Chapter 400 – Tumbling Down
The alarm was the sounding because the wall had been breached. Damion was not sure where, but after consulting the map from his auto-mapper, he was able to see that the breach occurred on the far side of the city. All the other walls seemed to be holding, in fact, there were very few signals from Demonic Beasts showing on the map, aside from where the breach was. Either the Demonic Beasts had decided to focus all their efforts together, or they had just happened to coalesce beforehand where the wall would be breached.
Still, for the actual wall to be breached meant that an S Rank Demonic Beast had attacked it. Damion knew he would be of no use against something that strong, but he was certain he could help. After all, he had Exile and Frost Fire. With those two spells he could at least hurt an S Rank.
Mounting his Ice Sword, Damion flew towards the breach. In the distance he could see Mage Levine and Mage Fletcher, as well as several other S Rank mages fighting what looked like an enormous, armored bear. The Demonic Beast was S Rank and had a Metal affinity. On its head was what looked to be an iron skull cap while on its back it had several bands of overlapping metal that curved around its flanks but did not cover its belly. On each of its four paws were long sharp claws, each one close to three meters long.
“Damion you shouldn’t be here,” Mage Fletcher warned.
“Even if it’s S Rank, I can still use Frost Fire on it.”
"If your Frost Fire grew large enough to critically injure the Iron Back Bear then you would surely lose control of it. We can’t risk burning down the world to save a city.”
“How strong is this Iron Back Bear?” Damion asked.
“Upper S Rank. It struck us just after Mage Thresbane left to assist Argentum with a peak S Rank Demonic Beast. If we can kill this S Rank beast, the rest should break and run. Then it will just be a cleanup effort.”
Damion was about to ask Mage Fletcher another question, but the S Rank Spatial mage Blinked away and returned a moment later holding an injured Mage Levine. The Iron Back Bear managed to knock a building over that, without Mage Fletcher’s assistance, would have crushed the Lightning mage.
“Damion, go!” Mage Fletcher demanded.
“I’ll close the gap in the wall first,” Damion told her before flying off. Mage Fletcher wanted to protest, but Damion left before she could say anything.
The course he flew would take him along the edge of the fight against the Iron Back Bear. Once he reached the wall he flew along it until he reached the gap that had several dozen mages and knights fighting on both sides of the wall to keep the Demonic Beasts out.
“Clear the gap!” Damion shouted at the defenders.
The few that were in the gap leapt backwards to land inside the city. One the gap was clear, Damion cast Ice Wall and fed his construct mana until it grew large enough and thick enough to completely seal the breach. With the gap filled, Damion looked over to the defenders who had been trapped outside the walls and cast Portal. The other end of the Portal opening up to the top of the wall. The defenders hurried through the lifesaving Portal, unsure of who to thank, just glad that they had not to be left for dead in the remnants of the beast wave.
Now that the wall was patched, though it would not hold forever and certainly not against anything above B Rank, Damion had a choice to make. Stay here and finish off the Demonic Beasts locked outside the city, clean up the ones here in the city, or fly back to the S Rank beast to help. Frost Fire might be out of the question to use, but that did not mean he couldn’t cast Exile.
His Exile was not strong enough to completely Exile an S Rank Demonic Beast, especially not one that was three stories tall at the shoulders, but it could still hurt the creature. Casting Exile could potentially rip sections off the beast, but Damion was afraid such attacks would still be too little to be of much assistance. And of course, there was the added risk of exposing his other affinities.
Since he would likely be just putting himself in danger, Damion decided to hunt down stray Demonic Beasts in the city. There were quite a few that had managed to scale the walls, or rush past defenders at the breach, all of them would need to be taken care of before the ordinary citizens of Viridis would be allowed out of the emergency shelters.
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Damion flew low over the city streets of Viridis, taking out Demonic Beasts that were wandering the city. Some were trying to tear through walls to get into shops and homes, making Damion wonder if there were people in those buildings. Whenever he encountered one, he cast Ice Shard and killed the beast before pulling the creature into his personal spatial storage when no one was looking.
The number of Demonic Beasts that had been killed in this beast wave numbered in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, just from the battle around Viridis. Both Rubrum and Argentum were getting hit just as hard and would likely have similar number of spoils. As a responder to the beast wave, Damion would get paid for his efforts, but that would most likely be deposited to his payment card, what he wanted more than anything else were cores. Most of the spoils from the battle would be used to rebuild the city, which he had no qualms with, but he figured no one would miss a few dozen Demonic Beast carcasses in the grand scheme of things.
