Gamer Girl Isekai

They were losing now, and not narrowly. Kruger had the advantage against his opponent, while Aexilica, Vari and Krummer's combined powers were enough to win a stalemate against their own. And yet the evening seemed to strengthen their foes. So long as the sun kept sinking, she knew, their power would keep growing. That was the pattern revealed to her so far.

It had been Kruger's idea to not simply attack by noon, where their defences would be strongest. Perhaps that had saved them from being drowned under ten thousand warriors with metal staffs and metal creatures. It had also meant they were walking a dangerous balance, and now that balance was collapsing.

Whatever had remained of it certainly did not survive much longer after the rest of the strange warriors arrived, storming in by the score and riddling the air with the popping of their staves. Aexilica was at once forced to both defend herself from the immediate threat of the giant monster she fought, and the more scattered menace that came for her from the weaker warriors. She heard sharp hissing by her ears where near-hits split the air, saw chunks explode out of stone walls as impossibly fast impacts sundered the material.

Then, inevitably, she felt another wound take her. The shoulder this time, right where the muscles most needed to move. Aexilica's impediment bled into the fight near-instantly, and it was no longer a winning affair.

Kruger was doing better, but only just, taking periodic pauses from his own combat to spray another blast of invisible magic and leave a few more of the uniformed warriors to fall down amid spurts of blood. He had actually been winning his fight, but even he couldn't sustain that while distracted so regularly. Everywhere in the room, ground started to be given.

And they hadn't even come to within viewing range of Emma.

The sheer injustice of it all, that so great a risk on her part could end in such monumental failure, was like boiling water in Aexilica's throat. Pure pain, and inescapable. She found herself faltering as she fought, the will to continue diminished by knowing how futile everything was.

Things only grew worse when the third monster appeared.

She was taller than the woman, though shorter than the man. Black haired, and a terrible sight. She seemed to Aexilica some kind of demon, and certainly moved like one. All inhuman grace and lithe power. There was a terrible confidence to her steps that left Aexilica certain the most powerful being present had just walked in.

Because of course, things could always get worse.

"Kruger." She grinned. "So kind of you to join us, I was growing hungry."

Kruger met the woman's eyes, darted his stare around the room, then smiled. In an instant the weapon he held transformed again, breaking down into pure light and reconfiguring itself. This new one landed on his shoulder, a strange thing of cylindrical metal with an oddly conical component protruding from the hole at its tip. Every enemy present screamed as Kruger turned and aimed it at the far wall.

Aexilica understood why a moment later, because it seemed this new weapon was the most fearsome of all. It screamed, first. And flames erupted from both its back and front. To her eyes, preternaturally quick, what happened next was rather clear. The protrusion she had seen poking out from the cylinder actually freed itself, and started streaking through the air atop a trail of fire. It was not merely a component of the larger weapon at all, but a separate creature made of metal and moving under its own power!

This iron bird thundered through the air and crossed the ten paces separating it from the wall in almost no time at all, then smashed into it hard. That impact alone would have been deadly enough—harder than Aexilica could punch to be sure—but it was not even one tenth of the terror at play. Because an explosion followed it, intense, blinding, teeth-rattling. The sheer concussion of it was almost like one of Emma's energy lances, though Aexilica thought it was greater still than even that.

Steel had surrendered to such attacks before, she'd seen it. And so stone, of course, had no chance at all. Aexilica took a wary step back as the air shook and struck her face with a sudden concussion. The room filled with debris, then that same debris began clearing as winds coursed through the chamber unnaturally intense.

What came next was the light, and it was this that revealed Kruger's plan. Where the dying sun's red rays touched, the three leaders of their enemies hissed and melted back. Aexilica saw brief moments of contact where the glow touched their skin, witnessed steam sizzling upwards from boiling flesh.

She understood in an instant what was happening. Weakened by day, weak to the sun. Kruger should have told her to expect such a thing—though she couldn't have done anything with it if he had—but that didn't matter now. Now she saw that they had a chance.

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While the giant retreated, distracted by the skies, Aexilica lunged. She dragged her sword hard across his gut in the deepest, heaviest cut she'd yet managed. It made her wounded shoulder scream in protest as she exerted every ounce of will in her body to force all of its strength out. But it cut him, and it cut him well. Blood poured from the wound and Aexilica actually saw entrail tips peeking out from schismed skin. The man cried out, snarling rage at her as he leaned in to attack.

That was when she turned her blade to catch the sunset, angling it just right to send a beam of light bouncing from the steel and catching his face. It wasn't a clean reflection—there was far too much grime and gore on the metal for that—but it did what she'd hoped and sent him stumbling back away as his flesh burned.

