A single ax swing from Esobel tears off yet another tentacle. But everyone that she cuts down, three more pop up out of the water. What's more, Mana Location is sensing even more creatures in the water. It's extremely blurry underwater, but I can tell that they're all about the size of a human or bigger, and that there's a lot of them.
Mana Location still isn't picking up where Amiel is either. I could probably find him if I put more detail into the spell, but I don't have time for that.
I fly towards Esobel, as I charge up three simultaneous lightning strikes. Adad! Put a whole lot of power into these, I need it!
As I swoop up and start levitating near Esobel, I fire them in three different directions. With the help of Mana Location, I'm able to hit my mark on each of them, taking out three tentacles at once.
"Esobel! Where's Amiel?!"
"Don't know! He's fine, this won't be enough to kill him!"
"There's a whole army underneath us! A lot of them too!"
"Huh? If that's the case, then we can't be wasting time with this stupid sea monster. Stand back, I'm about to finish it off."
Finish it off? Do we even know what this thing is? All we've seen is a bunch of tentacles, how would you know how to kill it? Judging from the tentacles too, it has to be huge. There's no way-
Esobel plants her feet into the ground so hard the stone of the pier breaks into pieces, like in anime. I see the veins in her forehead popping as she lifts her ax over her head, preparing to stab the pier with it like it's a sword. I realize now there are four holes in her ax. Two of them glow red, and the other two glow purple.
"Overcharge!" She yells so loudly it honestly stirs something within me.
She stabs her ax into the pier, and a stream of several extremely powerful explosions travels down into the water, completely destroying the ground she was standing on, and splashing gallons of water into the air.
I hear some sort of gurgled, eldritch roar of pain, as the tentacles flail around and fall back into the water. The water underneath us starts to dye itself red. That… that killed it?! That's terrifying! I really need to remember never to get on Esobel's bad side!
Where's Esobel now though? Off to the side, on another piece of the now broken port. She seems to be fine.
Claws start coming out of the water now too, although they're much smaller. Several bodies come out of the water, they look kind of like humanoid monsters. A red exoskeleton with extremely sharp teeth and bandables, and black, sunken eyes. They walk on two legs and have lobster claws instead of arms.
How interesting… there's so many of them too. Does that humanoid form lend itself to swimming, or maybe they're only semiaquatic and spend a lot of time on land like crabs do. No, they'd be more well known if that was the case, and there are no remote islands around here, I don't think. Actually, maybe the sea queen-
"Swirl!" Esobel yells, taking me out of my thoughts.
Esobel runs around swinging her ax like a mad man again, but this time instead of fire, her ax looks like its swinging around super cooled air. Everything it touches- no, everything it even gets near winds up frozen, because of just how wet everything is. Every monster she even gets near is quickly frozen in place.
I take advantage of this, and unleash a barrage of wind blades, each honed in on a different monster that Esobel froze. When they hit their mark, limbs and heads shatter like chunks of ice being thrown onto pavement. That's also really scary… I should be able to replicate that though…
I start to fly down to Esobel's level, but then I sense something huge coming out of the water. A whole bunch of water splashes everywhere and a huge crab comes up out of the water, using its legs to hold up onto the remains of the pier. Just as a rough estimate on the spot, it's probably around twenty or so feet tall?
As I'm trying to estimate its size, it lunges its open claw at me. I prepare cold air to freeze it with, as well as wind spells to quickly propel me out of the way. I'll freeze it, dodge it, then shatter it with a single wind blade. As inspired from Esobel.
I'm about to launch the cold air at it, as a sword that looks made out of pure lighting comes flying out of nowhere and impales itself into its claw. As soon as this happens, several more lightning swords appear out of nowhere, sticking out of its claw in every conceivable direction before disappearing as soon as they showed up. The claw is left a mangled mess.
Then a single line of light slashes through the crab's head. Nothing happens for a brief moment, but after that, the crab's head goes flying and blood spurts everywhere, as its lifeless body collapses onto the pier.
I look over to whatever could have caused all that, and find Amiel with his rapier drawn. He looks a lot worse off than Esobel. He's absolutely drenched in water, he's bleeding a bit from his forehead, and he's gasping for breath.
