Frostbound [LitRPG Apocalypse]-Chapter 192 - Warning Intuition
Rachel
"There he goes," Rachel muttered to herself.
She would have to be blind, deaf, and incapacitated to miss the veritable blizzard of power taking place inside the valley. Even before her magical abilities were enhanced with her bloodline she would have sensed it. A part of her believed even a normal person could have.
Chris was anything but subtle, but that didn't really matter anymore. The fact that his current display of power nearly matched the collective strength of all the mages here was irksome, though.
Rachel wasn't arrogant and wasn't envious, but she at least felt they were in similar leagues, but she knew she wouldn't be able to do what he was currently doing.
Sure, she could match the power output and area size, but her mana would run out eventually and she would be surrounded with nowhere to go. Chris, on the other hand, had asinine amounts of stamina.
She scoffed at his display and turned back to what she was doing. Being in charge of the [Ritual Cast] made her not able to split her focus too much. It was already hard enough to link seven people together, no need to add daydreaming on top of it.
Most of her skills weren't useful from how far away she was, but there were ways of getting around that. Sure, [Flamethrower] cast from her hand would do nothing, but if she moved the point of origin, it would be fine.
Manipulating spells to do something against what their Skill matrix indicated was difficult, but not impossible. Over a year of training had gone into making it easier and she prided herself on doing just that.
With Chris ruining the area closest to him with Ice mana, she started targeting the flanks of the formation. It was just in time too, because with the numerical advantage the Demons had, they were starting to wrap around the edges of the lines.
Giant pillars of fire exploded on either end, incinerating any of the creatures trying to get around. She took it a few steps further with a creative touch of [Fire Manipulation], feeding and expanding what was already there.
She knew this was a marathon, not a sprint, and conserving her mana pool was more important than flashy spells. Using [Fire Manipulation] on already casted skills used way less mana than activating new ones.
From her vantage point, she could see that the number of Warriors dropped. Areas where skills flashed for the last time and Demons rolled over the line.
While the number of Demons fell at an astonishing rate, they weren't without casualties themselves.
Ashton
"[Call of the Light]" He shouted as another beam of light descended. He had been fighting what seemed the endless tide of Demons for nearly an hour.
His sword was covered in Demon blood and so was his shield. His armor had dents and cuts all over it, yet he soldiered on. His people were dying and he had to do his best to stop it.
[Call of the Light] didn't only work as an offensive beam of light, but it buffed all of his allies in the area as well as himself. While he didn't have the most damage-aligned skills, he did his best.
Still, only about half the people fighting on either side of him were in range. They were spread too far apart for him to buff everyone, much to his dismay. He had already seen people fall, even with his light there to help.
His sword lit up and he unleashed large crescents of light out in front of him but that did little to slow the Demons down. It was like they didn't care about their fellow comrade's death and some would even stomp over them to advance. Pushing their bodies into the dirt to walk over them.
No matter how many he killed, it was like they were unaffected. Ashton wasn't sure if they were mindless, or just that selfish and uncaring. He wasn't sure he wanted to know either.
"Giant Demonling approaching!" Carson shouted which got his attention.
Those monstrosities were difficult to take down, and he would have to do it himself.
After being notified, he saw the amalgamation stomping up to their lines without a care in the world about the Demonlings it was crushing as it walked.
Ashton sprinted out ahead of it before it could attack the other Warriors, even launching one of his [Light Crescents] to get its attention.
The damage the skill did was minuscule, but his affinity worked wonders on the Demons. He wouldn't go so far as to call Light their weakness, but he could see the lingering Light Mana in the wound eating away at the Demon's flesh.
Having dealt with one of the monsters before, his sword and shield lit up and were encased in a blinding light. [Sword of Light] and [Shield of Light] overlayed an ethereal sword and shield overtop his own made of light.
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The skills were the hallmark of his class, Paladin of Light, and boosted his offensive and defensive abilities. Ashton was lucky they attacked during the day as the drain on his mana wasn't as much under the light of the sun.
He had another, more powerful skill, that could be used in addition to the two he used but it wasn't time to bring that out yet. It wrecked his mana pool and would only wear him out faster.
As he battled the combination Demonling, his sword flashed out as he tried to cut along the seams he could see. He knew from experience if he cut it just right, it would cause the monster to fall apart.
It took him a few tries, but he managed to land a slash just right and the giant fell, deconstructed back into its base form, and the Demonlings comprising it tried to scramble to their feet. It was only a few more sword slashes until those too were dead.
With his foe dead at his feet, he looked back over his army. So many of them were already dead and his heart ached at seeing their lifeless bodies. Even seeing the mountains of Demon bodies didn't help his mood.
He was no stranger to loss, but he had never experienced it on this scale before. He had never had to look over a field and see the expressionless faces of those he knew in such quantity.
