<~> Chapter 311I reached the edge of the pilr from the other side we initially approached with Sibyl still in my arms. It had taken a while to climb in altitude after my hasty dive, but we were going to make it. After our fall, none of the banshees had followed us, and I didn't see the horde of demons clustered against the edge of our nding spot the way that I did on the initial approach. Unfortunately, I also didn't see any sign of our friends, so it would only be the three of us until we could link back up with them somewhere on this isnd.

  "How are your eyes?" I asked Sibyl as I put her down.

  "Better now, still irritated, but I can see okay again," she replied.

  "That's good," I said with a sigh as I leaned against a tree.

  "Thank you again for saving me," Sibyl said.

  "No problem," I said with a ugh.

  Sibyl brought her hand up to her brow and looked around. "I wouldn't say no problem. We're going to need to find the others, and Raya's illusions might make that difficult."

  "Give me a bit," I said with a sigh.

  I was a little exhausted and mana-starved after that stunt. The only reason I was able to upkeep [Lightfoot] for that long was because my connection with everyone else's wings snapped once I got too far away. I was already a little drained from the trip across the isnds, and then I had to make it back up there on my own. The others either had to find a way to upkeep the wings themselves or make a nding in that mess.

  "Do you think everyone made it?" Sibyl asked with a hint of worry in her voice.

  "I'm sure they'll be fine. All of our heavy hitters are in that group. We should probably be more worried about ourselves. I'm not sure the three of us can hold out if we get surrounded by a group as rge as the one we saw earlier," I pushed off the tree and pulled Mimi's choker off my neck. Mimi reacted by shifting back into her humanoid form.

  "Are you okay, Lilith? Do you want another mana potion?" Mimi asked.

  I nodded, and she handed one of them over to me. Before I could drink it, Sibyl put her hand on my arm. "You probably should wait on that. You don't know if you'll need it yet, and too many mana potions too quickly can be toxic."

  Sighing, I slipped the vial into my hip pouch instead. "You're probably right. I kind of feel like crap right now, though. I got pretty close to mana exhaustion there."

  "Does staying in that form make things worse? You've been maintaining that armor spell this whole time," Sibyl asked.

  I shrugged. "I would regenerate faster without the spell, but I would be naked if I took it off. I'd rather stay in my true form for now, so I think I'll just deal with the lower regeneration rate I have while maintaining the armor."

  "Its upkeep is less than your regeneration?" she asked.

  I nodded. "As long as I don't mess with it too much, the upkeep is small. It costs the most to create new armor or change its shape."

  "Sounds handy."

  "It is," I agreed.

  "Did you drop anything when you fell?" I asked Sibyl.

  She looked over herself and shook her head. "No. It looks like I still have everything. Good thing too, I don't know how I'd deal without having a weapon here."

  "I could have given you another one!" Mimi happily interjected.

  "Oh, right. Do you have a lot of spares on you?" Sibyl asked.

  Mimi shrugged. "I have some."

  "The sword you got from the st dungeon is better quality than anything Mimi has on hand. It's good that you didn't lose that one," I said.

  Sibyl nodded. "Right. Anyway, do you have any idea where we're headed?" She put her hand back to her brow and looked around.

  "Well, the easiest way to find our friends would be to go to where we know they nded, roughly. But it might be better if we looked for them in the forest, rather than letting the banshees see us. We also need to be careful of those crawling demons I saw," I said, sighing again.

  "You're sure they were demons?" Sibyl asked.

  I shrugged. "I think so, but I'm not positive. I would also guess that they might be shadow demons from the look of them. That would be convenient for me, since all of my light magic is strong against them."

  "Good. We should get walking soon. You ready to go?" she asked.

  I nodded. "Let's go."

  The two of us drew our swords while Mimi walked out ahead of us. Mimi was the most durable of the three of us by far, so she took the lead. We only had the vaguest sense of where we were going, but our friends had to be on the isnd somewhere. Without my flight magic, they were more or less stranded on this pilr. With luck, Torien or Lori would find us while scouting.

  I pulled up my notifications.

  [Your party have defeated 348 Banshees][Your level has increased from level 57 to level 58][Apprentice Magic Swordsman has increased from level 3 to level 5][Light Magic has increased from level 29 to level 32][Flying has increased from level 10 to level 16][Marksmanship has increased from level 4 to level 5]

  I whistled. "I got six levels of flight for all of that. No new spells or anything though."

  I haven't looked at the kill notifications since we've entered the dungeon. It wasn't nearly as many as we killed on the bridge yet, but it seems the experience we're getting for killing these is slowing down. They have been getting easier for us to deal with, even in their rge groups, but tely my mana has been needed for other things, like flying.

  Sibyl nodded. "My marksmanship increased from using the crossbow and javelins. I haven't had many opportunities to utilize my usual skills. Flying enemies aren't a great matchup for me."

  I peeked up through a gap in the thin canopy of trees. "I don't see any banshees anywhere near us at least."

  "Our friends must have escaped from the ones following them using Raya's illusion magic, and the rest of the monsters probably went back to the dungeon entrance once they couldn't see any of us anymore," Sibyl said with a nod.

  "Does a dungeon like this normally make that many flying enemies?" I asked.

  Sibyl shrugged. "I don't really know. I've only ever been inside one dungeon before meeting you guys and it didn't have any flying creatures. This kind of dungeon seems like it would have flying monsters, but I don't know if the number is usual. It seems unlikely to me that it would be."

  "I hear something strange," Mimi said, cutting off our conversation.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  She shook her head. "Sounds like a monster, we should hurry!"

