Chapter 68 - Dire
Third Person’s POV (12 yrs. and 8 months old)
“I don’t know why but the wolves kept pouring out from the forest and in large numbers.” Ken added.
“That’s because the gate hasn’t closed yet, and with the increase in strength of those dire wolves, I’m afraid their numbers have increased as well.” said Granarados appearing behind Ken. Ken nodded leaving the group in thought.
“We need a plan if we want to deal with them effectively, they’re strength is not to be underestimated, I’d almost got wounded heavily from the fight back then.” said Ken, popping the group from their train of thought, as Ken showed a healing wound on his arm, it was deep before, but with his healing magic, it’s recovering at an alarming rate.
The nature deers were stunned again on their hooves, thinking about a child getting wounded like that, and healed in just a matter of seconds, what kind of atrocity did they undergo? Meanwhile, the group -except for Coralia and Trunk- went into conversation on how to tackle the situation.
“Wilbert, Glen, use the spell that I taught you to gain their attention, Icarus, join the support team, we’ll need all the fire power we can get, while the three of us hover above the group to keep large numbers at bay.” the group of kids nodded, and positioned themselves in a three lined formation.
Two at the front, them being Glen, and Wilbert with their shields and swords -except Glen’s only carrying a shield and uses his fists to pound any monster that may come by-, five in the middle with Icarus joining the group, and three at the back. Ken turned to the leader and said…
“Leader is there any way to close the gate?” Granarados shook his head.
“I’m afraid the gate will remain as it is and will continue pouring out monsters or in this case, dire wolves, usually it lasts for a day.” Granarados added, Ken nodded, deep in thought.
“Leader Granarados, can you order your warriors to form a pyramid using my group as the basis.” the leader looked at him confused, Ken then abruptly used his memory spell on the leader to make him understand quickly.
“We must hurry, my spell will run out soon.” said Ken, waiting for the response of the leader, he took out his scythe embedded on the ground, and the sound of waves falling bounced off from the forest, and Granarados understood finally.
Granarados executed the pyramid formation Ken showed to him, with the outer warriors created nature shields while those on the inner provided support by magic or spears, and in no time, everyone was ready for another wave of monsters.
“Get ready!” Ken shouted and activated his flight spell along with Allen, and Princess Lang and flew to the air as another wave of hungry looking, red-eyed dire wolves emerged from the trees running at them full speed towards the formation.
“NOW!” shouted Ken.
“Enchant Magic: TAUNT!” Wilbert and Glen shouted simultaneously as two magic circles appeared on their feet the color of white and an aura of red erupted from their frames hitting the wolves directly making them turn their heads towards the two and snarled viciously preparing to lung forward.
“Sword Style: Blade Surge.” said Wilbert as he stood still, a buzz reverberated from his body making him almost blurred out, when a wolf would be close enough in striking range he would slash swiftly before returning back to position, as if he didn’t move out of his position.
Sword styles don’t function in terms of cast to magic, since a magic circle is required to form before the activation of the spell, the sword style that was taught to him by his father required only rigorous training and constant wielding of the sword.
Eventually leading to a swordsman creating their own style of swordsmanship and be able to use aura, aura is similar to magic, only ever available to weapon practitioners, and since all of the people in Ken’s group, are touched with a slight effect of aura, or aura for that matter.
They are able to sense Wilbert’s aura.
But not as much as Wilbert, one close to being equal to him would be Ken to say the least, so for every slash in his blade surge struck lightning fast, almost unnoticeable by the naked eye, but if one focuses, they’ll be able to see a blur, not clear, yet.
And quite probably the sword spell was influenced by Ken, the spell may be efficient but requires mana to operate, done in quick successions costs more mana to be spent.
“Earth Magic: Earth Guard.” chanted Glen as it summoned an earth wall reaching up to his waist, while striking anyone in close proximity with a barrage of earth spears or in this case, the wolves that jump to strike him.
A two way spell that both defends and attacks at the same time but requires the caster to stay still and pour a constant amount of mana to every attack, the only vulnerable window of time for Glen is when a spear retracts to the ground, lucky for him he uses a shield and his fists, to defend and strike those that stick too close to him.
“Shadow Magic: Arrow Daggers.” said Celine and Lila simultaneously as they both released a black arrow from their bows, one bow made out of shadow magic held by Lila.
After the release, the bow dissipated, while Celine’s bow emitted a black smoke, after the release returned to its original state.
The black arrows flew deep into the enemy, and upon landing on the ground activated a black magic circle, each with a radius of fifteen meters, and exploded thousands of shadow arrows with the former arrow/s as the center striking the monsters head on,
With a quick snap of their fingers the black arrows expanded to that of daggers further wounding every monster unfortunate enough to be pierced by the arrows, others that were caught in the center of the blast were shredded into pieces.
