NOVEL NEXT Chapter 214: Severed
My attack initially seems to go well as I manage to immediately slice off the head of one of the devils at the front of the formation. But they quickly start adapting to my presence making my subsequent slices a hard fought battle as my swings start to get parried and blocked by them. Their size advantage is not making it easier on me to get swings in. Even if they are quite a bit slower than I am, their reach and sheer number makes it difficult to get the opportunity for good attacks. What I do however not have any trouble with, is being bait for them to chase whilst Gamma picks them off with her guns.
“Keep doing what you are doing, Ami!” I hear Gamma call out as two of the devil’s numbers fall down with a shriek, bullet holes through their heads. The others, seemingly not caring at all, keep gunning for me instead. Apparently it’s not really Gods in general they seem attracted to, but pretty much just me.
Gamma’s shots manage to make a couple of openings for me as well, as she tries to pick off the devils who are just about going to strike me or the ones that are preparing to block my attacks.
Occasionally in between my strikes I also call down a column of light from the heavens but, as expected, it doesn’t do much aside from slightly weakening them. Definitely not worth the expenditure of mana.
As I keep kiting the devils in front of our line we do manage to slowly whittle down their numbers. With fewer of them to block my attacks it keeps getting easier to land hits on them, although not always fatal ones. Something I have to get used to because apart from the giant shadow monster back at Hofudstadr, there hasn’t really been anything that managed to tank more than one hit from me. In any case, two to three hits to go down isn’t much of an improvement but still quite a bit tougher than the opponents before.
After yet another one of Gamma’s volleys I try to exploit the opening it has created, but to my surprise I’m almost hit by a jab by one of the devils behind the front line. I just merely manage to deflect the strike with my shield. I respond by kicking the devil in front of me with all my force, sending three of the devils in front of me skidding over the forest floor.
“Shit, don’t get too careless, Ami.” I flap my wings a bit harder to give myself a little bit of a breather. But that doesn’t really last long as a huge shadowy bolt flies towards me from the side. I manage to dodge over it with another flap of my wings as the bolt breaks five trees in half to my left. I don’t immediately see who or what launched the bolt, but that becomes clearer to me as the second one flies towards me, this time I use my shield to deflect it, though the sheer force of it makes me reel a little.
The purple devil who threw the bolt is almost thrice the size as the devils who I have been fighting so far and by far the biggest one I’ve seen till this moment. It’s weird how I didn’t really see him before as he’s the size of a city gatehouse
“Gamma!?” I call out to my purple haired friend.
“That’s a big one… I’ll give it that!” Gamma calls out as she takes her fifteenth set of pistols from her jacket while she runs along the line of battle where husks are being fought by the brave defenders. She immediately fires her volley with me tracing her shots with my eyes. The two bullets find their mark effortlessly as the purple devil doesn’t even try to dodge it. But the bullets just do nothing, not even leaving a mark. It is as if the bullets phased right through him. “Uh…” Gamma looks confused at her guns. “That didn’t seem to do anything, Ami!”
The purple devil throws another bolt at me, although this one is a bit easier to dodge.
“I noticed!” But I can’t keep my attention fully on the guy as I still have an angry bunch of red devils following closely behind me. This was already not that easy but now I really wonder how we are going to tackle the big guy. If I leave the red devils they will go for Gamma and Gamma is presumably not good in melee and if I focus on the red guys I’m giving the purple one free shots into my side which isn’t great either…
Right when I’m starting to doubt our chances however, the cavalry arrives, in the form of an arrow hitting one of the red devils in the side of its head followed by a lightning bolt of magic electrifying the air and zapping another two of them.
“Amicia, leave these to Sam and I.” Sidolphus joins the fray with his big warhammer, smacking one of the red devils from behind and subsequently pulling their attention with some kind of war hymn. “Take Veanya and focus on the purple one, would you?”
Veanya floats towards me, levitating herself with her magic. A couple strands of her hair are still crackling with the electric current she used to zap our enemies with. “We came here because our part of the front dried out. Looks like you pulled all the fun.” Veanya gives me a sly wink.
I start flying parallel to the purple devil so we are not an easy target. “This guy isn’t going to go down very easily.”
Veanya follows closely behind me. “I know. Should we approach him from both sides?”
“That might be best to divide his attention.” As I say that another purple bolt flies in between the two of us. “At least he will only be able to focus on one of us like that, I hope.” And that person is more than likely going to be me.
Veanya nods. “I’ll pepper him from the other side.”
“Please try not to hit me with your spells.”
Before she flies off in the distance Veanya smiles. “Don’t worry, I can exclude you from my spells anyway. I assure you you won’t feel a thing.” She then shoots off in the opposite direction.
-I kinda wanted to ask what elements she was going to use, but considering the time, that's probably not a great idea… I know we said that we were going to try to hide Veanya’s multiple elements earlier, but that probably went out of the window the second the massive attack started.-
As I had expected, the purple devil keeps his attention solely on me, luckily thanks to Sid’s intervention I at least don’t need to worry about the red guys for now.
Right now I want to try to stop the purple devil from throwing his bolts, if nothing else, then to avoid collateral damage. That’s why I decide to rush straight towards the purple menace, dodging what I hope to be the final purple bolt on the way in.
With my velocity behind me I prepare my sword for a slice through my target but before my blade can connect with the creature’s body, a blade of shadow materializes which stops my blade dead in its tracks. It’s weird as it’s only my blade that’s making any sound, it is really as if it's an actual shadow I’m fighting. A shadow with a physical mass. And now that I am looking closer into the enemy I’m fighting, the same can be said about the devil itself. Its body seemingly made out of a combination of shadow and purple miasma.
Which brings me to the conclusion that Gamma’s bullets not only seem to phase right through it, but that they in fact DID phase right through.
As I rebound from my swing, the devil prepares to take a swing at me too but before he can strike, the right arm that’s carrying the sword is severed by an almost blinding blade of frost, fire, stone and electricity. Completely disintegrating the arm.
That confirms that Veanya has definitely given up trying to hide her elements.
With the blade gone I waste not a single second to power my blade with holy light and slash twice at the creature’s neck. The contact my blade makes with the ‘skin’ of the devil feels wrong. I don’t know what I was expecting after realizing I was fighting shadow, but it wasn’t this. For some reason it feels like putting a knife in a bowl of chocolate paste…
A third blow from my blade severs the head from the body after which the head also starts to dissipate, but to my surprise, the body still keeps on going as the left arm now materializes a blade of shadow in the right arm’s stead. And to make matters worse, just after a couple of seconds of having been destroyed, shadow and miasma starts to bind together again to form the arm and head anew.