Abyssal Awakening

Seeing the beast disappear along with the other beasts, Bo gritted his teeth.

"F*CK!!!" He let out a furious shout as his last attack was completely ignored. Not only that, but the beast had also taunted him!?

Veins bulged on Bo's neck as he jumped down with the other captain who had helped him block that last attack.

If they had more captains with them, they might've been able to kill the beast. But most of the captains were busy protecting the weaker Warriors. A lot of the captains also stayed behind at the outpost so there were more groups than captains on this expedition.

Scratching his hair, Bo saw that his group was heavily injured but no one died.

That last lightning strike had taken out quite a few warriors, trimming down their numbers.

No one saw it coming. Even if they had people on watch, how could they predict the beast would just open a pathway from the Void and ambush them?

It was clear that their target was the supplies all along. With the attack on their supplies, a lot of it had been burned to a crisp. Food, clothing, Abyss Blood and medical supplies have all been reduced by almost half.

"Tend to the wounded! Salvage what you can!" One of the captains shouted, reorganising everyone and reducing panic.

"How many did we lose?" Bo asked with a frown.

"Too many. 15 died at the initial ambush. 30 from the lightning attack." The captain replied with a frown.

When they set off, they had 100 Warriors ready to take back the port. With this single ambush, they almost lost half of their numbers.

"F*ck…" Bo frowned.

"Should we go back?" Another captain asked but the first captain shook his head.

"We can still do it with these numbers. Frankly, as bad as this sounds, it does resolve our issue of missing supplies. It just means we'll need to do a little more before facing the Grandmaster."

Out of the 55 that were left, they had 7 captains. 4 of which were Advanced Masters with 5 Sigils and 3 were also Grandmasters with 6 Sigils.

With this lineup, taking care of the Grandmaster looking after the port should be easy. The difficulty was interference from the rest of the people stationed there.

"Even if we call for reinforcements now, it'll take too long to arrive. We'll switch up our attack plan instead. Since they ambushed us, we'll return the favour in kind.

"We'll attack at night. Make some adjustments to the squads, have our stealthiest Warriors form a group with the Captains. The rest will attack the gates if we are discovered. The best case scenario is that the stealth unit can take out the guards so we don't notify the Grandmaster of our presence." The first captain strategized while Bo frowned.

"And if the beast from earlier was to return? What then?" Bo asked.

"The priority is to take back the port. As long as we succeed in killing the Grandmaster, we'll be able to get reinforcements from the capital. A few casualties are a small price to pay." The first captain shook his head.

Clenching his fist, Bo took a deep breath.

"What if we form another unit with the people we have left? A unit specifically for slowing down the beast if it was to appear." Bo asked as the captain raised his eyebrow.

"You have candidates in mind?"

"Two people that I think are perfect for stalling. We can add more to the unit to increase the odds and give them a healer too." Bo nodded his head.

"Egil and Selen. Egil has the best defence out of everyone if we're purely talking about physical reinforcement. If we stack some buffs on him, he'll be able to keep the beast distracted. Selen has a unique ability of being able to slow time down in a specific zone covered by her barriers. If these two work together with some help, keeping that beast distracted won't be hard." He explained.

He hated the fact that he had to rely on Egil of all people, even if he did acknowledge the fact that he was strong.

But if the trade-off was to lose more Warriors, he could only count on Egil to keep them safe.

"Alright. Bo, form a stalling unit for the beast. Vilken, get those that pass your test for being stealthy. Everyone outside of these two units will be doing the same as before." He ordered as Bo nodded his head.

"Before I do that, can someone tell me what the hell that beast was?" Bo asked as the beast felt like it could do everything

It had multiple elements and could even shrug off attacks with ease. Usually, beasts would have extremely high defence and low attack or high attack and low defence.

But this? It had both high attack and high defence.

"Frida might have a clue but I doubt it."

Nodding his head, Bo made his way towards Frida. She was the captain who was most focused on saving the supplies. If it wasn't for her keeping the beasts away and putting out a lot of the fires, they would've lost far more supplies.

She had long brown hair tied into several braids, a pair of orange eyes and markings across her face.

"Frida." Bo called out as she glanced over.

"Has Olvir given his order? Are we retreating or are we continuing?" Frida asked, throwing some burnt supplies to the side.

"We're continuing." Bo sighed.

"Sh*t. New plans or same crap?"

"New plans. Out of the 55 warriors left, excluding captains, we're making two additional squads. A stalling squad and a stealth squad. Stealth will follow the captains and take out the guards so we don't alert the Grandmaster.

"The stalling squad will be responsible for holding back any large beast like the draconic one just now." Bo explained, causing Frida to frown.

"You know that once we form these two squads, the ones left are basically lambs for slaughter right? Their numbers are far too little to siege a stronghold. To begin with, this plan was already risky even if we had 100 warriors. But now Olvir is telling them to fight with just 55? Isn't that basically telling them to die?"

Letting out a sigh, Bo nodded his head.

"It'll be a small price is what he said. If we can get reinforcements from the capital to the frontlines, it'll be worth it."

"Bullsh*t." Frida shook her head.

She couldn't allow this kind of mission to continue. But seeing as how Bo was here to tell her, it seemed like Olivr had his mind set on this new plan.

"So are you just here to tell me the sh*tty news or do you need something from me?"

"The draconic beast that ignored my attacks. Do you know what it is? If I know what it can do I'll have an easier time forming a stalling squad." Bo asked as Frida folded her arms and closed her eyes.

"Two candidates in mind. Both are very similar so I'm not sure which it is."

"Any information is good. At most, I'll had to account for both of the candidates if I'm going to form this squad." Bo shrugged.

"Alright. First is Twilight Drakorian. Grandmaster level beast. Notable features are an extremely high resistance to energy and elemental based attacks. It can absorb, adapt and even counter. Can channel anything it's experience before and sent it back.

"The more it experiences, the more powerful it becomes. In terms of abilities, I can only remember three. Elemental Breath, Twilight Shroud and Cosmic Judgment. Cosmic Judgment takes on the element that it has absorbed before." Frida began to explain as Bo nodded his head and made a mental note.

"The second is Aetherion Harbinger. It also has a high resistance to energy and elemental based attacks but this primarily lies with the fact that it can shift itself between an aether state and reality. It can't absorb, adapt or counter but with each attack it receives, its resistance grows until they're immune to the caster.

"It gains elements based on the beasts and materials it has eaten before and it's a beast mostly focused on defence. Its main form of defence is tearing apart the Void and escaping when its life is threatened."

Hearing this, Bo furrowed his brows.

One was heavily focused on attack while the other was heavily focused on defence. Neither sounds like an exact match against the beast he fought against. In fact, pieces of their skills almost seem to be merged together into a single being.

"Alright, thank you." Bo nodded. At least this was better than going in blind.

With a basic understanding of what the stalling group could be potentially against, their main goal is to just keep its aggro and take the attacks it throws out. If they attack the beast, it'll either increase the offensive capabilities or defensive ones.

"You're welcome." Hesitating for a moment, Frida wanted to tell Bo not to take too many Warriors into the stalling squad since it'll only cause more casualties for the main group. However, if he was to agree, the stalling squad of some of their finest may die in vain.

A choice between the two and Frida couldn't resolve herself to choose the first option. After all, the if the stalling squad dies, everyone else would follow. Yet if the main squad dies, the stalling squad could still hold on.

All she could do was watch Bo leave while looking for potential candidates for the new group.

Meanwhile, Alice couldn't help but kneel in front of a crater caused by the strange draconic beast.