Chapter 74: Relentless Assault
Coop fought Enraged Defenders all day, refusing to yield his position on the battlefield. He kept swinging his ethereal glaive even as the sky turned blood red. The sunset’s brilliant display filtered through the red mana that encompassed the territory cast an ominous aura throughout Ghost Reef. Coop barely noticed.
He fought in the dark, illuminated by flashes of magic, as the ranged combatants did their best to thin the horde of monsters carpeting the island. Despite his battle-trance, he began to recognize abilities. Unable to associate the magic with a face, he simply acknowledged the skills themselves.
Tiny volcanoes, growing out of the sand like termite mounds would erupt, launching molten projectiles that scorched the Enraged Defenders and exploded into splashes of lava that destroyed or maimed any that were touched.
Black totems, gleaming like obsidian, embedded themselves into the ground as if they fell out of the sky, vibrated with energy and struck monsters near them with electric bolts that chained into the crowd, stunning those that weren’t fried completely.
Tiny droplets of glass swept forward, like sheets of rain, penetrating the monster’s armor and leaving them riddled with holes and collapsing on unsteady legs.
Green flares arced through the air, embedding themselves inside of whatever they touched, monster and ground alike, before burning like roman candles and exploding into pillars of flame when they ran out of wick.
Shimmering purple orbs that were difficult to look at directly, hovered across the scrubland in slow, straight lines, eroding the monsters and dissolving them into dust with barely a reaction, just by proximity, until the orbs disappeared themselves.
Chunks of frost, launched as if they were fired from a catapult, splashed onto the sand and unfolded into perfectly formed, giant snowflakes, 25 feet in diameter. Any monsters standing on them were frozen solid, allowing them to be shattered by the slightest touch.
Golden arrows raced through the air, puncturing metal limbs and bodies without losing any velocity, leaving a trail of shining light and defeated monsters until they simply disappeared, extinguished by a lack of mana.
The pattern would continue until it culminated in the most reliable attack of them all. When Charlie’s colossal tornadoes formed, swallowing multitudes of Enraged Defenders. All of the rest of the efforts to stem the tide of monsters paused when the Aeromancer took over the battlefield.
Shane had organized the ranged defenders into groups of three. One would cast their spells, while the other two recovered their mana or waited for cooldowns. The one exception was Charlie, who took a turn all by herself, resetting the cadence of attacks for the entire army. The archers would only be active as her tornadoes faded, before the first group of casters resumed their spells. Arrows were already becoming limited.
No matter how many spells they cast, monsters kept flowing forward, giving the melee fighters an unlimited supply of opponents.