403 An unexpected attack
“So…What do you usually do around here?” Nemmoxon asked as she was resting in the living room. She looked around, this was her first time inside Cain’s house.
In her eyes, the mansion looked a bit bland. This wasn’t the type of housing she expected a mage like him to have. She expected a fancy-looking building with a massive lab that resembled elvish architecture.
“What are you saying? This place has more going in it than the castle!” Isbert replied with a smile. She never expected to be able to leave the castle that easily.
Looking around, she could see Zaleria resting on the couch. Mary is drinking tea close to the fire. Hati was chatting with one of the maids trying to get some info on Cain.
“What? Selena, Alice, and a maid on top of that? He must be insane.” Hati said with a worried face as Elise informed her that Cain was not to be disturbed.
“SEBAS! SEBAS!” They suddenly heard a man calling from the outside.
Mary immediately stood up, she recognized the voice. It was Edward, the now guild master in command after her father left for the elvish kingdom.
She then went outside after Sebas to see what brought him now.
“Is Cain here? Could you contact him by any chance?” Edward seemed worried, Mary could see burn marks on his armor even though it was pitch black.
“The master is indeed here but he is busy right now, can’t you come tomorrow?” Sebas replied.
“We can’t, hordes of monsters suddenly attacked the western forest and the druids are now fighting them. I have already sent adventures and the guards but we’re getting pushed back.” Edward explained.
“Do you really need Master Cain’s help or are you just looking for someone to take care of your job? You’re adventures and your job is killing monsters like this.” Sebas replied.
“No you don’t understand, those monsters, they are using formations and actively employing tactics. In what kingdom did you see goblins corporate with bugbears and kobolds?” Edward looked stressed remembering the bugbears holding them while Goblins rained arrows from the trees, the kobolds used scorpion traps to poison the majority of adventurers.
“Hold up are you sure you aren’t just drunk?” Sebas glared at him, he was an archer before and knew that such a thing was impossible.
“I’m not drunk, we need someone knowledgeable like Cain to tell us what to do!” Edward wasn’t joking, especially now that the dragon fang have set to their country, the guild was extremely weakened. He did ask the Kenkus to help but apparently, they won’t help now, they are protecting their eggs.
“You said west right?” Edward heard a voice from behind Sebas, when he looked it was Sofia approaching in her mage outfit. Behind her were Chad and Ariel.
“You are…” Before Edward could finish, “I’m going out.” Sofia took to the sky with a burst of flames from her feet.
Ariel immediately flew after her with [Fly] so as to not expose her angel side.
Chad glared at Edward, “Monsters can act like this when led by a stronger and smarter monster. Think of it like how a lich orders the mindless zombies.”
“So you know about this thing? How do we deal with it?” Edward asked with a hopeful face.
“Killing the monsters is easy, what worries me is the timing of their attack. This is the day we returned and they attacked immediately.” Chad said with a passive face.
“What do you mean?” Sebas asked.
“They are either aiming at Cain or they are unbelievably unlucky,” Chad said menacingly.
Chad summoned his horse to charge, “I’m going to wipe them out.” He charged ahead.
…
Inside the forest, the guards used tower shields to create a wall. Then the images from the guild used [Earth wall] to reinforce that wall.
Bugbears are large humanoid, hairy monsters that resembled the mixture of an ape, a goblin, and a beaver. It was named a bugbear since its fur is always filled with mites and they hunt bears.
To say, they are strong, and there is a lot of them punching at the wall like crazed apes.
Thud! An armored adventure who was a tank leaped from atop the wall and grabbed one of the bugbears and threw him behind the walls to the mage.
The rogues and the soldier used ropes to tie the monster as one of the guild staff rushed with an appraisal orb. She pushed the orb onto the monster’s chest to apprise him.
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<Name: —><Race: Ettin>
<HP: 27><MP: 16><SP: 6>
<Strength: 15><Dexterity: 14><Constitution: 13>
<Intelligence: 8><Wisdom: 11><Charisma: 9>
—————————————————–
The moment the stats showed up, one of the adventurers shouted, “What is this? We can’t see his skills. Did you bring the correct orb?”
“Yes, at least this one doesn’t seem to have any special traits!” The guild staff replied.
“Yeah? If they are normal then how do you explain this mess?” The adventurer shouted back.
“But we’re…” They suddenly heard a faint rumbling, something was approaching fast.
VROOOM! They looked up to see a red star in the sky, it was getting bigger and bigger.
“What is that?” The adventurer looked closely and he was able to realize one thing, it was approaching them.
VROOO, BAM! It crashed right in the middle of the hordes of the bugbears. Some adventure immediately recognized her, the useless mage who couldn’t cast a single step two months ago.
She stood there in front of them, just the heat coming from her body was enough to intimidate everyone there.
“I might cause a forest fire, I better use the other one…” Sofia started mumbling to herself as her fire faded.
The bugbears being monsters charged immediately as they saw that opportunity.
CRACK! The first bugbear to approach Sofia froze in place and his body fell to the ground cracking. “A good place to test magic, and Exp on top of that.” Sofia lifted her hand with a smile.
[Fireball] she created a normal fireball in her hand and then started reversing the magic, instead of releasing heat she started absorbing it. The fireball disappeared and the spell seemed to fail to most viewers. Only the mages could sense that the spell was acting, the air where the fire used to be is now freezing cold.
“This isn’t magic, how could someone command the arcane arts like this?” A mage gasped as Sofia flicked her hand toward the bugbears.
The invisible ball of extremely cold air hit the monster and instantly caused them to freeze in place.
“This is working, it’s working.” Sofia smiled, she tried to hit Zaleria with it but the effect occurred so the spell was a failure. It was now obvious, that Zaleria’s body was just too hot to be frozen but the spell.
“You! What was that, where is your staff?” One of the mages shouted, and he started to smell something off.
Sofia looked at him with a smile showing her ring, “Cain made it for me, a convenient catalyst right?” In their eyes, Cain was already a mage that broke the norm. Cain creating a weird catalyst was still a possibility.
Sofia then turned toward the monsters and smiled, “Let’s try both? I wonder how it will go.” She created a fireball in her right hand and a coldball in her left.
In the distance, the bath’s old lady was watching. “Is it time, or should I wait?” She mumbled.