Chương 111: Chapter 109: Hard fought battle

But then, just about twenty seconds into the spell, I notice one of the other demons cast something. And as soon as they finish casting, Mab's Rage just ends. The cold wind dies down, the storm evaporates, and the spell fizzles away. I can't cast it again for two hours, so our major ace in the hole just got shut down. I guess we'll have to do this the old fashioned way. And I guess I have my answer about whether or not a spell can be unwoven.

I mark the caster as a target, wanting to make sure I get them down as quickly as possible. If they can take down Mab's Rage, then they probably have some other nasty tricks up their sleeve. And I'd rather not see what they can do. A small volcano starts to erupt at their feet. I've seen this spell. Vincent has this spell. The magma flows upwards in a thin stream, and the caster takes hold of a spear made of magma and throws it in our direction.

Ash holds up her shield and blocks the attack, and I notice that the magma flows slowly down her shield before dripping down onto the ground, not cooling until it lands there. It's kind of a good thing that the plains aren't dried out. That sort of thing could start a fire. And the magma could start a burning debuff. Which can be pretty nasty in the whole way of dealing damage over time. I block a thrust from the demon in front of me and cast Fire Bolt right into his face.

The fire splashes off his red skin without doing anything. Right. Ash has resistance to fire from her bloodline. Demons are immune to fire. That makes total sense. I take a hit for 112 damage to my Shell, and I strike back, dealing 681 damage with Vital Slash. One on one, I'm still going to slaughter any of these bandits. But it's not one on one. We're outnumbered ten to one. Right now, only about three of them can attack each of us at a time.

Well, six can attack El, but she's moving through them and doesn't seem to mind being completely surrounded. Ash and I only have to deal with three, standing more or less back to back as we fight. Do I want to risk the higher damage I'd be taking to get to the caster, or should I stay and fight like this, and just risk other damage from magic? As I'm trying to think of the answer, the mage casts another spell. This one is a fire storm, and it comes raining down on Ash and me.

El is already out of the range, fighting her way through the crowd. But it hits Ash and I, a small, tightly focused spell that will hit the demons around us, but they don't seem to care. A splash of flame hits me, and I see that it only does 12 damage. I'm resistant to fire as well, and I'm particularly resistant to magic generally. Hopefully, Ash isn't taking much more damage from the spell. It does the damage every second, so that 12 damage does rack up pretty quickly.

One minute of this spell is going to do 720 damage, and it doesn't seem like the mage needs to really concentrate to keep it going. Over the course of the minute, I do enough damage to the demon I'm fighting that he looks to be on his last legs. With a Bleeding Strike, I'm pretty sure he's going to die. I'm dealing around twelve thousand damage a minute, and taking about four thousand damage between the spell and the attacks of the other demons around me. It helps that I attack much faster than they do.

But four thousand damage a minute means I'm going to run out of Shell in about four minutes. That's not good. I need to buy myself an extra minute. How can I do that? I look at the mage. How far apart are we? Not that far. Less than a hundred feet. Maybe it would be best if I got to him and just killed him now.

"You going to be okay solo?" I ask Ash. She grunts.

"Do what you need to do," she says, smashing her mace against the kneecap of one of the taller demons, bringing him down to her level for an upward slash that crumples the guy's jaw. I focus on the demon casting the spells. He throws a spear at me, and I dodge it. Then I lower myself down towards the ground, getting a good tacklers position, and activate Dash. I speed through the surrounding demons. Thankfully, none of them seem to count as an obstacle.

I only actually hit one of them, slamming my shoulder into his chest and moving him along with me to the mage demon's side. The rest of the demons all leap out of the way as I charge through, closing the gap around Ash. Now I'm right up against the mage, and there's another demon that goes crashing down on his ass from my impact when I used Dash. The mage looks surprised, and grabs another lava spear, thrusting it right at me. The spear only does 18 damage, and because Shell is still up I don't start burning.

I use Vital Slash and then step forward and stab, trying to run the mage through. Turns out I was wrong about the fire storm spell; as soon as I start doing damage to the mage, the fire storm stops. He casts some kind of shield spell, and my sword slashes smack against an invisible barrier. It flashes into sight with every impact, and I notice that it lingers just a little bit longer every time I hit it. I think it must have a limit to how much damage it can take, and I'm more than ready to tear that thing down.

I want to tear the whole mage down. He dispelled Mab's Rage, and made this a much more difficult fight. That cannot go unanswered. It takes me about half a minute, but I break through his shield and start doing damage to the mage again. He tries to dodge, tries to run away, but I don't give him any leeway. I'm all but ignoring the other demon here. It takes him about ten seconds to get back to his feet, and then he starts trying to attack me. I dodge out of reflex, but mostly I'm focused on the mage.

It's just a matter of time before more of them come to surround me, and I'd like to kill the mage before that happens. Before he can get away. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. I recast Shell after another two minutes. Mab's Rage should be over by now, and so should the battle. The battle shouldn't be drawn out this long.

