"IT'S HERE AGAIN" yelled a soldier in terror, every man's body tensed up from apprehension of what was to come. Then, as usual, the red horned demon appeared from the darkness and casually walked towards the soldiers without minding the light like the other demons, several soldiers tried to stab it or stop it with their remaining nets but all attacks simply phased through the monster, but most soldiers tried desperately to move away from the demon as it ghosted through the middle of the army. After what felt like forever the demon finally decided and picked up a struggling soldier and walked back into the darkness just as casually as it came, as if it was going grocery shopping.
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Lucky giggled atop Ricks' shoulder as he concentrated on his portion of the spell and once the "demon" was in the dark he sighed in relief, he let his spell dissipate and the soldier fell from the "demon's" grasp onto the ground with a heavy thump, then one of Luck's strange pets jumped on the man and seconds later he was gone, the only evidence that a man had just died was a puddle of blood and a foul stench.
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Earlier
Rick was following the army and found Lucky messing with them on the way, he found her creating images of strange monsters he had never seen before just to scare the soldiers, he was surprised by how effective it was when he noticed how many soldiers started deserting from fear.
Once Lucky spotted Rick her little devious eyes lit up as she quickly explained a better "jok--er plan".
A few minutes later he found himself as an assistant in a little girls games, deadly games that he found slightly amusing and horrifying at the same time, he made a mental note to stay on this "harmless" looking devil's good side in the future.
Her little plan involved her creating a giant demon illusion to scare the soldiers and he would act as its hands, by using simple telekinesis he was able to make it seem like the demon was actually real even if the enemies couldn't touch it, although it sounded simple Rick only has the mana control necessary to do this because he never focused on power before and instead put all of his efforts into using mana efficiently, mostly to use with his alchemy, this along with his long life has given him a level of control that even Merlin dosen't posess.
However, after the "demon" appeared for the umpteenth time he was completely exhausted and his mana pool was less than empty. Lucky pouted when she was told he couldn't continue and he needed to rest, so she flew off to the fifth floor by herself.
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Sometime later.
The army had been trudging through the thick swamp of the fifth floor, the men seemed happy that there wasn't anything attacking them on this floor or the one before, maybe some of them would live to see home.
[Lucifer] "now"
just as the army was reaching the halfway point in the fifth floor Lucifer set loose this floor's guardians. Several soldiers called out when the water started rippling strangely, moments later the remaining crockadiles in the dungeon were bursting forth through the water surface and dragging men away.
Soldiers tried using their nets but they were less effective when the beats tails were still in the water, they just swished their tails back and forth to propel them forward, the nets couldn't do anything to stop them from getting away and shaking themselves free before coming back.
The only saving grace was that there were only a few crocodiles still alive left to attack them because of the previous fight. After ten minutes all of the remaining crocodiles were dead or too wounded to swim back and attack, the losses weren't that bad because they could only fit one or two soldiers in their mouths before they had to circle back around to ambush again, the ones that stayed behind after an attack ended up rolled over and quickly disemboweled.
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Everyone gave a weary sigh of relief when the attacks stopped, but that relief didn't last long, just after the battle finished swarms of small fish appeared, at first the soldiers ignored them, however, once they passed the corpses they were quickly devoured by the small fish, one moment the corpse of a one-ton reptile floated on the surface the next there was only a skull and some scales left behind.
The school of fish was circling the army, the standoff lasted several minutes where the fish slowly circled closer and closer, Drake yelled: "dig your shields into the mud and make a barrier!"
With something constructive to do against this fish hoard the soldiers eagerly planted their shields into the mud under the water, the fish felt the fluctuations in the water and took this as a cue to attack, they swarmed towards the men and slammed into the shield wall, cracks between the shields let in dozens of fish that immediately started taking chunks out of soldiers legs and calves.
Soldiers started giving their shields to the people on the frontline to fill any gaps, however, the area they were trying to barrier off was too large and they didn't have the right tools, several of the smarter people threw the nets over the gaps in the wall as a quick patching job why more shields were passed forward, meanwhile thousands of fish were happily swimming inside and taking a few bites before leaving.
Slowly the gaps were filled and the men managed to use daggers to kill the fish inside the barrier, soldiers started stabbing the water outside the wall to kill the fish pushing on the shields.
This continued for several hours as the army thinned out the swarm and at this rate, it would take several hours more, only the occasional fish was able to jump out of the water and land on the other side, but these fish were quickly taken care of the moment they stopped to bite someone.
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Lucifer who was observing the situation said to himself "this commander is quite ingenious sometime... although other times he's retarded", in hindsight he should have had the crocodiles attack at the same time as the pihranas, however, the fish were hard to control, he could tell them to go somewhere but if there was a light source nearby they would go there first, this forced him to hold them up in a tank temporarily.
He hoped that if he released the swarm while the army was in the middle of the floor they would have nowhere to run and thus cause maximum damage. however, with the shields in the way, the fish couldn't do anything and the army couldn't move either.
The sheilds gave Lucifer an idea, he lightly chuckled while sending a mental command.
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Drake was getting a headache, the last floor was a simple walk in the park with the occasional demon attacking, and although that sounded bad the demon only took 60 or 70 men so he wasn't worried about that, now he found himself stuck in a defensive battle against fish, at least having his men devoured by giant reptiles was not as humiliating as having his army stopped by fish.
If he didn't want to only fight fish then he didn't have to wait for long.
A large silhouette appeared in the distance and slowly moved closer, it looked like a spiked hill was growing larger to some of the soldiers, but as it got closer someone recognized it and yelled "ITS THAT FKN TURTLE AGAIN"
Another man next to him asked, "did it always have a monocle?"
...
Drake was the first to realize the sort of danger the slow-moving turtle could cause and he bellowed "USE WHATEVER RANGED WEAPONS TO STOP THAT TURTLE BEFORE IT BREAKS THE WALL"
Suddenly the slow-moving turtle looked a lot more dangerous in the soldier's eyes, they scrambled for anything they could throw or shoot at it, a few people carried bows and others crossbows, they moved to the front and shot at the enemy, but everything they shot just bounced off its hard shell or barely penetrated its thick hide enough to stick.
With nothing working the men started throwing anything they could at it, some threw their spears even though it was their primary weapon, others threw potions, healing or otherwise, someone even started throwing the fish in hopes the turtle would eat that instead of them.
Drake could tell that nothing was going to stop that thing from barging right through their barricade, he ordered "create several secondary walls so if one breaks we still have somewhere to stand"
Immediately the soldiers began creating smaller sections of walled off area to the point that no one was carrying a shield anymore.
Snappy the turtle finally made it to the first wall and moved through it as if it wasn't there, once the wall fell the swarm rushed the opening and found several hundred soldiers who hadn't made it behind a secondary wall yet, these soldiers had thousands of chunks taken out of their lower body until it couldn't support them anymore and they fell, once they fell down they only struggled for a few seconds before their bones were wiped clean.
Many of the new secondary walls still had gaps in them and the soldiers in those areas had to fend for themselves, Snappy only added to the chaos as it slowly mowed down walls and occasionally pushed over a mangrove that soldiers were hiding in the branches of.