Vari got stuck in too, of course. He hadn't seemed to lose any enthusiasm at all for the fight when they were losing, and he was certainly not backing down now that victory was making itself known. Aexilica actually winced at the sight of his hammer coming down hard on the giant's arm. She heard his shoulder break, and it made her own sting in sympathy.

The other creatures were now fighting Kruger two at once, and Krummer peeled away to aid his leader. Aexilica saw that he found just as much advantage in the light as she did, perhaps more. His weapon disappeared, appearing instead as a great sheet of…her? No, not her at all. It was…Her reflection. But rendered so perfectly that it made the faint aspect on still water appear like nothing at all. The clarity was beyond recognition, and the light rebounding from it was more intense than anything her sword had deflected.

Intense enough that it did more than just stun and anger its victim now, where the dying rays touched the monsters stumbled back and cried out. Flesh bubbled, actually burst into flames at points, and Aexilica found the scent of cooked and charred meat hitting her nostrils revoltingly fast.

A blast of fire struck the reflective sheet and blasted it to pieces, before it had even finished falling apart Kruger reassembled it into an identical, boxy weapon to the one he'd entered combat with. It screamed in his grip, and she saw patches of the monsters' skin falling away as invisibly-fast impacts shredded them.

She was almost distracted from the claws that lunged back for her face, but Aexilica smacked them away all the same and left a nice gash in their owner's palm. He hissed. It was then that she saw his burns, the ones from the sun, had yet to heal. Didn't look to be healing at all, even.

So they don't recover from everything?

But the skies were darkening, even as she fought. Sunset turning to sunless, turning to a rising moon and a black horizon. Aexilica could feel the monster's strength grow almost in-between swings. If she was to use such an advantage, it would be soon.

Vari's hammer came down hard on the enemy's foot, filling the air with a meaty crunch and widening the span of their advantage for those few seconds more. While he stumbled and roared, Aexilica leapt forwards, caught one of his wrists with her own grip, and dragged him back with her. Overbalanced as he was his great strength was momentarily useless in resisting hers, and Aexilica was able to haul him straight into the sunset's glare.

He caught fire, screamed and burned. Skin bubbled and melted, sloughing off in patches and charring into crumbling black at others. She saw him spasm, flail, backed away to evade being struck as he thrashed. At first he must have been disoriented, for he actually stumbled deeper into the sun. It took him only a moment to correct himself, to fall out of it, but by then the damage was done.

His body had been near-ruined in the brief exposure, and Aexilica and Vari both wasted no time communicating before pouncing on their opportunity to punish his weakness.

As the monster stumbled away, Aexilica saw his weakness mount, and risked a glance back at Kruger and Krummer's fight to see how they were doing. As she might have expected, they were doing well. The caster Aexilica had first encountered was already laid out of the combat, wounded and still on the ground and marked by a dozen—perhaps a hundred—smaller wounds from Kruger's mysterious weapons. The newer arrival was clearly the most powerful, though not by as great a stretch as she would have needed to make her uphill battle a true contest.

Even as she watched, Aexilica saw Kruger blast another chunk out of the woman's calf while Krummer hurled her back against the wall. She had barely so much as impacted it before Kruger's weapon changed again, this time turning into an odd thing with great cylinder built into the bottom. When he spat flames from its tip, that cylinder turned. And every shot was an explosion. Aexilica shielded her eyes as six subsequent detonations racked her enemy where she stood against the wall, by the time all had finished ringing out the woman's body was mangled indeed. She slumped down, trailing blood against the stone and boasting exposed viscera in no less than a score of places.

She was, ridiculously, still alive. Aexilica could only marvel at what it must have taken to slay such creatures, but then she saw Kruger's weapon transforming again—this time into the large one he'd used to blast open the wall. Their fight was at its end, it seemed.

"No speech, monster." Kruger panted, as he hefted the weapon upwards and levelled it. "Die."

The explosion rang out, bright and blinding and seeming to shatter the very air. The room shook, dust detached from the ceiling, and Aexilica actually saw globs of molten stone escaping from the point of detonation. It was, she thought, rather an awe-inspiring sight. There was really only one problem with it—it had not hit their enemy.

…Two problems, perhaps. Because she recognised this blast.

Kruger was thrown hard into a wall by the energy lance, body made to look almost as mangled in that one stroke as his enemy's had across their entire fight. He was still breathing, Aexilica saw, but only with great difficulty. From the far end of the room the attack had come, and staring there now she could just barely make out its conjurer.

Emma stood there, hand outstretched and eyes wide. Smoke wafted from her fingers, her shoulders heaved, and her lips were pulled back to reveal perhaps the most feral snarl Aexilica had ever seen the girl produce. Her eyes darted madly around the room as everything fell silent in staring at her.

"Don't hurt mommy dommy." She growled.

We're all going to die.