Chapter 22: Together

  Like rushing water surging around an isnd, tides of overflowing wolves poured out from the south forest darkness, avoiding and forming a space that created a circur ring.

  In that ring, Ashford, who stood close to six feet tall, was dwarfed by a monstrous bear who stood at more than twice his height, and four times his width.

  Standing on its hind legs, the two across each other resembled a fat adult man facing a toddler. If size was not a great enough advantage for the beast, the bear also wielded two more arms than the feeble creature in front of it.

  Ashford looked calm but his thoughts continued to race, “Should I block and wait for an opening?”

  “Can I receive a blow without getting my bones broken?”

  “No…I don’t need to face it directly, I just need it to overextend itself.”

  Ashford went from a stationary defensive stance, to no stance at all. Instead, he started to slowly walk around the creature in a circle. His bde, now held on one hand, hovered closely behind him in a taut state.

  The bear’s eyes glowed an unnatural light-brown as they followed Ashford’s figure. Despite its wild nature, it didn’t rush to attack the unfamiliar creature, but instead continued to observe.

  In the air the tenseness only continued to climb and climb, until finally, as if in agreement, the two suddenly moved.

  Raising its paws with a massive force, two left arms began to whirl through the air. At the same time, Ashford’s legs bent to gather and explode with superhuman momentum.

  …Unexpectedly however, something interrupted their confrontation at that exact moment. Two became three in the circur ring surrounded by wolves, and something moving at high-speeds pierced towards the bear in a blurry streak.

  The four-armed monstrosity reacted quickly, instantly changing the direction of its swiping paws.

  What followed next was a metallic cng that reverberated through the battlefield, followed by bright hot sparks that resulted from the force of their csh.

  A voice said with a cheeky tone, “Hey blue eyes, did’ya think we’d leave you?”

  ‘Did I look fucking cool or what?’ Adeide thought to himself.

  ‘Shit, my legs hurt though…’

  Ashford looked across him to see a brown haired man smiling confidently.

  Adeide gnced at him back, expecting a look of gratitude, but instead Ashford’s lips started to curve into a frown.

  “Wh– What? You’re not happy to see me?” Adeide excimed.

  ‘He’s like me isn’t he? Doesn’t like other guys? Wants all the girls for himself? I goddamn knew it!’

  “...You’re too early.”

  “Too early?”

  ‘Not te, but early?’

  “You should’ve waited for the right moment to strike.”

  “That would have increased our chances of success.”

  “You expect me to just hide and use you as bait?” Adeide said exasperated.

  “Yes.”

  “But enough. Focus.”

  Not at all feeling pressured by another enemy, the bear calmly and unhurriedly watched the two creatures in front of it.

  It turned its hefty body, weighing thousands of pounds, towards Ashford who was still trying to circle behind its vision.

  His pn of action was to let the bear lunge after him, prodding it to attack continuously as if he was prey that could be easily caught with a little extra effort.

  Ashford had in mind that he would dodge the strikes as closely as he could, while letting one or two purposefully graze him.

  With each failed strike, he wanted the beast to think that it only had to try just a little bit harder to catch him. The monster’s lunging cws would extend further and further, until it made a strike it could not easily recover from. Once it revealed such an opening, Ashford would then cut deep a fatal, or at least heavily impairing strike.

  At least, that was his pn…

  With another ally at his side, he tried to keep optimistic that Adeide would not just be an added burden to the fight.

  ‘The beast’s attention is on me. He should realize that and strike when the time is right.’

  ‘Although things have changed, the pn is overall the sa—’

  Before Ashford could finish his thought, the bear smmed its four cws down towards the ground. Under its thick fur he could see the beast’s powerful muscles undute and roil, and while he was no battle genius, he could tell that it was about to charge towards him with explosive force.

  As pnned, Ashford infused his legs with mana preparing to dodge, but the next moment took him by surprise. While the bear was poised to charge at him, he had not noticed that it had buried its cws in the dirt at the same time. What flew towards him wasn’t the massive body of the beast, but chunks of dirt in a wide barrage.

  Ashford dodged instinctively, but that half second he took to stop the dirt from coming into his eyes, was all that his opponent needed to disappear into the clouds of dirt.

  Both warriors vastly underestimated the beast’s intelligence.

  Adeide’s eyes opened wide, for in that split-moment, the beast was already upon him. A ripping roar sent spittle his way, although the beast’s cws would undoubtedly reach him first.

  …

  A group of armored warriors steadily fought their way through a chaotic battlefield. Among them, was a short woman with a gentle countenance. Her appearance often reminded people of the sweet girl next door, or the innocent girl who worked earnestly at the bakery, or maybe even a florist or clerk at a flower shop.

  Presently however, that image contrasted with the warhammer she wielded in her hands, still dripping with fresh blood.

  Laelin didn’t quite like the thought of slicing things open, but the sick snap, crack, and crunch of bone didn’t seem to bother her as much.

  Still, she didn’t like hurting things. The only reason there was blood on her hefty hammer, was to protect the ones around her.

  In her head, the cute doggies around her, were quick to turn into savage beasts the moment one of them easily stretched its maw over a companion’s neck, and just as easily ripped it apart in one grizzly bite.

  Laelin froze in fear, until that same dire wolf turned its murderous eyes over to her best friend.

  Evelyn had her back turned fighting off her own share of enemies. Trembling in fright as she swung her sword towards a giant spider, the woman was none the wiser to the lethal threat behind her.

