Another Stupid Isekai

– They look like humans! – Carmelita pointed out as soon as everybody assembled around me.

– So? – I asked. – Doesn’t matter how they look. They are monsters. Everything the device creates around the city is fake. They are shaped like humans, but that’s all. Besides they transform.

– It still feels wrong – she responded.

– Well… We have this place booked, so we should clear it. I can say, just to comfort you, that further, the enemies look like proper monsters – I told her.

– Yeah, very comforting – Tihana said not hiding irony.

She clearly didn’t care how they looked. Their power level was much more important.

– We shouldn’t waste time on idle chat. There is a lot of ground to cover – Leonel pointed out.

It was so obvious, that nobody tried to discuss it with him, we just started walking. Carmelita seemed really scared. She was grasping her staff tightly, looking carefully around. The rest was much calmer, but still on high alert.

After all the monsters, compared for example to the giants, had a similar power behind their hits, but were faster, tougher, and their magic was stronger. The real problem about that place though was the fact that the cultists were the weakest around, and further you had more demonic-looking creatures who had even more power at their disposal.

The march continued, and we encountered a few more groups, but my family took care of them, although it was a very slow approach, based on splitting the enemies apart to take care of them one by one.

Leonel and Celestine had a big role in this, as they were defending while Tihana and John slowly eliminated the monsters.

Like that, we passed through the field of crevasses and lonely stone formations, getting closer to the mountain. We were allowed to catch a breather there, but even from distance, we were able to see the camps of enemies further ahead of us.

Those were haphazardly put-together camping spots, with some tents, bonfires, and obviously some sort of a disgusting shrine with body parts, blood, and bones laying around. The sites were spread around at a decent distance from one another, but it could easily have been too little for my family members.

After all, they couldn’t eliminate the monsters easily and quickly as I did. Their fights were noisy, and messy often, even with the cultists, so there was a possibility of them pulling more than a single group.

– I guess you should stop fucking around guys – I told them. – In those tents are hiding monsters stronger than the ones you’ve encountered before. If you approach them like before, you will get in trouble.

My warning made them all look my way. Leonel was the first to react. He closed his eyes, summoning the draconic power.

The golden, shimmering scales appeared on his skin, covering almost everything but his face. The wings burst out of his back. Even the fighters changed. The nails became more like talons. Not to mention his eyes, now glowing with the color of the precious metal.

Around celestine, small bursts of light appeared a dozen swords, glowing with this fluid light covering the edges. They all assembled into pair of wings at her back, and with a single flap of those wings, she was able to take off the ground. She didn’t fly away, though, but stayed in a spot a few meters above us.

– Armory – Tihana said, putting back her weapon. Then she also added – Swords sixth and seventh.

With a similar flash in her hands appeared two simple-looking scimitars. The looked were quite deceiving, as bot weapons were heavily enchanted by me. The look was due to the fact that she requested a lot of stuff, so I was too busy making them look fancy.

Carmelita raised her staff, whispering something with closed eyes, and all the weapons got covered with her blessing, but it then changed into less fluid, but more like strong, vibrant white light covering only the edges.

She added another spell to that, making all the members of my family shimmer with afterimages poping around their location. An illusion. Simple, but incredibly effective.

The last move was John’s. It was the old burning aura, that enveloped his body, now assuming a form of a bulky, humanoidal dragon, which enveloped him, making him look bigger, and also weird, as the illusion was working on him, so the red stuff around him was also moving.

– That’s much better – I pointed out.

– Let’s go – Tihana said, taking lead over the group.

We were still a couple of hundred meters away, and on top of that I knew that the monsters were hiding in the seemingly abandoned camps, so there was no obvious line of sight, which resolved in them not getting alarmed that easily, but the truth was they weren’t as unaware as one could think.

We still had some distance to the first camp, when one of the tents started moving. It was clear that something violent was going on inside, as it looked like the whole structure was spasming.

Then it exploded. The fabric was torn apart by a two and a half meters tall, red creature with ram-like horns, and a toothy maw. It was muscular, the arms were armed with sharp talons, not to mention the thick long tail with a cluster of sharp spikes at the end.

It screamed at us before charging and leaping into the air with incredible speed. At first, it surprised the members of my family, but Celestine reacted before it landed. She slapped with her wings, gaining some speed, and slammed into the demon in midair. They rolled a bit before she kicked the creature off her.

It landed heavily on all fours, while my wife reminded in the air. At the very same moment, the other three tents also began spasming like the one that had just given birth to the demon.

– Time to go to work, guys – I told them, but they already knew what to do, and were reading themselves to face the monsters.