Chapter 276 Tier-3 Priestess

The woman who had been jabbing a pitchfork at a thrashing chicken-monster suddenly spun toward Lys, face streaked with dirt and something like darker, maybe monster blood.

“Oi, Lys! How long do we keep killing these things? My arms are done. Can’t you do something about this?”

Another voice piled on right after her, sharper, from a woman holding a bent spear. “Yeah. We’ve been at this forever. You were put in charge of security, right? So fix it!”

Lys cut down a dirt golem that had gotten too close to Selene’s ward and felt the familiar cold pull of cursed mana-absorption run up his arm. The notifications flickered and vanished at the edge of his sight. He didn’t bother reading them. His jaw tightened instead.

‘Why the fuck are they asking me?’

The thought landed heavy and sour in his already busy mind. Just because the guild and the council had dumped the words “leader of the village security” on him for a few days, these people now acted like he had a secret switch that could shut the whole mess off. He was swinging a cursed sword and trying not to die, same as them. The only difference was he actually had a blade, and they did not.

Still, the complaint stuck. It was true, they couldn’t keep this up forever. The hole in the western gate was still vomiting monsters. Every minute they spent just holding the line was another minute the breach stayed open, and the village behind them stayed exposed. And the eastern gate had their own mess to clean up. Who knows if they even knew this side was compromised.

He wiped monster blood from his brow with the back of his wrist and raised his voice over the noise.

“Yeah, we can’t keep doing this forever. So, someone has to get to the gate and check the damage. See if there’s any way to patch it, even temporarily. If we leave that hole open any longer, we’re just going to get ourselves drowned in these things.”

The middle-aged woman who had yelled at him earlier about throwing golems, broad-shouldered, still gripping that heavy iron shovel to hit monsters with it, spoke up without hesitation.

“I can go. Used to run adventurer work before I settled here. But I need cover. These little bastards might be small, but their numbers are the real killer here. Without someone drawing them off, I won’t get ten steps ahead of them.”

Selene’s head turned. Her face was pale under the sweat, but her eyes were clear. She adjusted her grip on the staff she had been using to anchor her wards.

“You just need cover, right? I’ll give it to you,” she said.

Before anyone could ask what she meant, she drove the end of the staff into the packed dirt and twisted it sideways.

Light suddenly bloomed from the crystal at its tip. It was not the harsh white flash of a combat spell, but a steady, brilliant radiance that washed outward in a clean circle. It was bright enough to push the night back several meters without blinding the people standing near her. Every monster in the immediate area jerked its head toward the glow like moths finding a flame.

Mira’s sword faltered mid-swing. “What the hell did you just do?”

From the half-circle of village women behind them, a rough voice cut through the sudden shift in the monsters’ attention.

“Isn’t that… tier-three divine magic?”

Another woman answered, almost breathless from driving the monster from her side. “Yeah. That’s a real Radiant Beacon. Only tier-three priestesses can hold that steady without burning themselves out. That costs a huge amount of mana. How the hell does she have any mana left in her after defending us all till this moment?”

Selene didn’t look at them. She put both of her hands on the staff now, light pouring steadily from the crystal, and spoke in a voice that was quiet but carried.

“Yeah. It is a tier three spell. I guess I just became a tier-three priestess now.”

Her words landed heavier than the light. She was saying it so casually, like that was nothing to her now. And she might not be wrong, too.

If this were some other time, people around her would be busy congratulating her for making it into the rare grade of priestessness, which not so many people reach even after serving a god all their lives. But now, in this chaos, she acted like it was only natural that she had managed it, after pushing herself to her limit, not giving up until the end.

Mira’s eyes widened for half a second. Lys felt something tight in his chest loosen and then pull taut again. He had watched her fail at the mana-breathing technique for hours just two nights ago. He had seen her hands shake and her face close up in quiet frustration. And now she was standing in the middle of a monster swarm, throwing tier-three divine magic as if it belonged to her. It was obvious she managed this feat only because she mastered the mana-breathing technique, unlike him.

As the monster’s attention was all toward Selene’s light, the former adventurer with the poker didn’t waste the moment. She jerked her chin at two other women who looked like they had some fight left in them.

