Chapter 2023: Chaotic Battlefield

"That’s the thing about these pests," Adventurer Black decreed, his broad shoulders covering a great chunk of the battlefield. "One day, there are hundreds of them. A few days later, they’re in the thousands."

Della stared at the mass of creatures beneath them, remembering how confidently she’d told Black there was nothing special about their contract.

"But this..." The adventurer bit her lips. This was far too much!

They would have walked into this with three people...

Her shield suddenly felt horribly inadequate. She shifted it higher anyway, looking for somewhere they could descend without being swallowed by the crowd.

On the ridge, an older man drove a golden longsword through a hobgoblin’s chest and kicked the body down into the others. His coat was dark with blood. He followed the falling corpse, cutting another creature from shoulder to hip before the first had finished tumbling.

"Keep that passage open!"

His sword pointed toward the barricade, where a woman with a thick pink braid was forcing her way through the crush behind a tower shield.

An axe struck its face hard enough to ring across the basin. She answered by driving the shield forward, folding the hobgoblin’s arm against its chest and throwing it into the ranks behind it. Her sword took the next creature through the throat.

Della’s mouth opened.

"She’s pushing them uphill..."

The shieldbearer planted her boots in the blood-slick earth and drove forward again. Greenskins piled against her shield, their feet digging for purchase among their own dead.

Farther along the ridge, a woman with blood coating her bare forearms met a charging brute with a punch.

*BOOM!*

Its chest caved around her fist. The impact hurled it backward through the creatures behind it, scattering weapons and broken bodies across the slope.

"Die! Die! Die!"

She went after the next one with a ferocious grin, catching its axe wrist before driving her other fist into its face.

Tavi made a strained sound beside Della.

"How are there this many people?!"

A man in plain robes caught a spear shaft between his palms and turned it across a second thrust. Both weapons broke when he stepped inside their reach. His palm struck the nearer goblin beneath the chin, snapping its head backward before he seized the next attacker by the elbow.

Near him, a swordsman kept the greenskins from reaching a woman with a staff long enough for her to cast.

"[Pyroclasm]!"

At her cast, fire erupted beyond his guard, swallowing a knot of attackers, but more creatures were trying to surround the pair. A blonde dagger wielder slipped behind them, leaving bodies in their wake.

Light flared near the older swordsman as a well-endowed, blonde elf swept her staff at the barricade. "[Luminous Tide]!"

The wave of light hurled greenskins against the sharpened trunks until the timber cracked under their weight, tearing a gap through the mob that the older swordsman lunged into.

From the slope above him, another mass of creatures came scrambling down through the trees.

Black raised his palm at the descending horde. "[Fortress Wall]."

Earth heaved across the slope. The leading greenskins vanished beneath the rising wall, and those behind them crashed into its outer face. Axes rang against packed earth while the fighters below gained a moment to drive forward.

"There’s a path down on the left," Della said, pointing with her spear. "It reaches the ridge."

"Good. Go with the girls," Black ordered. "Help each other."

"Yes!"

He stepped off the shelf.

"[Gust]."

Wind caught his armored body and carried him over the basin. His black saber came free as he descended into the gap beside the older swordsman, taking a lunging hobgoblin’s head from its shoulders before his boots reached the ground.

"There’s more behind the barricade!" the man called.

"I can see them."

Black’s free hand swept toward the creatures spilling around the broken timber.

"[Wind Blade]."

The cutting arc struck across their front rank. Bodies opened at the waist, blood spraying over the creatures behind them, and the screams rose above the grinding of his wall on the slope.

Della was already running down the side path. Ayame stayed ahead of her, katana held low while branches hit Della’s shield and Brena’s crossbow knocked against her shoulder behind them.

"On the right!" Tavi cried.

A goblin burst from the brush with a hooked blade. Della caught it on her shield and thrust her spear into its stomach, feeling the haft jar against her palm when the point struck the ground behind it.

Its shriek ended beneath Ayame’s katana.

"Brena, up the bank!" Della called, wrenching her spear free. The crossbow snapped beside her ear. Another goblin fell out of the brush, its body rolling beneath their feet before Tavi pushed it clear with her staff.

