914: Everyone's Last Resorts

「Velmeria gets the right, Lind gets the left.」

「I’m on it.」

「Kwoh!」

The three split up to take down the giant cannon-types. Now that we’ve gotten up close, I could examine their appearance. They looked like turtle shells with a bunch of spider-like legs growing out of them.

Not too different than normal cannon-types, aside from some strange-looking objects attached to the shell.

Several long tentacles grew out the shell, with cylinders attached at the end. Four were placed on each side, making a total of eight. These tentacle things shot magic bullets as Fran and her friends got closer.

Since the cannon-types were so huge, they must be equipped with these blasters to intercept attackers trying to enter their blind spots.

Dodging the barrage, Fran delivered a slash to the giant. Her blow was enhanced with a great deal of speed and mana, but it still wasn’t enough to destroy the cannon-type in a single hit. As one can imagine from the huge body, its defenses and vitality were extremely high.

「Brilliant Lightning Rush! Haaah!」

『Burn!』

Fran cloaked herself in black lightning, then thrust me into the slash wound. The black lightning merged with the flames I shot out, incinerating the cannon-type from the inside.

「Gryiiiiii!」

As expected, even this huge guy couldn’t withstand such massive damage. Smoke billowed out from its body as it collapsed to the ground.

We waited a few moments to ensure it was dead, but surely enough, the cannon-type began crumbling into dust.

『Okay, next!』

「Nn!」

Fran took out another five of them in the same manner, but that’s as far as she got. The cannon-types were ready faster than we expected. Velmeria and Lind also failed to destroy all of them in time, so many of the cannon-types fired their shots.

「「「 GYUOOOOOOH! 」」」

A high-pitched roar, almost like a scream, resounded with a flash of light from the turret on its back. What came flying out was a massive ball of energy, almost ten meters in diameter.

The amount of mana contained inside was absolutely extraordinary.

After firing the ridiculously powerful blast, something strange happened to all the cannon-types. They all suddenly collapsed on the spot, and started dissolving into the air.

It seems all these antidemons were disposable single-shot cannons. Such a monster was only possible because antidemons function as a group rather than individuals.

A huge, powerful antidemon with putting everything, including its own life, into a single shot. There’s no way such a shot could be weak.

Twenty of the energy balls, each filled to the brim with terrifying amounts of mana, flew through the air in an arc. Though fired from 700-800 meters away, each shot had a trajectory perfectly aimed at the city walls.

We and Mea quickly cast some spells to shoot down half of them, but the remaining ten rained down on the walls and…

KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

With all of that mana detonating simultaneously, the explosion of light covered the entire wall. After the intense light and the smoke cleared, the only thing left was the pitiful remnants of what used to protect the city.

An entire 300 meters of the wall had been destroyed. Some parts were barely standing, though reduced to the shape of a discarded apple core.

But they would easily crumble under the slightest attack. The city’s walls were rendered completely useless at this point.

Moreover, the buildings close to the walls had been blown away by the impact of the explosion. The vast empty crater left behind would be difficult to defend, only serving as a boon to the attackers. This was now more than just our problem. The entire city of Sendia was exposed to to the horde’s invasion.

「They got us.」

Fran groaned in frustration. Nearby, I also heard Velmeria muttering in dismay.

「F-Frederick……」

Oh yeah, Frederick was still on the wall!

The place where Frederick stood to command the dragonkin was completely annihilated, now nothing more than a pile of rubble.

After a direct hit from those explosions, could Frederick already be――?

No wait, he’s still okay. I saw a dragonkin man pushing aside the debris and standing up. With my Life Detection, I noticed a few more possible survivors too.

We might be able to rescue them. If we go over there immediately, we could save their lives.

But we couldn’t leave.

『Fran, the antidemons are on the move!』

It seems the antidemons intended to split up the horde.

Up until now, their formation had focused all forces on taking us down. But now that the walls have collapsed, they shifted to a strategy of spreading out and aiming for the town separately.

Once they’ve spread out, a small group like us will have trouble defending against all of them. Rather, it would be impossible to completely prevent the antidemons from entering the city.

Fran understood this too. With a stern expression on her face, she muttered a few words.

「We have to reduce their numbers.」

『Got it. No more holding back.』

「Nn!」

Fran nodded, readied me, and took off. This was not the time to be talking about conserving our energy. We had to do something now.

