Chương 386: Limitless Path Chapter Four Hundred Ten

Adannae didn't know what to make of the three standing in front of her. A strange human clearly in charge, leading a woman that had very significant draconic features, and a woman that had very obvious lupine features. Using some kind of Identify -type skill on them proved that true, as they were a human, dragon, and wolf, though they had other appellations that Adannae found interesting, and just a bit frightening, perhaps. She shook her head again and dove back into the conversation.

"Can that Exalted of yours get us some breathing room?" she asked, gesturing at the layout of the battlefield on the table.

"No need to bother Baelvyr with that," the woman replied with a slight roll of her shoulders.

"I think we've got this."

"Look, kid, this is serious stuff," Taen said from her right.

"If you're going to make a joke out of the battlefield, then get lost."

"You want to die, it's your funeral, not ours," the woman immediately retorted with a shrug, not caring about Taen's comment.

"You think you can make a difference? The three of you," Rogg asked in his deep voice.

"Anything over level three hundred out there?" the girl, for she was a girl, asked.

"Not in this wave. But still-" Taen said.

"Then it's easy," the girl replied, waving a hand before turning and walking out, followed by the other two. Adannae winced as the very tall dragon girl's horns almost caught on the top of the door before she ducked just enough to make it through. She looked over at the other two, seeing the frustration and weariness on Taen's face, his expression twisted into a grimace. Rogg, as always, was stoic, though he did have the ghost of a frown dancing across his lips.

"Come on," she said, waving at them both with a hand.

"If she's a CRA representative, we better make sure she doesn't get herself killed out there before the actual reinforcements can show up."

"Fucking brats! Now we have to go babysit while our men and women are dying," Taen said, slamming the table with a mailed fist. He calmed himself with a deep breath, following her and firing off orders as he did so. Rogg said nothing, just adjusting the spear on his back and making sure his armor's straps were tight as he walked after her.

"Where'd they go?" she asked one of the sentinels, just a kid that had been drawn into this hopeless maelstrom of death just as the monsters were appearing.

"That way, ma'am," he replied promptly, pointing towards the frontline. Adannae started striding that direction, the other two following on her heels, squinting her eyes as she moved. She had an eye power that was rather strong and had just broken through to Gold, meaning she should be able to easily spot the three, especially given the size of that dragon, but she didn't see them.

She cast her gaze further forward, trying to find where they were, and muttered a short curse under her breath as she saw them almost at the line of battle. She quickened her pace, but she wasn't going to get even close before the three were swept up in the fight, and she couldn't run. Not only would it impact her dignity in the eyes of the regular soldiers, seeing the commander sprinting across the encampment could easily cause a massive panic.

She watched as the three moved past, or in the leader's case, beyond the soldiers. She had to blink once and then twice, as the arrogant girl had teleported into the midst of the beasts and then teleported again, further in. Teleportation wasn't an exceptionally rare power, but it was not especially common on their world, either. It wasn't at the point where she could count the people on Red II that had teleport skills on one hand or anything like that, but it was a very tiny percentage even in the ranks.

It was also more surprising the way the girl used it, hurtling herself deep into enemy lines and then staying there, holding a spot and fighting. She frowned, tempted to quicken her pace even further, but a few seconds observation proved it wasn't needed. Her frown transformed from a deep scowl into a look she was sure she would be getting some comments about later as she watched the three work.

Despite their levels not being overly high, and all three of them reading as having done five rebirths, they were each destroying a section of the battlefield by themselves. The dragon girl was slow and steady, not even bothering to dodge or block as attacks came at her, but whatever that black and red armor she was wearing was, it was shrugging off almost everything that managed to make it to her.

Beyond that, anything the armor couldn't deal with barely made a mark on her skin, her defenses so high that Adannae really had to wonder exactly what her stats, END particularly, were at, let alone her skills and their levels. The wolf girl was just as crazy, but in the opposite way. Instead of taking a patch of battlefield and claiming it for her own, she moved around the area so fast that even Adannae couldn't exactly track what was happening.

A long stretch of the mob of beasts turned into a blur, blood and viscera fountaining into the air continuously, the lupine woman savagely tearing apart everything that she put her sights on, darting back and forth so fast the troops would barely be able to catch her afterimages. As the amount of blood in the air and surrounding her grew, her powers grew only stronger, her speed increasing and her attacks reaching out further to slice through enemies dozens of feet away.