His eyes turned grim and he turned to look at the center of the Demon army. He couldn't see much with all the things going on, but his intuition was telling him to hurry.
He didn't know why, but he felt like there was a clock counting down and he wouldn't like the outcome when it hit zero.
As he pondered on what to do, he couldn't help but notice a flake of white drift past his eye. It wasn't an arrow or the flash of a skill, but something smaller. He held out his hand and watched as the snowflake landed on his armored palm before it melted.
Looking up, he didn't see any clouds or anything and even if he did, it would be rain, not snow.
His gaze shifted from the center of the Demon army over to where he knew the other half of their forces were fighting. It didn't take long to see the disturbance.
A hurricane-like blizzard was currently taking place on the other side of the valley and it was quickly making its way deeper, toward where Ashton was once looking.
Ashton could only marvel at the sheer spectacle that was taking place. Nothing in his arsenal of skills would be able to do anything close to what he was witnessing, even if his level was higher than the other man's.
His mind warred on whether to leave his line behind and charge in like his counterpart was doing, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. His buffs and skills were the reason that many on his side were still standing.
If he left, the Lesser Demons and Giant Demonlings would be left free to slaughter whoever stood before them. If he left, people would die. Even if what his intuition was telling him was true, and they were on the clock, he couldn't bring himself to leave.
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Shaking his head bitterly, he could only hope the other City Lord had what it took to do it alone. Even though the plan was for the two to meet in the middle and take out the leader, he couldn't go through with it.
With his mind made up, he deviated from the plan and stayed put. His people needed him.
Chris
Faster. Faster!
Something was wrong but I couldn't pinpoint what it was. Over the many fights I had experienced, a sort of sixth sense had built up. Nothing supernatural or anything like that, but a scarily accurate intuition.
Jonathan once mentioned something similar happening to him so I didn't think it was anything odd, but the fact it was acting up now made my nerves flare.
Something in my gut was telling me to hurry. Even if my mind didn't know the reason, I went with the feeling I had. It hadn't done me wrong before.
I poured more mana into my skills and the Winds around me sped up and the air turned even colder. My hammer whipped around as fast as I could swing it and I marched into where I assumed the leader to be.
[Desolate Blizzard] and [Permafrost] did wonders to kill off the rabble, but that left the stronger Demons behind to bar my way. Strong Lesser Demons took chunks out of my armor with their spear-like limbs and Greater Imps blasted me with sickening balls of black rot.
My way toward the center caused me to run into higher and higher leveled resistance and the Demons before me already out-leveled me. [Identify] put them in the 80s and 90s.
[Frozen Patchwork] cooled through me and left any cuts frosted over in ice and I powered through the wounds. One leveled 89 Lesser Demon had a skill that penetrated through both my armor of Ice and what lay under it, punching a hole through my gut before I could bring my hammer around to crush its head.
It flopped to the floor dead with a flattened skull, but I still had a bleeding hole in my gut.
Something else was inside the wound, causing it to fester and get worse as well. Ice ran through the area to counteract whatever was causing it, but that only caused the bleeding to continue.
If that continued to happen, fainting from blood loss would be a very real threat.
I felt some of my Spirit well up inside me and it helped me push on, but at the rate I was using the mystical energy, it wouldn't last forever.
It was already being used to infuse the two Domain skills and empower my armor, I didn't have limitless amounts of the stuff either. The pool available to me had grown from using it to saturate the castle, but that didn't make it endless.
My mana was also being used at an astonishing rate. The only thing that I didn't have to worry about yet was straining my mind, as not even any hints of mental fatigue had arisen yet.
My mind was still sharp, even after using my Laws as much as I had. A chilling sensation overtook my brain any time I felt like I was edging toward fatigue. It was something I didn't know [Frozen Patchwork] was capable of.
It wouldn't last, I knew that already, but I had to push on.
My stats were well and truly the highest they'd ever been, but even with the mountain of power I had behind me, I still couldn't help but feel like it wasn't enough.
I felt a Greater Imp start powering up another of its skills and there was nothing I could do to stop it. They had already dodged any [Ice Arrows] I sent at them before and I didn't want to waste the mana to keep using them.
I knew my ranged capabilities were lacking but there was nothing I could do about it now. [Frost Armor] had already re-froze over the previous hole but my armor was left weakened for it.
The dungeons weren't like this. They didn't have hundreds of monsters at a time laying waste to my defenses.
Imps and the magical Lesser Demons launched spells while Hellhounds and melee Lesser Demons attacked relentlessly. There was nothing I could do to stop it except take them down one at a time with my hammer.
Even so, I didn't let despair build inside me. I couldn't afford the mental attention of letting helplessness build.
Even when I felt I might actually die.
