I Was a Loner, but My Class Got Summoned to Another World…

Mirael, the archer who had joined Stella's group, fired two arrows simultaneously.

Each was coated with light elemental magic, glowing faintly as they pierced the approaching enemies and revealed their positions.

Half the team was engaged with the demons coming from above, while the rest braced for the creatures advancing from below.

Stella was still focused on gathering mana.

She would soon have to set up a barrier before the enemies surged in like a flood from two different directions.

"Hold them off!" Zavar, leader of the half-bloods, called out.

He couldn't see what was behind them as he kept his focus on producing ice shards to attack the demons before him.

Above them, nearly one hundred meters, another battle was raging.

Renar, who had remained on the upper floors, unleashed a burst of flames that erupted in front of him.

The fire mage continued launching fireballs downward, pushing back the tide of enemies inch by inch.

But space was tight.

He had instructed Doblin, the earth magician, to narrow the path earlier, just enough so that not all enemies could rush them at once.

Some of the creatures even tumbled off the ledge, falling as they shoved and clawed over each other in their frenzy to reach the blood they craved.

They were no longer human.

Recently turned into vampire minions, their hunger had stripped them of all thought. What poured in now were hundreds of hollow husks, crazed and mindless.

Renar clenched his jaw.

They had likely been the city's entire population.

"Keep at it! They won't stop, so even if you run out of mana—keep attacking!"

He was mostly shouting at himself. His reserves had dropped dangerously low, and he was already pulling mana stones from his pouch to fuel the barrage.

After several more minutes of continuous assault, he turned to Doblin.

"Seal the path. Now!"

A thick slab of stone rose to block the passage again, silencing the screams below.

"Damn it," Renar muttered, breathing heavily. "We took out thousands of those things… and we're still not making progress."

"I think we've caused enough of a distraction," Stephon the assassin offered calmly. "It's time we head down and regroup with Stella."

Everyone nodded. As they turned and looked toward the lower levels, they saw it, another battle had begun below them.

"Make the rope for the next descent! Those who are out of mana—retreat! There should be others in the army who can take your place!" Renar shouted.

Eight of his twenty units immediately broke off and ran to switch out with fresh mages. The rest began fastening ropes to begin their descent.

As they climbed down, the battle below came into full view.

Stella was caught in a vice, pinned between enemies coming from both sides.

Their team was struggling, but the princess, Stella, had at least kept them safe thus far.

"Doblin, block the ones coming from the upper floors while we handle the lower ones!" Renar called out.

He was relieved to see that the enemy numbers below were fewer, though far more powerful.

As soon as they reached Stella's position, Doblin raised another earthen barrier, sealing off the flood of enemies from above.

"Thanks…" Stella muttered, letting out a ragged breath. "I'm almost out of mana. I thought I might even have to burn through my core…"

She finally stopped casting her barrier, breathing heavily as she glanced around. If they were struggling this much with a team of thirty, she couldn't imagine how bad things were for Roland.

Mirael, the archer, turned to the new arrivals and quickly relayed enemy positions.

"The Garmr, the wolf-like beasts, are hard to kill. Even my light-infused arrows barely phase them. They're absorbing it."

Renar narrowed his eyes grimly. "Those things are full vampires in bestial form. They won't go down like fledglings."

That made everything worse.

The Garmr, in their berserk state, were not only incredibly strong, but they might even be ten times stronger than a normal human, and not only that, but also far faster.

"Stay away from the ledges," Thessa warned. "They can cling to the walls like spiders."

Thessa, her eyes closed and attuned to the air, used wind currents to track movement.

"They're climbing up from both flanks," she said. "Trying to surround us."

Without waiting, Eira jumped off the ledge. Wind magic burst around her, manifesting into sharp blades that she hurled downward, aiming to knock the climbers off.

Some vampires hissed and plummeted under her assault, and yet others endured, retreating with agile leaps that made targeting them far more difficult.

"We're going to have a serious problem if you don't hurry," Thessa added, her voice tight. "I can hear flying vampires rising from below. Looks like they finally noticed their fledglings failed."

