Peak of the War

(Denzel's POV):

Two hours have passed and we still are fighting normally in the front lines. However, even without taking a break, we are starting to see larger figures bounding in to our formation.

"Frontline alert! Monsters have escalated from tier one to tier two monsters!" - Seymour

With a simple warning to us, we began receiving summoned monsters with severe difficulty of defending.

Bears, giant hornets, giant spiders, crocodiles are here as well!

"Malech! William! Prioritize killing the spiders! Their poison will be a dangerous issue!"

"Got it!" - Malech

"Roger!" - William

Hornets are everywhere and are shooting both at the frontline and the castle walls.

I swear this is gonna get a little harder!

As a bear was about to clobber me down I raised half of my Vajra to block a severely painful strike. Crocodiles and other morphed creatures start to swarm me at all sides. Using my charged Omnitelum in gauntlet, I smashed the ground to create a heavy fissure to blast away nearby enemies.

It did knock away morphed creatures such as the spiders and other thin looking creatures, but it wasn't strong enough to knock the bears and crocodiles.

"Shit!"

One crocodile was about to bite my leg while I couldn't really move from my spot due to the bear applying force and weight to my shield.

"No choice!"

I took out a card with an explosion symbol, and poured half of my remaining mana in it. I threw it upwards to the monsters surrounding me.

Before it exploded, I replaced the right half of Omnitelum with the other half of Vajra and defended myself completely.

The others will not be affected as they're a little distant from my position.

"Vajra! Shell Form!"

Vajra's size extended to the ground to protect me from all directions.

After the explosion card that detonated at least ten times, I retracted Vajra and turned the other half into a powered gauntlet.

"Now then, let's recover!"

I raised my gauntlet up high and changed its form into a large Paladin's Axe.

I then held my shield to the front and reformed it into a Paladin's Shield.

"Generate Temporary Equipment! Paladin's Palladium!"

My whole armor gets covered in Palladium plating, which protects me from most damage for some time. These kinds of things are tested in some situations before I hand them to the members to use.

"Malech! William! Jerald! Vince! Prepare the spell cast alignment number one!"

"Gotcha!" - Malech

"Alright!" - William

Malech and William prepared a spell that gives the target bonus stats. Using the stats I gave them with the "Travel Along" effect, they sent half of their bonus stats to boost me even further.

Not only them but Jerald and Vince performed the same procedure.

Thus, I just gained enough stats that would make me four times stronger than my normal self without the tarot card or any other stat boosting consumables I carried.

However, at the moment I start to swing my axe to clear off many summoned monsters. I end up seeing a peculiar monster.

"An undead earth dragon?"

"That's some creativity over the-!" William

"Now's not the time to talk!" - Malech

After the crocodile opened its mouth to devour William quickly, he cut off the jaw before dealing with the bear that was about to pounce on him.

However, the bear was shot from a far distance. Honestly, it could be Mitch or Chesca who did that.

Checking all the cooldowns of my whole arsenal of magic I continue blocking strong attacks while destroying every monster by chopping, slicing, and hitting them with the shield.

The great feature about this ability is that, it will absorb half of the damage it takes. The absorbed damage then converts into charged energy that will show the true capabilities of a Paladin.

This is actually one of the features of my vocation. The ability to learn classes more quickly than other vocations. I almost would've started as a no class if I didn't learn cryomancy as soon as I could. Luckily, Karl was there to uphold that tricky part.

Blocking attacks from monsters surrounding me, I charge up energy which I accumulated for a while. I raised my shield and empowered it to be more defensive for the time being.

By upgrading the shield temporarily, its size increased by three times. Its effectivity of absorbing attacks into charged energy had also improved by quite a bit.

"More!"

That sounded masochistic.

Blocking more and more attacks, I finally raised my axe which empowered its overall power and capability. Not only that I could blast this power to eradicate a huge number of mobs in front of me at once. So I lowered down my axe to smash the ground with momentum, and gravity assisting my overall power.

"..."

I was about to say some chuuni line for dramatic effect but I shrugged it off as it's very cringey.

As I hit the axe to the ground, a beam of light in a cone shone up high to the sky and eradicated mobs in front of me for quite some distance. However, it became stuck as I applied too much power.

