I leaped down the icy deck and plunged into the ranks of monsters. They were strong and numerous, but clearly lacking agility. We already had experience in holding off a whole army in a narrow passage, and when they were all focused on one point, it made our job much easier.
"I can help!" Grain, who had been sitting on the deck before, slowly got up, but it was evident that his previous magic had greatly exhausted him.
"No, make sure our piece of wreckage doesn't fall apart in the heat of battle. However, Levris could assist in repelling those who break through us."
We couldn't risk Grain in such a situation, but without magic, we couldn't effectively deal with enemies on an industrial scale either. I attempted to gather mana in my blades for lightning strikes, but there was only enough for a couple of blows before it dissipated. It couldn't be considered substantial assistance, especially since the fishfolk were easily killed with a couple of precise strikes. I abandoned the attempts to rely on magic and saved my strength for another time.
I assessed the situation. Every minute, a hundred enemies approached the ship. We managed to kill about half of them, and the rest had to be repelled by Levris. She couldn't kill them; thus, she simply threw them back into the sea, from where they tried to climb back onto our ship. Algo used the mana accumulated in his blade to kill several enemies with one powerful blow, but at such a rate, his strength wouldn't last long. Vivien efficiently dispatched the foes, but when faced with monsters with stronger armor, she needed to take a break before attacking them with renewed vigor. The numerical advantage was too strong, and we were gradually being pushed towards the edge of the deck.
"Hilda, Asura, anyone, can you help us?" I tried to contact the others.
"Sorry, but he seems to have understood our plan. Dagon is trying to break free from the ice trap. If we move away, everything will be lost."
"I still can do something!" Seleria waved to me from the deck. Gathering fire in her hands, she threw a massive fireball into the crowd. "Take this! You're not that tough on land!"
One blast from the princess incinerated half of the army.
"A couple more volleys, and we can forget about them. Well done, Seli!" Vivien looked happily towards the deck, where the princess hung weakly on the railing.
"I'll definitely do it... just..." Seleria gasped heavily as she slumped to the floor. "Give me a moment to catch my breath, and I'll roast them all."
"Her magic isn't something we can rely on too much," the previous pursuit had greatly exhausted the princess. If we forced her to use magic too often, she would lose consciousness and wouldn't be able to help us anymore.
Meanwhile, the enemies regrouped, replenishing the ranks we had just destroyed.
"They seem endless. Is Aileen still taking long?"
...
"Aileen?"
"Well, we've encountered some small problems..."
"What do you mean problems?"
"I don't know how to fix it, but there's too much charge in the feathers. We either need to divert it or send it back to the beginning of the chain... But all the lightning mages are busy."
That was to be expected; currently, only I could correct the excess energy, but I couldn't leave the battlefield.
"Seleria, please make a couple more volleys."
"Don't ask the impossible! Do you want me to die?"
"Then I can help!" A voice echoed from the water behind the ship. A shadow soared above the ice crust, and a shockwave scattered our enemies.
A beautiful dragon with a shade of azure landed next to us. Her body was streamlined, not as robust as Ragni's, and in size, she was slightly smaller than her current adult form. Her paws had membranes between the fingers, and her tail had something resembling a large fin at the end.
"Mmm, Miss Alira? You seem to have changed... a new hairstyle?" I couldn't resist making a silly joke.
"Haha, help your sorceresses already. I'll manage this attack somehow."
With the unexpected reinforcement, we finally had some time to catch our breath, but Dagon also used the time to contemplate his actions.
"So, what's going on with you?" I finally managed to free myself and returned to the ballista.
During that time, several substantial holes appeared in the hull, and Dagon was slowly moving away from the ship, breaking through the ice.
"We've never done this before, but it seems we're transferring too much power," Katrina frowned, trying to reduce the discharge, but it was too late for that from her side.
"I thought I had everything figured out, but it looks like there are some forces within the metal..." Aileen was intensely calculating something on a piece of paper, trying to come up with a plan of action. "In the end, vibrations occurred in the feathers, which won't allow us to aim properly. Even if we fire, the arrow will lose its direction right away."
I exchanged glances with Miriam, but she just shrugged.
"It's the same as shooting with trembling hands, given the distance, the spread could be about ten meters. Can you do something about it?"
We needed to discharge the excess energy; it's just that I doubted if I could withstand such a strong discharge. I could only hope that my blades could endure such magic.
"I hope this won't kill me," I carefully applied the blades to the arrow - the small one to the feathers and the large one to the tip. As soon as the metal touched the discharge, lightning pierced between the handles of the swords; if the discharge went through my heart, I would already be dead, but it only slowly killed the nerves in my hands.
The lightning heated the metal between the two pieces, and I felt the heat accumulating in my palms. The same applied to the arrow.
"Hey! It's heating up faster than needed; it will melt prematurely."
But at that moment, the lightning disappeared, and the vibration stopped. The arrow began to emit a bright glow, but electrical discharges were still running along it.
"What?" Katrina released the end of the arrow. "It seems I can't transfer any more charge to the arrow."
"I don't know what happened, but there's still voltage in the release, which means it's ready to shoot," Miriam smiled contentedly. "Now we just need to make it freeze for a second."
I looked at Dagon; he was furiously struggling with the dragons, or at least trying to, but no one else except Ragni had allowed any of his blows to land. At some point, our eyes met, and the monster's gaze dropped to the ballista next to me.
"Hmm, so this is what you had in mind?" The monster gave up trying to escape and reached for my left hand. The hand bent, and a long spike emerged from the elbow, or rather, it seemed more like a bone.
