NOVEL NEXT 200 – Making a Stand
Even as the demon’s dead body fell towards the ground, Alissa took a quick glance at her surroundings to judge the situation of the other battles. Benedictus was struggling at keeping the rest of the demons back, but with the help of those who stayed on the rooftop, he managed to keep them at bay for the time being, so Alissa turned her sights elsewhere.
Ethan was pushing hard against another Ma’Varok demon that fought with two axes, likely a berserker sort from the way the demon fought. The demon’s wild flailing strikes were coldly met with calculated blocks or allowed to land on armor even as Ethan landed his own blows at the demon’s body, which was already bleeding and bruised from many injuries. Even so, the demon seemed to ignore the injuries on his body and kept attacking, though Ethan managed to handle its attacks calmly.
Bronwen fought viciously against a demon that wielded an odd weapon in the form of a chain flail without a handle, the spiked metal balls at the end of the long chain whipping around almost as if they were living creatures. The demon landed many strikes on the Temple Guard, but she shrugged off the blows and returned threatening blows with her own spear. While the demon was agile enough to avoid most of those blows, Alissa noticed that it was bleeding from one leg, and that Bronwen kept the demon well-contained to the point that it was unable to divide its attention.
Nadine engaged a female Nevilosk demon that incidentally also wielded a two-handed sword in a roughly even duel. The demon was on the backfoot, however, as the fighting style it had was more of a graceful and flashy one. Good when it came to slaughtering masses of weaker foes in style, but less effective against a skilled opponent around their own power level.
In contrast, despite her background as the Fifth Royal Princess, the swordsmanship style that Nadine used was focused entirely on practicality and brutality, methods to swiftly bring a fight to an end by murdering one’s opponent as efficiently as possible. Amongst those techniques were various grappling methods intended to fight against an armored opponent, and at the moment Nadine had clearly employed such methods to bring her opponent down to the ground, where their long two-handed blades were hard to use.
Instead, Nadine decisively used one hand to keep her opponent’s blade out of play, pinned her foe using her knees, and started raining down vicious blows from her other fist against her opponent’s face mercilessly. She quickly drew blood as she broke her opponent’s nose, but didn’t let off as her gauntleted fist went up and back down again and again.
Moira was fighting a burly Ragah-Fiq demon that carried a pair of wicked-looking cleavers. The Royal Guard girl made full use of the length of her glaive as well as her superior agility to avoid the demon’s devastating slashes and strike back whenever the demon left openings. Unfortunately, the tough demon only took minor injuries from her attacks, so while she was technically at an advantage, she was the one who had to keep on her toes during the fight. Alissa judged the situation stable enough that Moira wouldn’t need her help right away, though.
Maribel danced around another Ma’Varok demon that wielded a hefty two-handed maul, a dangerous dance where she avoided the crushing blows by mere inches or less. She had a harder time hurting the demon back, however, as her opponent was fully armored from head to toe, and her pair of sabers lacked the force to go through said armor.
Perhaps if Maribel was to commit and struck with her entire force and weight, she might be able to land an injury to her opponent, but such an act would also leave her open, which was far more disadvantageous to herself unless she could guarantee a killing blow. Since everybody else had their fights well in hand or at least at a stable point, Alissa decided to go to Maribel’s aid first.
The demon fighting Maribel noticed Alissa’s approach, though, and after it pushed Maribel away with a forceful swing of its maul, it allowed the momentum of the swing to carry it along as the demon turned to face Alissa. Said demon then allowed its maul to revolve around itself into another vicious swing aimed at Alissa instead.
It didn’t take a genius to tell that the demon obviously had a Strength-heavy build, given its heavy armor and weapon and the vicious strength it used them with. Alissa wisely chose not to defend against the blow and instead leapt over the strike, her feet briefly stepping on the maul’s head as she leapt off it towards the surprised demon.
Even then, Alissa found to her dismay that her thrust failed to pierce deep into the demon despite the use of [Perforate the Stars] to enhance it. The demon’s armor was just far too heavy and thick for her spear to penetrate far into it, the wound she caused at most a flesh wound, even with the skill’s aid. In fact, if not for the skill Alissa might not have managed to injure the demon at all.
Although the damage she actually managed to do was rather underwhelming, the injury still surprised the demon, and that drew its attention long enough for Maribel to strike at it from behind, her sabers stabbing into the back of the demon’s right knee, one of the few locations on its body that was not clad behind thick armor.
The demon hollered in pain from the surprise and stumbled, almost falling to one knee, but still managed to use its maul to strike behind itself, which forced Maribel to disengage in order to avoid the blow. The injury to its knee visibly hobbled the demon, however, as it limped and clearly favored its uninjured leg when it moved after that.
