And (N)one Shall Remain

While the situation of the battle was relatively even – despite how the monastery’s expedition force fell into a premeditated ambush – for a while, Esperanza’s foray into the battlefield turned the tables almost instantly as the side effect of witnessing her presence from her [Far Down the Deep End] skill made itself known. Due to their trained habit, the monastery’s warriors kept an eye on their surroundings through their peripheral vision while fighting. That habit backfired when Esperanza came into play.

 

Almost every member of the expedition was affected, though none took the blow that badly due to their strong Souls and high levels. Even so, the momentary distraction alone proved to be fatal for some as they were in direct combat at the moment. At least half a dozen people fell during that brief moment when they were affected by the skill’s side effect and allowed their opponent to land a mortal blow.

 

Only when the Bishop used a skill of his to help against the effect of Esperanza’s skills did the temple guards manage to regain their calm, even if some of them still suffered from the effects of the skill, in a milder way. That fragile equilibrium, however, was shattered when Esperanza took the Bishop down and ended the man viciously, naturally causing the effects of his skill to cease as well when she did so.

 

While the expedition party had more people and plenty of experience, they were still fighting against people whose raw abilities were a good bit above their own. Each of the [Progenies of Yore] had the raw attributes of a low to mid leveled fourth tier on average, and skills of similar quality as what one would have expected out of a fourth tier despite being only in their third tiers. Ani’s people were not as exaggerated, but almost all of them were in their early fourth tiers as well, with the warrior woman herself solidly in the middle levels of the tier.

 

In fact, Ani had directly engaged the strongest fourth tier other than the bishop, an old woman clad in black cloak and hood, and kept her at bay throughout the fight. The woman was tricky and agile, and it was only thanks to Ani’s ability to freely manipulate water – which she had plenty of thanks to the melting ice from Dai’Vasy’s spells – that she could even contain the woman.

 

Fortunately while the old woman – the Head Inquisitor, if Ani heard another call the woman correctly – was tricky and hard to catch, she was not all that powerful as a combatant. Her fighting style seemed to involve poisons and other unpleasant agents that she smeared across her blades, which unfortunately met a perfect counter this time around.

 

Ani’s skill with the manipulation of water included the water contained within her own body, so even when the old woman managed to nick her with the poisoned blades, Ani would simply force the venom out of the wound along with the infected blood. It was an ability she gained very early in her life, when she was still in her first tier, after she survived an accident where she was stung by a venomous lionfish. The ability had since stayed with her through her whole life and even evolved three times.

 

It might not be powerful in most meanings of the word, but it rendered her nearly immune to poisons and venoms that needed to travel through blood, which had saved her skin more times than she could count over the decades.

 

Like it did that day with the clearly frustrated Head Inquisitor. It didn’t matter that the poisons she used could kill her targets within a few heartbeats when they were forced out of the body before a single heartbeat could even pass, while the woman was unfortunately lacking in more direct means of combat, having specialized her skills and classes to make full use of her poisons.

 

The old woman even tried using poison sprays, only to be met with flowing water barriers that washed away her poisons before it could do any harm. Due to her fighting alongside her allies, she couldn’t use her gaseous poisons either, as that would cause horrific casualties to her own allies, who were physically weaker than their foes.

 

In the end, the old woman made a mistake as she stepped too close to a puddle left behind by Dai’Vasy’s magic where the ice had melted and Ani capitalized on that opportunity to manipulate the water to grab at the old woman’s ankle. Caught and unable to escape, the old woman was unable to block or parry Ani’s subsequent attack and ended up impaled at the point of her large harpoon-like spear.

 

While Ani took care of the Head Inquisitor, Dali handled another of the fast, agile fourth tiers, a member of the temple guard that seemed to have some sort of spatial-type movement skill that they excelled on. The temple guard attempted to use his skills to sneak behind one of Esperanza’s people and land a sneak attack, but found himself stymied by Dali at every turn.

 

Dali was just as capable of moving through space as the temple guard was, and in fact, was even more skilled at it. The temple guard moved first, but Dali was always there to intercept him the moment he appeared back into reality, despite moving later. In fact, after they danced around like that for a while, Dali seemed to have caught on to something and intercepted the temple guard while the two of them were still traversing space outside of the present reality.

 

The result of that interception was horrific, as the temple guard in question was hurled out of an unstable portal with grievous wounds all over his body, his right arm and leg in particular shredded to little more than a few hanging bits of meat stuck on the bones. On the other hand, Dali emerged out of a different portal mostly unscathed other than a bit of ruffled fur.

 

It was with horror and despair in his eyes that the crippled temple guard watched on as Dali trotted over and tore out his throat with a quick bite. The eyes of the dying man remained fixated at Dali, as if looking past him at something fearsome and horrifying up until his very last moments when the light slowly died out of his eyes.

