34. Bloodbath (below)
Sister Gogo, experienced in battle, was busy reassuring us, "Don't be confused, don't split up, we'll be safe if we find a way to break out and return to the camp, we can only wait for death here. I'll lead you, don't be afraid, and don't look back when you run."
Little Chai Nui and I both panicked and kept nodding our heads.
Sister Gogo put her hands around my head and gave me a kiss on the forehead and said to me, "Don't be afraid, I'm here!"
I could see clearly that Kuzi had a hunting knife in his mouth, and he had already pounced on a burly dwarf warrior in front of him, and the two of them were rolling on the ground and fighting together. The dwarf warrior in black metal armour who had felt his way up was about to raise his axe and help his companion out of this mess when he found a water bomb smashing directly into his chest, sending him straight away.
"There's a wizard! Finish that wizard first!"
It was rather strangely pronounced orcish, and as I hid beside Sister Gogo I saw a dozen or so dwarven warriors with different weapons and black battle armour not hiding their forms, but rising straight from their cover and charging towards us with their round shields raised, working in tandem, they were only twenty or so metres away and rushing towards us in a matter of ten seconds or so.
I could even feel her body shaking slightly as I saw little Shiba Nyuni beside me, her face pale with fear, a short sharp dagger in her hand as well, leaning right next to me. Standing here, surrounded by that group of trained dwarven warriors was only a death sentence, and I was just about to speak when I heard Sister Koko say decisively, "Come with me later, we'll get as close to the camp as possible and meet up with our regiment!"
I could hear that it wasn't Kuz's, his face was covered in blood and he was lunging back at the group of Dwarf warriors coming at us with his hunting knife in one hand, and the burly Dwarf he was fighting with was already lying on the ground in a bloody heap, twitching, blood gurgling and flowing from his neck to the ground. Sister Gogo looked at me and whispered quickly in my ear, "This orc friend of yours is ruthless enough to use that life preserver of yours the moment things go bad, and with all the chaos no one notices if you cast the spell yourself or if someone else enchanted you. Follow me now!"
The red flare lingered in the air for a long time, finally drawing a trailing flame and falling. Once again the black curtain blinds everyone, although with the silver moonlight spilling down, the red flare suddenly goes dark, blurring the vision until the eyes adjust to the darkness.
It could be that my eyesight has become sharper of late, I look in that direction of Kuz and I see the blurred shadow of Kuz already running our way, he also sees that the dwarves are leaving him aside first in preparation to surround us and take care of Sister Gogo, a mage with no melee abilities, first.
"Don't you even know what a wizard is? Damned dwarven bandits!" Sister Gogo said disdainfully to the group of dwarven bandits, reciting the 'Time Standstill' spell again, and I was still able to enter her world of time as I had done twice before. Earlier she had drawn magic formations for magical flares and water bombs with unparalleled skill, casting them with ease and fluidity, these elementary skills being the equivalent of instantaneous magic for her once drawn in a state of time stoppage. Old Kulu said this was because my mental power was unusually strong, and also because my magical perception was so sharp that I could detect magic fluctuations in close proximity.
The spell was a little longer this time, and the magic formation she drew was actually two double diamond-shaped light formations connected together. The staff in her hand stopped outputting the Force and a nebula of light appeared above Sister Gogo's head.
It was as if the nebula had suddenly disappeared, and the next second it appeared directly on the path in front of the dwarf warriors. In an instant, countless ice crystals condensed in the air fell one after another, and a ground of several dozen square meters was covered with a layer of snow, and those ice crystals in the air directly wanted to stick across this ground of ice and snow like unruly blades. The Dwarf warriors who had just stepped onto the ice fell on it like dumplings, scaring Kurtz, who was following them, to get out of the way. The dwarves were wearing black iron armour, so it was difficult for them to be harmed by normal attacks, and the icy path only hindered them, causing them to fall into a heap in their haste.
Sister Gogo took me by the hand and rushed straight towards the camp.
At that moment, the ambush team responsible for ambushing the scattered men on the outskirts of our camp was accidentally exposed, forcing the band of Dwarven bandits to attack early, and the merchant camp was in chaos as untold numbers of Dwarven warriors came rushing through the wide opening of the valley, sweeping in like a tidal wave.
A tall figure with a huge tower shield rushed out of the flaming camp and yelled at us, "Go!"
It was Strongbach's roar and Sister Koko raised the staff in her hand, pausing to send another red magical flare into the air that was like a guiding light as Strongbach's form rushed our way in a streak of light, and I marvelled in peace was this the power of love?
