"Dov! Dov!"
The first thing Dov saw as he arrived back to reality was Celene shouting at him in panic. Leyna was also there shielding them with rock-solid ice shields that can even hold out melee attacks. Although unlike Celene, Leyna seemed to be calmer about the situation.
"Oh thank the stars you're moving. Your eyes went off there for a moment, I thought you were gone or something." The lycan blew out a sigh of relief.
"Well… that's not far off." The masked Hunter quickly looked around to analyze how the situation went after he killed the Chief and his mother.
"You monster!"
"How could you be so heartless!"
"Coldhearted black bastard!"
"You're fucking dead! Demon!"
Every single dark elf was cursing at them, throwing them with projectiles, and charging toward them with weapon raised.
"Looks like everything went smoothly." Dov silently muttered to himself.
"What should we do Dov? We're surrounded!" Celene's body shooked in panic. Right now the rage was on top of its heat, even the vampires need to take shelter behind Leyna's shields.
"Follow the Hunter's conduct, Celene." Dov's gun began to light up as he slowly exited the safety of those shields.
"Wait— you don't mean…" The lycan's face went pale.
"If they're a threat to you,"
"Kill them."
Celene girth her teeth the moment she heard that. As a Hunter, she's prepared to kill a couple targets, but full-on genocide…
"Leyna, cover me." Dov passed the last shield that she put. "I'm going in."
"Alright."
Dov ran himself into the enemy line, charging through rains of crossbow bolts and magic missiles. Leyna on the other hand, pulled a magic staff out of her [Inventory Ring] as she wish to catalyze her magic.
"Rise from deep within, bloom so far without."
She raised her weapon high, and a brilliant cyan light began to shine greatly, blinding any that dared to see. Cold mists began to surround Dov with comforts as Leyna started casting her support spell.
[Personal Skill]
[5th Act]
"Strength of a Thousand Men!"
Crystal of ice spun around Dov as the spell finished being cast. They're like a whirlwind, siphoning energy from the Hunter's body and colored themselves with it. Now all of them went purple and reaimed their edges at anything but the host.
*Shoot!*
And thousands of blades began to scatter, flying all over the sky, harassing all the dark elves and vampires no matter where they stand. Those blades were cold, yet also sinister since they were coated with dark magic. Luckily, the ice shields were able to protect their allies.
Blood spurted everywhere, painting the ground with thick red. Leyna's 5th Act will enchant the host mana and use it as a weapon. And since it was Dov's mana that she's using, the damage is also impeccable.
"By the Goddess! Someone cast the magic shields!" One of the elves screamed at the top of his lungs. The other elves who heard him quickly did his suggestion, and a chain of command began to spread throughout their line.
Fragments of purple lights started to spawn all over the battlefield, then dark magic shields with the shape of hexagons stood themselves tall to protect the elves from the flying blades.
They might not be able to cover every side of the attack. But it helped them reduce the momentum of those blades.
"Whoa, your skill… is pretty impressive." Celene complimented the human lady beside her.
"It's the 5th Act after all. Although, it won't do much against bosses," Leyna replied. 5th Act personal skill is like the first ultimate skill adventurers acquire. "Luckily the remaining enemies are just normal folks or level 41+ adventurers."
"Dov having staff as one of his symbols is also an important factor for this skill compatibility." She added. "Since it strengthens by intelligence attribute."
Meanwhile, as the dark elves were busy dealing with the annoying blades that slowly pierced through their defenses, Dov cocked his gun, filling it with physical bullets that can conceal themselves as a melee attack.
His bullets can penetrate through magic shields. And since they're made out of winterstone—the strongest metal there is, they can also penetrate through steel or ardorum armor.
*Bang! Bang! Bang!*
One by one those elves fell to their demise.
Nothing can stop Dov's bullet, and no one can stop him from advancing due to his sets of skills and experience. Not to mention the numbers on his statistics were really high, with the intelligence attribute currently ranging at 720.
Every non-adventurer humanoid and level 1 adventurer has a total attributes points around 40-80, depending on their talent. These points also still need to be distributed to 8 attributes.
When people gain a level they'll receive another 10 points to spend. So for someone at Dov level, they usually receive about 620 points from leveling up (lvl 63) alone.
So how come Dov had that much intelligence then? The answers can be spread into mission rewards (1-2/mission if included), dungeon (10/first clear), nest (20/first clear), and lair (40/first clear).