 

On the other side, Gordy directly overwhelmed another senior temple guard who seemed to be more of a commander-type, as he fought alongside six other third-tier temple guards in a tight formation. Their tight-knit formation proved to be powerless before Gordy’s mist form, however, and one by one the temple guards were consumed by the maws that formed in the mist that surrounded them.

 

The fourth-tier commander was left for last, as he was the most powerful and the toughest, but not even he managed to break out. He never managed to break free even while he had the support of his subordinates, much less on his own. In the end, all that was left of the man were bloody bones with bits of flesh still attached inside his pristine armor, while Gordy burped loudly as she finished her bloody feast.

 

Elsewhere, the rest of Ani’s people and the other [Progenies of Yore] finished off their opponents one by one and rushed to the aid of the others who were not yet done with theirs. It did not take long from there for the battle to turn completely one-sided, even with Esperanza and her pets staying out of the fighting to allow those who needed the experience to gain more of it. 

 

Of course, Esperanza kept blaring her aura at full power and even used [Aura Mastery] to intensify the effects so as to make things easier for the rest of her group. The fifty strong expedition army soon dwindled to half their number, and from there, they just collapsed and routed, each man trying to escape, prioritizing their own lives over everything else.

 

The sight of their leaders dying likely didn’t help matters one bit.

 

Even though their enemies no longer had any stomach for more fighting, it was not like Esperanza’s group would let them off just like that. Their safety was directly tied to the fact that nobody – other than Alissa, if vaguely – knew of their existence within the human kingdom, so it was out of the question to allow for escapees that might report them at the earliest convenience.

 

That was also one of the reasons why Esperanza set up the ambush within the valley. She herself held up one end together with Nalihimatu, Dali, and Gordy, while the rest of the group bottled up the other end and slaughtered their enemies in their desperate attempts to escape. Most of their enemies fell without managing to go far, but a few kept some tricks up their sleeves that almost allowed them to have some hope of escaping.

 

One nimble temple guard used a skill and ran directly on the steep cliff as she attempted to bypass Esperanza’s group, only for Esperanza to whip out one arm with her dagger in hand. The dagger sliced clean through the escaping temple guard’s left achilles tendon, and the woman toppled over and crashed down the steep cliff in a tumble, her broken body landing at the feet of the cliff moments later.

 

Another evoked some kind of skill that allowed them to glide with the wind and leapt up the cliff’s walls as he tried to escape from the other side, only to be turned into a pincushion as he inadvertently glided past Ilavakide and the other archers. Even the five from Zikeal joined in and landed some hits on the unfortunate temple guard who then crashed head-first against the cliff, though he was likely already dead before then.

 

Those two temple guards were the ones who managed to get the farthest in their escape attempts, as the rest were simply cut down before they could get far. Soon, silence reigned once more in the valley, as Esperanza’s group rested and caught their breath amidst the corpses of their eviscerated foes which littered the ground.

 

“Anyone injured?” Esperanza asked as she walked over to where the rest of the group was seated or sprawled.

 

“Some are, but Mel’s taking care of them,” said Tiesya as she pointed out to where Mel-Ivas was healing a couple members of Ani’s people who took wounds and injuries during the fight. Fortunately none of the group lost their lives, and their injuries were within the limits of what Mel-Ivas could heal with her still-growing skills.

 

“Bueno,” nodded Esperanza in satisfaction. “These people had some pretty good equipment on them. You all should check their gear to see if anything they got happens to be better than what you’re using and replace things as needed. It’s not like these people will be using them anymore, anyways.”

 

“Understood, Exalted One,” said Val-Kas’j who was seated nearby. He had taken on the most enemies during the battle and gained the most levels, which made him the closest amongst the [Progenies of Yore] to the fourth tier in terms of levels. “We’ll strip them and see what useful things they have after we rest.”

 

Esperanza nodded at Val’s affirmation and walked over to where Ani was seated. Mel-Ivas was nearby, as she helped nurse Ani’s wounds, which the latter had taken during her fight with the Head Inquisitor. While Ani could handle the poison on her own, she couldn’t deal with the actual injuries other than to prevent her blood from bleeding out through them, so Mel-Ivas had to deal with those for her. 

 

“Do you have something in mind, Exalted One?” asked Ani when she noticed Esperanza walk over.

“Nothing much. I’m just wondering whether or not we should return the favor to wherever these bastards came from,” said Esperanza somewhat vehemently. “When you’re removing weeds, you need to make sure to get the roots as well. We took care of these pendejo today, but their base remains. I’m wondering if we could pay that base a little visit…”