Shadow magic still eating away at their flesh. Another phenomenon they could not understand to be possible, the warriors were more scared of the kids now more than the monsters, but wait till they witness what Ken can do more.
The area in front was clear as Glen and the other three used area of effect spells along with the constant diving of Ken, Allen and Princess Lang in the front lines made it more easy to manage the wave of wolves,
For every dead body of the wolves in front of their vanguard would be flung back to the wolves running towards them, making their bodies collide for a brief distortion, making them disoriented for a moment,
To be later taken care of, either by getting caught by a spell’s blast, or cut off by Ken’s scythe, some are still able to pass though, and that’s fine.
But the rear was slowly being over-run, Icarus jumped at the right side of the pyramid while Riyah jumped at the left, immediately casting one of their area spells.
“Fire Magic: Explosion!” casted Icarus after landing down and two magic circles appeared out of his outstretched hands, the explosion didn’t start at his initial position, instead, erupted a distance away from him of five meters in front.
With an explosion size of three meters the fire spell engulfed the wolves in flames in no time with fifteen explosions in total.
“Ice Magic: Ice Nova!” casted Riyah as a big magic circle appeared on the ground in front of her the radius of twenty meters.
Ice energies built up before exploding leaving the wolves caught in the blast either freezing and on the verge of dying or had frozen to dust and fell like a grain of sand -or salt-.
The two jumped back into position leaving the minimal wolves to be taken care of by the warriors. The group rejoiced as they had a winning chance this time, but a thump on the ground ceased their thoughts from processing.
As a monster came out of the forest, with a height of over two and a half meter, had a club in hand, brown in skin color and wearing tattered clothes, an ogre appeared. Suddenly the atmosphere’s temperature dropped several Celsius.
Another intimidating figure appeared out of the forest, this one looked to be a human, but with the swirling red and black energies as the body, with the slow moving of hands and feet, the figure made it look like a twisted nightmare of the people.
The wolves started to mutate as sounds of popping bones echoed, and the group saw the dire wolves stand on their two legs, they were now werewolves, but with bigger and furry build.
“Shit, the situation is increasingly turning dire by the minute. Flin, how are you doing in on with that spell!?” shouted Ken as he dived back and forth in front and sometimes at the rear.
“I’m almost done, just give me more time!” Flin replied.
“Okay, Allen, Princess, use a spell that’ll weaken the enemies.” Ken shouted as he went down beside Flin, sheathed his scythe, and helped him set up his spell by giving him mana for the spell to use, the other two nodded and quickly got to work.
“Water and Ice Magic: Torrent of Frost!” casted Allen in mid-air as a magic circle appeared in front of him summoning a gush of frost and water energies pushing back and occasionally drowning and freezing over the werewolves, the ogre fared no better.
But more came out of the forest, and more ogres padded towards the pyramid, Allen directed his magic on the approaching ogres and pushed them back.
“Stand on the ground to conserve mana Allen.” shouted Ken, and Allen complied but still dished out frost and water as he descended, wave after wave directed at the ogres that got too close to the formation while the wolves were taken care of by the supports of the group.
“Can’t let them outdo me, Royal Magic: Draconic Flames.” chanted Princess Lang in mid-air, a magic circle the color of golden red appeared in front of her outstretched right hand and burst forth a beam of flames that incinerated all the ogres hit.
She repeated the process over and over again, stopping mid cast only to cast it back on a different target but mostly focusing on the ogres. The warriors watched in awe as the group moved as a team, quickly switching with one another to assist the other.
Granarados was amazed as he watched the scenery unfold, of course he could not let a bunch of kids outdo him so he showed off his magic.
“Nature Magic: Wrath of the Forest!” he chanted, a magic circle a radius of one hundred meters appeared below his hooves and tendrils of roots burst forth to either strangle, tie down, or slice the monsters approaching, each tendril of root as thick as a ten meter radius and can extend how much he like, but only on his zone of influence.
Trunk and Coralia exploited this opportunity by brandishing their weapons, both having twin swords, the former holding black blades, while the latter, holding white blades, the two danced around the battlefield finishing of those caught by the roots that were still breathing.
And those unfortunate to get caught in their way were spared none of the slaughter. The monster’s numbers are rapidly dwindling, but Ken felt awfully wrong, he cannot shake the feeling that something is amiss.
Part of the reason why he jumped into action without sparring a second or teleported at the back of the barrier to place a trap was for this very feeling that he cannot explain, cold sweat ran down his back, and his guard is raised.
At the same time, his body alternates from cold to extremely hot, but he was able to stabilize his situation after he had positioned himself with Flin to assist him, he took a look around, his eyes stopped at the humanoid figure.
It was smiling, eerily, at him, or so he presumes so.
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