Once Damion had cleared the district he was in of Demonic Beasts, he began to search for another task to complete. Other teams of knights and mages were operating in other districts to hunt down stray Demonic Beasts. According to his map, there were even teams outside the city sweeping around the walls of the city, clearing out the remaining vestiges of the beast wave.
The only real threat remaining was the S Rank Iron Back Bear. Despite there being ten S Rank mages in Viridis fighting it, the Demonic Beast was still alive and causing quite a bit of destruction to the city.
Flying back up to Mage Fletcher, whose responsibilities during the battle was to rescue any of her fellow S Ranks that were injured or in imminent danger, Damion had a new plan of attack.
“Damion, I thought I told you to clear this area.”
“How quick are you with Portal?” Damion asked.
“What do you mean?” Mage Fletcher asked.
“I can fly around pretty quick and…”
“Compared to that Iron Back Bear you are little more than a fly,” Mage Fletcher interrupted.
“True, but a fly can still be pretty annoying.”
“What is your plan?”
“Simple, I fly around, annoying the crap out of the Demonic Beast and when it tries to smack me with one of its paws, you open a Portal for me to fly through and then close it on its paw. Hopefully, slicing it off.”
Mage Fletcher looked at Damion for a moment as if he was crazy. The plan was simple, suicidal, but it might just work. The defense of the Iron Back Bear was too strong, most of their attacks were doing little to nothing against it. But there was one thing that the Iron Back Bear could not do, and that was maintain itself in two places at once. If a Portal closed around its paw, it would be cut off, no matter how much higher the Demonic Beast’s magic power was than hers.
“Go, just don’t make me regret this,” Mage Fletcher told him.
If Damion’s plan succeeded, they would be able to severely wound the Iron Back Bear. Once it was wounded, it should be easier to kill. Of course, wounded animals were often the most dangerous, so Mage Fletcher was crossing her fingers as she watched Damion fly towards the beast.
Damion flew close to the Iron Back Bear’s head, casting multiple Ice Shards at its face, aiming for the creature’s vulnerable eyes. After a few successful hits, the Iron Back Bear snapped at Damion, but he flew out of reach of its snout.
The Demonic Beast snorted and then began to turn its attention back the real threats, the other S Rank mages who were pelting the creature’s flanks with spells. Seeing that he was losing the Iron Back Bear’s attention, Damion flew in closer again and started hitting it with Ice Shards while also casting Ice Domain and freezing the air around the creature’s face.
This time, the Iron Back Bear swatted at Damion with one of its paws. Mage Fletcher opened a large Portal and Damion flew through. Since the Portal was large, the paw of the Demonic Beast was easily able to slip through. However, once it realized its paw was not visible after passing through the spatial opening, the creature began to pull its paw out.
Mage Fletcher quickly closed her Portal and half of the Iron Back Bear’s paw was cut off. The Demonic Beast howled and rose up on its hind legs swatting with its front paws, slinging blood around the city. Given the distress the creature was in, Mage Fletcher took a chance and cast Exile where the body of the Iron Back Bear would be once it came back down on all fours. The ominous tear in space hung there, waiting for the Demonic Beast to fall on it.
The Portal had deposited Damion on the far side of the Demonic Beast from Mage Fletcher, but seeing how the plan had worked, he was quickly making his way towards her. When he was about halfway, a force suddenly caught hold of him and began dragging him towards the Iron Back Bear.
At first Damion was not sure what was happening, but when he tried to Blink away from whatever bound him and failed, he realized it was because a spell had hold of him. There was only one spell that he knew of that could restrict his movements, even override them, Shadow Bind. Unfortunately, this knowledge did Damion no good. The spell was dragging him towards the Iron Back Bear and because the caster’s magic power was so much higher than his, there was no way for him to resist.
Damion saw Mage Fletcher’s eyes go wide as he was pulled towards where she had cast Exile. The spell should not have the ability to suck him in, but she watched in horror as it somehow did.
"Mage Wells!” Mage Thresbane called out, seemingly rushing to Damion’s aid while launching an attack that sliced the Iron Back Bear in two.
“Shadow Bind!” Damion shouted just as he was sucked into the last vestiges of Mage Fletcher’s Exile, as she was not able to cut off her spell before he vanished.