  Mimi started running ahead, but luckily, both of us could keep up with her without an issue. After running for half a minute, I could hear something too. It was roaring noises. Panic suddenly flooded into the bond from Mimi, and she started to run even faster.

  "Mimi? What's wrong?" I asked.

  ("I hear someone fighting it! I think our friends are in danger!") Mimi yelled through the bond.

  Sibyl and I picked up the pace and soon we started to hear the sound of fighting as well. Whatever it was they were fighting, it was huge and the sound of snapping and creaking trees in the distance didn't help ease our worries. It was another five minutes before the three people snapped into crity through the bond. Kal'daeryn, Nelly, and Torien were fighting something together. They were so focused on the fight, they hadn't noticed us yet, but we were almost there.

  We finally got close enough to see the monstrosity they were fighting. The front half resembled a six-armed humanoid skeleton, covered in transparent bck goo. Connected to the base of its hips was the rotting corpse of some kind of lizard, attached to the skeleton's torso as if it were some kind of mockery of a centaur. The entire thing was around twenty feet tall, nearly the size of a two-story building. I had no doubt this thing was a demon from the way it looked.

  The monster lifted a tree trunk that had fallen near the clearing and threw it at Kal'daeryn. She leapt into the air and dodged the skipping log before spinning into a long ssh across one of the lizard half's legs. Deep bck blood sprayed out of the wound, but the creature didn't even seem fazed. It just reached for a nearby boulder and tried to toss that at Kal'daeryn next. Torien was shooting it from a nearby tree, but her arrows were getting caught in the goo and didn't seem to be doing a lot. One of the monster's fnks already had several arrows sticking out of it, but the thing didn't even seem to notice or care. Torien looked incredibly frustrated. This enemy was more or less immune to her attacks.

  Nelly looked run ragged. She was exhausted, but continued to channel buff magic into Kal'daeryn. It was likely the only reason Kal'daeryn had been able to keep up with the monster at all. She dodged out of the way of one of the six armed demon's swings, only to freeze in horror as the monster threw another boulder at Nelly this time!

  I had just barely gotten in range and snapped up a [Light Shield] in front of her. The rock exploded against the barrier and cracked it, but the shield held and the fragmented rock sprayed harmlessly to the sides.

  "Lilith!" Nelly cried in relief.

  Sibyl dashed across the clearing and acrobatically spun in the air to ssh at the demon's goo-encased skull. One of the monster's arms tried to swat at her as she flew by as if she were an annoying gnat. Already a lot of the pressure had been taken off of Kal'daeryn, and she took advantage of the monster's confusion to ssh at the demon's lizard-like body.

  I cast [Light Domain] with an area rge enough to include Torien, before wading into the fray myself. I had a pretty good feeling that this monster was shadow-aligned, so I threw a [Blinding Crescent] at the horrible creature. The monster let out an inhuman scream of pain as the magic attack sshed through it, and the blinding effect had clearly taken hold. It began to guard its head from attacks with its top arms and scrabbled along the ground around it for other things to throw with its lower arms.

  A blinding arrow of twisting light and shadow exploded from Torien and rocked through the monster's body. The attack had fired so fast that it completely traveled through the creature. Unlike Torien's previous attacks, the arrows improved by the light domain did significant damage to it. I chose to capitalize on our synergy by using [Light Imbue] on her, which made her brilliant arrows fsh even brighter on impact.

  In only moments of our arrival, we completely turned the fight around. Kal'daeryn, Sibyl, and Mimi were taking advantage of my [Light Domain]'s slow to do massive uncontested damage. Every arrow Torien shot now had the monster screeching in pain. My [Blinding Crescent] spells cut through its gooey flesh like butter while keeping the monster distracted and occasionally blinded. Meanwhile, Nelly recovered her mana with a potion Mimi had given her so she could properly heal Kal'daeryn's wounds.

  The tide of the battle shifted, and we were now wearing the monster down. It was still dangerous, though. The three of us in melee range still had to be careful to avoid the stumbling monster's attacks, but now it was only a matter of time before we killed it.

  I suddenly felt a rush of mana collecting, and I turned my head to see Torien holding a drawn arrow back. The nearby ambient mana collected and empowered the swirling light and dark magic more and more. When the intense pressure of mana was on the brink of cascading back at Torien, she fired the unstable energy in the form of a massive arrow. All of our melee fighters had ample time to escape from the explosion when Torien gave them a mental nudge, so all of us were able to avoid the insane bst that hit the demon head on.

  The light the explosion gave off blinded me, and I was thrown off my feet. I hadn't gotten quite far enough away to avoid it. All that remained of the monster was a crater and the burning remains of the creature's bones.

  [Your party has defeated a Shadow Chimera Malcontent]

  Torien jumped out of the tree and ran at me at full speed once the kill notification had rung in all of our heads. I was taken aback when the smaller catgirl jumped and threw herself into my arms. She wrapped herself around me and hugged me as hard as she could.

  "Lilith! You're okay! When the bond snapped, I thought that the three of you had died! I'm so gd you're okay!" Overwhelming relief flooded the bond as Torien cried into the crook of my neck. Torien wasn't usually the most emotive person, so I wasn't ready for this kind of reaction from her. It wasn't just her overflowing emotions that made my throat tight from our reunion either. I squeezed her back and kissed the side of her head as she continued to cry.

  "It's okay. I'm here, Torien," I whispered.

  Saine

  Hello! I think it's fun to py with how the same event can be viewed completely differently from other perspectives. Torien thought Lilith had died here, and it never even occurred to Lilith that the others might think that. Torien doesn't often get emotional, so it's nice to see how much she truly cares for Lilith slip out a bit. I hope you enjoyed the chapter, thanks for reading!

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