Chapter 913: 913: Beast-Type Swarm

913: Beast-Type Swarm

Fran discussed with the others what to do next in the face of the approaching antidemons. Well, we only had a few options in the first place.

Continue fighting the antidemons as we are. Abandon the city and flee. Rally the forces in the city to join the battle.

Those were pretty much our only options.

We obviously didn't have the time to evacuate everyone in Sendia, and the antidemons could easily pursue a large group of refugees anyways.

In the end, we decided to stall the antidemons while Sophie, the most recognized of us, went around the city calling for reinforcements.

「Urushi, let Sophie ride on your back.」

「Woof......」

「It's okay. We'll hold out until reinforcements arrive. Please.」

『Come on Urushi, this is a job only you can handle.』

「Woof.」

Urushi seemed hesitant for a moment, but he must have understood the importance of this job. He nodded reluctantly with worry in his eyes.

「My partner will fill in the hole Urushi and Sophie left behind. Come forth, Lind!」

「Kwooooh!」

Mea called out to Lind, the dragon dwelling in her sword. She probably waited until now because of the limited duration of his summon.

「Lind! No time no see!」

「Kwogh!」

Fran patted Lind's head as he roared happily. After such a cute display, it's hard to believe he's a transcendent entity inhabiting a divine sword.

Yeah, that's right. Mea's Dragon Blade is actually a divine sword. The true name of her sword is "The Raging Dragonblade, Lindwurm", a divine sword said to summon a gigantic dragon.

However, Mea was unable to wield Lindwurm to its full potential. She could only manage to summon Lind, a small wyvern.

I guess he's a little bigger than the last time I saw him?

He looked more like a red lesser wyvern previously, but I think he's worthy of being called a fire dragon now. Lind's overall size increased a bit, and his horns and scales were much more impressive.

It seems Lind really did grew alongside Mea.

「Woof!」

「Kwoh!」

Urushi barked while staring at Lind, who responded with a short roar.

As if to say "Take care of them!" and "Leave it to me!". I bet they were saying something close to that.

「Okay, I'm heading off.」

「Nn. Sophie, we're counting on you.」

「I'll come back with reinforcements, I promise.」

Sophie climbed on Urushi's back with an air of reluctance, and rushed back into town. Now all that's left was to defend this place until Sophie gets all the various organizations to send their troops.

After a short wait, the approaching second wave of antidemons entered our field of view.

「A swarm of beast-types!」

「I notice some big ones too.」

As Mea and Velmeria stated, the new antidemon horde was composed mainly of quadrupedal beast-types. That explains how they could move so fast despite having several times as many antidemons as the previous horde.

Fran and I invoked our magic against the charging antidemons.

We cast land magic to produce countless rock spears. All of them burst out of the ground, slanted toward the approaching beasts. Kinda resembling an anti-cavalry palisade.

The antidemons at the head of the charge plunged into the rock barricade, unable to avoid the hundreds of spears appearing out of nowhere.

A lot of them still made it through, but we've definitely succeeded in killing their momentum.

With the rest of the horde slightly jammed behind them, the density of the pack increased. That's when we all bombarded them.

Velmeria's water magic, Mea's silvery white flames, Lind's crimson flames, Zefmate's shockwave blasts, and our thunderbolts.

After the continuous ranged barrage without worrying about our resources, we succeeded in annihilating more than ten thousand antidemons in just a few minutes.

That's probably less than 10% of the entire horde, but we've definitely attracted their attention. We needed to draw as many of them to us as possible, since dealing with any stragglers would be troublesome.

The antidemons continued charging through the wall of smoke left behind, but Fran and Mea plunged in first.

This battle had a different ferocity than the previous one. Wolves, tigers, bears, and all sorts of other beast-types rushed us without any kind of formation or strategy.

One might think it would be easier due to their lack of cooperation, but I'd have to say no. Those patternless, erratic attacks were hard to predict. Another issue was their completely reckless omni-directional attacks without caring for friendly fire, which made it difficult for us to avoid too.

