"Lana?" Myra felt her heartbeat seize as she feared for the worst. The mill which was supposed to house Lana and her family was now infested with undead!
"Amba! Let's go there, we have to help them!" she didn't know if they were still there. She tried not to think too much about it and allowed Amba to wade through the deep stream and run along the bank to the building.
The undead around the area noticed Amba's loud movements and moved to intercept them. They wielded different types of weapons, swords, spears, maces, axes, some even had large hand made clubs shaped out of wood.
Amba adjusted Myra on his shoulder and thundered into the approaching group like a crazed juggernaut!
He swung his arms in wide arcs as they smashed into the skulls of countless skeletons with the occasional ping of metal crashing against his body. Amba just kept crushing the black skeletons into pieces while wholly ignoring their attacks. Myra could only allow herself to get carried along by the flow of everything.
Soon, the whole mass of the skeleton army that was chasing after them caught up. They climbed atop each other as they rushed to cross the stream to get at the duo. Seeing this, Myra got scared and she quickly started looking of a way out.
The undead skeletons kept coming and Amba kept destroying them while taking care that the girl on his shoulder came to no harm. During his rampaging, a skeleton wielding an axe approached his back to launch a sneak attack. Myra's legs were dangling in a very exposed manner and the skeleton raised the axe with both hands to launch a strike.
CLANG!
CRUMBLE!
Amba turned around in time to deflect the attack with the back of his hand before grabbing the skeleton's head and grinding it to pieces with a clench of his fist. With fluid motions, he sent a punch flying which sent three skeletons wielding swords sailing through the air and into the river while using his other hand to grab the club of an attacking undead and flinging both weapon and wielder into an approaching group of enemies.
"Let us get into the house Amba! We can fight them easily there and find Lana and her family!" Myra yelled at Amba as the golem snapped a rusted spearhead from its handle and smashed the skeleton with a downward clenched fist.
As she was desperately looking for a way out, she noticed that they were going to be swarmed at the rate at which the undead kept coming. Even Amba wouldn't be able to fight that many undead at once. She had then looked at the ransacked house by the waterside and suddenly came up with a plan.
"More of the undead are coming out of the water!" she yelled in alarm as Amba took them in a mad dash through the undead blocking the way to the house.
She looked at the large number of undead blocking the way to the house and the amount of undead also coming out of the stream towards their direction and closed her eyes as she prayed intensely in her mind. 'Oh gods please bless me on this holy night of the white moon, let it work this time!'
Amba was still far from the entrance and noticing their slow progress due to the large number of skeletons. He grunted before using one hand to hold Myra tight.
"Amba? What are you doing?" Myra asked with part fear and part suspicion.
Amba just took two large strides while clearing the Skeletons with his other free hand. On his third step, he suddenly pushed his legs stronger and suddenly leaped high into the air!
"Eeeeeeeek! Hyaaa! Ambaaaaaa!!!!!" Myra yelled in immense shock as Amba tore through the air in a big arc and crashed through the wooden walls of the building landing directly into what looked like the living room.
Myra breathed heavily as she tried to calm her mind down from the sudden shock but she didn't have much time to before she noticed the messed state of the house and the grim red liquid staining the floor.
She quickly closed her eyes not wishing to see anything as she slowly calmed her breathing.
"A-Amba? L-L-Let me down" she stuttered as she was slowly let down by the golem. The undead were already pushing in against the door and Amba went off to fight them.
Myra walked a few steps with her eyes still closed. She stopped after a few steps before putting her hands on her chest to feel her wildly beating heart.
"Calm down, it is okay. It won't work if I am not calm" she muttered to herself as she felt a fresh wave of tears trying to burst from her eyes. She had experienced more in the past few days than she had ever experienced in her life and she was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed.
"It is okay, they are probably just injured and unconscious somewhere" she muttered to console herself before she slowly bent down and sat on the floor with her legs crossed.
She took a deep breath before she turned her face to the direction of the fighting, all without still opening her eyes. "Amba, please hold them off for a few minutes. I want to prepare a spell".
She heard the reassuring grunt of the golem before she suddenly focused and took a deep breath. After a while, soft murmuring could be heard from her lips as she started chanting a spell.
"I wonder what happened that they had school closed early today" Natsu voiced out his thoughts as they left through the school gates with the mass of other students. The principal had suddenly announced not long after the lunch break that school was over for the day due to some emergency and students were to leave for their homes immediately.
"It sounds like something really bad happened, or something suspicious is up?" Reo added his own speculations.