By seeing the numbers on his statistics, people can tell how accomplished Dov was as an adventurer.
With their shield rendered useless to Dov's gun, wave by wave the dark elves began to take a more daring action and rushed towards him with their swords and spears.
This of course is a desperate idea since they were removing themselves from the comfort of their cover, including those which are not magic shields like buildings and rocks.
Because of this rash decision, they were now exposed to other attacks like vampire's magic or Celene's lightning arrow.
Even though the elves had tens of times more personnel compared to the Hunter's group, their firepower and experience were highly lacking. Not to mention they no longer have a leading figure among them.
"Leyna, shouldn't the dark elves have one leader left?" Celene questioned as she only saw three of them throughout this battle.
"The Provost? He's not in the Shrine of Consciousness at the moment." Leyna retorted.
"Ouh… I see…" Celene realized how abandoned these dark elves were then at the moment.
"It's quite a fortunate event for the dark elves if I must say," Leyna added. "After everyone here lost their lives to us, the Provost can gather all the dark elves outside the shrine to rebuild their community back ."
"One leading figure is always better than none, even if it's a bad one."
As time continue to tick, the battlefield got bloodier and bloodier. Not just because of the blood magic the vampires' using, but because of how many of the elves were dead due to their lack of order and strategy.
"Looks like that's enough," Dov muttered as he smacked and kicked all the approaching dark elves away from him. "My guilt to Emi will pill up if we prolong their suffering like this…" With that in mind, Dov quickly jumped to where all his allies were taking cover.
The lines of ice shields were incredibly hard to reach through melee advance, and Leyna can just heal anyone who got hit by enemy projectiles. She might only have a cross as her sole symbol, but she's a complete menace to have as an opponent.
She's the ultimate support you don't want to mess with.
"Leyna, I want to clean up this whole place," Dov said to her. "Teleport everyone to outside the shrine, or else…
"They'll die."
All who heard Dov said that gulped their spittle in fear. All but Leyna.
"Roger!" She salute and hopped to the closest ally there is, began casting her Broker's teleportation skill, and quickly send those she grabbed outside of the battlefield.
"Everyone else left continue to fire everything you got at the enemy! Cover this place until Leyna finishes sending all of you out!"
This plan might take a while since Leyna was still a Cadet Broker, which is equivalent to an Apprentice Hunter. Due to this, the teleportation skill she had was a lot lacking compared to the one owned by someone like her brother, Penn, who was a Source Broker, equivalent to Veteran Hunter.
So Leyna needed to teleport everyone one by one for them all to get out.
"Celene, you'll be the last one to get out. Destroy all this shield before you teleport." Dov instructed.
"Understood."
It took about half an hour for Leyna to finish teleporting everyone outside the shrine. And as instructed, Celene cleared all the ice shields that used to be their cover with her lightning skill. Now Dov was left standing unguarded in the field full of corpses, open for all the eyes to see.
"Good thing every resident gathered here."
With a snap of his fingers, a small dome made of [Shield of Corvus] built itself to protect Dov from all the ranged projectiles. However, he was not all safe since nothing was there to guard him against any melee advance. The elves realize this and many of them came running to finally end the Hunter's life.
"Finally realizing your sins eh, Hunter!?"
"You'll pay for all those dead, bastards!"
"DIE!"
Yet Dov remain where he stood. With every step the elves took closer to him his gun shone brighter, radiating the shade of purple. He was gleaming with dark energy, and it continue to get stronger by the second.
And when a hand managed to touch the [Shield of Corvus], Dov swiftly raised his gun to the air.
[Personal Skill]
[5th Act]
"Black… Massacre…"
As the night went silent time stopped itself from ticking. When all things stayed where they are, tens of shadows of Dov illuminated themselves around him. Each of them aimed their gun in all kinds of directions with their muzzles sparkled with flickers of purple flame.
And when time continue to tick, chains of loud bangs echoed to the entirety of the battlefield. Dark magic bullets flew all over the place and ricocheted after a certain distance to redo their advance on the enemy.
As the name suggests, it was a massacre.
In just a couple seconds Dov erased everything around him, no matter whether they were animate or inanimate objects. All that was left was himself, standing alone on the flat ashen ground.
". . ." Dov then turned himself toward the brightest object in this shrine. "Bless All-father, the Core remains untouched."
"Now… onto the next target."