Chapter 236: No holding back anymore
“Everyone. Don’t leave a single one alive. Kill them all.”
Vessa’s voice cut through the chaos like a blade.
With Rhuvia’s order to engage in the battle with the kobolds, the whole strike team surged forward with Vessa. Hooves pounded against the torn-up ground, kicking up clumps of dirt and broken leaves. The air filled with shouts and the clashes of weapons as the adventurers rushed to join the three Fiora hunters, who were already deep in the fight.
Rhuvia gripped her reins tighter and urged her horse forward a little, to get a better vision of the battle in front of her, her face set in hard lines.
She hadn’t wanted this. Not now, at least. But those three hotheads had forced her hand. There was no circling around anymore. The kobolds knew they were here.
The pack of kobolds was bigger than it first looked. Dozens of the creatures filled the far end of the clearing, their scaly light-blue bodies moving fast between the fallen trees. Most stood around five feet tall, with crude pointy-sticks and clubs made from sharpened branches and animal bone. Their eyes glowed with that hungry yellow light, jaws snapping as they turned toward the charging riders. A few bigger ones lumbered at the back, heavier and slower, their hides marked with old scars.
Looking at them closely, Vessa had a thought about how Lys would have called them pitiful creatures. But she knew better than to underestimate these little monsters. To her, they were just threats that needed to die quickly. The longer the battle goes on, the messier the battle gets fighting with these creatures. However little experience she had compared to Rhuvia, she at least knew about this fact. As a matter of fact, most of the adventurers from the capital knew this fact.
Even though the capital's Great Dungeon has only zombies, undead, lich, and skeletal types of creatures, beside the capital’s main residential town area, countless dungeons have little humanoid creatures like kobolds and goblins. So, for adventurers going to those dungeons, not underestimating these creatures was kind of like a second nature.
The first clash was loud and messy. One of the Fiora hunters drove her spear straight through a kobold’s chest, the creature shrieking as it fell. Another hunter swung her blade in a wide arc, taking off the head of a second one that tried to jump at her horse. Blood sprayed across the churned ground, dark and thick, making everything smelly.
The smell of blood in the air hit Rhuvia a second later, metallic and sour, mixing with the damp forest air. Even though it smelled very horrible, she didn’t seem too much bothered by it.
Vessa was already in the thick of it. After killing several kobolds from up on her horse, she finally leaped from her horse with practiced ease, landing in a crouch before slicing upward with her sword. A kobold that had been lunging at her lost an arm and half its torso instantly, in one clean cut.
She didn’t stop moving, spinning to block another attack from the side. “Keep formation!” she shouted over the noise. “Don’t let them surround you!”
Seeing the huge number of these creatures, Rhuvia finally decided not to hold back herself anymore. She stayed mounted on her horse, using the height to direct the fight from a distance. She sent bursts of small-scale wind magic forward, knocking groups of kobolds off balance so the adventurers ahead of her could finish them.
Several creatures flew backward and slammed into trees with a cracking sound. But even with her power, the numbers were a problem. The kobolds kept coming, crawling over fallen logs and swarming from the edges of the clearing, as if there was no end to them.
Maya rode hard through the chaos, her face twisted with anger. She finally reached the three hunters from her tribe who had started all of this.
“What the hell were you guys thinking?” she screamed at them, voice raw over the sounds of battle. Her horse reared up as a kobold slashed at its legs. She brought a spear down hard, impaling the creature.
“You disobeyed a direct order! You put the entire mission at risk, for what? Your pride?”
One of the hunters, the woman with the scarred arm, turned her head just long enough to shout back. “Niruha, they killed our people! We don’t leave our dead behind like those outsiders do! You know that. So, how can you still obey her like this, after seeing her treatment of us?” She swung her weapon again, cracking a kobold’s skull, but her movements looked slower than usual, like the anger was making her sloppy.
Maya cursed and drove her horse closer, slashing at another kobold that tried to climb up behind the scarred hunter. “Don’t you understand this yet? This isn’t about our dead! This isn’t even about me following someone younger than me, or someone from inside the village. This is about saving those poor people, who we’ve left behind inside those walls. This is stopping the dungeon break at all costs, before it becomes too late. Why can’t you see that?”