Several more of the lobster monsters jump at Amiel, but he swings his rapier once. All I really see is their heads being attached to their bodies, and then not anymore in the next moment. He's clearly exhausted and yet he can still fight like that?!
I fly down to him, but as I get close, another large lobster monster fights its way onto the pier. This one's probably a good 12 or so feet tall, and has four claws instead of the regular two. It lets out a gargled roar at us. I guess on some instinctive level I'm kind of afraid. There really isn't any need to be though, because I can see what's behind it.
"Overcharge!" Esobel yells.
Esobel swings her ax right up into the creature's groin, and a series of massive explosions literally tear its body into two. Its head is basically turned into mincemeat when the explosions reach that far, and blood goes flying everywhere like a fountain.
Esobel walks up to us slowly. She's covered in blood, although I'm almost sure it isn't hers. Both of the sleeves of her suit got ripped off too, revealing her bulging muscles.
"You're a whole lot worse for wear than I was expecting, Amiel. Have you gotten weaker without me noticing?"
"No, it's just that your overkill attack knocked me into the water. As it turns out, fighting enemies from literally every direction while not being able to breathe is a tad bit difficult."
He was underwater the whole time?! Could I manage that? Probably not. That renders wind completely impossible to use, and that's what I pretty much always rely on. Not to mention just how difficult moving underwater is, and how hard it is to get your bearings if you're submerged suddenly. And he had to fight right off the bat? How?
"Now, they're still coming and coming, but it seems like they're avoiding us for now. If we hurry we should still have time to evacuate-"
Suddenly, Amiel's cut off by some sort of indescribable noise. I don't even know where to begin putting it into words. It sounds like hell coming to earth, if that even sounds like anything. Even Amiel and Esobel look extremely unnerved.
They look inland, with concerned looks on their face. I look towards the direction they're looking and see two extremely tall walls of rainbow light slowly closing around the city. Eventually both walls meet in the middle, and a loud thud noise returns the silence.
"Shit, we're already too late?" Amiel says.
That was… it's dawned on me that's the only time I've ever heard Amiel even remotely caught off guard. He clearly didn't expect this.
"What is it?" I ask.
"An extremely high level spell made with a certain connection I'd rather not disclose. It's not a physical wall per se, but it scrambles all mana coming through it. Try to walk through it, and your soul will be jumbled to a point beyond repair, rendering you completely insane. No spells can pass through it for the same reason."
Huh?! That's really bad, isn't it? If that's the case, then no one could ever get in or out. Are we stuck here, without any hope of reinforcements?
"I see your nervousness, but it isn't all bad. It's a huge miscalculation on my part, but there is still hope. It's a wall, not a dome, so it's still possible to fly over it. As for getting rid of it, that's just a matter of finding the caster. Given its magnitude they couldn't possibly be far."
Wait, I could help with that. If I could recognize the spell, it's entirely possible that I could track down the caster with Mana Detection. I could cover so much distance with flight too. I wanted to keep that a secret from Amiel, but it'll be more important to work together here.
"Um, Amiel-"
"Sorry Azariah, but I'll hear your ideas later. We need to hurry up and stop the initial attack and calm down the populace. If we can't do either of those we've already lost, and it won't even be worth discussing any sort of counter attack."
That's- that actually makes sense. We probably should get the situation under control before I think about tracking down whoever's behind this spell. I also have to bring in reinforcements. Given how long that will take, it'll probably be better if I do that first too.
"Esobel and I will take control of my mercenary company and the town guard. They'll respond to the initial attack. As for maintaining morale among the populace… I'll figure that out. Meet me at the city hall. Go ahead and warn anybody you know about what's happening. Tell them whatever you want, but make sure to tell them that Amiel Leon will make sure Rose Harbor gets out of this alive, no matter what. Got that?"
"Y- yes."
"Then hurry up and go!"
"R- right!" I say as I fly off.
Damn it. First priority is definitely April and Sierra. They're probably still at the beach, meaning they're the most in danger. Erika can fly, so he should be able to get away unless he was caught off guard. I don't think there's anyone else I need to be super worried about. I need to prioritize finding April and Sierra.
