storm clouds slowly faded away. “And that’s a wrap.”