The monsters increased their speed once they saw their first ally falling, and they even managed to fly while zigzagging just by changing the position of their wings.
Sigma furrowed his eyebrows when he fired the second and third arrow and ended up missing. A vein in his forehead began to bulge, and without hesitation, he used his free points to increase his dexterity and multiplying by two hundred percent its value.
Before the enemies had the chance to attack, three more arrows were fired, and they landed on the heads of the monsters. As if they didn't care about the losses, the enemies kept flying toward them and eventually used their wind magic.
While looking over her shoulder, Sabrina could see the enemies' wind arrows and then created a thin wind wall to block the attacks. While it didn't block them completely, it made them lose a lot of power. Thanks to it, Ed swung his sword and then blocked all of them. Sigma furrowed his eyebrows and looked at him when the tip of the sword passed a few centimeters from his left side. It couldn't be helped since the horses were only one meter away from each other.
"Haha… sorry…" Ed forced a smile.
At least he did his job, and the monsters frowned when they saw the result. The wind wall dissipated, and then Sigma began to attack again, focusing on the beasts that got carried away and approached too much. Sigma could almost see the monsters' annoyance when five of them fell to the ground.
[You got 50 experience points.]
[You got 50 experience points.]
…
His allies were only helping indirectly, but Sigma still was receiving a lot less than the total… it couldn't be helped, though. He could only blame his own incompetence for being unable to deal with enemies all by himself.
Regardless, the enemies tried to split to the sides and tried to attack like that in order to make sure that Sabrina's wind wall would be less effective, but after using several double shots in a row, Sigma wiped out all the enemies from one side, and Sabrina blocked the attacks of the other side.
The remaining beasts formed a line to approach in order to use each other as a shield, but that only helped Sigma since he only had to aim at the same spot over and over again. Ten of those creatures were killed in less than ten seconds, and they lost thirty of their original fifty. When that happened, they turned to the side and then began to retreat.
"It seems that our original guess was right… they don't want to move that much further away from their line of defense," Ed said when the horses stopped moving.
"That or they received the orders to retreat, or they realized that they can't underestimate us again," Sigma said.
"Only demons can control monsters like that…" Ed said and then furrowed his eyebrows since he didn't consider that possibility. "While they can do that, they need to be close to the demons… their magic can't work like that. New orders need to be given when they are within their field of vision."
"So, a demon made that attack on the wall and made the monsters retreat, but the creature didn't join the fight?" Sigma asked after he crossed his arms.
"I know that it sounds ridiculous considering how we always say how powerful they are, but sometimes they act like that," Ed said and then shrugged. "Out of boredom or pleasure."
Kind of like monsters who enjoy seeing their prey struggle in front of them… it made sense. Regardless, since Eclair didn't have to use any mana, she went to help Ed. At the same time, Sabrina and Sigma mediated to recover their mana.
Sigma's Mediation was already at level nine. Still, he felt like it was at a low level, yet since he could only recover enough mana for three extra arrows every ten minutes. Besides, he used ten times more than he could recover in ten minutes. Unfortunately, there was nothing that they could do to deal with that aside from being patient. Sigma's mana wasn't the only problem, though. When he recovered all of it after one hour and a half, Sabrina still was at it.
"As expected, she had to use a lot of mana to block the enemy attacks completely," Ed said and then crossed his arms while looking to the side. "I wish that I could ask her to hold back a little on the mana usage, but I am barely managing to block the attacks as they are."
Sigma had to be faster… that was the only solution he could think of. He leveled up once in that fight, so he decided to increase his speed and do that again in the next fight. In any case, they had to wait for another hour before Sabrina had all of her mana back, and they couldn't risk it since the enemies might come with more numbers, after all.
As soon as they turned around and moved back to the enemy's territory, they noticed that they looked more concentrated on the area ahead than on the sides. The monsters could tell that they were planning to take a detour.
The group looked at each other without saying anything. The only thing that I could do was to try and see the results. For a moment, Sigma considered using magic and combining his with Sabrina's. Still, he shook that idea out of his mind. He felt more confident using the bow as a main weapon… and magic as support. Once again, when they were five hundred meters away, the monsters turned to face them… at least three hundred of them.