Chapter 1083: Chapter 1082: The Fingers (3)
Chapter 1083: Chapter 1082: The Fingers (3)
With the warriors clashing in front of us in that ever brutish dance of death that held such a beautifully morbid fascination in everyone's minds, I was expecting this to be more of a swift, violent quickstep type dance where Jahi and the others simply overwhelmed these drugged up rogues with both strength and technique, but I was sorely mistaken.
This wasn't a quickstep; it was a formal waltz through and through, with changing partners and sincerity and seriousness that was usually hard to replicate for us at this point, which made me clench my jaw as I felt worry beginning to creep into my mind at that realization.
It wasn't that these rogues were capable warriors at all - it wasn't that, nor was it their relative cohesion either that was a tad surprising from a group like this - but instead it was the fact that the amount of strength that they exuded now that the potions had fully settled in was rather high even for a buff potion that most definitely traded health for more damage output.
This was most definitely an insidious, one time use potion that would only leave the consumer twitching on the floor in a few minutes after consumption, but the problem was that even if it was just a minute or three it was so outrageously potent compared to anything I could even think of, and that was extremely worrisome.
They were able to easily stand against a Demoness and even begin pushing her back in some cases, which was something that I had seen very few people be able to do in this lifetime, and likely something I was rarely going to see considering how outrageously incredible Demon blood was.
And yet here we were, witnessing as a man with wide, strained eyes growled at Jahi like a hound infected with rabies, his relatively simple war spear crossing over her great sword as they stood in a stalemate, the mana of both warriors clashing together even before their weapons could meet; we knew the materials of Jahi's blade was infinitely better than whatever alloyed metal that spear was made from, but right now that didn't matter whatsoever.
The rogue was simply exuding that much - and such potent - mana from his skin that it created an involuntary cloak around himself without him doing anything at all, which then paired with the spell he had crudely cast on himself before he had consumed the potion to form a doped up 'weapon' that could pretty much go toe to toe with Light Mana.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om
Which was terrifying, since this man had relatively basic and unimpressive Fire Mana that was almost akin to the dangers of an open campfire; it's capable of dealing harm to most people if they don't have protections, and it can grow larger and stronger with fuel, but for the most part it was controllable and not that dangerous to those who knew what they were doing.
Now it was a superheated forge capable of almost melting itself with the sheer heat that was being generated constantly, meaning one wrong misstep would lead to extreme damage anywhere at all, even on the man himself, which was evident by the blisters forming on his skin.
And that was just him; the rest of his compatriots were in similar states, and while they were dealing little damage at all to Anput and the Death Jackals, the guards were sadly not as lucky, and even as Leone and I focused on separating them from the current threat, many of them were sadly cut down or otherwise killed, leaving a lucky few to run away and allow the ire of these berserkers to land on the properly trained and well equipped warriors capable of handling them.
For those few seconds where we were focused on removing the distractions from the field of play, Jahi was forced to take the aggro of a few of the rogues all at once, and while that first one was trying to pin her down two others leapt at her from the sides to crush her between the three of them, all while the remaining ten or so rushed at the Death Jackals and tried to claim the heads of the Sultanate's deadliest warriors.
Thanks to the Death Jackal's preferred style of agility based combat, those two leaping rogues were easily redirected as the thinner, yet mana empowered bodies of the Death Jackals slammed into them, sending them staggering away from Jahi and allowing her to focus on the individual in front of her for the time being.
Leone and I were watching her closely, and the moment that we could take all of our remaining mana and focus off of everything else we gave her the support she needed, knowing that we were in a relatively tight position ourselves since our spells were limited thanks to said agility of the Death Jackals - and Anput as well, who had forsaken the idea of head on combat when she noticed Jahi being almost stonewalled completely.
So the impossibly hot flames that Leone loved to wield were a no go, and I couldn't focus on too much of a blistering cold gale since it could impair the reflexes of our own fighters, placing us into that tight spot that needed us to think quickly, which wasn't that difficult at all for us.
Since offensive spells were so limited, the best thing for us then would be to drop that idea entirely and focus on support based magic, which we were rather adept in, especially when it came to single target buffs that would help a single person turn a drugged up idiot into a dead drugged up idiot.
And since Wind Magic was such a potent fuel source for Fire Magic - if used correctly and the two mages were, oh I don't know, extremely close and even linked through rather loosely understood Vampire related bonds - we could give Jahi an enormous boost of power that would hopefully even this dance of hers at the bare minimum.
So when she felt her elbows and shoulders begin to warm up as Leone's mana wrapped around those areas, the Demoness planted her feet even more than she had and began to focus on her upper body as she angled her blade against the spear in such a way that a sudden burst of explosive power would result in rather gory results for the one holding the spear.
First the flames welled up around her joints, and then came the small gusts that caressed her arms as she stood there, her muscles strained as she pushed against the spear and kept it from slicing down towards her throat, which would not only sever her head from her shoulders - an 'injury' I had no idea how to cure if it was possible to cure - but also cauterize the wound as well, which I most definitely had not learnt how to deal with just yet either.
With the berserker snarling at her and causing a few sinews in his arms and shoulders to pop as they snapped free as he tried to kill her, Jahi did really well at not faltering even as saliva spattered across her face as his snarling grew worse, but I doubt she even felt it since she was so focused on not dying, which was pretty important.
Controlling the gusts around her arms was slightly difficult, since it couldn't interact with the flames just yet, and with the timing being rather precise, we were all under pressure right now, but thankfully this was something Leone and I had done before, and as soon as the flames flared into being and began to drive her arms forwards, I infused my Wind Mana into those flames and gave them the boost necessary to let Jahi overpower this berserker.
Her golden Light Mana was almost solid with how thick she had it between him and her, and as her arms swung forwards to smash against his own barrier of near solid mana that golden sheet almost instantly shattered the flimsier, less put together mana that was rolling off of the man's skin like vapors, though he was so far gone that he barely understood what was happening as her blade sliced cleanly through his upper torso and came out the back in a fraction of a second.
No blood sprayed out as he stood there, staring at her blankly as he heard the spear clang to the ground in two separate pieces, and even as she lowered her shoulder and bashed him square in the chest there was little 'beauty' in this kill from my standards, though watching as his top half flopped to the ground while his legs remained in place was interesting enough, especially since they took a step back and tripped over his severed torso.
Even then though, the reason we saw little blood wasn't because it was just such a clean slice; it was because the potion was working overtime to try and keep the man alive, and as he tried to reorient his lower half to his upper half I could see the flesh and organs trying to knit together while his blood trickled out very slowly.
A heavy stomp to the skull stopped him from doing anything though, and Jahi didn't give the berserker much acknowledgement as she instead charged towards the next one, taking some pressure off of one of the Death Jackal's as she lowered her shoulder again and barreled into the closest one, throwing them off balance and making it simple to finish them off too.