“B-but…!” The woman tried to say something, but got interrupted by a kobold that was coming at her.
While Maya was trying to put some sense into those hunters from her tribe, the battle continued around them, loud and brutal. Blades met crude weapons with ringing clashes. Horses neighed in fear and pain as kobolds tried to pull riders down. One adventurer went down hard when a kobold stabbed her leg, dragging her from the saddle. Two others rushed in to pull her free, hacking at the creatures around her. But blood had soaked the ground, making it slippery underfoot.
Rhuvia watched it all from her position, directing wind blades where they were needed most. But her attention kept snapping back to Maya. The tribe leader was fighting hard, but something was off. Maya’s movements weren’t as sharp as they should have been. Her enchanted body still hadn’t fully healed from the fight in front of the village gate yesterday, and that strain was showing in her fighting style clearly. She took a hit to her side from a kobold’s club, the blow landing with a dull thud. Maya grunted but kept fighting, stabbing the creature through the throat, all while trying to keep talking with that woman from earlier.
But before she said anything more, a bigger kobold, almost at Six feet, came at her, pushing through the pack.
This one looked wrong, mutated, with extra bony spikes along its back and arms that ended in jagged claws instead of hands. It was moving faster than the others, eyes locked on Maya. She turned to face it, spear ready, but the thing was quicker than she expected.
It swiped at her, catching her across the shoulder and chest. Blood welled up fast on her shoulder, staining her clothes dark red.
Maya staggered, one hand pressed to the wound on her shoulder. “Damn it…”
Drosha saw it happen from a distance. She was fighting her own share of kobolds a little ways away, but she still tried to push through to reach Maya. “Sister Maya! Hold on!” Drosha shouted, cutting down two smaller kobolds in her path. But more kept coming, blocking her way.
Seeing the grave situation, Rhuvia’s eyes narrowed. She understood that she couldn’t wait any longer. So, without delaying this any longer than it already had turned out, she finally raised both of her hands, channeling power through her wind magic and mixing it with the electric currents around her.
As she raised her large wand upward, the air around her started to crackle. Dark clouds gathered overhead even though the canopy blocked most of the sky.
All of a sudden, lightning started dancing between her fingers.
“Get clear if you can!” she called out, voice carrying over the fight.
Hearing her shout, everyone looked at her once.
And before they can realize what she meant by it, Rhuvia released it.
Massive amounts of electric current fell from above, striking down in bright, jagged bolts, one after another. The lightning hit the kobold pack hard, jumping from one creature to another. Screams and snarls filled the air as most of the kobolds convulsed and dropped. Smoke rose from burned bodies. The smell of charred flesh mixed with the blood and forest dampness.
Only a handful of kobolds were left standing when it ended, half-dead and twitching on the ground. The mutated one that had hurt Maya lay smoking near her feet, barely moving.
Rhuvia lowered her hands slowly, the residual static humming against her skin as the crackling energy finally faded from her fingertips. A heavy, sudden silence fell over the forest, broken only by the ragged breathing of the survivors and the pathetic, twitching whimpers of the dying monsters.
The strike team stood frozen, weapons half-raised, staring at the blackened earth in stunned disbelief. Even the defiant Fiora hunters looked shell-shocked by the sudden display of raw, devastating higher-tiered magic.
Vessa was the first to break the stupor. Flicking a spray of black blood from her blade, she looked back at Rhuvia, a sharp, knowing smirk cutting through the grime on her face.
But Rhuvia wasn’t celebrating. Her jaw remained tight as she surveyed the smoking clearing. The air was thick with the suffocating stench of ozone, charred flesh, and blood. They had won the clash, but it had cost them precious time and energy they couldn't afford to waste.
Worse still, the forest was already answering back.
From the shadows beyond the clearing, a low, discordant chorus of snarls and pattering footsteps began to echo. The thunderous roar of her magic hadn't just cleared the field; it had functioned as a dinner bell. Hundreds of glowing yellow eyes began to blink open in the dense undergrowth, drawn by the noise. The horde wasn't retreating; the real wave was just arriving.
Rhuvia exhaled a sharp, cold breath and gripped her wand once more. Pointing it past the frontline toward the encroaching darkness, she let the remaining restraints on her mana snap completely.
The air didn't just crackle this time; it began to burn.