「Brilliant Lightning Rush! Haaaah!」

Our target will be the high-ranked antidemons. The soldiers and adventurers left in town stood a chance against the lower-ranked ones, so our job was to make sure none of the higher-level ones make it through.

Ten minutes have passed since we entered the fray.

Or at least, it should have been about that much. Our sense of time was completely screwed due to constantly accelerating ourselves with space-time magic. The exhaustion made us feel like we had been fighting for hours.

Even so, Fran kept going at top gear.

「Uraaaaah!」

「Grah!」

「Ugh!」

Fran, clad in black lightning, slashed at the crimson wolf-shaped antidemon with a shout. But at the same time, she got rushed by the surrounding black wolf antidemons.

Those assholes just used the higher-ranked crimson antidemon as a decoy. I managed to block them with a barrier, but that drained a ton of my mana.

Since she was completely serious now, Fran managed to avoid taking any serious damage thus far. However, there was nothing we could do about the heavy mana costs.

The antidemons, perhaps realizing our gradually depleting mana, switched to a strategy of exhausting us as much as possible.

That said, we could not ask our friends for help.

Mea and the others were already fighting to the best of their ability, having already spent their trump cards.

「Golden flame! White fire! Let the raging inferno incinerate my foes!」

White and gold flames gushed out from Mea’s body. The wild blaze turned into a stream of destruction engulfing the young girl’s body as well as the surrounding antidemons.

「I’m not done yet!」

The swirling flames gained even more momentum. As if reaching out to grab her prey, the vortex grew to over 50 meters in diameter, turning over a thousand antidemons to ashes in a matter of seconds.

Such a ridiculously powerful move has gotta be Mea’s last resort. It was indeed very impressive.

But an attack of this magnitude came with a price.

「Krgh……!」

Mea let out a stifled groan. Did something happen?

The answer to my question revealed itself when the flames dispersed. Mea emerged into view, with her arm discolored into a reddish-black.

She must have been inflicted with a severe burn. However, just as the Black Heavenly Tigers have the Thunder Nullification skill, Mea, a Golden Fire Lion, should have the Fire Nullification skill. She couldn’t possibly take damage from her own flames.

If Mea still took burns despite that, it meant those white-gold flames exceeded even her nullification skill. She must have set one foot in the realm of Divine Flames.

The slow regeneration of those burns was probably due to the fact that they contain a small amount of the divine attribute. One wrong move with those flames, and she might be the one turning to ash.

Even after being forced to use such a dangerous ability, and injuring herself because of it, Mea’s lust for battle only kept rising.

She glared at the antidemons trying to pass her with her shining eyes, slaying them without hesitation. The fierce lioness cloaked in a fiery rage protected Sendia with her own body as a shield.

Lind was off fighting the antidemons at a distance from Mea. Even a fire dragon like him would take heavy damage from getting too close to Mea’s white-gold flames.

By using his huge body as a wall, Lind was trying to reduce the number of intruders by physically blocking the antidemons.

Zefmate and Frederick made similar decisions. After healing their wounds with potions, they used all their might to hold the flood of antidemons back.

Velmeria even created a wall of water more than 100 meters long, in a desperate attempt to prevent the antidemons from entering the city. It seems her wall had the ability to automatically blast away anyone trying to touch it, which already killed hundreds of antidemons.

Despite maintaining such a huge water spell, Velmeria didn’t let up on her assault. Holding daggers of water in both hands, she dove into the horde. Every time she spun her blades, a few more antidemon shreds got sent flying into the air.

Furthermore, I saw a surge of magical power in Velmeria’s head. Or rather, her mouth?

As I watched in amazement, a white flash burst out from Velmeria’s mouth.

「Uraaaahhhh!」

（Wow, just like a dragon.）

The flow of mana was almost exactly like the dragon breath attack I had seen before. I never imagined she could pull off something like that.

After unleashing her breath, Velmeria swept it horizontally, engulfing more than a thousand antidemons in total. However, the problem came after. We could see the mana in Velmeria’s body rapidly dwindling.

Even after inheriting a portion of Divine Dragon Form’s power, she must be pushing herself incredibly hard.

The same could be said for everyone else.

『This is bad……!』

Thanks to everyone giving up on conservation and bombarding the horde with wide area attacks, we’ve miraculously stopped any antidemons from breaking through so far.

But when any one of us runs out of mana, our united front will collapse. It’s like I could hear the footsteps of tragedy closing in on us.

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