The smell of smoke and screams greeted Adimir when he woke up. Bolting up out of the covers of his bed he glanced around the room for the source of the smoke. When he looked out of the window a scene akin to that out of a disaster was what he saw. There were multiple plumes of black smoke drifting into the sky. There were countless buildings on fire and from what little he could see of the streets dozens of people running about.
Tossing off the blanket he went and started to get dressed in his robes and grab his staff. A loud banging on the door interrupted him though.
"Adimir! Get up! We need to get out of here!" The urgent yelling of Tauna came from beyond the door. Adimir sighed in relief upon hearing it was only Tauna. Grabbing his mage book and staff he walked over to the door.
"I'm opening the door Tauna!" He yelled back to her as he opened the door.
Instead of the familiar figure of the wolfkin girl greeting him, however, there was a large bipedal and vaguely humanoid black specter with pale glowing white eyes looming in front of him. The eeriest thing about it is that other than the pale white eyes there were absolutely no other features on its body and had mist like shadowy tendrils emanating from it.
"Dis!" Adimir shouted as soon as he saw the creature blasting it with a wave of mana sending it crashing into the wall across the hallway. The creature shrieked as it was blasted by the spell but bounced right back up with its shadowy hands outstretched towards him. Before it could do anything however a ray of light burst through it causing the shade like entity to burst in a cloud of black gas with one last shriek of protest before dissipating.
"Hey, kid are you alright!?" A youthful voice called out to him. Peeking out of the doorway and down the left hallway, he saw what looked like a teenage human in priest robes holding a fancy white wood staff adorned with a small magicrystal on the top of it.
"Yeah, I am. What was that thing?" Adimir asked as he exited the room with his bird blizzard perched on his shoulder.
"That was a shade. They're vengeful spirits that mimic the voices of people to lure in others to drain them of their mana and consume their soul." The boy in robes answered.
"I see. I need to go find my team. What will you do?" He asked the priest like teenager.
"I'll be heading over to the local order church. See if I can meet up with other priests and order knights to drive back these vile things. If you find your team you can head over as well. The church will most likely be pushing back against this threat soon. Good luck." The priest replied before hurrying down the hallway.
Adimir watched the priest run past before going over to the door that Tauna and Mira should be staying in. Instead of wasting time knocking on the door Adimir opted for a more direct approach as he blasted the door open with the same spell that he used to send the shade flying. What he was met with however was the tip of a sword at his throat. The owner of the sword Mira untensed and pulled away the sword from his throat.
"Sorry, Adimir. Thought you might be one of those things. Come in. We were just preparing to come to get you." She apologized to him before moving to the side to allow him in. Tauna was currently putting on her shoulder guards and Mira didn't even have her boots on yet.
"What's going on out there?" Tauna asked him as she finished putting on her armor.
"Some monsters called shades are causing chaos out there, I think. Some order priest guy said that the local church may be staging a counterattack soon. Any idea who those guys are?" Adimir responded.
"They're a religion that practices order and is one of the main organizations that help with maintaining public order during hard times. So, I don't doubt that they'll be taking a stand against the shades. But shades usually only lurk around areas where a lot of death has taken place and are typically nocturnal. I don't understand why'd they'd be attacking people in broad daylight." Mira answered him with a thoughtful look on her face.
"Doesn't matter. We should head to the guild. They're probably organizing an emergency quest so we can get some good pay and get some more experience with this disaster. And as a bonus, we'll get to work with other adventurers so it's probably one of the safest places around." Tauna commented picking up her mace and tower shield.
"Well, I can't turn down a chance to get some pay. You taking point Tauna?" Adimir asked her. She nodded while taking out her mace with a grin and started walking out the door.
"I'll be behind you. Provide us some support magic. Also, magic-powered attacks are most effective against shades so keep that in mind." Mira told him. Adimir nodded and followed behind Tauna. When they exited the inn only then did, they see just how much chaos these shades were capable of creating. There were dozens of people bleeding out on the ground and dozens more running for their lives or fighting in the streets.
Meanwhile, the street was filled with dozens of shades running around using their long-clawed fingers to eviscerate people left and right. Not even stopping to confirm if they killed the people, more often than not leaving them to slowly die a painful death bleeding out on the hard cobblestone road. Adimir conjured a firebolt and blasted one of the creatures that were just about to slash one of the few guards that were left fighting in the area. With the trademark shriek of protest, it dissipated leaving nothing but the many corpses to show that it had existed in the first place. The guard glanced over to Adimir and offered a nod of thanks before rushing to another shade with his sword drawn to slay it.
Now that they were out on the streets four shades turned their attention to them. With a howl one of the shades flung themselves onto Tauna who used her tower shield to ward it off. While it was distracted bashing against her shield Mira snuck up on it and slashed both its arms before slashing the head off killing the creature. While they did that Adimir was warding off the other three with several wind blast spells to knock them off balance.
