by Iliev, Neven
Retreating was indeed something she very much wanted to do. Even if she wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, she still had enough common sense to realize how deep in trouble she was. One couldn’t make it to Level 100 if they used their head solely as an explosive delivery device. Granted, nobody would make it past Level 1 if they actually did that, but that was beside the point. From where she stood, Hilda recognized the need to retreat and recuperate before another troublesome opponent showed up.
“ORRRRAAAA!”
Just then, a loud yell rang out behind her in the direction of Fort Yimin’s besieged walls. She turned around on her heel to see a towering, four-armed, red-skinned demon ploughing her way through the Empire’s ranks. The fiend’s steel-clad fists sent Imperial troops flying with every punch, while her armored kicks made them bend over in weird, unnatural shapes. Her bright-green eyes scanned over the heads of her opponents as she rampaged, her stare naturally directed towards the odd gap surrounding Hilda. The two Berserkers momentarily locked eyes, each of them confirming the burning fury within the other’s glare.
Locating her target, the towering demon leapt an astounding twenty meters through the air, landing right on the edge of the Empire’s encirclement of the dwarf. Her massive weight crushed some poor, unsuspecting soul’s skull underfoot, and the surrounding humans immediately made space around her in shock and awe. The blood-splattered, silver-colored cloth tied diagonally across her chest signified her allegiance to the Republic, but the veteran dwarf did not relax in the slightest. This was a natural reaction, as one never knew if a demon on a battlefield was still bound to a master.
The two muscle-heads glared at each other with vicious grins as they confirmed the other’s unique brand of wrath. While Hilda’s was a fine-tuned, constant burn that could melt through anything, the other party was a raging inferno no mortal could hope to contain. It was sometimes said that the Berserker Job originated from the demon world known as the Beyond, and the being before the dwarf’s eyes seemed to be the living testament to that.
“Hah! Hahahaha!” Kora laughed. “That’s a good glare you got there, lady! Practically sets my soul ablaze! I love it!”
“Right back at ye, Spiky!” the dwarf humored her. “So, why are ye lookin’ around fer lil’ ol’ me?”
“I’m here to send you flying, of course!” the demon answered with a sharp-toothed grin.
“I see. Well, then should we get started?”
“Yes, let’s!”
Hilda positioned her axe’s blade behind her and dashed forward with a guttural roar. The fiend in her sights turned her left shoulders and hip forward, as she got ready to meet the charge. Their audience tensed up as the monstrous dwarf jumped at a high speed and thrust her weapon forward. The demon deftly grabbed the upper part of its shaft, just under the massive blade, and spun her body around like a top. After picking up speed for several revolutions, she let go of the weapon, sending it and its owner soaring through the air.
“Thanks fer the liiiiiiiift!”
The clearly unhinged dwarf’s cheery voice trailed off as she hurtled towards the general direction of the fort. Kora watched with a bemused smile as Hilda was caught in the air by a certain blue-skinned succubus that had draped herself in a silver robe just for the occasion. Well, ‘caught’ was not perhaps the right word, as the dwarf was far too heavy for Xera to do anything of the sort. In the end, all she really did was cushion Hilda’s fall with those massive breasts, and was no doubt moaning creepily after being partially crushed under the armored dwarf’s weight.
“Angry lady retrieval complete, boss!”
Kora reported telepathically back to her Master while giving four thumbs up to nobody in particular.
“Good, very good.”
“You sure you wanna let her get away so easy? We could’ve finished her off, you know.”
“It’s regrettable, but going after her life was too risky.”
Boxxy was able to steal and preserve that Holy Necromancer’s body unnoticed by using the dryad’s root system, but Hilda was another story. She was too far out, too exposed for that to happen without either side noticing its interference. Besides, it seriously doubted that monstrous dwarf would fall that easily just because she was ‘weak.’ A Berserker was at their most dangerous when standing right at death’s door, and that dwarf was plenty lethal even without it. In fact, now that Boxxy thought about it, she was no doubt even more terrifying than Edward the Spymaster when it came to direct combat.
