Waking up, I looked down and noticed Anise still cuddling with a happy smile into my arms.
"Morning, sleepyhead." I said while ruffling her hair slightly.
Anise slowly opened her eyes and gave me a weird look: "Good morning. You seem to be in a good mood today."
I nodded and stood up. I didn't know why myself, but I was actually in a pretty good mood. Checking and seeing that my mana and spirit were fully recovered, I gathered everyone together.
"I'm going to check out the situation outside and see how the demons responded to us clearing out the western forest. You guys wait here until you hear from me."
Seeing that everyone nodded in agreement, I gave Anise a small kiss and teleported outside after which I made myself invisible and started flying in the direction of the city.
As I was looking down, I noticed that, even if I was flying in the eastern side, there seemed to be indeed a change in the number of demon patrols I was passing over and Ai confirmed it for me.
[There is an increase in the number of patrols and also the number of demons per patrol. If I had to estimate, I would say their numbers tripled since the last time. I can also feel mana scattered in the atmosphere all around those patrols. It might be some sort of detection magic.]
'Troublesome indeed. Let's go check out the other sides.' I replied as I went full circle around the city walls, but discovered the situation to be just as bad on the other sides as well.
After marking every patrol I managed to notice without getting to close to the ground and updating the map, I returned to the underground room and told everyone the news.
"So, do we change cities?" asked Oliver.
I started to seriously consider changing cities since it would be too risky to continue hunting here.
"If we can't killed them silently, why don't we just wiped them all at the same time?" asked Lysa all of the sudden, causing all the eyes in the room to turn on her.
"Do you have any plan?" I asked back, really curious about what she had in mind.
"Not really a plan, but if we manage to gather a decently large group of them together, we can wipe them out before they barely had any time to react. Then we can retreat before the others from the city or even Azrin come to investigate."
"Yes, but there are quite a lot of problems. How do we make them gather together without getting the attention of Azrin. If Azrin comes, he will probably be able to easily take care of out attack. There is also the problem of locking down space so a spatial wizard won't teleport them away." I said, liking her idea but not really feeing it was a viable strategy.
"What if you use attacks large enough so you won't need to gather them close together?" asked Oliver all of a sudden before continuing: "Ethan could probably use a large spell, the same way he did in Bastion, to attack the areas the demons were most concentrated in. Some of them might be able to escape using spatial magic, but you should still be able to kill a large number of demons this way. The fact that they increased their numbers might not necessarily be a bad thing."
We were so focused on doing thing quietly, that we didn't even consider the option of just using a quick large scale attack.
'What do you think Ai?'
[If done right, you might be able to pull it off, but you need to be careful and leave the area as soon as you launch the attack. Azrin will definitely feel the attack coming as soon as it gets close to the city.]
'What are our odds of success?'
[If you don't distract Azrin, 10%. He will most likely be able to negate your attack.]
I relayed Ai's words to the rest and Oliver responded with another idea: "It might be risky, but what if you attack the area surrounding the city and Anise, together with Lysa, launch an attack on the city itself? The attack of two over level 6o wizards will probably be enough to keep him busy enough for you to wipe down the patrols in a large area outside the city walls."
'Ai, what do you think?'
[The odds of success will increase to 80%. The only way that could fail is if any of the other generals happens to be inside the city and they can split up to deal with all the attacks.]
'But do we know for sure he will prioritize protecting the city? I don't feel like casually wiping out all the humans behind the city walls, even if they are under the demons' control.'
[There is a high chance he will indeed prioritize the city over the surrounding patrols. The highest number of demons are still behind the city walls and it would make no sense to ignore that attack to block the one outside. Also, since they kept most of the humans alive, they must need them for something.]
It was a risky plan, but the gains heavily outweighed the loses in my opinion so I eventually agreed to it. The only remaining problem was if I had enough mana to pull it of. After some calculations with Ai, she gave me an idea.
[You could use the staff to convert your spirit into mana. This will overcharge your avatar and cause you to lose health points, but if you release the mana fast enough, there shouldn't be any major issues.]
After some more calculations, Ai concluded that I needed a total of 3264 mana to pull off an attack strong enough to cover the surroundings of the city completely. That was an amount of mana even a level 100 wizard couldn't possibly have, but using the mana stored inside the Staff of Eternal and converting a portion of my spirit I could actually do it. After going over the plan a couple more times, since Oliver and Velor had no part to play, I asked Anise to teleport them at the Bastion's entrance so that I would conserve my mana.
Once Oliver and Velor were safe inside the battalion, the three of us floated high above the city.
"Are you guys ready? We must all launch our attacks at the same time for this to work."
Seeing both Anise and Lysa nod with serious expression, I summoned the staff, added the free points into intelligence and started converting my spirit into mana. After about half of my spirit got converted, pain started spreading from my abdomen area and my avatar started losing health points at a rate of 20 per second, but it was still manageable.
"Now cast the spells!" I said and used all my gathered mana to form eight purple fireballs all around us. The fireballs had so much power concentrated inside them that one could see space cracking around them.
The girls also cast two big attack spells , one being a divine spell and the other another fireball, this one being white instead of purple.
Seeing that we were all ready, I gave the signal and we all launched our attacks. My fireballs headed for the area surrounding the city, forming one big circle about five kilometers away from it's walls and the girls' attack went straight down towards the city itself. After the attacks were launched and I started feeling a bit drowsy from reaching zero mana, Anise teleported all of us at the battalion's entrance just as we planned beforehand.
Since we didn't want to leave anything to chance, we all used our total mana in the attacks and, after giving each other a smile, passed out right then and there.