And then there was the leader of their little group; Elizabeth, as Adannae's eye powers revealed her name. She didn't so much take command of a part of the battlefield as she simply devastated it. Adannae had to rub her eyes, the first time she had made such a gesture in a couple years, as she really couldn't believe what she was witnessing.

First, the girl punched a level two hundred ninety beast to death without using a skill, just hammering the thing, which was like a treant with heavy wooden armor over every part of its body, into splinters with a single strike to the torso. She then proceeded to fire off a series of punches and kicks so fast that Adannae had trouble even seeing what she was doing, the air around her just blurring for half a second before a wave of beast parts including limbs, organs, and skulls exploded outward from her.

Not satisfied with such an incredible level of destruction, the girl then fired off a series of attacks that shot large beams of golden light from her fists; everything a beam touched was just… gone. Not as in destroyed, and Adannae felt like rubbing her eyes again, but they were simply gone, like a giant beast had taken instantaneous bites out of them. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Rogg and Taen had caught up to her at that point, just standing beside her and goggling at what was happening in front of them. She looked over at Rogg and asked, "You're seeing this shit, right?"

"I am, indeed, seeing this shit," he replied gruffly.

"Who the fuck are they?" That even the ever-calm Rogg was displaying such upset, swearing and raising his voice and shifting his weight from leg to leg, demonstrated how out of the ordinary this was. She turned back, just in time to watch as the lead girl fired off some new, even more horrifying attack. She punched out with immense force and everything in front of her for over two hundred feet was destroyed.

This wasn't like the golden beams that had vaporized whatever they touched; oh no, how could this attack be so simple and minor? Instead, everything in front of her, from the beasts to the earth to the air to the very fabric of space was shattered and torn apart. And the noise of it! By the Blood Stars, it was like two mountains had slammed into each other while an ocean screamed. Adannae took a step back, looking around worriedly, seeing the shock and fear on the regular soldiers' faces.

She had to do something, or this little helping hand would be a worse defeat than the rout they had just been staring down.

"Soldiers! Men and women of the line! Rally now! Firm! Take a step!" her commands echoed out down the line. Captains picked it up and called it out, which the sergeants took up, directly ordering the line soldiers. They firmed up before taking a step forward, pushing the tide, which had honestly turned into a trickle by that point, back from the makeshift wall they had been defending.

"Secure! Swing! Hold! Take a step!" Adannae roared out, going through a basic drill for moving forward in a line formation. The soldiers listened, following the command as repeated by their nearest sergeant, with plenty of cussing and browbeating thrown in by them for good measure. Never let the enlisted think they were doing a good job, or it would go to their head and get them all killed to something weak and simple.

She returned command of the line to the series of captains that had been watching the separate zones of the battlefield, ready to move forward herself if the lines needed reinforced or the girls from the CRA needed help. That proved entirely unnecessary, though, as she saw all three of the girls were doing even better than when she had stopped actively watching them to firm the line.

She boggled at the mana expenditure of the leader, as she watched her fire off attack after attack that shattered space, ripping apart any beast caught in the vicinity like they'd had explosive charges stuffed in their stomachs. And limbs. And heads.

"The monsters aren't going to like this," Rogg commented, still by her side.

"Well, they did say they had a fucking Exalted with them, so maybe we won't suffer too badly?" Adannae said, glancing up and down the line.

"Maybe, but I don't want to bet on these three little kids to save us," Taen said with a grunt, watching as the three tore apart thousands of beasts a minute, perhaps into the tens of thousands.

"Well, they're doing a damn good job getting us some immediate relief," Adannae said.

"Just hope neither of those monsters show up," Rogg said.

"We'll be dead before we even know what hit us."

"Ya kids are too pessimistic, ain't ya?" a deep voice rumbled from right behind them. Adannae spun, drawing her sword, but found herself staring up… and up… and up, looking at a truly gigantic ogre. The man was over eight feet tall, comprised of layered slabs of muscle, with a massive gut sticking out in front of everything. He looked down at her with a… slightly bemused expression, as if trying to figure out what she was trying to do.