Della caught herself against a tree and kept moving. She could still do her job. Whatever waited in the basin, her friends needed her shield in front of them.

At the bottom of the path, a silver-haired elf raised a silver barrier between them and a volley of arrows.

She pointed her free hand up the ridge. Sera reached her first, light gathering into a spear between her fingers. "[Divine Arsenal]."

For an instant, the two elves stared at each other. Then Sera drove her weapon through a hobgoblin trying to get around the barrier, and Della had to raise her shield against the blood that splashed onto it.

"Keep going!" Ayame ordered. "You three, don’t fall behind us!"

They did as told, and the group soon reached the ridge just as Serika hit the lower slope.

"[Solar Drive]!"

The redhead shot into a knot of greenskins. Her first punch folded a brute around her fist; the next drove it into the creatures behind it, and she followed with a sweeping kick that cleared the ground around her.

Across from her, the bare-knuckled woman barked a delighted laugh.

Vex cut through a creature between them, her blade trailing the dark magic of [Hex of Decay]. The shield it raised crumbled around the edge of her sword.

"Why are you having so much fun, young lady, if I might ask~?" she purred.

"They’re still coming, aren’t they?" The woman punched another greenskin off its feet. Vex’s smile widened before she turned to meet the next charge.

Della found space beside the pink-haired shieldbearer and held it with her while Brena reloaded behind them. With Tavi watching the brush at their backs, staff ready whenever a creature tried to crawl through the dead, Della could keep her shield facing the slope.

"That way!" Tavi warned, pointing beneath a fallen trunk.

Blossom flashed past her. The dogkin’s claw gauntlet caught the hidden goblin across the throat, and she sprang over its body at the next one.

"Blossom found more!"

The laugh that answered from farther down the ridge was loud enough to carry through the fighting.

"Zehahaha!" A bloodied man was wading back into the press with obvious enthusiasm. Behind him, a composed woman guided a robed companion through a gap to the wounded, keeping them clear of the blades swinging along the ridge.

Della barely had time to register them before a mass of hobgoblins came down the path from the barricade. She set her spear and braced.

The pink-haired woman stepped ahead of her, shield raised. Black Fang passed on the woman’s other side, her serpent-patterned blade opening the throat of the creature leading the charge.

The blonde elf aimed her staff at the hulking hobgoblin behind the fallen leader. "[Prism Cage]!"

Her spell raised walls of light around it, closing until its arms were pinned against its ribs. The creature roared and thrashed while the older swordsman closed on it, his golden blade rising.

She released the cage as his sword descended. The stroke split the hobgoblin through the shoulder, throwing its body across the creatures behind it.

Black followed him, raising a hand toward the survivors gathering at the timber’s far end. "[Wind Blade]."

The spell tore through the last packed ranks beside the barricade. Broken spears flew through the air with the bodies holding them. Della felt the displaced wind against her face even from the ridge, hot with the stink of blood.

The remaining greenskins fled through the broken barricade and scattered up the wooded trails. A few tried to escape around the ridge instead, but the fire mage swept flames across their route. The swordsman guarding her intercepted them from the flank.

"Keep that trail clear!" the older man shouted.

He drove his blade through a fleeing hobgoblin and shoved it away from the path. Beyond him, the last creatures disappeared among the trees.

Della lowered her spear enough to draw a full breath. Her forearm ached inside the shield straps, and blood had worked its way beneath her fingers, making the haft slippery.

The pink-haired woman glanced back at her.

"Are you hurt?"

"No. Thank you."

"Good!"

The woman smiled softly, then turned toward the broken barricade. Della stared across the bodies covering the basin, struggling to understand how they had just helped force a path through that many enemies.

The older swordsman was already coming back toward them, looking between the three women and Black’s helmet.

"I need someone who can follow their trail and navigate their lair. I can pay."

"You’re looking for someone?" Della asked.

"My daughter and her friend. I’m..." The man gritted his teeth and spoke the next words with immense fury. "They were taken by these filth together."

"You think these foul creatures have them?!" Brena gasped.

...

Author: Yesterday’s Chapters had a mistake. [Blessed Seed], when applied directly, lasts a full week after Quin’s upgrade, not 3 days. Edited. Thanks for pointing it out.