><><><><
"Well, we're obviously going to be meeting back up with her so she can get ahold of Rhectia and Pitiful, but other than that what are we going to do? The wall closed way faster than Lila told us it would." Esobel asks me.
"I don't know. I'm assuming that Lila lied about the timeframe in order to get something to happen… Still though, there better be a damn good reason for that. As it stands now we're probably going to get quite a few casualties just from scared civilians trying to force their way out of the city. And I can't do anything about it because I'm standing here, because Lila made me think I had way more time than I actually did."
"Yeah, yeah, it's Lila, I get all that. But your old plan obviously isn't going to work because of this. What are we doing now?"
"Helen, I know you're here. Organize the mercenary company to take over the city guard's response. Have the city guard start building defenses inside the city, and keep civilians from leaving. Esobel, you and I will head for the city hall while we try to figure something out."
"Right, got it."
><><><><
By the time I got there, the city hall was crowded to say the least. I was dragged to a private area along with a few other members of Amiel's camp, but even then it's still incredibly loud. Did Amiel have the city guard tell all the locals to come to the city hall?
There's a bit of a stage in front of the stage, with rows of chairs in front of it. I'm assuming that it's normally set up in a different way when it's being used as intended, but right now is a bit of an emergency. I'm off to the side on the stage, and pretty much all the locals are on the ground floor.
I look around. There are a couple people that work for Amiel around me, but all of them clearly have no idea what's going on. All of them are clearly just as panicked as I am. Damn it Amiel, where are you?
As I'm thinking that though I hear one of the side doors open. All the people around me start going crazy, running up to the people entering. I look over to see Amiel and Esobel being followed by several extremely mean looking people in black armor and doused in blood.
Amiel's clothes look a bit dryer now, but it's still clear that they've been doused at some point. His hair's also frizzy as well. He doesn't look like he's ever been bleeding from the head either. All of the blood that was on Esobel is gone now.
"Alright, alright, that's enough! I have a plan! Now let me act on it!" He yells towards all the people swarming him. That's the first time I've heard him sound legitimately annoyed too.
"Azariah! Great timing! Have you seen Lila at all?"
"Huh? Lila? N- no… I could look for her-"
"No, not enough time. I'll speak with her the second I get the chance. I'm not going to have the time to write a very long winded letter either… what's the showup like? A full house?"
"Er, yes…" I say.
Suddenly one of the mean looking people in black armor walks up to me. They're an older looking woman with light brown hair. I also notice that she has elf ears. She reaches out to shake my hand, and I instinctively reach out to shake it. I try my best to not show any disgust on my face. She smells like death.
"So you're Azariah. I'm Helen Hanover, the captain of Amiel's mercenary company. Nice to meet you. It's a shame we're meeting under such dire circumstances."
Captain of Amiel's mercenary company? So this old woman is also undoubtedly very strong. She looks to be an elf too, and she looks old. There's no telling how many decades of experience she has.
A loud thundering boom completely fills my ears. It's so loud the ground below me shakes. I instantly start preparing wind blades, and hone in Mana Location while looking all around me. All of Amiel's advisors seem to be panicking, but Amiel, Esobel, and all the members of the mercenary company seem unbothered.
"That's a good reaction Azariah, but don't worry about that. It's not from an enemy, just Charlotte."
"Huh?!" I can't help but let out.
"I could've sworn Lila introduced you to her. She's a powerful lightning mage you know, she isn't just a mouthpiece of Adad's cult. Esobel can't fight some of the more durable monsters right now, so I've simply left the heavy hitting job to her."
As Amiel says that another thundering boom is heard, and everything shakes again. Seriously, it genuinely feels like a small earthquake. I don't know how far away Charlotte is, but just from the shaking alone every attack is probably using up my entire capacity's worth. If she's far it could probably be more than that, and she's firing them off casually.
Each one of them is definitely stronger than Esobel's "overcharge" which she used on the tentacle monster. Is everyone in Amiel's camp actually a monster? Lila and Cameron didn't seem all that strong, but now I'm not so sure.
