Chapter 279 Woman in blue

The fight with the monsters coming from the hole in the western gate had stopped being a fight and started becoming a grinding stone.

Monsters poured through the jagged hole in a continuous, hungry stream. The Radiant Beacon Selene casted still burned from her staff, a steady pillar of light that dragged every pair of eyes and every set of claws toward their position, but the small size of these creatures had turned the advantage they had in the beginning into a curse by now. What had been a controllable press now had become a living tide.

Chicken-monsters of every size darted low between legs, mini dirt golems lurched forward in uneven packs, their stone fists swinging without rhythm. The bipedal lizard-things also used the chaos to slip through their gaps, claws flashing for any chance they got to slice the people here.

Lys’s voice cut through the noise without pause.

“Hey, you, on the left side, keep your line tight! Don’t let them slip past you here! If something gets past, call it, don’t chase them and leave your side!”

A woman with a bent spear grunted acknowledgment and drove the point into a golem’s knee joint. The dirt golem broke almost instantly. Another swung a heavy rock in short, brutal arcs, hitting several small creatures when the rock splitted into many projectiles with the throw.

The half-circle these village fighters had formed had held earlier was still there, but it had shrunk in just a couple of minutes. Most of them just escaped when they found their chances. And seeing the condition of this bunch who remained, one could argue they might have been the clever ones.

Shoulders sagged. Breathing came harder, for every time someone had to step back to catch their breath, the gap they left threatened to swallow the person next to them.

Lys wanted to send someone for the guild. The thought kept rising between his swings. One runner. That was all they needed. Someone to reach the main hall and drag back even a handful of adventurers. But every time he glanced over his shoulder, the reality of the line stopped the words in his throat. If even one fighter peeled away from this mess, the pressure on the others would double. In this density, handling double the amount of monsters was basically a death sentence.

He killed a lunging chicken-monster with a short upward cut, felt the cold pull of mana-absorption, and stepped into the next threat without looking at the notification.

Mira fought three paces to his left. Her red hair was plastered to her neck and temples. The wind edge on her enchanted blade still flared when she swung, but the swings themselves had lost their earlier sharpness. Her footwork, never perfect to begin with, had also grown heavier.

Before long, a golem’s stone fist clipped her shoulder and spun her half around. She caught herself, snarled something under her breath, and took its arm off at the joint, but the recovery cost her a full breath she didn’t have to spare. Things like this were beginning to happen quite often.

“Mira, tighten up!” Lys called. “You’re leaving your right side open!”

“I know!” she snapped back, voice raw. “Don’t you see I’m trying my best!”

Everyone was getting a little tense here.

Only Selene stood at the center of their shrinking pocket, both hands locked on her staff, not saying a word for a while. The Radiant Beacon poured from the crystal stone of her staff without flickering, but the ward she maintained around them all this time pulsed in rapid, irregular waves now. Each time a heavier monster slammed against it, the light thinned for a fraction of a second before she forced it solid again. Sweat had soaked through the collar and underarms of her priestess dress. Her face was pale under the grime, lips pressed into a hard line of concentration. The mana-breathing technique kept her standing, but even that had limits. Dual-casting a tier-three beacon and a sustained ward while monsters threw themselves at the barrier was burning through her reserves faster than any recovery cycle could replace.

Even though he had his own shit to handle, Lys saw the tremor in her arms and felt something cold settle under his ribs.

It was obvious.

They were losing.

Not in a dramatic collapse. Not yet.

In a slow, grinding way that left no room for recovery. Every monster they killed was replaced by two more pushing through the gate. The village women on the flanks were past the point of thinking straight.

And given how bad the situation here had gotten here in just some mere minutes, if they could think properly, they would’ve run away so long ago. Most of them fought in grim silence now, spears and sticks rising and falling.

One older woman went down to a knee after a lizard-thing’s claws raked her thigh. The fighter beside her dragged her back into the line and took the next swing in her place, but the gap stayed open a heartbeat too long. A chicken-monster slipped through and had to be stamped under someone’s boot before it reached Selene’s flank.

Lys’s own body was holding. Basic Regeneration and Enhanced Stamina skills kept the worst of the fatigue at bay, and CorpseSlayer had settled into his hands like a living extension of his will. Every cut fed the sword. Every absorption fed the quiet, growing certainty that he was getting stronger in real time. But strength meant nothing if the people around him fell. He could kill until his arms gave out, and it still wouldn’t be enough to cover every gap in this collapsing line.

He needed help. From anyone. Maybe someone strong enough, or desperate enough, to tip the balance even slightly.

A bipedal lizard-creature broke through Mira’s side while she was locked with two golems. It moved low and fast, eyes fixed on her exposed back. She didn’t see it. Her focus was on the stone fists in front of her, and her breathing had gone too ragged for peripheral awareness.

Lys saw that. And without caring for his current battle, he started to turn, already knowing however fast he may turned out to be, he would still be half a step too slow….

Mira also noticed it too late. The bipedal lizard was already about to use its claw to grab her back and do…..

Swishh-h

Before that, something dark and thin cut through the air past Lys’s shoulder.

A long spear took the lizard-creature clean through the side of the skull. The force of the throw lifted the monster off its feet and slammed it sideways into the dirt, where it kicked once and went still.

The shaft quivered with residual force.

Lys’s head snapped toward the direction of the throw, behind him.

A figure stood at the edge of the mana-bulb’s light, just beyond the worst of the press. Blue dress, practical and close-fitted for movement rather than show. Her red hair pulled back out of the way. The posture the person had was balanced, weight settled, hand still in the pose after throwing the spear.

She stood up and was already looking for any weapon she could find lying on the ground, as if the first throw had been nothing more than an opening statement.

For a fractured second, Lys’s mind refused to connect the figure of the woman with a name. The fighting around him continued: Mira finishing the golems she was fighting with a pair of exhausted cuts, Selene forcing the ward to hold through another heavy impact, a village woman screaming as she drove a poker into a thrashing chicken-monster, but all of it felt suddenly distant to Lys, as he was looking straight at the gorgeous and badass woman in front of him.

The woman in the blue dress moved closer, stepping over a fallen lizard which was pierced with a spear, without looking down. She pulled the spear from its body. Her eyes found Lys through the chaos. Recognition flickered across her face, sharp and immediate.

“Lys,” she called, voice cutting cleanly through the noise. “Is that you?”

The sword in his hand dipped a fraction. The next monster lunging toward him might as well have been moving through water.

He stared at her. At the set of her shoulders. At the way she held herself in the middle of a monster swarm, like the danger was a secondary concern for her. At the face he had seen every day after coming to this world, in a quiet kitchen, now stripped of every soft, ordinary line it had worn for years.

The word left his mouth before he finished processing it.

“Mom?”

“Is that you?”

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