All three of the shades who were still dazed and on the ground were ripe for killing for the three of them. Adimir killed one of them with a firebolt while Tauna eagerly started bashing the other two into black mist with Mira's help. After fighting their way through several more streets with the things they arrived at the adventurer's guild. Along the way, they managed to save some people and help the local guards and people fend off the shades, but there seemed to be no end to the creatures. Just as Tauna said though there were dozens of adventurers of various ranks forming up and attempting to push back the onslaught of shades.
With mages and archers firing off spells and arrows respectively and then with the melee fighters hacking and slashing with various weapons it made for a ferocious counterattack against the shades slaughtering them by the dozen. But more shades were streaming in replacing the fallen shades. The three of them joined up with their fellow adventurers and began to fight alongside them. Adimir went back with the mages to help them cast combat spells.
"Does anyone have an actual plan on how to stop these things?" Adimir asked a human mage who was casting wind slash spells.
"The guild master told everyone to hold back the shade while he and a team of gold rankers investigate the source of the problem." He shouted back before casting another wind slash spell. Adimir glanced over at Tauna who was playing a tank role in the front lines absorbing the attacks of the shades and Mira who was supporting her by slipping in and attacking any enemies that were distracted by Tauna. He then looked over at the horde of shades that were streaming in from all directions.
It truly seemed like some type of apocalyptic event was going down right before his eyes, but he wouldn't let these things overwhelm the adventurers like zombies from certain novels and movies do. He had a spell up his sleeve that was perfect for mowing down swaths of enemies in situations like this. With a confident smile, Adimir began tearing small ping pong sized stones from the ground with his mana and began to spin them in front of him. Once they reached a satisfactory speed, he began launching five stones every second into the oncoming shade and the results were already beginning to show them as copious amounts of black mist began to dissipate as each stone took two or three shades out before slamming into the ground.
The human mage next to him looked over at Adimir with a surprised look on his face at seeing him take out so many shades in such a short span of time. But soon his expression changed into one of joy as their chances at survival raised significantly. With Adimir's stone machine gun spell paving the way the shades began to fall in droves and the adventurers were beginning to advance forward foot by foot. Not only that but the pressure was taken off of the melee fighters giving mages who specialized in healing the time they needed to start healing the injured.
In order to hasten the firing rate of his spell a couple of the mages including the human mage he first talked to cooperated to started making the stones, he needed for him allowing him to up the fire rate from five stones a second to fifteen stones a second. With this, he was practically slaughtering a sizeable chunk of the shades with his spell alone. Adimir's shoulders shook slightly as he chuckled darkly getting a small power high from how easily he was wiping out the enemy. Was this what the ogre felt like when it slaughtered the goblin nest? He brushed off his idle thoughts and inwardly reprimanded himself for getting a bit arrogant there for a second.
He couldn't let arrogance get the best of him and end up like the hobgoblin lord after all. That would only be too pitiful after he's come so far already. The flow of the shades began to slow, and the melee fighters began to take over as Adimir took a break to regenerate his mana. Just as he was about to leave, however, he spotted a massive plume of flame burst out of one of the streets that the shades were coming from and every shade that was on the street were wiped out. Dozens of shades there one moment. The next all of them were wiped out. Seven people could be seen walking down the street the flame came from. One of which a woman in bright red robes walking boldly at the front with a fireball still floating in her hand.
It didn't take a genius to realize what happened just now. That lady wiped out easily as many Adimir did in the past couple of minutes in a single second.
"Holy shit. As expected of a gold rank. Just absurdly strong." A mage near him said with a voice filled with admiration. And Adimir couldn't find a reason to disagree with him. Gold rankers were truly a sight to behold. She didn't even look like she broke a sweat casting that spell. She alone was probably enough to match an entire army of steel rankers. Especially with a massive AOE spell like that.
Thinking back on how he was getting a power high from using his stone machine gun spell he began to get disheartened. It truly was a terrifying spell for an apprentice rank mage but it's nothing compared to the spells that a gold ranker could cast. Reaffirming himself he decided that he must get strong enough to catch up with gold rankers. They had the level of strength he wanted to be able to push around enemies like ogres as if they were small fry. The other people who were walking along with her also stood out.
Three of them were in full plate armor that had a strong mana signature showing that they were high end enchanted gear. The plainest one of them was a grey-haired old man wearing leather armor. There wasn't a mana signature coming from his armor, but his presence set off Adimir's danger instincts practically screaming at him to stay away from that guy. Adimir noticed that his hand was trembling and tightened his grip on his staff to hide the fact that he was trembling.
That guy was definitely more dangerous than any ogre was. Probably would make an ogre wary of him. The other two looked like they were clerks of the guild but since they were with those other five, they were probably also had some ridiculous level of strength of their own. The crowd of adventurers parted for the seven people to enter the guild. Shaking his head Adimir decided to go back to meditating to regenerate his mana.