"Now time's of the essence here. We need to calm down the populace as soon as possible. If their morale crumbles, so will all of our fighters, and once that happens every man, woman and child here is as good as dead. Unfortunately, I can't speak to the whole city at once, so I'll have to settle for a city hall's worth at first, and we'll have to earn the people's trust through actual military success."
"About that, could maybe I be of some assistance?" I recognize the voice immediately, it's too beautiful not to.
I look over to the voice, and find that gorgeous Kari's priest dressed in the usual plain white dress. How did she even get over here? I'm pretty sure this area is guarded.
"Judging from your attire, you're either a priest, or a priest's assistant at Kari's cult. How did you even find me here?"
"A certain advisor of yours told me to meet you as soon as possible. She said I would be very important, and took me here. She ran off to do her own thing right after getting me through security."
"Hm… and this advisor of mine wouldn't happen to have pink hair and dressed in normal clothes that reveals more skin than it covers?"
"Yes, that does sound like her."
What? No, that doesn't make any sense. "Lila can't talk." I say.
"Oh but she can, dear. Something's probably wrong with her voice box. She can make all the noises needed to speak just fine, but all the ones made in her throat come out way too quiet for a normal person to hear. Enhance your hearing with wind magic though, and you can hear her just fine. She has a rather pretty voice, you know that?"
Something wrong with her voice box? But that also doesn't make sense. Can it not be healed? I'm sure Amiel can afford to bring very powerful healers in for her. Also, couldn't she also amplify her voice with wind magic? She seems to be very compatible with Kari.
"Lila wouldn't bring you to me for no reason. Just what has she asked you to do?"
"She thought that you'd try to bring the people of Rose Harbor back to their senses with a rather grand speach. I excel in manipulating voices with wind magic. Give me enough time to prepare, and I'll be able to make sure your voice is heard by every last person in Rose Harbor."
"How long do you need?"
"Just a minute or two without being bothered. May I head out to the stage?"
"Yes. I'm going to write two very short letters, verify they're from me, and talk to Azariah here. Will that be enough time?"
"More than enough. I'll get ready." She says before running off to the stage.
I make a note to myself to try enhancing my hearing with wind magic, and making it easily adjustable with Ctothis' connection. Now though I have to listen to whatever Amiel has to say. Another loud boom starts shaking the entire building again.
"Paper and quill! Someone get those to me now! And envelopes! I need two! And an urgent stamp!" Amiel yells
His advisors run around trying to get him everything he needs. He sits down by a table that I follow him to. His advisors put several sheets of paper in front of him and handed him an ink and quill. He starts writing about as fast as I type when I realize I have an essay due today, and I've written none of it.
His handwriting is incredibly loose, and honestly kind of pretty. It's like cursive. I didn't know that was a thing in this language. The general format doesn't seem to be all too different from letters back home.
He finishes writing them both incredibly quickly. I can tell the general personalities of who he's writing too given how he wrote each of them.
To Rhectia, he promised military success that would help her win the Royal Selection. As well as a threat that if she didn't come he's claim Rhectia didn't care about the lives of her citizens and use her inaction as proof.
To Pitiful, he simply says that innocent people are in danger. Also, this could possibly be orchestrated by the demon lord, and that he knows this would pique her interest immediately.
When he finishes writing each of them, he draws an extremely small magic circle in the bottom right corner. After that, he takes a needle out of his clothes, and- draws blood on his finger? He rubs the blood across the magic circles, before folding the letters up and sealing them in their respective envelopes.
On the front of each of them he writes "From Amiel Leon, To Rhectia Royther," and "From Amiel Leon, To Pitiful Girl" respectively. On the bottom left corner he stamps "URGENT" in red ink. On the bottom right corner, he draws the same magic circle and smears his blood on it for each before handing them both to me.
"According to my latest information, Rhectia Royther is currently in control of the Heafdes adventuring guild. Pitiful Girl should be staying at a normal inn along with many of her men. For her, just look for an inn way too many snow white skinned people are staying in for it to be a coincidence."
"A- alright…" I say, not knowing how else to respond.
