Going Strong

Screams rang through the air as demons and humans alike fell beneath blades and arrows. The war drums and crimson rain never stopped, providing a hypnotic cadence to the battle that many Mages had sunken into.

Every thump of a drum was accompanied by the thump of their heart, every rallying cry loosed from the imps' mouths met with one of their own.

Cait smashed the head of an imp against the concrete, rolling out of the way of a descending sword and grabbing the attacker's leg before pulling him to the ground.

She snatched the dropped sword and stabbed the imps in the throat, tossing the sword into a mass of the red bastards afterward as she snatched another imp's pitchfork by the pole and wrenched it out of his hands.

With a twirl, the imp's pitchfork was brought around and into his chest, his own weapon becoming his demise.

Around her, Pospo nipped and clawed at the feet of the imps, distracting them at opportune times so Cait could capitalize. Pospo's light beams were Mana-based and thus useless, but she didn't seem to mind.

Cait couldn't use her Skill, so what?

Her Skill was the least of these pathetic creatures' concerns.

Venden was thankful that his Skill was of the Mental Realm, so he could keep it active without touching the imps. He couldn't use his Spell, The Test of Time, but half of a second of foresight was enough to keep him alive.

Demons couldn't do away with auras, whether by absorbing, eating, or burning them, until they were at least Tier IV, and then they could only take Mana from an aura of a weaker Stage than theirs.

However, Venden's Spell charged his aura with a different kind of Mana than the type his aura used, a type the demons could snatch, so it was out of commission.

Venden was no warrior, but like every noble, he had a modicum of self-defense training. Considering his opponents had no training at all, that was enough to scrape by with only a few nicks and cuts.

Every minute was another he tired, but the adrenaline flowing through his veins prevented it from hampering him, at least for the moment.

He was finding himself immensely regretful of not having learned how to use a weapon, but his Skill, the pitchfork he had stowed his dagger for, and the wooden shield he had torn from another imp's corpse was still enough to keep himself alive for the moment.

He hadn't killed that one, but he wasn't about to worry about the spoils of war when the war was still ongoing.

'This sucks,' Samantha thought.

She was doing better than Venden, but not by much.

Since her Skill was a Physical (Self) one, she could use it against these creatures without risking a bonfire of imps, but the dagger she held in her off-hand and the short sword in her other were far more useful at this moment than a bit of chill.

Her Familiar, Gevum, was her saving grace.

The metallic Zimdon hovered out of reach of the imps' weapons, using his magnetic pull to disrupt or slow their swings, sometimes even halting the weapon in its tracks.

Some imps had wooden cudgels or nothing at all, but Gevum's help was better than nothing. And thanks to his experience, he could do all of this without his Mana contacting the creatures.

Those were the physically weaker imps, however, but Samantha took full advantage of every minor stall or hindrance to slay another imp.

Like Venden, she had to worry about conserving stamina, which was easier for her as Gevum lent his strength to her weapons.

It was only a few drops spared from the bucket of stamina she used with each swing, but she counted her blessings while she could.

Fate's excitement, in contrast to Cait's ever-growing bloodlust, had started to dim to a faint rush.

He by far had it the easiest due to his Skill, which prevented him from the worst of wounds. He still got cut and nicked when he wasn't paying attention, but he had to conserve his Mana.

He didn't know how long this battle would continue for.

To conserve his resources, he used Reflexive Zero for defense rather than keeping his Skill active at all times.

The timing was still something he had trouble pinning down, which was how he kept getting afflicted with minor wounds, but this defense combined with his sword for offense was enough to keep himself safe and make his enemies dead.

The largest part of his success wasn't because of his Skill, but rather because of his concerted effort with Kravoss.

Kravoss' Breath was draconic in nature, so it was more water than Mana and thus mostly mundane. For a Water Dracok, this water came from the surrounding air or was generated within themselves as a natural part of digestion.

This similarly applied to the Breath of all dragons and draconic descendants, and was one of the many reasons that even demons feared the powerful creatures.

Imps couldn't absorb the natural water, and what little heat they gained from the Mana they could snag was doused by razor-sharp water jets to their faces and vitals.

Honestly, Fate started to feel bad for the imps, what with the way the gathered Mages systematically massacred them. But it was their own fault.

Who told them they could take on the strongest city on Ziobrun with nothing but Tier IIs and Tier IIIs?

Suddenly, the war drums increased in tempo, doubling in volume to the point Fate couldn't even hear his heavy breathing.

The imps screeched or bleated or mooed as they surged back toward the opening in the wall, stepping over their dead comrades and sometimes getting cut down in their mad dash to the outside.

Fate's sword arm hung limply at his side as the muscles within screamed from the novel stimuli. He had never worked out the muscles involved in swinging a sword.

Punching, kicking, rolling, and dodging, yes, but he hadn't owned a sword back in the days of his childhood and never bothered to practice for one.

Fate pulled a bottle of water out from his storage ring and took a deep swig as the others gathered did the same with their water.

None of them cheered, because they knew it wasn't over.

The war drums were still going strong.