"What do you think happened though? Maybe an armed robbery nearby? Or some rich dude's AI went rouge or something?" Natsu pointed out with even a bit of disbelief in his own suggestions.
"You're thinking too much Natsu-san, I told you it is bad for your health. It can't be something that serious I'm sure." Reo immediately waved it off.
"Anyway bro, I can't go to the arcade with you today. I want to go home quickly and get back into the game." Rastel said apologetically as he started moving off his own way.
"Something dangerous might be going on now anyway, going to the arcade would have been a stupid idea" he added with a chuckle.
"Sure, get back to your baby sitting" Natsu smirked provocatively.
"I'm telling you man, something is up with that girl. Did I tell you I still can't see her level?" Reo told him with
"Probably cause your level is too low, I'll do it when I catch up to you" Natsu waved as he also started walking off.
"Exactly my point! Where would you see a girl that's like 11 with such a high level!?" Reo shot back in his defense.
"Erh…. I mean it is Age of Magic bro, lots of weird shit in there. I have told you about the vampire dwarves, right!?" Natsu yelled from a distance.
"Fuck your dwarves!" Reo yelled back and Natsu went off chuckling.
Reaching home, Reo met the house empty. His sister wasn't back yet and his mother seemed to be out doing some shopping so he just went straight up to his room.
For some reason, he kept having a nagging feeling that he needed to go back into the game quickly. Without even taking his clothes off, he decided to jump into the SVN to take a look.
"Just to be sure" he muttered as he saw the blinding lights that took him to the other world.
Amba was battling through hordes of undead that surged towards the building. Not long after Myra started chanting her spell, the undead had already gathered around and surrounded the house. It felt like all the undead Amba had destroyed up till then had no effect on their numbers at all.
Ever since the first chase started, Amba had been sending a signal to Rastel hoping he could help somehow. With him fighting for a long time, Amba's core was already running dangerously low on mana and the distance between him and Rastel meant he couldn't get more.
He was now forced to back up close to Myra who was chanting with a look of serious concentration on her face and her eyes shut tightly.
The skeletons were now getting through the windows and holes which they had smashed through the walls with clubs and axes.
Rastel grunted deeply as he smashed at one skeleton after the other while looking at Myra with concern. This was a girl his master was protecting. If he failed her then he wasn't sure he would ever be able to show his face again.
Out of helplessness, he pinged their connection again to ask for help but surprisingly this time. There was a response!
Ratel had woken up to an empty room in the middle of the night. He was confused at the course of events because he could clearly feel Amba in a far away distance through their connection though it now felt faint.
'What are they doing there?' before he could attempt asking Amba, he felt a faint plea for help come through from the golem. Without any hesitation, Rastel replied that he was on his way and jumped out the window without much thought.
He swung off the window and bounded off a wall facing the inn and landed safely on the ground with swift agile movements.
With a swish of his tail, he ran into the forest and was soon rushing through the trees in a hurry. There seemed to be little time and a lot of distance to cover. He needed to get as close to Amba and Myra's position as soon as possible so that he could send him some mana!
Amba's movements were now significantly more strained. His mana reserves were really low but luckily, he had established contact with Rastel. He just prayed he would get there in time.
But after a few minutes, there was still no sign of the muan and Amba felt hopeless. As a last ditch effort, he used his last remaining mana to instantly nearly double in size before he covered Myra's figure like a cocoon.
There were countless strikes and thuds that sounded against his body as the undead mercilessly attacked but he just tanked them all.
Myra seemed to be breathing heavily at this point and was now covered in a layer of a blue tinged white glow. The spell that took minutes to cast seemed to be coming to an end. Amba looked on quietly as the frenzied attacks of the skeletons smashed against his body, as long as he lasted till the spell was released, it will be enough.
Myra raised her hands up to her face in her sitting position. She spread them wide before her as the glow surrounding her grew brighter while she chanted the final words to complete the spell. As she uttered the last words, all the light that surrounded her was suddenly extinguished.
Amba was confused, did it fail?
Without any warning, a bright burst of light suddenly erupted from Myra's body in all directions as it blasted Amba away from her and enveloped the surroundings with its intense light!
Amba would have had to revert back to his core if not for the sudden arrival of a large amount of mana flooding in through the connection. Rastel was here!
Rastel who had just arrived at the stream suddenly saw a bright burst of light that seemed to be tinged with a faint blue suddenly burst out of the wooden house enveloping a very wide area of the surrounding forest and literally burning away all the undead that area.
"Woah" the image of the seemingly holy light and the resulting view left him speechless.