I woke up a few hours later and found myself laying down on a soft bed with Anise right besides me. Seeing that she was still asleep, I didn't move and asked Ai: 'How did it go?'
Ai didn't respond and just showed me my status.
[
Name: Ethan Knott
Age: Avatar 19;
Race: Avatar Human;
Soul: Tier II;
Experience: 1 425 174/7 000 000;
Health Points: 930/930;
Mana Points 1630/1630;
Level: 90;
Vitality: 93;
Strength: 96;
Dexterity : 94;
Intelligence: 163;
Resistance: 92;
21 free stat point
———
System Points: 413 429 350;
Spirit: 3192;
]
'I leveled up 21 times?'
[Affirmative. You managed to kill a total of 2116 demons all over level 70, receiving an average of 250 000 experience per kill. There were some of them that were also level 80 and even 90. I distributed the experience evenly between the five of you or you would have reached well over level 100. You need a total of 144 million experience to reach level 100, which means around 576 more demon kills of an average level of 70.]
'How much total experience did I received from this attack? Before distributing it to the rest of the party.'
[Around 527 million.]
'Damn wizards are terrifying…'
[It was the 100% increase in power of elemental attacks from the staff combined with the increase in power that came with your soul evolution. Without these two, the demon wizards on the ground would have been able to block a big part of the attack, resulting in the number of kills decreasing from 2116 to an estimated 400 or so, most of those kills being on lowest level of demons.]
'Still scary nonetheless…'
As I was talking to Ai, Anise also woke up and a look of surprise appeared on her face as she felt the mana circling through her body.
"Ethan, what level am I now?" she asked while staring at me with eyes full of expectations.
"You are level 90." I checked her status and replied.
"Exalted Wizard?!.." Mumbled Anise as a smile appeared on her lips and tears starting falling down her cheeks.
She then lifted herself up and kissed me on the lips all of a sudden before hugging me tight.
"Thank you, Ethan. I finally managed to surpass grandma and fulfill my and mother's dream of becoming an Exalted Wizard. Thank you, thank you…"
She kept hugging me and thanking me non stop. I couldn't really understand the over the top reaction, but I was happy for her nonetheless and hugged her back.
Once she calmed down, she released me and thanked me once more before asking: "What happened with the city?"
"I have no idea. I just waited here for you to wake up. Let's go down and ask the others."
She nodded and we both walked out the room. Once we reached the main hall of Anna's house, we were surprised to see all kinds of unknown faces running around like headless chickens, each carrying some sort of papers in their hands. Anna, Oliver and Velor were sitting at the main table and looking through various documents as well.
Anise and I looked at each other and, seeing the confusion in each other's eyes, we made our way towards the main table. Once we got close to Anna, she extended a paper towards me and said: "Take this to party 238, tell them to start right away."
I was stunned and picked up the piece of paper on instinct. Taking a look at it, it seemed to be a mission to intercept a squad of demons and eliminate them. But before I could read more details, a young woman picked the paper form my hand and ran outside.
"Anna, what is going on?" I asked, seeing that she didn't even notice it was me who she gave the paper to.
Startled by my voice, she looked at me and said: "Velor will explain to you since he's not really doing anything. I'm quite busy with all this mess."
Seeing that Anna returned to writing something on a piece of paper, I turned towards Velor, looking for an explanation.
"Apparently the demons have panicked after your attack and started gathering the bulk of their troops back inside the city walls of every city. This made them vulnerable as they are abandoning the other settlements and the Battalion started hunting them down in mass as they are retreating."
I understood that our attack was strong, but I don't think it required a mass retreat like this, luckily Ai was there to explain.
[Since the attack was so close to Azrin's city, he was able to probably feel the mana signature of the attack. What would you think if those eight attacks all happened in an instant and carried the same mana signature?]
'I don't understand?'
[A single wizard able to generate the destructive power of an over six thousand mana attack? Of course he will get scared.]
'Oh.. Now I get what you're saying.'
Now that the demons were retreating, I was even more curious to see what the result of our attack so I teleported in midair some distance away from the city, but I wasn't really expecting the scene that appeared before my eyes.
The city in itself was fine, but the area for a radius of over ten kilometers all around it was completely destroyed forming a gigantic moat that was slowly filling up with water.
'Good thing Azrin managed to repel the girls' attack.' I though to myself as I teleported back inside the main hall in Anna's house and asked her to let me help with clearing some of the retreating demons as well. It took a total of four more days until the reports of retreating demons finally stopped, period in which I managed to level up two more times, mostly because the demons that were distributed in villages and towns far from the city were not that high level.
[
Name: Ethan Knott
Age: Avatar 19;
Race: Avatar Human;
Soul: Tier II;
Experience: 287 486/8 500 000;
Health Points: 950/950;
Mana Points 216/1650;
Level: 92;
Vitality: 95;
Strength: 98;
Dexterity : 96;
Intelligence: 165;
Resistance: 94;
23 free stat point
———
System Points: 413 429 350;
Spirit: 3368;
]
After the demons finished their retreat behind city walls and the craze inside the Blessed Battalion's headquarters died down, we all took some much deserved time to rest. During this time, I also managed to fulfill my contract with the lesser spirit and he returned to the dark dimension, freeing Ai from having to keep an eye on him all the time.
In the morning of the next day, we gathered in the main hall once more to speak about what we would do next. Since hunting for more experience was quite hard from now, with the demons all having retreated under the protection of a demon general and millions of innocent humans, I figured it was time we moved our sights on the demon generals themselves.