D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad - Chapter 2099 Light Battle

Chapter 2099: Chapter 2099 Light Battle

— Lily —

As the man got close enough to disable, a bomb of light went off removing Lily’s shadows from play completely. Lily hissed, unable to see because there’d been no sound, no warning. There was just suddenly light. The man had to have triggered it, and clearly someone had planned for their intervention. Hedera wasn’t much better, she blinked the light out of her eyes as quickly as possible.

The twang of a bow went off and Hedera stepped to the side, unable to see the attack coming but her hearing was enough that it barely grazed her armour. Lily meanwhile was still stunned, her eyes quite sensitive to light and the feedback from having her shadows thoroughly shredded were keeping her locked in place. Luckily for her that involved clinging to Hedera’s shoulder so she wasn’t just a sitting duck for the moment.

Another twang went off, this time from behind them. That had to indicate a forth attacker. Hedera ducked down, out of the path of the bow as her vision finally returned. The man Lily had bound was running towards them, daggers in hand while the woman stepped backwards and readied a throwing dagger. Hedera pulled out a dagger of her own and got ready for the right to heat up.

Arrows started to come flying from both sides, clearly planned as they ensured that should she dodge in an obvious way one of them would hit her. Luckily, Hedera didn’t need to worry about that because Lily was back in the fight. Not at full power, but actively helping. Her shadows felt weak, almost like they’d had the mana strip from them. They lacked the depth Lily knew they should have.

*I hope they can recover from this. I don’t know if they just need to rest of if I’m going to need to recharge them slowly like before but I really, really hope I don’t have to do the latter.* Still, even as she mentally complained about the cost, the shadows moved to intercept both of the arrows, with one eye shut just in case and a mental finger hovering over the spell to summon up shields of paper.

The knife wielding man stepped in at this point, seeing that the shadows were busy and tried to lunge at Hedera with both knives. Hedera stepped back, making it seem like she was panicking as she moved swiftly backwards before lashing out with her own dagger, knocking one of the man’s own completely from his hand.

He seemed surprised, but the woman behind him threw two daggers, slightly out of sync, to interrupt any follow up Hedera might have wanted. The arrows rained down on Lily’s shields while this was happening and Lily found she couldn’t justify moving them to do anything else. They weren’t all that strong but the risk that one of them would be, or perhaps carry an obscure elemental effect was too high to do much else.

Lily was carefully keeping that one eye shut for another light bomb, but she was also ensuring that not too much mana was flowing through the shadows. It was a tentative bond that she could retract and not as solid as it could be… but it was more than solid enough to take the arrows for now.

*The real worry will be if they shoot us with an arrow that explodes into light. I’ll need to summon up way too many paper shields. That will cost me so much of my lacking mana that I worry we’ll be left hanging afterwards. I think I lost a good thirty percent of my reserves from that first grenade and I can’t afford to keep taking that sort of ’damage’. *

The man dodged backwards, recovering from the missing dagger by dropping the other one for some reason. Sure he pulled a big hammer out instead but… he really should’ve placed the dagger back in whatever storage solution he had. Regardless, the hammer was a lot more dangerous to fight against when you only had a dagger.

Hedera did not only have a dagger. She had her bow sure, but she also had a few enchantments on her armour that hadn’t been used yet. Still, she was an archer at heart and Green had the right idea, super jump on the boots. Just as the man wound up for a big slam with the hammer, Hedera launched herself up to the roof close to the spot the arrows were coming from.

Once in the air, she could see that the arrows were being fired by a floor mounted crossbow. It had been enchanted to pull itself back and a male dwarf had been feeding it arrows. Hedera slammed down on the mechanism that groaned under her weight but didn’t quite break. Lily decided to fix that by leaping down and slicing through the wood with her claws.

While that was happening, Hedera punched the dwarf in the space who apparently hadn’t been expecting the attacking. Finishing him off with a kick to the head, the dwarf went down and the arrows from the second archer continued to fly over towards them. Lily through some paper up to block it for a few moments needed for Hedera to ready herself.

The two on the ground seemed to be ready to leave now that Hedera had jumped away… but that just meant she had a better chance to shoot them. The woman at least threw down a smoke bomb to cover the area and make it harder to hit… but Hedera was good enough for that not to matter.

Lily kept up the defences as Hedera released her arrows. Two explosions of ice before she aimed towards the paper targets. Hedera didn’t need to look down to confirm she had them both. Lily, trusting Hedera was correct and that she knew what she was doing, stopped summoning paper to intercept the arrows. A few flew towards her but Hedera simply breathed deeply, allowed a few to glance off her armour, and then fired.

Hedera’s arrow travelled much faster and with far more power. It slammed into the crossbow on the other side of the market square, the one they were further away from and the machine exploded. “Lily, I can’t get over there too fast, if you could grab that last archer?”

Lily nodded and flew off. She could see another dwarf panicking at the lack of a weapon. While Hedera brought the first one down to the ground to tie them to the other two attackers, Lily took on the final fighter. They had no means to attack her, so the dwarf simply booked it, throwing themselves off the roof with seemingly no care. They hit the ground with an odd ’boing’ sound, their boots launching them forward and further away as they bounced along the ground and off various houses along the way.

Lily growled and tried to speed up but she’d already been going at full speed. It galled her, and some instinct roared in challenge. This weak fool was FASTER then her somehow. Lily didn’t even really think about it when two much larger wings of shadow appeared behind her. Just having them out really shouldn’t help her fly… but one flap of the oversized things sent her rocketing forward.

Lily’s claws were out and her teeth were barred as she swiped towards the dwarf. They didn’t seem to need to look behind them to notice her. Just as the attack would land, he somehow managed to flip himself in the middle of the air, letting her fly underneath him, the dwarf weaved between the giant wings as he did so, leaving Lily needing to turn around.

At least, that was clearly the plan. Lily’s giant wings, might have been formed by instinct… but that didn’t mean they were any harder to change then normal. The fool had overplayed his hand. Lily let her shadow wings snap shut like the mouth of a giant flytrap only for the dwarf to drop another light grenade just as the trap slammed shut.

Lily howled as her shadow’s burned. The wings felt connected and her real wings twitched and spasmed under the assault of the light… Lily wasn’t happy, she was falling from the sky. The idiot was free even if he momentum had been stalled. Lily decided she wanted no chance of him escaping. Her shadows were still recovering but she’d never been just a shadow mage.

A hoard of paper appeared from the four cardinal directions. Small shards of paper sliced into the man as best they could, Lily burnt more mana then appropriate to ensure that the man hit the ground bleeding. Cuts littered his body and while he tried to bounce once again, his legs gave out instead, leaving him face down on the floor.

He tried to stand but Lily landed nearby, pretending that she wasn’t also in a good deal of pain. Simply raising her claws next to his eye… well that got the message through to him. The final dwarf lay down allowing a groan to escape his mouth as he relaxed. Lily nodded, and sat down to wait. Normally she’d take him over to Hedera with shadow hands… but that felt like a poor idea at the moment. Whoever made those grenades ensured they were painful, AND annoying for a shadow mage like herself.