(Denzel's POV):
"Time Hijack!"
The sky color changed and apparently, time was paused. Everyone and everything couldn't move without restriction. Me, Malech, William, Vince, and Jerald continued to look straight ahead confused and stuck in a time stop. After that, we see a group of people heading towards the dragon corpse.
From my sight, I saw multiple pieces of dynamites place into the corpse. They're spreading some sort of effect it seems. However, it seems that they aren't reaching towards us for some reason. Is it because we're invulnerable during the hijack? If so then they should just place traps. I'm not so sure if it's their ego simply thinking that their raid is a success. My only theory is that their range might be unable to reach here even though they can stop time here. Could they not go too far from the center?
After a sole conversation with myself, the group left and returned to their position near their barrier. A few seconds later, time started moving again, but still kept the red, tainted sky.
"Guys, what do?"
The moment I asked that, multiple explosions occurred from the corpse which spread its flesh around without popping into particles.
A large protective physical barrier was cast by Seymour, it seems he had some instinct about the danger of it.
I immediately entered comms.
"Seymour! What was the corpse about?!"
"It's a piece of flesh that turns into an undead apparition if it passed by a bit of time. We can't have them rummaging around the castle!" - Seymour
After cutting comms, multiple monsters converged into my position once again. Orcs, goblins, bears, boars, eater of souls, crimeras, they're swarming both the ground and the air.
Something's not right though.
While I was fending off various enemies, my senses randomly tingled and my instinct told me something dangerous is coming. Because of that, I immediately activated the comms.
"Seymour! Reactiv-!"
Before I finished my statement, a barrier was erected which blocked a powerful convergence of sunlight beam directed to the front line.
The laser took a while before it dissipated slowly.
"My instinct was right."
There was a large axe held by an orc that was about to chop me from above. I took out Vajra to block it, I made the axe slide to the side by tilting the shield diagonally.
"Energy Discharge!"
An impulse of energy blew multiple monsters back by a few meters. Giving me a small room to breathe and get myself back in shape. After that, I hear Seymour's warning.
"Denz! The barrier sustained minor damage, it cannot recover quickly as the solar energy bombardment prevents any form of regeneration by fifty percent!" - Seymour
That alone makes me worried. Since there will be a time where the barrier cannot hold out. By that time, I will have to jump in and absorb it using Vajra which is an extreme risk that can get me killed if I make a mistake.
After killing the orc with multiple ice spikes, it vanished into thick atmospheric mana. Behind the mana particles are multiple boars charging quickly onto me.
Malech's sickle passed through the boars and cuts them in half.
"Nice! I'll clear the air in your side! Hailstorm!"
"Thanks!" - Malech
It seems the others are starting to have difficulty in handling the amount of monsters swarming into us. I took out one potion that I believe is necessary to lower the amount of monsters that are swarming against the others.
I then splashed a charm potion right in front of me.
Considering that these monsters are artificial, they pretty much go to where it smells nice and attractive. I swear I didn't use this to lure Rika in. I use potions for combat purposes only.
More monsters converged towards me which allowed Karl and Seymour to strike more targets at once. Something kept bothering me as the sky is still red and somehow closer.
I simply ignored it for now as I have most of the summoned monsters in front of my face.
"Prison of ice!"
An ability that entraps a large area with ice that prevents them from any escape. I connected this ability to another to simply get myself a refresh of mana overload.
"Mana siphon!"
I absorbed every piece of mana that was inside the ice prison, the ice, the monsters trapped, and the atmospheric mana within it.
To allow my team to breathe, I converged all of the absorbed excess mana and fired it as a powerful prismatic laser.
"Prism Energy!"
With the amount of excess mana I gathered, I have about half a minute to control this and wipe out most of the monsters.
Continuously sweeping it from left to right, the monsters kept disappearing at high speeds. Just in time my instinct starts to act up again which changed my aim to the sky.
I challenged the converged sunlight with my prism energy to see who could last longer. Apparently, I had only half a minute left to my laser, which means they outlasted me.
It did some damage to the barrier but it sustained far less damage than the last one thanks to my prism laser.
Since most monsters disintegrated into atmospheric mana, it slowly started to spread around once again.
As these monsters start to close the gap though.
The spread out flesh right in front of us is starting to take shape of dangerous undead monsters.
The husks numbering up to fifty immediately ganged up on my group by having a ratio of ten husks each person. But since I have the charm potion effect, more husks should be targeting me.