Alissa took the chance to deliver a few more stabs while the effects of her skill were still active, but found no greater success compared to her first blow. The demon’s armor was nowhere near as inviolable as Sir DelVillar’s armor of conjured and compacted stone, but there was simply more of it, as the demon wore ridiculously thick armor.
On the other hand, all that armor and the heavy maul also meant that the demon was sluggish for a fourth tier, which was what had allowed Maribel to hold her own against it so far. The demon had a fighting style that was indeed reminiscent of Sir DelVillar’s, but far less refined and a lot cruder, relying on its prodigious physical strength to wield heavy, nearly impenetrable armor instead.
It might be an annoying foe to have to deal with quickly, but fortunately, Alissa wasn’t alone.
Together with Maribel, the two danced around the demon’s strikes. Their counterattacks were more perfunctory unless they happened to be in position to strike at a less-armored spot, and they were focused more on trying to tire the demon out. No matter how strong the demon was, it would run out of strength after lugging around its absurd armor for long enough.
Fortunately the other battles also went to the party’s advantage. Nadine had apparently already finished off her opponent and went to Moira’s aid, the two women fighting side by side and forcing the Ragah-Fiq Moira had been fighting back as wound after wound landed on its sturdy body. They would probably be done with their opponent than Alissa and Maribel would, at this point.
Bronwen had apparently already finished off her opponent as well, as she joined Benedictus in holding back the third tier demons. The arrival of the defensively focused temple guard instantly solidified their teetering defense line and stabilized the situation there, the crowd of demons trying to force their way through turned into target practice for those on the rooftop.
Ethan was still tangled with his berserker opponent, who by that point was pretty much a mass of bleeding cuts and bruises, yet refused to give up the fight. Alissa thought that the demon must have some sort of skill to ignore pain or the like to keep going in that shape, and that it might well just drop dead the moment said skill’s effect ended.
Her guess proved rather prescient because a few minutes later, that was exactly what happened. The demon was roaring as he rushed towards Ethan once more when all of a sudden, he just suddenly dropped to the ground in mid-motion. The bloody mess of a body just fell right there and moved no more, so Ethan went over to help Alissa and Maribel with their opponent as well after he made sure the demon was gone for real by chopping its head off.
With the three of them working together, the armored demon was truly put at a disadvantage. Ethan was capable of taking its blows head-on, which allowed for more openings where Alissa or Maribel could strike, for greater effect at that. They immobilized the demon by savaging the backs of its knees first, then from there, ducked under its desperate swings and stabbed into its armpits until its arms fell limp on its side.
Only then did Ethan step closer and forcibly removed the demon’s helmet off, revealing the desperate face of a Ma’Varok – none of them were sure of its gender, as it was a bit hard to tell with that type of demon at times – and allowing for Maribel to finish the demon off by slitting its throat wide open using her blades. Even that took the girl some effort, because the demon’s body was definitely on the tough side compared to most fourth tiers.
Moira and Nadine had just finished off the Ragah-Fiq demon too by then. The demons were outmatched and in a desperate situation, but since they were rushing towards the gatehouse to aid in its defense, they were left without the option of retreat. They knew that the base was important and that they would be punished if they escaped without doing their damndest.
That, combined with the misleading strength of Alissa’s party made the demons stay too long, until it was too late for them to even try to retreat. After all, the demons thought that they were “just” facing third tiers at first, until they realized that Alissa’s party had strength far beyond typical people at their level, at which point they were already entangled in a battle.
Once the fourth tier demons were gone, the remaining seventy or so third tier demons were of minimal threat to the party, and after a quick skirmish where the party slaughtered a good twenty-five or so of the demons in short order, the remaining survivors scattered away in fright. That left Alissa’s group with little to do, so they went around and helped the other ambush teams deal with their targets.
With the help from Alissa’s party, the other teams managed to deal with their respective targets easily, though some of those teams had already taken casualties by the time Alissa could get to them. By then, only around fifteen minutes had passed since the battle had started, and Alissa could see a large crowd of demons surging towards them from the base’s interior.
The ambush parties gathered together in the gatehouse by tacit agreement, since they needed to defend the place at all costs. Meanwhile, the fighting inside the gatehouse had pretty much ended, and Magus Drummond’s group had apparently also taken over the gate mechanism room at the top floor. Everyone set up formations to defend the two personnel entrances on the sides of the gatehouse as well as the entrance on the roof.
They would have to battle an unending tide of demons for at least the next hour and a half or so, since the main army was still on its way. At least for the time being, the gatehouse was secured, and it was vital to keep it secured for the sake of the assault team. Without control of the gatehouse they would be left stranded in the enemy base, and both their stamina and mana were already halfway used up after the hard fight with the enemy fourth tiers.
