NOVEL NEXT 199 – A Premeditated Ambush
“I count six of them, Allie. Do we go for it?” said Ethan quietly as he carefully peeked out from the shadow of the warehouse they hid beside. He had been paying careful attention to a distant group of demons that were headed towards the gatehouse without using his skills and counted those which felt powerful enough to be fourth tiers. Out of their group Ethan was the best at that sort of approximation, as it was more of a gut feeling rather than any sort of skill.
From the intelligence provided by Sir DelVillar’s men, there should be around twenty fourth-tier demons in Arh-Getlam, with the expectation being that there would be more of them present on each of the base’s two gatehouses, and the rest being stationed elsewhere. So far they had accounted for however many were in the northern gatehouse, plus another eight which had been intercepted by the ambush teams who were now fighting them in delaying actions.
The large, powerful group of six fourth tier demons followed by nearly a hundred third tier demon combatants was late to the battle, likely because they had to run the length of the base from the southern gatehouse all the way to the northern one. They were also the exact sort of prey that Alissa’s group had been waiting for all this while.
All around the city turned military base, chaos reigned as the smaller teams also set fire and otherwise wreaked havoc where they could before vanishing one more. Their actions forced the demons to send some of their troops to search and hunt for them, reducing the number of demons that could be devoted to the northern gatehouse as a result.
“We are. Everybody hold on to me or to someone touching me,” said Alissa decisively. She waited a short moment to make sure that everyone had gotten into contact with her or with someone who did, then she activated [Living in a Dream]. Immediately, their surroundings took on an ethereal appearance as the group felt as if their bodies were no longer theirs.
Like [Walk in the Shadows], Alissa could carry others with her into [Living in a Dream], but it was difficult for the others to do anything other than to follow her as if they were being carried along by her presence. She could communicate with them, but not the other way around, though at the very least with the evolved skill those she brought along could still see what happened around them, unlike before.
Alissa carefully navigated her way towards where their target demon group were headed. It was trickier to carry so many people with her, so she strived to minimize the amount of contact with anything as much as she could. Slowly and deliberately, Alissa brought the group floating upwards towards the roof of a building that some other demons had previously used as a shortcut and settled them there.
It was not as ideal an ambush as materializing directly beside their enemy and assaulting them at point blank range, but to do so against moving enemies with such a large group was a risky endeavor in and of itself, so Alissa chose a safer method instead. Even so, she waited until the last moment, when the demons they were targeting were just passing beneath them, before she canceled the skill and allowed the group to materialize on the rooftop.
They leapt towards the unsuspecting demons below and brought nothing but death with them as presents.
The demons were caught off-guard by the sudden ambush, especially when Joshua hurled a powerful [Overcharge]d fireball directly into their midst, which caused the demons to disperse out of surprise and self-preservation. Joshua, Ormont, Leda, and Glenn had stayed on the rooftop. The former three because it was easier to provide ranged support from a height advantage, while Glenn was there to guard them against retaliation from the demons.
Everybody else leapt straight at the demons, with each of the seven taking on one of the fourth tier demons other than Benedictus, who instead fought a defensive action to prevent the rest of the demons from coming to the aid of their commanders. The team that stayed above mostly also focused their ranged support on the pack of third tier demons separated from their commanders by the sudden ambush.
Alissa picked out the strongest of the fourth tier demons for herself, a Ma’Varok that wielded a wicked-looking glaive with both hands. The demon saw her attack coming before it was too late and skillfully deflected her spear using the shaft of his weapon, even attempting to skewer her with the weapon’s blade while he was at it. Alissa blocked his counterattack with her shield, though, and landed safely on her feet.
Unexpectedly, the demon had not pursued her immediately. Instead, the demon took on a low guard position, with his polearm held at a diagonal position, its blade pointed downwards. It was a typical guard position seen in many fighting styles, usually used with the intent of chaining a parry into a counterattack, which definitely fit what the demon had done against her first attack.
As such, Alissa did the same as she lowered her stance and raised her shield diagonally before her, holding her spear further back with her other hand and resting its shaft on the side of her shield. It was a position from which she could either attack or defend easily, which she took since it was obvious that her opponent this time was more skilled than the typical foes that relied more on brute force or speed like before.
The demon grinned at her reaction, and the next moment Alissa could see how the demon’s muscles bulged and grew larger as a reddish sheen of light covered his entire body. Probably some sort of buff skill in use, which was not unexpected. Alissa and the rest of her group had also cast their buff skills before they launched their attack after all.