Adannae realized she and Rogg and Taen had all drawn weapons and Rogg had aborted a thrust after realizing the being that spoke wasn't an enemy.

"And who the fuck are you?" Taen demanded.

"That fuckin' Exalted ya all keep pissin' yer pants about," he rumbled back, some humor evident in his voice.

"Really? You?" Taen asked, not able to keep the skepticism from his voice. Instead of replying, a giant hammer, something that looked more like a block of metal someone had beaten on with, well, a hammer, appeared in the ogre's hand. He lifted it over his head and swung it toward the battlefield, where the three girls were still slaughtering beasts at an insane rate.

A massive image of the hammer appeared over the beasts, all three girls scattering instantly, Adannae noticing they all had teleport skills, before the hammer quite literally dropped. The effect was horrific, Adannae crouching and digging into the ground to not get blasted off her feet. When she stood again and looked towards the battlefield… there was nothing left. The three girls all appeared beside them then, looking none-too-happy, though Adannae quickly found out it was for different reasons than she thought.

"What the hell was that? Do you really need to kill-steal us like that?" the leader of the girls snapped.

"Too bad yer too slow, or ya coulda got some experience," the ogre said, laughing just a bit.

"Aren't you supposed to be, I don't know, hunting down a monster?" Elizabeth asked.

"I ain't gonna do that shit," the ogre said.

"That's what Megoria's for. I got enough to do with keepin' you three outta trouble and handlin' the beasts."

"I thought the beasts were our job?" Elizabeth asked again, frowning at monster of a man.

"Yeah, and I wanna be done before this star goes out," the ogre retorted.

"Ya lot'll have more than enough to do, don't worry. There's approachin' billions of the things out there; ya can take yer damn pick."

"Well, that's exactly what we'll do," she said, turning to Adannae.

"Hey, where's a spot with a ton of beasts? We need something to kill. Actually, you know what, tell us the top five spots. We're gonna go hard here."

"We can help with that," Adannae said, examining the group.

"There's multiple massive waves or groups beyond here; it's why we set this line here. I can authorize you to go after those groups."

"Give us everything you have," the lead girl said, the tall dragon girl chuckling at that. The lead girl turned and got in a small argument with her, Adannae realizing at that point that the two were clearly a couple from the way they spoke to each other.

"Ya get the kids settled. I got some stuff to check, then I'm gonna swing back," the ogre said, turning and striding off. He was clearly using a skill, as his steps, which looked perfectly normal, each carried him a mile. He disappeared over the horizon practically before his voice had finished fading.

"Alright, get us our targets and we're out," Elizabeth said.

"Come on," Adannae said, gesturing with her hand before walking back to the command tent. It was the first time in a very, very long time that she had a good feeling, even if it did feel strange to be basically throwing a group of kids into the heart of danger.

"These are all the coords we have right now," she said, exchanging contact information with them before passing the lead girl, listed as Beth, the data.

"Don't put yourselves in unnecessary danger out there. We've got tens of millions of hostiles on this front alone, and that's just a small section. We can't have you pulling a Delonne on us."

"What the hell is a Delonne?" the young woman asked her.

"He's one of our best; been with us longer than anyone. Hell, I heard stories of him when I was growing up. He's still out there, fighting his war, though he's broken away from the command structure," Adannae said.

"Look, it's complicated. Just stay safe and do what you can."

"Well, I've never been good at following that kind of advice, but I appreciate it," Beth said.

"This shouldn't take long," said the dragon girl.

"You're that confident?" Adannae asked.

"That confident in her, sure," the dragon girl replied, flicking her head at Beth.

"Considering how powerful she is, we should be done fairly quickly."

"Well, I saw her firing off those crazy attacks early one after another. If you need to rest, we can accommodate," Adannae said.

"It's fine. Barely took any mana," the girl shrugged.

"Yeah, she's got plenty left," the dragon girl said with a slightly too big smile.

"Oh, stop," Beth said, giving her a little nudge before turning to leave.

"We'll be back in a bit."

"They were…interesting," said Adannae.

"I think the girl in the lead built a Mana Physique," Rogg said.

"What?!" Adannae exclaimed, staggering a bit and catching the edge of the table.

"Blood Stars preserve us."