Worse still, even if Arms won, the Republic’s military leadership already knew her and Snack to be the Sandman’s familiars. The Warlock was responsible for their familiars’ actions, meaning the elven government would no longer do business with the masked mercenary if he blatantly attacked their VIP, win or lose. If Boxxy had to choose between getting an obscene amount of shinies or a chance to gain some Warlock Levels quickly, Boxxy would go with the former ten out of ten times. That wasn’t even taking into consideration the benefits that Keira’s personal connection with Hilda might offer one day.
Simply put, there was more value in helping the dwarven Berserker than trying to kill her.
The Imperial grunts that Arms was currently chest-deep in, though? Those were fair game.
“Anyway, just keep doing like you always do,” Boxxy commanded. “And keep an eye out for tasty targets. I’ll be coming out in a little while.”
“You got it, boss!”
Kora turned her attention to the still-dumbfounded mob around her and clenched all four of her fists hard enough to make her knuckles crack.
“Alright, boys! Who wants to show me a good time?!”
Part Four
“But- But- But- It huuuuuurts!”
“Shhhh. I know, sweetie,” Keira whispered, “but you have to try and bear it.”
Castelia desperately clutched the right side of her face and head, curled up on the ground with her head in the redhead’s lap. The young dryad’s features were charred black and gave off a faint stream of smoke. One could easily see the dull-red embers on her cheeks, which ran all the way down to her shoulder. Keira gently stroked the distraught child’s hair-like grass in an attempt to soothe her.
“But it huuurts! Muuuummyyyyy!”
It clearly wasn’t working.
What a pain, Boxxy grumbled internally. At least this tree isn’t the one that got hit.
The place Keira and the other dryads occupied was nestled within the crown of Lilly’s tree, who was on the northwestern end of the front. While it was also on the side facing the enemy, Castelia was the one who ended up shouldering the biggest burden.
“Torenia, be a dear and help Castelia out. Lilly too.”
“Do we have to?” replied the two in unison.
“Your sister is in pain. You would want help if you were in pain, right?”
“Y-yes?” they answered sheepishly.
“But how can you expect help if you don’t offer it? It wouldn’t be fair, right?”
“Okay! We’ll help right away, mummy!”
The two of them got closer to their scorched sister and put their hands on her back. Although a plain action, the fact they could do that at all was quite extraordinary considering their biology.
According to Ambrosia, a hylt tree’s near-infinite vitality was extremely demanding in terms of sustenance, and those needs only grew as the tree aged. As such, the tree’s roots would choke the life out of other plant life, including their own kind, in an increasingly larger area around them. That was why only simpler and more resilient forms of vegetation, such as weeds, grasses, and shrubs, could thrive anywhere near a hylt tree. Even Azurvale’s original twelve were considered very densely packed, despite there being literal kilometers between them. Their case was an exception made possible because they could tap into the vast reserves of natural magical energy that ran underneath them. Sometimes called ‘ley lines’ or ‘dragon veins,’ these subterranean rivers of mana were ideal energy sources for the ravenou
s hylt trees, assuming their roots grew deep enough to tap into them.
The hylts at Fort Yimin had none of that. Ambrosia claimed it would be surprising if even two or three of them had survived under these conditions, yet there were five of them. Then there was the fact that their dryads were quite underdeveloped for their age. The way they looked completely identical and acted in total sync with one another only added to the weirdness of their anomalous existence.
As it would appear, the root cause for all of these oddities had been just that—their roots.
At some point during their sapling stage, something caused the five trees’ roots to fuse together into one gigantic system. As a result, the quintuplets had apparently shared their food for centuries, albeit subconsciously. It was more accurate to think of them as a single five-headed organism than a collection of separate entities. This would certainly explain all of the deviations at Fort Yimin, though the full extent of the side-effects brought on by this aberrant mutation was unclear.