After a moment where both sides held their position and observed the other, it was the demon that made the first move as he took a large step forward and flicked his blade upwards with a smooth motion. Alissa managed to take the blow on her shield, but the force behind it was enough to push her back a step and almost shove her shield out of position, which was somewhat expected given that it was a two-handed blow.
At the same time, she also gave a tentative thrust with her spear to test her foe’s defenses only for her opponent to catch the side of her spearhead in the same smooth motion and pushed it aside as he twirled his polearm around for another swing from the top. This time Alissa didn’t try to block the blow but instead leapt a short distance back, just out of the descending blade’s reach.
From the short exchange, Alissa realized that her opponent was more powerful than she was, though she was maybe a little faster. He was pretty high up on the levels, at the mid fourth tier, so the demon was probably one of the strongest in the base, as those in the late levels of the fourth tier were rare. The only reason Alissa could take the demon on despite still being in her late third tier was due to her better classes allowing for a parity in attributes.
The demon had more skills than her, though, even if his first tier skills were likely mostly useless in the grand scale of things.
Before the demon could begin another series of strikes, Alissa chose to pre-empt him as she lunged forward and thrust her spear towards the demon’s face. She noticed that the demon was particularly proficient in chaining his moves together, so if she allowed him to take the initiative, it might not bode well for her.
As her spearhead neared his face, the demon calmly bent his neck as far backwards as it could go, while at the same time, he used the shaft of his polearm to push Alissa’s thrust upwards, causing it to miss the demon’s face completely. He was just about to start another swing of his glaive when he noticed that Alissa had not stopped there, and instead of just withdrawing her spear and falling back, she actually twisted her body around forcefully and struck out with her shield.
Caught off guard, the demon took the strike against the armor plate that covered his chest and abdomen. The point of Alissa’s shield landed directly against the center of the armor plate and only slightly dented it, but the force behind the blow was enough to send the demon stumbling back a few steps, off balance. It was about as Alissa expected and hoped for, since she had not reinforced the blow with her skills yet.
Her skills were mostly intended for one-off strikes with her spear, and didn’t mesh too well with percussive blows from her shield, so she saved them up for an appropriate time. As the demon was stumbling back, Alissa took the chance to grasp her spear with both hands and brought the weapon down in a vicious swing from above with all her strength.
The demon was unable to parry the blow gracefully as he did before and could only block it crudely with the shaft of his own weapon. The force of Alissa’s blow forced the demon to use his own considerable might to block the strike, until he felt the force behind it weaken and he pushed out. Little did he know that the weakening was intentional on Alissa’s part as she had let go of her spear with her left hand at that time.
While the demon’s arms were high above as they were pushing away her spear, Alissa slipped below his guard and landed another blow to the abdomen with her shield’s edge, striking the same area she already dented on her previous blow. She used the force of the recoil from the demon’s pushing away of her spear to add to the power of the blow and sent him reeling further back this time.
Alissa saw her chance and activated several of her skills at the same time. She clad her spearhead with the effects of [Seize the Spirit], [Unravel the Firmament], [Truth is a Bitter Pill to Swallow], and [Lies may Please, but it Doesn’t Heal], all at the same time while it was mid-swing and struck out with a one-handed hewing slash.
Her slash caught the side of the demon’s upper arm which was not covered by his armor and drew blood. The wound was not a heavy or incapacitating one, but the effect of her skills kicked in all at the same time. The demon suddenly found himself with his buff skill forcefully deactivated, hard of breathing to the point of near suffocation, bleeding profusely from the small wound, and suffering from pain like he had never felt before.
[Seize the Spirit] was an evolution to [Grasp the Soul], which retained the effects of the previous skill – allowing a strike to affect an opponent’s Mind and Soul as well – and further amplified the damage the target suffered to their Mind and Soul. The damage it did was far from fatal, but the pain and discomfort it caused would likely distract most people and cause them to leave an opening, which might well be fatal in a battle.
Such an opening similarly presented itself to Alissa as her opponent was assaulted by the sudden deluge of unpleasantness her skills caused him and she was not one to waste such a chance. Alissa stepped in close to her reeling opponent and landed another shield bash, this time straight against the underside of the demon’s chin, hard enough to nearly snap the demon’s neck on the spot.
The shield blow was merely a prelude, one meant to daze the demon so that Alissa would have enough time to stop the momentum of her spear and jab upwards using its other end, which ended in a spike, directly into the demon’s lower jaw and further upwards, through the roof of his mouth and into his brain cavity in one fell swoop.