"Whoops" Kurtz let out a scream at this point, I was so scared my legs went weak and I looked back over to see a dwarven warrior with a double bladed open axe in his hand swinging it into a full moon shaped halo, sending Kurtz flying out, backwards four or five steps in a row and sitting on his butt, the fine iron hunting knife he was holding was also cut in two, all that was left in his hand was the The knife was cut in two, leaving only the hilt and half of the blade in his hand, and cutting a foot-long gash in his chest leather armour, with bright red blood gushing out instantly. The other dwarf with the short two-handed axe took three steps forward to catch up with Kurtz and slashed at his face with one axe, the other chopping at his waist and stomach, trying to kill the young orc.
Kurtz's face turned white with fear and in a panic he rolled to the side with all his might to avoid the fatal axe, but he was already covered in blood and in a terrible state. I thought of all the things we had done together in the past, of how he had gone out of his way to steal the beeswax from the earth bears for me, of going down to the glacier in the bitter winter to catch fish for me to replenish my body, and my blood rushed to the surface. I saw Kurtz being chased by the two dwarf warriors and was in danger, so I didn't care about the ice crystals sticking out of the ice prism trail that Sister Gogo had cast, I raised the small round iron-clad shield that Jumbach had given me on my right arm to protect my face, and my body went straight The small round shield was held above my head and shattered a number of sharp ice crystal blades, while some other ice crystal fragments that had not been shattered by the small shield cut my right arm and both sides of my body.
I saw a different magical aura emerge from my body one after another in an instant, an ice shield shielding my body and immediately reducing my wounds by a large margin, as a succession of water bombs exploded around my body, keeping the dwarven bandits coming after me behind me. The water bomb that exploded beside me hit the dwarf solidly and managed to dent the entire chest armour of the dwarf bandit, and the dwarf warrior fell to the ground spitting blood.
I slid through the ice path to Kurtz's side, and with the pain cutting through my body, I got up on my hands and knees and dived like a monkey onto the back of the dwarf with the short axe, stabbing him in the back with my wolf tooth knife. The dwarf with the short axe let out a heart-rending scream, threw the axe away with one hand, turned around and ripped me off his back, tugging me by the collar and throwing me against the wall with eyes the size of copper bells. The dwarf bandit must have been bullying me into being small and wanted to drop me to my death on the mountain wall.
The last thing I saw of the dwarf bandit's face was the black blood that had tripped out of his seven orifices, the poison from the wolf's tooth dagger was so fierce that it had taken just a breath.
"Ja!" Kurtz's heart-rending roar was followed by the feeling that I had crashed into a meaty embrace, followed by rolling into a ball on the floor. When I snapped out of my daze, I realised that Kurtz was grunting miserably beneath me with his teeth bared, and the wound in his chest had started spurting blood out again after my impact.
Luckily, Kurtz had deflected me in the nick of time, but even that had knocked us both out of the way.
The next moment, Kurtz pushed me out of the way and rolled out of the way with the force of the recoil, and a huge open axe slashed directly into the ground where we had been before, half of the blade sinking deep into the ground. I took a deep breath and rolled to my feet, fighting the pain and dizziness that I felt.
Kurtz threw the knife aside and crouched down on the ground, pale as a sheet, but without a word he pulled down the leg of his linen trousers, bandaged the wound on his chest and spat out a mouthful of blood on the ground. The two of us instead surrounded the dwarf left and right at this point. The rest of the Dwarf bandits were held in check by Sister Gogo, and about ten of them had already surrounded Sister Gogo and Little Chai Nui. Sister Gogo tugged Little Chai Nui and dodged left and right, and whenever there was a moment of crisis, a water bomb would shake the oncoming Dwarf bandits away, and for a while it was a mess but safe.
In the distance, Strongbach crossed a distance of two to three hundred metres like a shadow, shaking the dwarf warriors in his way, but was stopped by a long-bearded dwarf on a tall panga. The wizard was far more of a threat than the fighter on the battlefield.
One by one, agile figures came from the direction of the camp, the leader of the Wind Chasers was in the lead. The Dwarf warrior was frightened.
The next moment he saw a bloodstain on his cheek and looked in horror at Viru, who had landed on his hands and knees and had drawn his bow into a full moon again.
On the battlefield, the giant panga with a huge bloody hole in its spine fell to the ground with a miserable wail, doomed for life. With a wild roar and battle qi burning around his body once more, Qiang Bach took a step three metres away and darted towards Sister Gogo's side.