CHAPTER 25 ENGAGEMENT PART 1
Our team walked towards the front of the group. Garrus and the guildmaster were talking with each other. According to Karif they have known each other for a while. Everyone around us seemed pretty relaxed, conversations were happening as friends joked with each other and laughed.
I remained quiet for the most part, focusing on the fight that was coming up that I knew was going to be difficult for me.
“Are you nervous?” Penny asked.
“A little, most people here have about two tiers on me so they’re in the level range to easily clean this up. Not necessarily the case for me.”
“Well if you fight like you did against Miltaen you should be fine.”
“I nearly died fighting him, if he had taken the fight seriously from the beginning I wouldn’t be here right now. Which doesn’t really inspire confidence in my chances of coming out of this alive.” I retorted.
Penny bit her lip, a concerned look flashing across her face before she responded. “I know. But you still shouldn’t worry. This time you’re not going to have to fight them alone so the risk won’t be nearly as great. And if he wasn’t lying to us then there shouldn’t really be any other tier three demons to worry about here.”
Well, she was right on both counts. On paper I stood a good chance of fighting against any demons tier two and under, and with the rest of the Earth Raiders by my side I stood an even better chance of living through the whole ordeal.
The guildmaster raised his fist and everyone stopped and the chatter died down instantly. He turned to face us and spoke loudly enough for everyone to hear.
“We’re nearing Muldren. Barring any surprises, this should be a quick and clean operation. I will stay here and approach from the front. Garrus you’ll take half and loop around to the back of the village. In fifteen minutes I’ll send up a signal and at that point we’ll charge in and work towards the center clearing it out as we go. This should be simple, after that Marcy and Kleve, your teams will stay here to hold the village while the rest of us go group up with Commander Neese. Any questions?”
Guildmaster Stark looked out over the group of adventurers, I struggled not to smile as he had to stand on a box in order to see over people's heads. The fact that he had come prepared for this very situation spoke volumes about how many times it had happened.
Nobody spoke and he nodded firmly before turning to Garrus who turned and started jogging off the road giving Muldren a wide berth. We followed closely behind him, and roughly half the adventurers broke off from the group to follow us.
Our speed slowly picked up until we approached near running speeds for the mages of the group and maintained that all the way through. I still couldn’t get over the way the system enhanced physical performance, I was already as fast as olympic level athletes and I wasn’t even sprinting yet, let alone using buffs. I felt like a kid in a candy store again, a slight smile coming to my face as we pushed through the lightly wooded fields.
“Finally coming around?” Garrus asked, giving me a slight shock.
“Hmm? Oh yeah, I guess. Still just thinking about how cool magic is, along with the system and everything. Even missing an arm I’m stronger than humanly possible back where I’m from. It sparks a childlike feeling of excitement in me every time I realize I’m the one using this strength.”
He smiled at me. “Yeah I guess when you put it like that, it is pretty nice isn’t it. Just don’t take the system for granted. Experience can end up trumping levels or stats. Knowledge should never be overlooked either. Karif is a good example of that, or George for that matter. Managed to catch a key detail we all missed due to his smart thinking.”
I nodded, “I’ll do my best not to. But that’s also why I have y’all isn’t it? A party does a great job of filling in the weaknesses that one person has.” I said with a wink at the end.
“Hahahaha, you’re not wrong there.”
We soon made it back onto the main road and came to a stop a decent distance away from Muldren with about five minutes to spare. We were parked about two miles out from Muldren which would help prevent anyone from just glancing this direction from seeing us. With how fast tier three’s could sprint as well they could cross the distance in a minute or so.
We sat with bated breath, waiting for the signal we knew would come soon. I pulled my blade and held it loosely and threw a couple of practice swings. My anxiety was ramping up and it was making it hard for me to find a comfortable hold on the weapon.
Penny rested a hand on my shoulder, with her skills she could probably easily sense my distress on the situation. She smiled at me before focusing back in front of her. I looked forward as well, waiting for the moment. I took a deep breath and held it in an effort to relax myself.
It was so sudden I almost missed it.
A massive flare practically appeared in the sky with how fast it ascended, the only reason I was able to react in time with everyone else was because of how loud the explosion was as it detonated showering sparks all over Muldren and the surrounding area.
“CHARGE!!!” Garrus roared and lunged forward.
