Chapter 195 - Stream of Essence
Rachel
[Field of Flames] sucked mana out of her at an astonishing rate but there was nothing she could do about it. As the Warriors died or fell, the pressure on the ones who remained constantly increased.
She couldn't afford to play the long game anymore with her mana. If the rest got overwhelmed the Demons would be free to charge the backline. Not that the mages were helpless, but they were not suited for front-line fighting.
Using fire against Demons wasn't the most effective but she found ways to lay waste to as many as possible. The Hellhounds were the hardest to kill as their resistance to fire was mighty.
The Demonlings were nearly trivial to burn to death, just some extra oomph and they would soon be ashes. The Lesser Demons were the next hardest behind Hellhounds but for a different reason.
Where Hellhounds were straight-up resistant to her skills, the Lesser Demons were smart enough and had the magical abilities to fight back. They would rip and tear at her spells and some could even shield against her.
Her ability was greater in this regard, but the distance made it difficult to leverage it. She stood over a hundred feet back, making everything she did or tried to manipulate harder. Plus, with the battle of manipulation taking place closer to the Demons than it was to her, everything was that much harder.
While the Lesser Demons had less skill and finesse, they didn't have to work nearly as hard to defend themselves as she did to attack them.
She watched how the other mages around her dealt with the problem she was facing but none seemed to make any better headway than she did.
Most relied on brute force and increased the strength of the spells they threw.
The ones who did that were chugging down mana potions like there was no tomorrow to compensate for the increased costs. Conner and the other Alchemists were great, but they weren't able to make an infinite amount of the potions to be as liberal with mana as some were acting like. Not even mentioning the fact the number of potions a person could use was finite.
Rachel herself had already used a few. Not that she was close to running out, but to supplement her diminishing mana pool. One of the potions was a new creation that Connor said would boost her Acumen and increase the rate her mana would regenerate. Taking that at the beginning of the battle was likely the reason she could still launch spells.