The connection clearly had its benefits, however. For one thing, the dryads could freely enter each other’s trunks, which would normally be impossible even if their trees were close enough for their root systems to overlap. Another benefit, and one that was far more relevant to the current situation, was that they could bolster one another in times of need. Boxxy had no idea what Torenia and Lilly were doing, but it was clearly working. Castelia’s charred skin fell off in smouldering clumps and healthy, vibrant green plant-flesh rapidly grew to replace it.
Considering that a dryad’s wellbeing was a reflection of her tree’s condition, this meant that some freshly-shed, still-burning branches were likely making life difficult for the people outside.
“Not too much now,” Keira cautioned. “Wouldn’t want you girls getting too tired before the big surprise.”
Torenia and Lilly took their hands off their kin. The right half of the burn victim’s face and hair were still somewhat blackened, but at the very least she stopped crying. It was clear the girl was no longer in pain, though she didn’t seem too happy with the outcome.
“But-” she tried to protest.
“No buts, Castelia. Your sisters were kind enough to share their food with you, so you be sure to pay them back later.”
“Okay, mummy,” she whined.
“And?” the redhead crossed her arms demandingly.
“And, uh, t-thanks, Torenia. Thanks, Lilly.”
“You’re welcome, sis,” they smiled in response.
Truthfully speaking, Castelia would have probably been fine on her own. However, Boxxy needed these excitable children as calm and collected as possible before the time came. Speaking of which, the effects of Hilda’s Tempest of Rage would dissipate in around five more minutes. The Republic forces caused terrible casualties to the Empire’s troops at the moment, but that would only last as long as that dwarf’s Ultimate was giving them an edge. They would pull back as soon as it ended, and the mimic-minded shapeshifter wanted its fair share of man-flesh before that happened.
“Now then, mummy needs to step out for a while,” Keira stated. “I promise, I’ll be back in time for the big surprise or if someone hurts you again. So, stay put and be good until then, okay?”
The dryads seemed disappointed, but still nodded their heads in affirmation. Boxxy gave each of them a peck on their foreheads to cheer them up, and then set out to do what it did best—spread death and misery.
Down on the ground, Kora was still fighting the human troops that rushed her after she gave Hilda a lift. Even if she was a Berserker herself, she was nowhere near that dwarf’s level. Not only were the various Skills and effects of her secondary Job far less pronounced, but her fists’ reach was nowhere near as wide as that dwarf’s inhumane axe. As such, they had been constantly accumulating damage on her. She bled all over the place with a body covered in gashes and riddled with arrows and half her face melted off by magic. Someone had drilled a hole clean through her chest, and she had even lost one of her left arms somewhere along the way.
As one might expect, neither her bloodlust nor her grin had diminished in the slightest.
“C’mere, cupcake!”
The heavily-injured fiend reached out with one of her hands and gripped onto a human soldier’s head with enough force to cause both his skull and helmet to creak ominously. He screamed in pain and desperately swung his sword at her arm, but it only bounced helplessly off her gauntlets. Kora then lifted the poor man off his feet and swung him about like a ragdoll, pushing his comrades away with his body. He had gone completely limp by this point, but whether it was because he passed out or passed away was irrelevant, as what was left of him was flung into the path of an oncoming Icy Comet Spell. The two projectiles collided, and the result was something that could only be described as ‘dirty fireworks.’
In the next instant, her torso was pierced from behind by three separate spears that went almost halfway through her. The fiend grit her teeth and bent over forward with all her might, delivering a headbutt to the guy directly in front of her and splaying him out on the ground with a dent in his helmet. The soldiers behind her kept a firm grip on their spears and found themselves launched into the air by the sudden motion, as if hurled by a demon-shaped catapult.
“War Stomp!”
