SWOOSH!!!
Immediately they charged forward, Erik didn't forget to cast a control spell to try and limit the actions of the magic beast.
PRIEEK!
With a screech from the elemental, a flurry of snow immediately condensed in the air and pelted the magic beast furiously with a violent wind.
"AAAGHHH!!!" Redbone roared as he led the charge of the melee fighters.
His already huge muscles bulged under his armor and he held his shield right in front of him. When he judged he was close enough, he pumped his legs backward with a small grunt and bashed his shield into the small body of the elemental beast!
'Shield bash!'
BAM!
The skill was used to knock down and stun enemies. This skill would usually cause the opponent to at least stagger back a bit and enter a state of confusion but in the face of a magic beast, the effect was very limited.
But Redbone wasn't conceited. Immediately his shield hit the target, his axe was already coming down fiercely from behind with a vicious glow.
'Crushing strike!'
This was an attack that increased his base damage by a lot. No special effects or drama, just sheer power.
The magic beast got a bit distorted by Erik's crowd control and the shield bash took it by surprise but it quickly regained its senses and noticed the glowing axe coming at it.
With a vicious snarl, it condensed a thick bolt of lightning and was ready to strike this annoying person down. Although these attacks wouldn't cause it much damage, it still wasn't nice to take and too much of it would be troublesome.
But before it could launch its attack, a flurry of strikes suddenly hit it from numerous directions!
BANG! BAM! DING! BOOM!
The other melee warriors used the slight opportunity to hit the magic beast with various abilities and skills temporarily immobilizing it.
Baluu's attack was particularly vicious as utilizing his great strength as a bearman, he lifted his large club and brought it down heavily on the beast's head which caused it to finally scream out loud.
SQUEEAK!!!!
This was the first reaction they had gotten from the magic beast since they had started fighting!
Seeing this, Redbone was ecstatic and yelled out loud.
"NICE!!!" he strengthened his grip and brought down his axe with all his strength.
SLASH!!!
His attack hit the beast straight at the forehead, coming down with impressive force.
SPLURT!
A burst of blood spurted out staining his axe red. Redbone's expression was marvelous! Seeing as he had finally damaged the beast, a sense of achievement erupted in his mind.
SQUEEAK!!!!!!
The magic beast screamed in pain and a trace of anger could be seen in its eyes. The amount of lightning around its body suddenly increased drastically causing alarm to appear in the eyes of the melee fighters.
They quickly dispersed as they utilized numerous skills to escape. Black Raven was quite adept at this as her feet suddenly blurred and she used short bursts of speed to instantly retreat.
BLZZT!!!!!
The terrifying amount of lightning caused their hearts to tremble even as they were escaping. But they soon realized that there wasn't much need to be alarmed.
Countless water shields suddenly appeared and surrounded the magic beast in multiple layers. Up above, the array avatar stared down with a silent gaze.
Reacting to the situation, Rastel used the array to cast water shields as a means to counter the lightning. Every time a lightning bolt struck one of the shields, it would be instantly absorbed as the water conducted the lightning away.
Although the shield exploded immediately afterward, another one would pop up right after to replace it. Just like that, the magic beast found out that its attacks were constantly disrupted as it couldn't muster enough lightning to launch a powerful attack.
Using this opportunity, the few rangers in the team finally got their target. Multiple projectiles flew through the air and pelted the beast one after another.
Vars was firing shot after shot and his arrows were quickly depleting. But he didn't seem to care, his hands were moving so quickly they became a blur and arrows flew out like bullets.
As blacksmithing which was a craft that required delicate handwork, he had an impressive amount of dexterity which he utilized in his archery.
His hand-eye coordination was standing at the boundaries of human limits.
The beast at this time was totally infuriated! As it had awakened its powers, it had a certain level of intelligence and it could tell with certainty that all these creatures assaulting it were definitely weaker than it.
Even the strongest ones could only cause him a limited amount of threat. But right now, it was being badly suppressed by these weak beings.
Anyone would be angered by such a thing. It was like a grown man would be assaulted by a group of 4-year-olds and would end up getting beaten. It would be very humiliating and infuriating!
It had to take care of all of them in one fell swoop!
But first, it had to do something about these water shields that were constantly interrupting its attacks. With its perception of mana as a magic beast, it was easy to trace the water shields to the dark, sharp-eared being with green eyes.
With a low squeak, it suddenly released a sharp burst of lightning that sped towards the green-eyed being that was obstructing it. The lightning bolt was released by the magic beast after much planning and dodged all the water shields, heading straight for its target.
BLZZT!!
Rastel was caught off guard as he saw a long trail of lightning suddenly heading towards him.
"Rastel!" Roxanne suddenly yelled his name anxiously from the side.
It all happened in the space of a second and all the others around could not even react on time, they watched the lightning bolt head towards Rastel with increasing alarm
'Oh shit!' Rastel hastily created a water shield in the path of the lightning bolt but it instantly got shattered by the bolt and it kept advancing.
The magic beast was determined to exterminate him so it had made this particular bolt far stronger. Seeing the shield was useless, a wave of dread washed over Rastel.
'I'm really going to die this time!'
Sacha was supposed to overlook the battle and ensure their safety but he couldn't see how this situation could be salvaged. He felt like his brain went on overdrive immediately he sensed death, multiple thoughts were crossing through his mind.
He could see the faces of everyone present, Roxanne, Vars, Baluu, Erik, Redbone, Whitesoul, even Black Raven had paused and was looking over in shock.
