CHAPTER 43 THE BEGINNING OF THE END PART 2

I instantly snapped barriers above our heads at an angle. Hopefully this would cause them to deflect rather than just try to brute force push them away instead. Either they weren’t magically enhanced or I was right in my assumption as they pinged off harmlessly.

Tank armor strategy go brrrr.

I struggled slightly to keep up with everyone else. I could see several adventurers actually falling behind the group. They were tier two so they just didn’t have the stats to quite keep up. I was actively struggling to even keep pace with them and as it was I was actually falling behind slightly. Although I doubt this would last for much longer.

I kept the barriers up as we approached the Alixian force. They were organized into neat lines, kind of what you’d expect from a Roman Legion. Spears stuck out in front of them to try and impale us on as we got close enough.

I could currently create up to 11 barriers with my third class. I was only using four currently to protect our heads by creating a tent. I snapped another two in front of both Fiona and Kaylith creating a forward facing tent similar to what was above us. Hopefully this would help protect them from the initial impact from the spears. And if they somehow made it through my barriers they both had their own shields that they could use to protect themselves.

The charge started at a distance of roughly 500 feet. That distance quickly closed down and once we were within 100 mages and rangers started returning fire with their skills. We had lost a couple of unlucky people along the way, either those by themselves or groups that just didn’t have skills to protect themselves.

That last 100 feet flashed by in the blink of an eye and we were suddenly within 20 feet. Both Fiona and Kaylith instantly activated skills of their own and launched forward immediately closing the distance. My barriers didn’t help as much as I would’ve liked in that they both leapt over the barriers and the spears and took down the guards closest to us.

I slowed down, not interested in being close to the melee just yet. I fired off [Chain Lightning] Wherever I could, watching it arc from person to person. It didn’t seem to kill anyone, but any bit of damage helped I’m sure. I did my best to aim for people that Fiona and Kaylith were actively engaged with, causing distractions and giving them the opportunity to kill their opponents with impunity.

Screams and yells, along with flashes and loud crashes emanated from around us as the fighting picked up in full force. I tried not to focus on any one thing happening around us. I specifically tried not to focus on the gruesome injuries that were being left on both sides. It was not a pleasant sight all around.

Notifications started flooding in through the system as I got credit for assisting with kills. No doubt I was also receiving tons of levels. This would cap me out pretty quickly. Hopefully I’d find a chance to tier up somewhere?

Despite everything that was happening around me, despite the fact that I watched an adventurer get impaled through the chest and then the neck causing a painful death, even as people screamed in agony around me.

I smiled.

I kept firing off [Chain Lightning] wherever I could. It was the most cost effective skill I had for attacking multiple people right now. I caught one person who must’ve been a lower tier, he was the first person I hit with a casting and instantly crumpled, dead on impact. The smell of burnt flesh permeated my nostrils.

It was nauseating.

Marcie was next to me using a composite element. Storm it seemed to be. Lightning and wind magic combined together. Currently she was building it up and looked like she had been for a while based on the way the sky looked above us. Shortly after I noticed her eyes opened and mana spilled forth in a visible way, even without [Mana Sense].

Lightning surged forth from the sky smiting the groups in front of us. People died by the dozens as the skill raged onwards, Fiona and Kaylith pushed forward unbothered by the strikes, from what I could tell of Marcie’s gestures she was manually directing the bolts in each strike. Which was pretty impressive.

I didn’t try to outcompete her and instead just focused on doing what I could. A man slipped between the group to our left, one of the Alixian soldiers. He made a dash straight for me and Marcie given that we were in the back and she was more than likely causing the most damage on this side of the field.

I pulled my sword out and called down several [Strikes of Lightning]. The man expertly dodged all of them without looking, some sort of danger sense skill? Either way it was allowing him to preternaturally dodge all of the attacks.

[Level 323]

I readied my blade, I was hopelessly outmatched in this fight, but I was still going to try at the very least. I just needed to hold on long enough for Fiona and Kaylith to come and help.

When he got close enough I thrust out a barrier right in front of his face causing him to impact directly into it. I’d seen him start to try and move but he wasn’t able to stop his forward movement. At least inertia still exists in this world.

As he was forced to come to a full stop I rushed forward and cleaved forward, slicing off half of his sword arm causing him to drop his blade. I immediately followed up with a heart strike. I twisted my blade completely destroying his heart and then finished with a decapitation strike.

I received a ping letting me know he was dead.

I turned and threw up to the side. That was extremely brutal, but I hadn’t realized I was doing it before I was already done.

I heaved a couple more times before I caught my breath. I looked up in time to see another Alixian soldier looming over me, his sword raised and about to be brought down.

Well shit. Was all I had time to think before a knife went straight through his temple killing him instantly.

Striga flipped off his shoulders as he slumped to the ground in front of me. She gave me an impassive look before rushing onwards to her next quarry. Marcie appeared next to me and helped pull me up. She had a look of pity on her face that I resented. For now I would just have to ignore her. I couldn’t blame her for feeling sorry for me after the display I just put on.