“Come with me. Stay tight. Don’t stop for anything that isn’t about to take your head off.”

With that being said, they ran.

The light did its work. Monsters that had been pressing the flanks peeled away and surged toward Selene’s position instead. The path to the ruined gate cleared just enough for the three women to push through the gap and disappear into the darker stretch near the breach.

Before it was too late, monsters beginning to come with speed at Selene’s light, Mira spun on Selene the second the runners were clear, red hair whipping across her face.

“I’m glad you became a tier-three priestess and all, but couldn’t you give me a little warning before you turned every single one of these things toward yourself? What if we were far from you?”

Selene just gave a weak smile, as she kept the light on, pouring mana into it non-stop.

Lys stepped in front of a lunging lizard-creature and took its front legs with a short, brutal cut. The sword drank. The body dropped.

He positioned himself closer to Selene and Mira.

“I guess we just have to be more ruthless,” he said in a humorous voice. “Fight with everything we’ve got, Mira. That’s the only way through. Who knows, maybe you’ll also get to be on our level soon like that.”

Mira muttered something under her breath that sounded a lot like “easy for you to say” and then set her feet again. The wind edge on her blade flared brighter as she met the next wave head-on.

And as expected, the pressure of the full force of the monsters hit them all at once.

What had been a messy but manageable fight turned into a grinding press. Chicken-monsters darted low and fast, trying to get under the ward that was still on. Dirt golems lurched forward in greater numbers, their uneven steps kicking up dust that mixed with the coppery smell of some kind of monster’s blood. The bipedal lizards used the chaos to slip between the smaller creatures, claws flashing.

Lys stopped thinking about clean form anymore. Forget his intimidating skill, Selene’s Radiant Beacon spell was doing four times the work of that skill of his. All the monsters’ attention was on them now.

He used the sword the way it wanted to be used: short, heavy cuts that ended lives fast, the flat of the blade when he needed to knock something back, the edge when he needed it gone. Every kill fed the cold pull of absorption. Every absorption fed the quiet, growing certainty in his chest that he was getting stronger in real time, not because a quest told him to.

Selene held the light steady. The Radiant Beacon didn’t flicker, even while her ward spell was on. Yes, she was basically multitasking here, casting two spells at the same time. This was in reality, a feat only tier three priestesses could do after various types of training. But in this moment, she felt like she could do anything.

Her breathing stayed locked into the mana-breathing cycle Lys had taught her, even while the monsters piled against the outer edge of the glow. Her whole body was covered in sweat and monster blood, making her feel uncomfortable, but her face stayed set to not lose focus in this dire time. She had crossed a threshold tonight, and she wasn’t going to let the moment crack under pressure. She knew she could do better than this. All that study and devotion to her god was finally going to pay off tonight.

Mira also fought like she was personally offended by Lys’s last words of not being his level. Every monster that reached her, she was slicing away at them like they were there for her to kill. Her footwork was still rough, but the wind edge on her enchanted blade was sharper than before, and she used it without hesitation. When a golem got too close to Selene’s flank, Mira took its arm off at the shoulder and kicked the rest of it into Lys’s waiting sword.

“Here, take my leftover food. It is served as you wanted.”

“How can you still joke about that?” Selene asked.

“Don’t let them stack on her, Mira,” Lys said as if her mocking him didn’t even bother him, as long as he could gain EXP now.

“Don’t forget, if Selene’s light dies, those three at the gate are dead.” He reminded Mira not to forget about the main objective here.

Mira didn’t answer. She just kept cutting.

The village women on the periphery held their rough half-circle with spears and pokers and sheer stubbornness. Some of them were still shouting insults at creatures that couldn’t understand a word. Others had gone silent and simply stabbed anything that got close. The line was ugly and uneven, but it held. Although the majority of the monsters were attracted to Selene’s light, some stayers still attacked them. After fighting for so long, even this bunch was getting too much for them now.

Somewhere near the breach, distant sounds of wood being dragged and voices calling instructions suggested the three runners had reached the damaged gate and were already trying to do something about the hole. Whether they would be able to do what they had gone there to do was another question entirely.

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