'Well fuck me then, this feels too real.' The feeling that he was about to die overwhelmed his senses and it was like everything went into slow mode.
He could even see the cruel beady eyes of the magic beast as it glared at him.
The lightning bolt was now a few feet away, there was no evading it now.
_________________________________________________________________________
In the Vulcan smithery, grandmaster Vulcan was working busily on a project and Lolo was going around assisting him from the side.
Ever since the archmage left and he settled his matter with the town lord, Alera. He had started working on this project without much concern.
In his eyes, a beast horde was just a beast horde. He had seen many of them throughout his long lifespan and he didn't think much of them.
With Sacha and Alera around, there was definitely no threat to be had unless a primordial beast got called over and the chances of that were slim.
Even if a primordial beast did get called over, the grandmaster was confident in his ability to escape. He wasn't a grandmaster in name only.
Myra was also very relaxed. Going around the smithery curiously, she was inspecting one thing or the other and when she didn't understand something, she would pester the grandmaster till he explained it to her.
Although grandmaster Vulcan was normally a grumpy drunk, he wasn't heartless and could only satisfy the little girl's requests.
After a while though, he got tired and got Lolo to give Myra some type of dwarven candy that he himself was fond of. He was partial to sweets.
So now, Myra was quietly sitting down on one of the empty workstations with Amba in her laps and a bowl of candy in front of her. As Myra downed one candy after the other, she occasionally whispered one or two sentences to Amba to keep herself company.
Although the golem couldn't reply. He gave her answers through gestures and nods every once in a while and she was quite satisfied with them.
"Hey Amba, do you think Hero is okay?" she suddenly asked him with a bit of concern.
Amba patted her hand and nodded to assure her.
Since she was younger, she had always heard about the horrors of beast hordes. The fear of beast hordes was something that was imparted into everyone in the world of Aelmar since a young age so her concern was understandable.
But seeing Amba's reassurance, she felt a bit light and nodded in confidence.
"That's right, Hero is strong so he will definitely be safe. There is nothing to worry about right, Amba?"
But Amba didn't answer her this time, his gaze was suddenly fixed in front of him.
"Hmm? Amba?" noticing the weird reaction, Myra shook him a little and called out.
Amba didn't reply. But all of a sudden, his eyes and the circle in the middle of his body suddenly glowed with a bright light!
HUM!
Sitting at his workstation, grandmaster Vulcan was suddenly alerted.
"Hmm? What's that?" he raised his head and looked around.
He just felt a large fluctuation of some weird mana but before he could trace it, it suddenly vanished.
"What is it Vul-vul?" Lolo asked by the side while casually chewing on some ores.
Grandmaster Vulcan shook his head and replied.
"I thought I felt some weird type of mana just now but it disappeared before I cou- HEY! I told you to stop eating those!!"
_________________________________________________________________________________
Deep inside the town lord's castle, the town lord Alera Tarmal was busy listening to reports coming from the walls with the rest of his officers around a table when he suddenly felt the weird burst of mana also.
'What…. Was that?' his eyes narrowed as he thought of the possibilities of such an occurrence.
As the lord of this area, he couldn't let go of anything that he couldn't account for.
'I will have to investigate this later.' He couldn't afford to split his attention now. When the beast horde was over, he would try to find out the cause of it.
___________________________________________________________________________
Back at the battle, just as Rastel was about to be hit by the burst of lightning, archmage Sacha had already raised his hands and was about to nullify the attack.
Although the sudden attack from the magic beast was surprising, in his eyes, it wasn't a cause for alarm.
Before he could cast a spell though, he suddenly felt a weird burst of mana erupting from a certain location. Before he could react, the mana suddenly arrived at their location.
'What is this now?' he observed with interest as the weird mana instantly approached the muan and merged with his body.
'Oh… oh hoho! This is interesting.' lowering his hands, he decided to watch the show.
Just as Rastel was about to get hit by the lightning bolt, he suddenly felt his mind link with Amba activating. A burst of mana suddenly appeared in his body and he felt his consciousness blur for just a moment.
The biggest change though happened not inside his body but outside.
As the rest of the team watched in horror as Rastel was about to be hit by the magic beast's attack, a change happened to the array that only a few people noticed.
For just a split second, the array avatar changed from Rastel's figure to that of a huge golem with soulless eyes.
As it was very sensitive to mana, the magic beast noticed this change and lifted its head only to see the deep eyes of the golem glaring at it.
Fear...
BOOM!!!!
A large burst of mana suddenly erupted from around Rastel and pushed forward!
The bolt of lightning was dispersed like hay in the wind and the force kept moving forward until it met the stunned magic beast.
BAM!
The magic beast was knocked senseless and it collapsed to the floor with heavy injuries.
By the side, Sacha's eyes sparkled with interest as he watched Rastel recover from a sudden bout of dizziness.
'This was definitely interesting!'
There were also others who noticed the split change in the avatar like Roxanne. But as she already knew of Rastel's identity, she was more concerned about his safety.
Some were the soldiers of Eadon. Although they found it weird, they left the fact aside for now as they had a powerful enemy still in their hands.
But as for others, this discovery was more significant.
Erik and Redbone were also witnesses to the change. And they were much smarter people with much wider interests.
They subconsciously connected the few dots in their heads and immediately came to the same conclusion.
Looking at the disorganized Rastel been helped up by Roxanne with varying emotions in their eyes, the same name echoed in their minds at the same time.
'Sleeping beauty?!'