All I could do was press forward.

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It took what seemed like years before one of us finally sustained an injury. Realistically, it was probably only dozens of minutes at best. Time was hard to gauge right now. I watched helplessly as it happened. Fiona was fighting several opponents at the same time and got caught in a bad situation trying to cover Kayliths back. One of them managed to get behind her and cut deeply into her back. She fell in what seemed like slow motion, the attack seemed like it could be fatal if I didn’t deal with it quickly.

My heart pounded in my ears as I strained myself to get there just a little bit more quickly, I had begun running forward before the blow had even landed, and it seemed like both Marcie and Striga had the same idea as me. As soon as the attack landed both Marcie and I retaliated with [Chain Lightning]. Mine hit first, Marcie’s was the one that actually killed them though, more than likely she had probably even waited for me to attack before finishing them off.

I reached Fiona shortly after and began healing her. Striga disappeared in a flash of shadow and the area around us seemed to darken. Her voice ominously whispered and somehow filled my ears with the name of her skill, “[Cloak and Dagger]...”

Immediately flashes of her daggers appeared all around us, wherever there was a shadow and the shadow of Striga appeared and her blades carved through our opponents. Dozens of people died instantly or suffered grievous wounds that would cause them to bleed out shortly.

After a few short moments she reappeared out our side seemingly slightly out of breath. Kaylith also joined us back yelling over the cacophony of sounds around us, “We need to hold, give Fiona and Striga time to recover!”

Marcie nodded and immediately began muttering under her breath, probably getting ready to cast another skill. I focused my attention back at Fiona, she was bleeding profusely from her back. She had already lost consciousness. I had been using [Nature’s Touch] but quickly switched. If we were going to be holding this position I could use a better skill for that.

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[Healing Blossom] appeared at my feet and I could see it already doing more work to Fiona’s back than my other healing skill had. I nodded slightly to myself before standing back up and checking my mana.

Mana - 4563

I was sitting quite a bit under half. I could go a little longer before I felt the need to down one of these potions I’d held onto since Muldren.

“How long until she’s back on her feet?” Kaylith yelled at me.

I glanced back down at Fiona, the wound seemed to be closing pretty slowly.

“I can’t say for certain!” I yelled back at her, “It looks like it could be several minutes before she’s up again.”

Kaylith gritted her teeth and stanced up to repel attackers.

A party near us noticed the glow of light from my healing skill and moved towards us, one of them carrying a party member. We didn’t say anything, they were in the same situation as us, except they didn’t have a healer. The more people we also had fighting together the better it would be for all of us involved.

At least until we got overrun.

One thing I hadn’t considered, my healing skill gave off light that people noticed. So sure groups like the adventurer would see it and rotate to us in order to get healing if they needed it. What I hadn’t also considered was that it would make us a prime target for the Alixian soldiers.

It made sense though, if a healer is preventing you from effectively killing your opponents, you deal with the healer.

I kept slamming [Chain Lightning] whenever I could. It kept frying through people. Not necessarily killing, but doing a decent amount of damage if their skin was anything to judge by.

I did my best to stay close to Kaylith, not necessarily to watch her back, she didn’t quite need it. She was the same level as the soldiers, but she seemed to be way more experienced than them in fighting. No, I stuck next to her because I didn’t want to be caught on my own. I had managed to deal with one of the soldiers already, but I wasn’t going to push my luck on that front.

Every now and again as Kaylith carved through her foes I would dart through and cut through them with my blade saving my mana. In fact I tried to do it as often as I could. The more mana I saved and the more I aimed to kill people with each of the individual classes the more they benefitted.

Maybe it was strange to be thinking about my classes and skills in a fight for our lives. But I was, if I was going to be here I was going to get the most out of it. I was getting petty of pings that I was completely tuning out as well, so it seemed to be working well.

I was running all of my sensory skills as well. My head seemed to be hurting less as well and considering I wasn’t doing much to limit [One With Nature] in any way seemed to lend truth to my idea that [Accelerated Thoughts] helped deal with the info overload from the skill.

I smirked slightly, the soldiers around me seemed to be moving more slowly to my eyes as well, hell even I was moving more slowly. Now that I was looking out for it I could see a noticeable difference.

I was startled while aiming a [Chain Lightning] when Fiona suddenly jumped up from where she was laying on the ground. I nearly fired the skill at her, but I barely managed to hold myself back and managed to aim at one the Alixian soldiers Kaylith was fighting.

Fiona looked around, her face had extreme alarm on it. She was probably still struggling to get her thoughts in order.

Kaylith noticed and just yelled at her, “Fiona! Move your ass!”

Fiona’s eyes sharpened instantly and her sword and shield snapped into her hands from where they were on the ground. A skill? Would definitely be useful to prevent being disarmed.