Skills around me flared up as the quickest fighters launched themselves forward, I pushed my buffs to their maximum to keep up, but even then that was only enough to keep pace with the Earth Raiders. They didn’t need buffs to run as fast as I could either, I’m sure Penny could’ve pushed ahead if she wanted to as well. Quickly the village of Muldren approached, already I could see fighting happening inside.
Fighting might’ve been a bit of a stretch, the demons had all molted out of their human forms and we’re getting mopped up by the adventurers. We darted into the village and Garrus threw himself into the nearest demon with a roar slicing it in half before quickly moving on to the next with a vicious swing.
Penny fired shot after shot from her bow, each shot hitting with laser precision and netting her another kill. Karif stood close to her casting his spells. Demons without wings got launched into the sky and came tumbling back down splatting into the ground, demons with wings got pancaked by the invisible forces of his wind magics.
I swung my sword with wild abandon doing my best to aim for killing blows but settling for seriously maiming most of the time. I just didn’t have the raw stats necessary like everyone else to straight out kill most without catching them by surprise. The ones I killed were the ones that felt like they were durable enough to block my sword which would then proceed to cut through them like they were made out of warm butter. With every opportunity between close quarters combat I would drop my sword to cast some long range spells, making best use of my mana so it wouldn’t sit continuously topped up.
Chain lightning bounced between targets knocking them off their rhythm and opening them up to a finishing blow from whichever adventurer had been fighting them at that point, or just allowing Penny to make an easy shot and take another demon out of commission.
My mind was constantly bombarded with pings from the system, I just had to tune it out. As far as I knew there wasn’t a convenient way to get it to stop making noise when I didn’t want it to. And to a degree the noise soothed my mind, it let me know that progress was being made, that we were actually killing them.
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It didn’t take nearly as long as I thought for the crowd to start thinning out, we had completely boxed them in. The demons started realizing this fight was a lost cause and started trying to break free. Any that tried were instantly cut down. The ones that tried to fly over were picked off from a distance by sharpshooters.
And before I realized I was standing around waiting for the next demon and they never came. My heightened senses were working overtime frantically trying to find the next threat that I jumped when Penny put her hand on my shoulder.
“Whoa, settle down there. We’re finished. You can relax now. There’s a couple of runners, but we can leave them to people that are better suited to chasing them down.” She said with a smile, “Come on, let's move over to where the healers have set up, maybe you can help out there.”
Penny looked back over her shoulder and shouted at Garrus who was conversing with the guildmaster, “I’m taking Alex to the healers to see if they need any help.”
Garrus just idly waved his hand signaling his assent.
That was… Extremely anti-climactic. I’m not sure what I expected, but I had been a lot more stressed leading up to the encounter than I had been during the whole fight.
“That wasn’t nearly as stressful as I was expecting it to be.” I said to no one in particular.
One of the nearby adventurers heard me and spoke up, “That’s because we were prepared and had overwhelming force. What you were probably expecting was a frontal clash between two equal forces. But that’s not what happened here, count yourself lucky this is all we had to deal with.”
I nodded my head his direction, he was right. That made a lot more sense now that I thought about it, we had the element of surprise heading into this encounter and most of the adventurers here are at least third tier. We came up to the healers area they were working in. It was about as sparse as I’d expected, only a couple of people had gotten injured seriously.
“Well, looks like there’s nothing here we need to do, let’s go back to Garrus and the rest of them.”
As we were getting back to the group we heard the guildmaster start addressing the group.
“Alright, Elseen, Lyster, Korand, Millevia your four groups will stay here and secure the town. I’ll have further instructions once this whole thing is dealt with, the rest of you come with me to assist the forces in the North.”
The squads broke apart to start getting things organized with surprising efficiency. Although I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. While these people may not be used to working together they still knew how to handle themselves in a state of emergency and they wholly trusted the leadership of the guildmaster.
I spared a glance around the village now that the fighting was done. There was barely any damage done to the structures, it was a much cleaner fight than I had expected it to be. The occasional spell had gone flying off into a building or two, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed quickly and easily.
Penny nudged me grabbing my attention, the other groups were all gathering towards the front of the village getting ready to move out. It was pretty easy to spot Garrus out of the crowd, George and Karif standing with him. Garrus glanced at us as we came to a stop next to them.
“Made it through alright lad? Good good.” He nodded approvingly.
It made me smile that he was concerned about me, “Yeah, for the most part. It finished up a lot more quickly than I had expected so there was just less time for me to do something stupid and get myself hurt.”