Thankfully, two minutes of attacking the mage after his shield goes down is enough to wipe him out, and I'm now down to fighting the other demons, who have us all surrounded. There are six of them around me. That's as tightly packed as they can get without getting in each other's way, I suppose. I look around and see that both Ash and El are surrounded by the same number. That accounts for eighteen of the demons. I've killed three. El, from the looks of it, has killed five, and Ash has taken out four.

That's twelve down total. Leaving eighteen. Okay. So one of us is fighting the big boss demon. Looking around, it doesn't seem to be me. I'm oddly relieved at that. The huge sword he had would be at a disadvantage in this surrounding strategy, but I still don't want to have to deal with it if I don't have to. The problem with being surrounded by six people is that even when I dodge and weave, I'm getting hit a lot. I'm taking about thirty five hundred points every minute if I focus on defense.

Five thousand a minute if I focus on offense. Now, that means I can kill a demon every minute with the amount of damage that I'm dealing, but I don't think the math works out in my favor. I'll have to recast Shell again soon, and once I do, it will only last three minutes if I go offensive. I'll have to cast heal on myself. But I'll be able to take out three of my opponents. That's half. That should reduce the amount of damage that they're dealing. That should change the calculations.

I decide to focus on offense and just suck up all the damage. Better to get rid of my opponents quickly than to try to drag things out. So I start using Vital Slash as often as I can, cutting into one opponent and focusing all my attacks on him. I knock his blade aside and I stab him, then I cast an Ice Bolt directly into his chest. The ice damage isn't doubled, but it allows me to deal an extra 268 damage while we fight.

I can feel the impact of the other attacks coming at me from the other directions, and I do my best to try to dodge them when I can, but mostly I just let them hit me. I keep one eye on my hit points while I work on slaying the demon in front of me. Over the course of one minute, I manage to kill my opponent and take close to five thousand damage. My Shell will survive that. I turn to the next opponent and repeat the process.

I do end up having to cast Healing Touch on myself, but by the time I do, I'm down to three opponents. And the three of them can't deal nearly as much damage as six of them can. They can barely keep up with half as much damage, now that I'm facing one of them head on. The battle goes on, and I do end up casting Shell again, but I don't need to cast it any more after that. A battle that was supposed to take two and a half minutes does end up taking closer to ten, but the result is the same.

I'm a little bit out of breath when I finish with the last of my opponents. Seems like Ash and El are as well. El actually finishes last, fighting the big boss of the demon bandits. The boss is one of the bigger demons, and has the hit points to match, being level forty instead of level thirty. That's good for an extra five thousand hit points, which is why it takes El a little while longer to kill him. You have defeated the cadre of bandits. You receive (455, 000/3) 151, 666 experience points.

You have gained a level. You have 11 stat points to spend. I decide to put all eleven points in Charisma, because of an idea that I had once all the demons are dead and we start looking through camp. There is enough loot here to fill the wagon that we found by the road.

"Why should that matter?" El asks.

"We can fit it all in our spatial bags."

"Yeah," I say.

"But if we refill the wagon, we might look like an appealing prize for a dragon flying overhead. And we could bribe them with the contents of the wagon to make them actually talk to us. Then we could find out more about the god slayer and where they are."

"That's clever," Ash says.

"Okay, so we load up the wagon and what, just start pulling it down the road?" El puts up her arms and flexes.

"I'll pull it," she says.

"I'm at least as strong as a horse." So that settles it. We take the goods and put them into our spatial bags, adding all the tents and camp equipment we can gather from the camp, along with the weapons and armor from the demons. The only weapon that I really care about is the one that the leader was using. Jagged Blade. Very rare two handed sword. 20/30. Base damage: 450-472. 50% chance to cause bleed.

"Ooh, that's powerful," El says.

"I might be willing to use that. Mind if I take it?" I've no interest in a two handed weapon, and neither does Ash, so we let her take it. I suppose it will replace the other two handed sword that she's been using since we were leveling up with Wrax. She almost never actually uses it, but I guess she likes to have a good backup weapon. I should consider a backup weapon myself. I have my sword and I have my bow, but I don't have anything that does bashing damage.

If we fight skeletons, my sword becomes much less useful. But I suppose I have magic as a backup. I don't want to carry too much equipment. Something about it just take away from the immersion of my life. This world is still very gamified, and sometimes that can make me feel like my life isn't real. Like there's something that we can do, some kind of goal we could achieve, that would end this game and let us go back to our old lives.

I don't much like that feeling, so I prefer anything that helps me forget that this world follows the rules of a game. And I feel like covering myself in weapons would just make me feel more like this was a game. That said, I might want to pick up a dagger at some point. That could be useful. While we put all the goods in our spatial bags in order to fill up the cart and attract a dragon, we don't do that with the money. And there is a surprising amount of money.

Twenty five platinum, four hundred and sixty gold, and about a thousand silver all told. It doesn't divide evenly by three, so we get as close as we can and put the rest aside as a party fund, the way we used to with Gigi. That means I get eight platinum, a hundred and fifty three gold, and three hundred and thirty three silver. Now I feel like we can explore Marketplace more fully, able to actually purchase things if we come across anything that suits our fancy. Like, for instance, a new dagger.

First, though, we need to go back to the wagon and fill it up, then try to use it to bait a dragon.