CHAPTER 27 ENGAGEMENT 1.2: INTERLUDE KARIF

[Wind Shears]

Another trio of demons were perfectly bisected with a flick of his hand. He made sure that he heard the telltale pings of the system in his head confirming that they were dead before dismissing them from his mind.

If there was one thing Karif had managed to learn during his stint as an adventurer with the Earth Raiders, it’s that you can never dismiss enemies completely until the system confirms that they’ve been killed.

He’d seen a couple of people get killed in the short moments between a monster pretending to be dead and the subsequent moment that said people dropped their guard.

He vowed to never make that mistake.

[Rushing Winds]

Karif reset his spell that increased his agility and leapt backwards to avoid getting cut by one of the unseemly beasts. He frowned slightly in annoyance before retaliating.

[Crushing Pressure]

The air surrounding the demon compressed bringing the creature with it and flattened it almost instantly into a disc. He tried not to look too closely.

He quickly took stock of the area around him and moved with confident purposeful strides to the next engagement. Karif always made sure to strategically place himself where he could do the most possible with the minimum amount of effort involved.

That wasn’t to say he was skimping on pulling his weight. On the contrary he made every effort to pull more than the people around them to give them some slack if he could. But at the same time he made sure he wasn’t biting off more than he could chew and also making sure that what he was doing was actually helpful.

It’s one thing to take on the hardest job in a group effort, it’s another to take it on and actually be productive while doing it. That was the goal Karif strived towards. Take on the most work while optimizing the amount of effort expended into said task.

Karif dashed forward placing himself between a squad of lower leveled guardsmen and a particularly rowdy tier three demon. With a couple of quick waves of his hand he blasted out several invisible cuts of wind intersecting each other as they cut off the escape routes of the demon before cutting it into four uneven pieces.

Once again Karif made sure he heard the ping before fully moving on to his next engagement.

On and on it continued. Swing, cut. Swing, cut. Swing, cut. Swing, cut.

But Karif didn’t allow himself to get complacent. He focused on his rhythm as he danced between his enemies blasting them apart, crushing them, flinging them up into the air…

He should probably stop doing that last one, the last thing he needed was for them to fall on someone and hurt them or kill them.

Karif looked around him and saw, in the distance, Penny carving a bloody path through the battlefield. He suppressed a sigh, they were supposed to work together. Garrus was probably going to give her a stern talking to again. He always wanted us to at least work in groups of two so that we always had someone to watch our back.

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Penny was a loose cannon though, and that was putting it nicely. She was completely unhinged once she made it into combat. Somehow he could just hear her laughing as she decapitated a demon and saved another squadron of guards from getting pulverized.

Karif redirected his attention to his immediate surroundings and continued to lay waste to the demons in front of him in a similar manner to Penny.

But without all the psychopathic motivation.

Karif cut through a swathe of demons in front of him and came to a quick stop. A hulking monstrosity stood before him just having finished tearing its way through a platoon of guardsmen and a few adventurers.

[Level 114]

Oh, that wasn’t good. It turned and locked eyes with him before letting out a vicious roar and started charging his way.

As capable as he was he didn’t want to take the chance of trying to deal with this on his own. He turned and started bounding his way through the battlefield cutting his way through lower leveled demons as he did.

With his enhanced agility and dexterity thanks to his spell he was able to be a lot more graceful than he normally would be. Most mages had a spell that gave an amount of their intelligence to other stats. For elements like wind or Alex’s lightning it was usually dexterity and/or agility. Fire would be something like vigor and/or strength.

He quickly leapt to the side narrowly avoiding a fist from the massive beast as it slammed into the ground next to him. The wind pressure off the attack pushed him back even further than he had intended with the jump.

Karif landed with a light slide before casting another quick glance around. His eyes narrowed on his target and he smiled slightly before straightening himself back up and dusting himself off a bit.

He turned his attention towards the demon who had just finished extricating its fist from the ground and turned to glare at him and let loose another guttural roar before trying to charge him once again.

Instead of bounding off like he had before he stood his ground against the demon, charging up his magics into a more powerful spell this time. Right as it started to get a little too close for comfort a ball of cutting steel and fury burrowed itself into the knee of the demon echoing with borderline maniacal laughter.

Karif took the opportunity that Penny’s attack created for him and lined up his attack letting a thin, practically invisible bolt of wind shoot forward.

[Piercing Fang]

The demon was already in the midst of falling over when a hole the size of a gold coin opened up in the middle of its forehead clear through to the other side of its skull. It crashed to the ground in an unceremonious heap and didn’t move again.

‘Ping’

Karif nodded approvingly as he turned towards his teammate who was getting ready to dash off into the foray again.

“Wait! You know Garrus wants us to stick together.” He said to Penny stopping her before she could dash off again.

“Hah. You can stick with me if you can keep up, four eyes.” She snarked back at him.

Karif very carefully did not rise up to the bait, “You know Garrus is going to lecture you again if we don’t.” He said chidingly.

Penny stopped before letting out a deep winded sigh.

“Yeah… Yeah, you’re right. I’ll try and reign it in a little I guess.” She scuffed her foot on the ground looking more annoyed than apologetic, but given the situation that was the most he was gonna get.

He nodded approvingly, “Alright then, let’s not waste anymore time.” Her face brightened up immediately, whipping around to dash back into the fray with Karif following closely behind her.

“I’ll try not to step on your toes while you do all the work for me.”

Penny let out a snort of laughter in reply before throwing herself into the nearest scuffle that she could.