Grasping the end of the sting, the monster pulled out a long jagged bone, vaguely resembling a sword, or rather, it was a sword made from his own body, and one of his strikes would be enough to split our ship in half.
"Krito!! Make him turn as soon as possible; I can't shoot him in the side!"
Miriam's panic was entirely understandable; Dagon stood facing us at a half-turn and was already preparing to strike. If we ran away now, he would destroy our last chance of defeating him. We couldn't retreat, and the necromancers' shield wouldn't save us from such a blow.
"I don't care what happens," my left hand was no longer capable of gripping the blade properly, so I threw it and leaped across, holding just one sword in my hand.
There was no chance of parrying his sword, and avoiding it was also unlikely. I hoped my strength would be enough. I focused on the tattoo on my hand; if all went well, I could block his strike; I just needed to find a weak spot. The black flames began to envelop the blade, which severely drained my strength, but it should be enough for one strike.
"Hey, at least warn me!" I heard Ragni's scream; the mark had drained both her powers and her strength, and she involuntarily returned to her human form, falling from a height of ten meters, but it probably wouldn't hurt her health.
The bone blade was sharp and deformed, but like all bones, it was supposed to narrow toward the end before expanding.
Dagon finished his swing and forcefully brought the blade down on us. At that moment, I threw a clump of flames at the base of the blade.
"It won't help," Dagon showed no intention of deflecting the strike; he couldn't possibly know what the black flames were famous for.
The blade passed through the flames, but at some point, two concentrated dark clumps appeared on both sides of the blade, and they exploded. Two forces of destruction began to rip everything around them with a screech, and the blade split in two. The explosion sent the blade flying, and it crashed into the ice in front of the hull, pushing back the monster's hand, causing him to recoil.
"Shoot!"
"I see it myself," Miriam aimed the ballista at the monster's chest but at the last moment redirected it to the lower chest area: "I hope I didn't miss."
The arrow of light pierced the sky, and only after that, a roar shook the battlefield. The shockwave cracked the ice and scattered the remains of the ballista across the deck.
"Did you hit him?" Miriam got up from the floor, staring at the massive body of the monster, unable to see where the shot had landed.
The monster held his left hand on his stomach, as if trying to feel what should have been there. Black blood slowly began to flow down his body, staining the icy surface. The monster withdrew his hand and looked at the spot where his shield had just been. A hole more than two meters in diameter gaped in his body, a through hole.
"Impossible..." Dagon checked the point of impact again with his hand.
"Did I miss?" Miriam's voice trembled.
"Where did you shoot??" I thought she would shoot at his chest, where the heart is usually located, but she aimed at the joint between the chest and abdomen.
"Well, I thought he wasn't entirely human... and the organs of crabs are more centrally located. Besides, his shield in the center was much thicker than at the edges; I thought he would protect what's most valuable first."
"It's pointless; I haven't been so weak for a long time to die from such a wound," Dagon gathered strength, and blue flames ignited on the edges of the huge wound.
"Does that mean... I made a mistake?"
I scrutinized the wound; something was wrong with it. The holes from Seleria's flames healed instantly, but this wound required much more effort from Dagon.
"No, you didn't make a mistake," a woman in a blue dress emerged from behind the ship, Alira had returned to her human form. "The fish people have stopped; it means he lost control over them."
I looked at the wound again. The flames of life still flickered at its edges, but the wound only grew bigger from it.
"What's happening?!" Dagon was already coughing up blood, but the wound was expanding despite his efforts. "Such a little hole won't break me."
"You're wrong, dark god," Alira smiled contentedly. "I was always wondering how you could control divine power that doesn't belong to you. Even Ultras was given a fragment of the flame, so there was nothing unusual about it, but you stole all of this power."
"And what of it? What I took is rightfully mine!!" Dagon winced in pain.
"No, the power doesn't belong to you; you're simply not attuned to it. The power of the blue flame is the power of life, but it's also the power of death. You suppressed the force of decay with your powerful regeneration, but when they destroyed the source of your life, you became vulnerable."
"It changes nothing; I can regenerate any organ!"
"You could, if you had the time for it. But all the regenerative power you used before was returned to you in an instant as the power of decay. You will fall apart before you manage to regenerate anything."
"I won't admit defeat to inferior beings. I am the killer of gods!" Dagon strained as much as he could, but his body was quickly falling apart, and the wound had already grown to half of his torso. "I will kill at least one of you."
The monster swung one last time to strike the nearest enemy, but I had no strength to escape. Before his fist could slam me into the ground, someone grabbed me by the cloak and pulled me aside. With a crunch, the remains of the monster's torso detached from the main body, and he fell lifeless.
"That was almost choking," I rubbed my throat, looking at Hilda, who stood aside and whistled something nonchalantly. "But thanks for the help."
"No need for thanks... But what do we do with him?" the princess pointed at the "god."
The power of decay was eating away at his body even stronger, slowly reaching his neck.
"How could I lose..." Dagon choked on blood, decay was already approaching his jaw.
"You simply attacked the wrong weaklings," Seleria staggered and approached the monster's head. His body was already breaking down, but his head remained conscious.
"You should have gathered more strength..."
"No, you just had to use it correctly," I smiled contentedly. "By the way, you were defeated by the weakest of us."
I nodded towards Miriam, who blushed vigorously at my words.
"And of course, you lacked strong allies. For you, everyone else was just slaves."
"Kuh..." Dagon choked on blood, and decay was creeping up to his jaw.
"May I end his suffering?" Seleria exchanged glances with Katrina, and the guildmaster nodded in response.
The sorceress took a deep breath and released a stream of flames. The remnants of the monster's body turned to dust within seconds.