“Weren’t worried about me at all, Garrus? I’m a little offended.” Penny quipped with a sardonic huff.
Garrus didn’t find it as amusing as she did. “I’ve spent a lot of time worrying about you recently.” He said quietly.
Penny opened her mouth to say something but decided otherwise and just nodded. The mood from then on as we waited for the guildmaster to take the head of the group was a bit awkward.
Thankfully we didn’t have to wait that long, the guildmaster quickly appeared at the front near us yelling.
“Everyone prepared? Good, now move!”
We took off at a near sprint for me, running through the forest. Maybe forest wasn’t the right word for this area, woods might be a more apt description. The trees, while plentiful, were spaced apart neatly rather than being densely packed together.
After a few minutes passed we had covered several miles and I could faintly hear the sounds of fighting in the distance.
“I think I hear them…” I said out loud, mainly to myself.
“What’s that? You can hear them from here?” Garrus said, quickly looking over at me before turning towards the guildmaster and saying something, who in turn addressed it to the group.
“We near the encounter, prepare to engage!”
Once again the faster people split apart dashing ahead branching out to create a sort of crescent to surround the opponents. The spellcasters and others that could fly, although few in number, took off to get an overview and rain hell from above.
The sounds of combat grew louder, spells and skills resounding in the area. When we finally broke through and saw the fighting it was the complete opposite of what I was expecting. It was a borderline massacre, except instead of us being the ones doing it to the demons, the demons were the ones doing it to us.
Two things immediately stuck out, the first and lesser thing I noticed was a massive demon standing roughly eight feet tall was completely decimating everything around him.
[Level 3215]
That wasn’t good… George hadn’t said anything about this when he had told us about the encampment… To be fair he hadn’t said anything, more signed it to Karif who translated, but that's besides the point.
I shook my head trying to get myself to focus on what I was seeing rather than making terrible puns in my mind. The second and more important thing I noticed was a massive portal in the middle of clearing being defended by the demons. Demons were also spilling out of it dozens at a time. Most of the demons were tier three and lower, but every odd one out was tier four. None of them from quickly glancing through their levels were at tier five thankfully.
I heard the telltale ping of my identify skill leveling up but I pushed it out of my mind, and focused on where I should be focusing my efforts.
Penny and Karif were already firing off attacks, the guildmaster immediately launched himself forward with a boom as the ground practically broke apart under his feet like an anime character. He instantly put himself in combat against the large demon. He was outleveled by about two-hundred, but I figured the higher you got the less levels mattered and more how you used your abilities. Hopefully that difference wouldn’t make or break the fight, if he lost against him I don’t know that anyone else would be able to handle it.
For that matter, where was the Guard Commander? He should’ve been handling it, did he already fight and lose? Uncertainty filled my mind.
Just as I was starting to get bogged down with negative thoughts someone slapped me in the back. I whirled around pulling out my sword to retaliate, and whoever it was grabbed my arm stopping me before I could finish my swing.
It was Penny again.
“Hey, look at me! Calm down! Focus on the fighting in front of you, I don’t know what’s got you confused but you can’t worry about that now, the more time you spend thinking on it is less time taking action which is what you need to be doing right now. If you’re not ready to run up in there then just use your spells, I know you have some ranged abilities. Just aim for where you can do the most damage.”
I nodded slowly, she was right. There wasn’t much I could do about anything even if I realized it was a problem.
“I’m going to try and find where they’re putting the injured! I can probably do more help there getting higher level people back into the fight!” I yelled back at her.
She just nodded before dashing forward firing a single arrow at an angle upwards that immediately split into a hailstorm and rained down onto a group of demons.
I turned away and quickly scanned the fight and quickly found what I was looking for. I saw a man dragging his buddy across the ground making his way a little to the east of where I was standing. I assumed that’s where the injured were gathering. I quickly sprinted over to him and started healing the guy who had been injured while helping move him.
He had a deep gash along his side, it ate a little into my mana to heal it all the way but I went ahead and did so.
They both quickly realized I had healed the injury and nodded their thanks and turned to rush back into the fight. I grabbed one of them by the arm stopping him before he could dash off.
“Are they gathering the injured up ahead?”
He nodded and pointed, “Just a little past the start of the trees can’t miss it.”
Then he turned around and ran off laying into more demons with his sword. I ran in the opposite direction. Here was to hoping I could be productive out here.