She bounded forward quickly, and instantly got back to work next to Kaylith. I smiled, we just might make it through this.

Of course karma saw fit to bite me for my hubris. The head of an adventurer next to me exploded. Like actually exploded. I wasn’t able to see what happened but I instantly crouched my head whipping wildly every which way to see where the attack had come from.

“Marcie! Where did that come from?!” Fiona yelled at the mage.

I saw Marcie’s mouth moving rapidly as she spoke under her breath. There was no discernable act of magic when she finished but she somehow got what she wanted and pointed to the far back lines of the Alixian forces.

“Archer sitting that way about half a mile!”

I nearly choked. Half a mile? What the fuck was that bullshit? Fiona seemed to agree and swore verbosely.

“Shit, do your best to stay out of their sight. They may be good but I doubt they can hit us easily, so if we do our best to stay close to their soldiers we should be somewhat fine.”

I sighed, well that just sucked all around.

I raised my hand to fire off another [Chain Lightning] except none of my mana gathered this time. Fuck. I quickly glanced at my mana again,

Mana - 227

Fuck I didn’t have enough to activate the skill. One of the soldiers seemed to notice that I was out of mana and lunged forward. Fion easily tripped him up by bashing him with her shield. I took advantage of the distraction and lunged forward myself and buried my sword in his throat. I used the momentum to carry him forward and push him to the ground. I let go of the blade with my right and pulled it out of his throat with my left hand.

I then began fiddling with my backpack with my good hand and quickly managed to find the remaining mana potion I had in there and down it.

I watched my mana begin to rapidly climb. Hopefully this wou-

I rapidly threw myself to the side as an arrow slammed into the ground with insane force causing dirt to erupt into the air. My head snapped in the direction it came from and I felt my lips curl into a malicious smile.

“Gotcha.”

Had I ever mentioned how bullshit [One With Nature] was? [Electric Sense] and [Mana Sense] didn’t help that much here, too many people to untangle everything. But [One With Nature] could track things individually so long as I mentally had the ability to multitask like that.

I personally wasn’t tracking every single soldier individually, I wasn’t that good. But picking out one person in a general direction that had already been told to me at a specific distance away performing a specific action? That was easy peasy.

The only skill I had that could hit that far, without completely bankrupting me of mana, was [Chain Lightning]. But that would be fine, it was more than fast enough and I could accurately aim it given I knew exactly where to fire. What’s even better was that the person shooting was up off the ground a good distance, which meant none of the chumps at ground level would eat the spell for him.

I raised my hand and took time to carefully aim the skill, I definitely wasn’t going to miss it. I fired.

I watched the skill with both my eyes and my skill sense, it covered ground at ridiculous speeds, but apparently not fast enough as the archer’s body seemed to shimmer and all of a sudden he was down on the ground, off the podium and my skill sailed by harmlessly.

I growled in frustration, but immediately focused back in front of myself. Whatever, he had some danger sense ability and superspeed. I guess it was asking for too much to be able to hit him. But I had him in my sights now so I’d keep an eye-

I immediately fired another skill at him causing him to jump off the platform he had gotten back on top of.

“You aren’t getting back up there so long as I have mana cocksucker…” I whispered to myself.

A little more loudly I yelled to the people around us, “I’ve found the archer and got a lock on him. I won’t be able to take him out, but he’s not able to shoot from his little podium anymore.”

One of the adventurers next to me laughed loudly, “Well done little healer! I see now why you stand with us!”

I glanced over to him checking his level.

[Level 1254]

Well shit, he was up there.

“Allow Redrix the Red Blade to take it from here!” He stated with supreme confidence and strode forward.

His blade flashed brightly and a cutting whirlwind erupted from him clearing out the Alixian soldiers near us completely pushing them back.

I whistled, he had some moves. Looked anime as fuck but when you can actually pull off the maneuver it’s hard to make fun of someone for it.

He laughed heartily as he pressed forward. One of the adventurers next to us let out a sigh coming to a stop and resting on one knee. She glanced over to me and gave me a nod.

“Might as well rest while you can and you’re keeping an eye on that archer. He’s gonna tire himself out eventually doing this.” She said.

I nodded slowly and focused back ahead of me, the archer hadn’t tried to get back up after my second shot. I looked around us.

Tons of bodies covered the ground, way more of them bore the Alixian uniform. But plenty of them were adventurers. Anger and hatred started to boil within my chest.

“What the fuck are those soldiers doing that they haven’t helped us yet?” I asked, mainly to myself.

No sooner had I asked that then I heard a chorus of horns.

We had been fighting to the north of the capital as that was the direction the Alixian force was coming from. Off to the west was an open plain that didn’t have much, but to the east was the forest that Fiona had taken us too and where I had spent the last couple of days resting at.

Out of that forest charged a cavalry force completely blindsiding the Alixian forces.

I wish I could say I was happy to see them at this point, and to a degree I was relieved. But it was hard to be happy about it at this point.