As such, I managed by switching Omnitelum into my expertise weapon. Twin short swords.
"Transweapon tech! Duality!"
Both pieces of equipment reformed themselves into two short swords.
As most husks gang up to me I twirled once to cut as many as I can, but weren't affected easily. They received cuts on the body but didn't falter. I might need a sharper weapon.
I continued to try and make more cuts before pushing back the husks with kicks. With a single shockwave, I pushed back most of the husks. After that I immediately changed my twin swords into a single, sharp, katana. With frostbite special effect for improved severing tech.
"Transweapon tech: Severum!"
Clapping the two short swords together, it reformed its shape into a single blade katana that has a low temperature, sharply cutting anything in half with its curved shape. I formed a simple prepared stance as the husks close in to my position slowly. Moved my weapon to the right and calmly slashed sideways.
I sliced the air twice in a single instance and returned my weapon to the same position. A short delay, all husks in front are cut in half.
"Nice."
Or so I thought, the husks continue to move towards us without stopping. The upper and lower body parts are separated, but they continue to walk and crawl towards me position.
"That's very creepy, how did they make it like that?"
"Denz! Any weaknesses from them?" - Malech
"Nope, got none yet."
I have no clear idea how I'm gonna get rid of these because, once the swarm arrives, it's game over. One thing comes to my mind when it comes to nearly invincible monsters that regenerate quickly.
"Core! William! Perform a scan on them!"
"Got it!" - William
With my calculations, William can fully scan anything within ten seconds. So I have around forty seconds to eliminate all of these husks before the swarm enters our range.
And within those ten seconds we were having trouble with managing a doubled number of bodies trying to hit us or pull us down. I stabbed the katana into the heads of one of the husks. But it still didn't stop moving, which means the core isn't there.
"Scan Complete! It's in the Medul-" - William
I retracted my katana and slashed calmly once again. This time, I targeted the spot where the brain stems reside.
That ultimately stopped the husks from functioning.
"Never mind then." - William
"We got some time, rest a bit."
We sat down and asked Seymour for a bit of revitalization. What we got was some light shining down upon us. And that was some light that basically both heals and energizes a person. Truly the perfect all-rounder abilities Seymour developed that have the perfect utility of our usage.
Not like anybody is about to reach that much skill and intelligence.
"So, what are you guys gonna do after this?"
"Maybe hang around in your palace." - Vince
"Sure, I'll prep your rooms after this but first, let's clear up the trash."
All five of us stood back up and faced the enemies once again. We returned to our positions and the war continues with us holding the front line. The list comes forth as it suddenly changed into way stronger monsters.
Immediately with the large ogres with trees as weapons.
As one ogre reaches my position it immediately raised the tree in its hand to smash me.
"Vajra!"
I immediately turned the katana into my trusty shield. I then made a full block preparation stance to lower the impact. A giant tree was smashed onto my shield which eventually passed. With a bit of recoil damage to my body, I became unable to release the shield.
Karl used lightning magic to disintegrate the large ogre in front of me... But before the lightning hit, Jerald shot multiple bolts from his launcher which got stuck at the ogre.
As such, with metallic electricity, the electrocution was more effective than usual.
The ogre disappeared into particles but the tree was left being heavy on my arms.
"Somebody burn this thing into mana."
Since I can't particularly move I had to wait for either Seymour or Karl to burn this tree down.
In the meantime though.
"Frozen stalagmite!"
Multiple spikes emerged from the ground to pierce through the bodies of most monsters.
"!!!, Everyone jump!" - Malech
Malech immediately noticed the signal, since this ability has a high potential of friendly fire, they will have to avoid this ability. The spikes rose up to a meter just to joust the monsters. Before hitting Malech and the others, they jumped back up to the castle walls whilst Vince prepared a pinnacle skill.
Michael is absent so I can't make a combined pinnacle skill that's as great as Seymour's "Black Death" skill. But since we only have to eliminate a large number of monsters, it should be decent enough for the situation.
All ice spikes rose up even higher to double its height, effectively piercing through most enemies. To finish it off, Vince cleared them off by using his own pinnacle skill.
"Pinnacle Skill! Firestorm!" - Vince
Immediately, the whole battlefield burst multiple times in a single second. Fire particles rose up to the skies and brewed up a storm of fire, effectively wiping out the whole entire wave. They immediately went back down and entered a defensive stance instantly.
We're getting closer...