For the first time in a long while, Renar felt it, pressure.

He wasn't sure if they were going to make it this time.

Their numbers were few, and the enemies many; he did not even know where Roland was or if they could really save him.

Roland, on the other hand, was already an hour into the climb.

He'd been lucky; after defeating a worm earlier, he had found its burrow and was now using the tunnel system to search for a way up.

From time to time, he heard movement in the dark. Whenever a vampire approached, he quickly dispatched them. Their glowing red eyes made them easy to spot, especially in the dark tunnels.

Eventually, the path began to slope sharply upward.

Roland broke into a run at times struggling since the floor was unstable.

The trail was rough, clearly never intended for frequent use. He suspected it had been carved out for fledglings, those without the power of flight, since true vampires would've simply used their wings to travel between ledges.

Now and then, he had to fight four or five enemies at once. But even in his weakened state, they weren't much of a challenge.

He was still managing well.

Along the way, he collected weapons and armor from the fallen.

Most of the gear was low-grade, poor materials, brittle blades, and battered armor, but he stored it anyway.

With his army growing by the day, he needed every spare weapon he could find. Many of his people had once been farmers or captives with nothing to their name. Equipping them all was becoming a real challenge.

He kept ascending. The further he got from the cavern's core, the less oppressive the ambient miasma felt. His mana drain was slowing, and he could feel it; soon, he'd begin recovering naturally again.

Still, something didn't sit right with him.

He couldn't shake the feeling that the draining aura below was going to be a danger he would have to face sooner or later.

Something the demons had created. But how? What sort of power could suppress the power of a spirit?

He had no answers to this, and he couldn't even try to find them; all he was left with were questions.

And those questions multiplied the moment he reached the halfway point.

That's where the real resistance began.

Until now, he had faced only vampires. But now, he spotted demons again.

Blue-skinned, muscular, and with barely any armor on.

Unlike the feral fledglings, these were intelligent beings. They had even set up groups, clearly waiting for him.

He was walking cautiously through a narrow corridor when three bolts of lightning shot toward him.

Roland dodged the first, barely avoided the second, and conjured a barrier to block the third. The impact rattled his arm.

"What the hell?" he muttered, shocked.

Until now, none of the demons Roland had faced had been capable of using magic. But then he saw it.

One of the blue-skinned demons stepped forward, its chest partially exposed.

A mana stone pulsed near its heart, embedded directly into its flesh.

The crystal gave off a corrupted, eerie glow.

A mix of red and purple lightning that flickered like a malfunctioning spell.

Veins around it were blackened and bulging, as though poisoned by the energy coursing through them.

The sight was very grotesque.

It made Roland instinctively turn away, his stomach twisting, bile rising to his throat.

And then came the smell, like scorched meat mixed with chemicals. It all felt wrong, like a failed experiment that somehow lived on. The demon looked half-dead already, and worse still, it didn't seem to care.

"Damn it... a lab?" Roland muttered under his breath.

He barely had time to finish the thought before the thing lunged forward, followed by six more of its kind.

These weren't normal demons. And they wouldn't be repelled by light like the vampires.

Roland gritted his teeth and surged forward, blade in hand.

Fire and electricity rained toward him, but he raised his sword to block the flames, then cast a half-ward to deflect the lightning.

The mutated demons looked dazed, their movements erratic, like they were drugged or half-controlled.

"Yeah… You're just fodder. Sloppy work from whoever made you. But I'm more interested in where your masters are hiding," Roland muttered.

He dashed through them, his blade cutting clean through necks and chests. In just a few seconds, all six lay dead.

Each one had a core embedded near their heart.

He broke them, one by one.

As the final one shattered, he felt a strange pulse of energy flow into him. It instantly made him regret his decision; the mana felt unstable.

Then a familiar voice echoed in his mind.

[Try not to absorb those cores. The magic inside them is tainted… I was able to purify the one you just drained, but I won't be able to do it again.]

It was Elios—his tone uncharacteristically stern.

[If you clear this place out… find the source. Destroy it. Whatever created these… it must be stopped. This kind of abomination defiles everything the Spirits stand for.]