The fiend’s Martial Art smashed what was left of his head into a pulp, while also cracking the ground around her. The sudden tremors made some of the Empire’s troops lose their footing and stumble. Kora picked one such off-balanced target at random and swung both her rights at him. The man put up his shield just in time, but the impact from the double-handed punch lifted him off his feet and threw him several meters into the air. He fell back to the ground, reeling from the pain. His kite shield had two distinct fist-shaped imprints on them, his arm was definitely broken and he dropped his weapon during lift-off, but he was most assuredly alive.
Even if the fiend’s ridiculous strength and heavy weight meant she could send people flying with a single punch, that didn’t necessarily mean they were done for. In fact, she only killed about thirty, maybe forty people in this entire battle. This bunch were far less shaken and a lot more in control than the ones in that night raid a week or so prior. That, and most of her victims fell back to get treatment while their comrades covered for them. Even if she could toss these goons around all day, it was quite difficult for her to finish them off if they didn’t die in the first few hits. That was unlikely to happen considering the quality of their armor and training.
“That’s why you shouldn’t send them flying, but bury them into the ground instead.”
Her master’s words of wisdom flashed through Kora’s head. She knew that would-be-box was right, but since it was advice rather than order, she hadn’t really listened. There was just something immensely satisfying about literally blowing people away, even if it wasn’t necessarily fatal. And if there was one thing Kora valued above all else, it was her own enjoyment. Therefore, she pushed away those thoughts of efficiency and charged at her next victim. She curled her biceps to strike, but her master quite literally beat her to the punch.
A gigantic, barrel-chested figure landed on the man in front of her. Well, it landed on a few of them that were bunched up together, but that was beside the point. After using the Empire’s soldiers to cushion his fall, he stood up at a height that was almost equal to Kora’s. His head was covered by a face wrap that hid all of his features aside from his yellow eyes and the pale skin around them. A heavy flowing cloak concealed the entirety of his body, its silver color and the image of a black swooping eagle on the back clearly declaring his allegiance.
Just in case him deliberately stomping down on Imperial troops wasn’t enough of a hint, the Sandman was quite literally draped in the Ishigar Republic’s flag.
“True Darkness!”
His deep voice rang out, and a huge dome of blackness that was a little over twenty meters in diameter covered the field around him. The human soldiers near the edge ins
tinctively retreated. Although True Darkness merely robbed the area around a Warlock of all visible light, that didn’t mean it actually did any damage. However, their decision was definitely the right one, as the shrill screams and unpleasant crunching noises heard from within that world of darkness signified it was not a safe place to be.
After several seconds, the lightless bubble went deathly silent. One of the higher-ranking humans gave an order to brace for attack. The soldiers rapidly established a shield wall perimeter several meters away from it while others ran off to fetch aid. The Republic’s troops held the line immediately in front of the breached wall, some two hundred meters south of their location. Whoever or whatever that terrifying figure they caught a glimpse of was, it was completely cut off from any hope of reinforcements.
Of course, they didn’t know it yet, but they were the ones about to be begging for backup.
A multitude of figures burst out of the darkness before it had a chance to dissipate. Leading the charge as per usual was Kora. Her wounds and missing arm had fully regenerated thanks to a Rejuvenation Potion Boxxy had ‘borrowed’ from the elves’ stockpiles. Using it on an expendable demon was something of a waste, but it wasn’t shiny and didn’t cost the shapeshifter anything. That and it wouldn’t have to spend its MP re-summoning her, which was good.
The fiend stretched her arms out to the side and then swung them forward with all her might.
“Thunderclap!”
Her two pairs of palms met each other with explosive force, producing a powerful, ear-splitting shockwave that swept over the human forces in front of her. The ones closest to her were knocked down to the ground from the sheer force of it, while those around them keeled over while clutching their ears. As expected of a Berserker’s Martial Art, it was extremely effective on those weaker than the user. The fiend’s unnatural physique had only further amplified its power.