Fran and each of her comrades used the tricks they had up their sleeves to defeat as many antidemons as possible. Mea probably put in the most work here.

She activated her golden flames to shield herself, just like the Beast King showed us previously. That ability was just plain unfair in wild melee like this one. After all, her enemies got burnt to a crisp from simply trying to get close to her.

Maybe it's because the antidemons were attracted to Mea's mana, but they showed no sign of wariness at jumping into the inferno. At this rate, they'll just continue incinerating themselves on her flames.

Velmeria was also stronger than expected.

She finally activated her Dragon Form, with her whole body covered with light blue scales, and a huge amount of mana swirling around her. It seems the water enveloping her acted as an additional layer of armor, massively improving her defenses.

With well-crafted equipment, dragon scales, and that water armor, hardly anything would be able to scratch her. She didn't even try to defend herself under the antidemon assault, simply striking down each as they came to her.

I guess Zefmate was having a pretty rough time though? Even if he's been getting stronger, he wasn't on the Rank A level yet. I could see the number of wounds on him increasing steadily over time.

Maybe I should help him out? Just after that thought, Zefmate shouted something.

「Leopard Leg!」

It seems that the Blue Leopards had more than one racial skill. Just like the Black Heavenly Tigers had multiple skills, the other beastmen races must have their own as well.

The skill "Leopard Leg" caused his leg strength to sky-rocket. He became faster than ever before, with a maximum speed most likely exceeding Mea's.

In that case, we should be able to maintain a stable front line for a while. Well, I don't know if you could really call it "stable" when everyone was putting their life on the line.

But none of us could say for sure what the future held. Or rather, we didn't have time to think about it. All the warriors did was continue destroying antidemon after antidemon.

We managed to hold the horde back, but we noticed a new movement.

「A giant antidemon has appeared from behind them!」

「Kwoh!」

Velmeria and Lind, who were in the air, shouted a warning. We failed to notice them approaching because of our focus on the fight at hand, but the huge antidemon was now barely within view.

That's definitely a cannon-type.

I don't know if the antidemons planned this or not, but we couldn't sense the cannon-type because of the beast-type swarm drawing our attention. Though maybe it just arrived so late because of the difference in speed between it and the beast-types.

『How could we miss such a huge guy!』

The cannon-type that just appeared was not even on the same level as the usual ones. I'd say it's more than five times larger than any previous one I've ever seen.

If normal cannon-types were around the size of a tank, this guy would be the biggest tank in existence. No, even bigger. It might even be on the level of a small fortress equipped with a cannon turret.

And there's over thirty of the cannon-types. They were kind enough to line up horizontally so I could count them all.

「That one's a little weird.」

『What? Which one?』

「That one.」

I looked at the cannon-type that Fran pointed out. Like she said, the cannon-type was enveloped in a strange aura.

After a few observations, I determined that the cannon-type disappeared from view when the aura got thicker. I first thought it was some kind of invisibility, but it wasn't nearly that good. The aura merely had some sort of light refraction effect for assisting with covert movements.

Considering the fact that we didn't notice them earlier, that seemed quite troublesome.

「Their mana levels are rising steadily.」

『So they're preparing to fire!』

They seem to be the type that charges up a powerful single shot instead of firing a barrage. Considering the size and the amount of mana being charged, I don't want to even imagine how destructive that blast will be.

I wouldn't be surprised if they reached the level of supreme-tier spells.

Not to mention there were thirty of them. We needed to stop them before they could fire, no matter the cost.

Mea and Velmeria seemed to think so as well.

「Fran! Velmeria! Take Lind and go crush them! Zefmate and I will handle the rest here!」

「Nn!」

「Okay!」

「Kwhoooh!」

There was no time for a discussion, so Fran and Velmeria immediately nodded their heads and left.

Meanwhile, the cannon-type's mana levels just kept getting higher and higher.

『We need to hurry!』

「Nn!」