"Before you go though, you're definitely going to have to conserve your mana to make it all the way to Heafdes. I have a solution for that though. Helen, which one of your men has them?"
Helen doesn't answer, but one of her men pulls out a large, leather scroll out from behind their armor. They unroll it in front of me, and inside of it are several pouches holding a lot of small vials of a light blue potion. They hand it off to me, and I hold it in my hands. Let's see… 12 vials across… 4 vials up and down, that's… 48 doses of whatever potion this is.
"These are all mana recovery potions. They'll help keep you mana up on your trick to Heafdes and back. Use them as you start running low on mana. Don't worry about overusing them, they're all of such great quality that there's no way you'll have to worry about using them all." Amiel says.
"Mana… recovery potions?" I ask.
I mean, it's obvious what they do. Just look at the name. Amiel's words also confirm that, but I just wonder why I haven't heard of these before?
"A little tip, if you have Diana's connection, I'd suggest opening up your throat, and just pouring it in that way. If you've ever had any medicine that tasted awful, this is like that, just much much worse."
Oh… I guess that would kind of hinder their popularity. Still though, I still really feel as if Lucidna would have recommended them to me? Maybe they're just stupidly expensive? So much so that only a one percenter like Amiel could get a hold of this much? Yeah, that makes sense.
"Azariah, I don't mean to sound rude, but that is all I need you for right now. Please, leave for Heafdes immediately."
"N- now?"
"Yes, now. Be careful around the wall by the way. Flying just above the lights should be safe, but the height can fluctuate so fly a fair bit higher than that if you can. Remember that if it so much as grazes your soul "Azariah" is pretty much dead."
"Y- yes sir!" I say, even though it's a bit weird.
I roll up the leather scroll and put it in my shirt. I run out of city hall as I try to figure out just where I'm going to put the letters. I decide to stuff them in my bra when no one's looking. That should be the most secure place on me, and I'll definitely be able to tell if they fall out. I'm not doing this for sexy reasons, I swear!
I tie myself to my wind glider like I've done a hundred times at this point, and begin to fly. I decide to take Amiel's advice and fly high above the wall of rainbow light.
I look down towards the shore, and find the battle already starting. I see some huge Cthulu looking thing rise out of the water. It looks like a mass of tentacles, with a skull for a face, and several huge arms. Just the part of it sticking out of the water is a good hundred feet tall at least.
Then the largest bolt of lightning I've ever seen in my life strikes the thing, not only killing it instantly, but also causing it to explode. Pieces of tentacle that could easily weigh several tons are sent flying like pieces of small debris every direction. That was definitely more mana than my entire capacity.
I notice more of Amiel's mercenary company fighting hordes of lobster monsters coming out of the ocean. There are already so many bodies of humans and the enemy and it's only just started. I notice larger lobster monsters than the one Esobel split in half walking among them too, and destroying lines of soldiers with single attacks.
I notice huge stingrays flying around too. I'm not sure what they're doing, but the mercenaries are prioritizing shooting them down with magic.
I want to help so badly! I couldn't do anything about the truly huge monsters, but those stupid big lobster monsters would be easy for me to kill in droves if I used the right spells! And the stingrays! I've been craving another good dog fight for a while now! I want nothing more than to just fly down there and fight, but I have a job to do.
I have to keep that in mind and keep flying. I want to get my hands dirty so badly it actually kind of hurts, but I restrain myself. My job is to get reinforcements here, and that is a job I will complete no matter what.
I fly so high that all the buildings of Rose Harbor blend into each other. At this point I'm probably about twice as high up as that wall's highest point. Satisfied that my soul isn't going to get scrambled the second I leave I start flying towards Heafdes.
Normally I try to keep my speed down to conserve mana, but according to Amiel with the potions he gave me I don't need to worry about that. So I pump my speed up as high as it will go using Kari's and Ctothis' connections.
I'm not going as fast as I was during my race with Erika, but I'm still definitely in the 90 - 100 mph range. The only breaks I'll take are to drink and to sleep. I'll have a quick meal when I get to Heafdes, but other than that, I can't afford to waste any time.
I have to bring reinforcements back as quickly as possible! So that I can get involved in this fight!