  Immediately the dire wolf pounced, expecting an easy kill, but in the middle of the wolf's swift and powerful leap, a warhammer came striking down on its head.

  CRUNCH!

  Its head caved in immediately with a sudden and sick sound.

  Although she was a medic, behind the scenes, Laelin was also being trained as a potential healer because of her exact temperament. What that meant in short was, that she also knew how to use mana, and that knowledge and use, directly added to her might.

  Yet, although pure surging power coursed through her, that neither made her feel bigger, nor more important. In fact, what she just did didn’t make her feel triumphant, but rather saddened and sorrowful.

  Any life taken, even from a savage beast, was still a life lost. Well, at least that was how healers often thought.

  Laelin inhaled another deep breath, before taking a look around her. From ten or so members, not including the ones who left, there were now only seven of them left breathing.

  In fact, there would have been less than seven people alive if she wasn’t taking the bulk of the work from the rear guard. For that, the members at the rear looked at her with surprise and gratitude.

  Curiously, those at the front like Giselle and Evelyn however, remained clueless to her efficacy.

  In all the situation couldn’t be said to be good, but it was stable enough, with solid steps reaching closer towards a goal…Unfortunately, their luck was soon to take a turn.

  As the group made their way towards Adeide and the blue-eyed man, they heard an odd rumbling from behind them.

  The rumbling consisted of pattering thuds, and odd clicking mixed with rhythmic rattles. It was soft at first, but rose in volume to the point where it was impossible to ignore.

  When Evelyn turned her head, she looked at the dark forest in confusion, for it seemed as if the unlit areas of shadow were shifting and swimming. Only when she gazed through where the moonlight illuminated the darkness, did she see a surging bck mass, warping towards them like an ocean wave.

  She squinted her eyes. Looking at it closer, revealed to her that the waves of shifting bck, was not a trick of her eye, but simply the bodies of hundreds, if not thousands of skittering spiders rushing towards them.

  At the helm, was a particurly rge blob of moving bck limbs. A spider brood mother, not human sized, but instead around the same size of the eight-armed bear that Adeide and Ashford were still fighting.

  Evelyn couldn’t help but to freeze in fear. She had nightmares before of being buried underneath countless spiders just crawling all over her body, however, never in her wildest dreams did she think those same spiders would be human-sized.

  Luckily, the girl with arachnophobia was not alone. Giselle and another member quickly tried to shake her out of frozen-state, and when that didn’t work, they urgently pulled, if not dragged her away from the area, and further away from the surging mass of arachnids.

  Even when she was being shouted at however, the expression on her face was still the same as it had been. Horrified, and unchanging as if stuck in time within a nightmare. Suddenly however, something appeared in her vision causing her to shake urgently awake.

  “Wa— Wait!” She shouted hard; the cords in her throat screeching painfully.

  In the corner of her eyes, as she was being pulled away, she saw Laelin frozen in fear in the exact same way as she had just been. Unlike her however, the gentle cleric was trembling and all alone amongst dire straits. Those who had been by her side, who she had protected, had all but abandoned her in a bid to save their own life…not that she would have faulted them even still.

  In that moment though, Evelyn was suddenly reminded of why exactly she could face her fears in the first pce.

  ‘How could I forget!?’

  ‘How could I ever let her out of my sight!?’

  In a sudden burst of desperate strength, she broke free from the arms that were dragging away and rushed to her friend’s side. \

  “Hey!” Giselle shouted, but Evelyn didn’t hear.

  ‘Shit shit shit shit shit!’

  Biting her lip to the point that it bled, Evelyn couldn’t help but to look at the tide of giant insects climbing, crawling, and skittering on top of each other in a mad wave. Still, her steps never stopped. Fear no doubt had a grip on her heart, yet, there seemed to be something stronger within, fueling each and every step forward.

  Her mind continued to race, ‘Please make it, please make it, please!’

  A shadow cast itself on Laelin’s face. The moonlight shining down on her, became obscured by cloud, and soon to be instead, by creature.

  Leading the charge, the spider brood mother seemed head straight for the stunned cleric.

  No one at a high enough level was present in the battlefield, or if there, they would see the bizarre way the brood mother’s eight eyes looked at Laelin.

  Eerily, it was in the same way that moths looked at bright sources of light. Acid spit started to gurgle from the brood mother’s mouth, either dropping to the ground with a sizzling steam, or directly melting through an unfortunate spider’s flesh as it squealed in agony.

  Laelin’s face continued to be stuck in an expression of abject terror, when suddenly, two arms wrapped around her shoulders in a tight embrace.

  The warmth was already familiar to her, but when a slim face rested itself on her cheek, she all but determined who it was that clutched her from behind.

  “E– Ev?” She asked in surprise, now broken from her spell of terror.

  In fact, in that short instance, all the chaos of the battlefield seemed to melt away.

  Laelin looked at her friend’s face that was pressing itself closely to her own.

  Her eyes were shut tight, but it wasn’t hard to see the teary dew that struggled to stay inside her eyelids.

  Suddenly however, those quivering eyes then burst open before Evelyn yelled, “Let’s go you idiot! Let’s gooo!”

  Her desperate tone contained affection that was easily seen through by her friend, causing the corners of Laelin’s mouth to curve upward. Unfortunately in that same instance, the chaos of the battlefield instantly returned to her.

  The smell of blood entered her nostrils. A sordid mix of human screams, spiders screeching, and wolves crying out invaded her ears. And of course, the loudest sound of all, was the stampeding of ten thousand giant spiders, crashing forwards right in front of her.