"No worries."

Before the wave crashes into me, I changed both weapons into a large war-mace and a large war-hammer.

Since these guys are very hardened in their shells I should destroy them with force!

I smashed the war-hammer towards one of the crocodiles on my right that was opening its mouth to eat me, crushing the whole body with nothing but my force applied.

I swung my war-mace upwards to strike the bear that was on my left this time. For the coordination, I raised my war-hammer and swung it around once to fling away a few monsters near me. I then swung it high to squash a giant spider in front of me.

I checked my book out death regarding the cooldowns, in which some are ready to be cast.

"Frost Squasher."

Two ice walls with spikes formed in a cone shape in front if me. I then closed the whole thing to move the monsters to the center of the cone.

Next ability comes in immediately for a follow-up.

"Lightning rend!"

Lightning magic isn't my best skill but it's still a good follow up as it will shock enemies in a line, stunning or slowing them for four seconds I think? Well I made another follow up using Earth Magic...

"Focal Strike!"

Four earth turrets on my sides showed up and started shooting the monsters in the center. After learning heard to ascertain penetration of my turret shots through monsters, I was able to use this as a wonderful follow-up attack.

Now a large amount of enemies were killed off. I wonder when the enemy will run out mana soon? Oh wait, I was stopping them by the sonic wave turret. That's why the waves are nearly twice as long. Can't be helped, I'll have to endure this without using cataclysm-class abilities such as Prismatic or Throne of Ice. I'll stick with area of effect spells or crowd control abilities.

"Copy Skill! Enigma!"

A skill that applies various effects that will hinder anything hostile. Surprisingly, it could buff enemies so I should be careful when using the ability that would apply an even stronger effect.

But meh, you can't expect me to risk some enemies getting that buff but a few of them will so why not?

"Copy Skill! Pandemonium!"

I blasted all targets affected with enigma which will deal very high damage and apply severed version of the effects applied with enigma. Most monsters just blew up into particles whilst some survived and seemed to have strengthened by a huge margin.

These two abilities are from Chaos Slayers, no matter what variation they got.

However, now that the remaining enemies are weakened by health points, but are stupidly powerful due to enigma giving a Courageous effect which evolved into Paragon.

Paragon amplifies the damage by 500%...

"Be careful on the cleanup for the next few minutes! Do not let them hit you!"

All four of them exhaled strongly.

"Chronoglass Reset!" - Malech

Malech resets his Chronoglass to stay at top condition. He has to pay attention to using this ability since if he was not paying attention and the timer reaches the bottom, he will be unable to move for half an hour. The same will occur if he messes up the timing.

On the plus side, he will have an inexhaustible supply of energy and mana.

Out of the hundred monsters that were affected by my Enigma and Pandemonium. Around twenty plus lived and have been strengthened.

However, Chesca and Mitch shot the heads of some of the empowered monsters, allowing us more room of error.

I materialized eight swords to rotate behind me in a halo. I utilized each one to fire a different element that will blast heavy damage upon a small area.

Pinpointing my focus towards the strengthened monsters, I fired various elements that detonate on impact.

Hitting strengthened bears, and other summoned monsters. All enemies have been eliminated or weakened to the extend where it's possible to kill them without much effort like earlier.

I killed off a few while the others killed off some of the strengthened ones.

After that, the sun shines at the peak of noon. However, the second that the sun peaked, everything changed.

"Denzel! The undead earth dragon!" - Julius

A sudden intercom message from Julius. Apparently he and Robin dealt with it from a far distance before coming near us, but it was by sheer luck, strengthened heavily by my enigma skill.

"Shit! Seymour! I need a comet!"

I have no other choice but to eliminate it using a comet, but I had to request Seymour for one since my frozen comet is still in cooldown for a few minutes.

A large burning comet was dropped down towards the empowered earth dragon, completely destroying the whole body effortlessly.

Blood splattered everywhere, but it dissipated into particles before hitting any of us.

The only issue is that, destroying the body was a mistake.

I heard two words that are from the enemy lines. Those words alone create a spell that will become the worst threat we could face.

"Time Hijack." - ???

Everyone was slowed down, and fatigued this instant...