<~> Chapter 321My [Creeping Frost] spread across the side of the wall and I created stairs going up. This wall wasn't nearly as tall as the previous one, so I was able to make the stairs without much trouble. It took a bit of time to finish our path upward, but the others had only just arrived when I finished.

  "Let's hurry," I said.

  Before I could take the first step, Silva pushed me aside and went first. "You should hang back with the mages. Let Sibyl, Kal'daeryn, and I go first."

  I nodded and let her pass before going in the middle of the group. I made sure to keep a steady supply of mana powering the stairs as we walked up, but it wasn't as difficult now that I've become more experienced with it. [Creeping Frost] had turned out to be a useful spell, with how helpful its utility has been.

  It didn't take us long to reach the top of the stairs, and there we found the corpse of this dungeon's boss monster. It looked simir to the st guardian we fought, another mixture of beast and skeleton. The only thing that really set this one apart was its size, but like the st one we fought, it was broken in two halves at the spine. Its skull was missing, and it was apparent that they had torn the body open and taken out a core that it must have had as well. I didn't understand the mechanics, but it struck me as odd that its body hadn't disappeared like all of the other dungeon monsters.

  This isnd was the smallest yet, probably not more than a square mile. The st pilr was butted up against this one and didn't look much rger than a house lot. I could sense Lori through the bond, so I knew where she was watching the cultists from, but I never would have seen her otherwise. She had managed to secure herself to the side of the pilr somehow and was peeking at them over the edge. She was far enough away that she could see them near the dungeon crystal, but not so close that she was likely to be spotted.

  I gnced up and frowned. ("The st pilr isn't very tall, I think it would be better if we flew up there instead. Rather than slowly take the stairs up, we would be able to get into fighting position much more easily that way.")

  ("I agree,") Lori said. ("They're close to finishing, we need to hurry now if we want to stop whatever ritual they're doing before they activate it.")

  I looked over my friends ("I can support everyone's wings briefly, but I'll have to release them when we nd. That will give us a short window of opportunity to surprise them.")

  When I got nods back from them, I began to cast [Winged Cloak of Light] on everyone. Normally, supporting this many people at once would be difficult, but it would only be for a short time. I could handle the brief effort on my own. I also made sure to properly reform and harden my armor from [Arms of Light], since the dogkin woman had been able to break through it so easily in our st fight.

  Silva nodded. "Everyone ready? Three, two, one... go!"

  With a leap, all of us shot through the air and arced onto the isnd. The dangerous dogkin woman immediately turned to face us with a hardened expression. Silva, Sibyl, and Kal'daeryn nded pretty close to the ritual circle with their weapons drawn. The gold-haired dog woman didn't even hesitate to attack them. The other cultists behind her panicked slightly, but they quickly refocused on the ritual, sure that the dogkin would protect them while they worked.

  Morrigan, Raya, Nelly, and Bel nded a few yards behind Silva and the others, but I stayed in the sky with my wings. Even if she could leap at me from this distance, I think I was safer staying in the air. I cast [Chromatic Halo] on myself and started by throwing [Blinding Crescents] at the other cultists. My light attacks hit an invisible barrier, and I could see one of the four cultists still working on the ritual shudder. That one must be holding the barrier up.

  Noticing what I was doing, Morrigan started to assault the barrier behind the frontline. Lances of fire materialized above her and were smming into the barrier at an astonishing speed. Her attacks were so fast that one of the cultists was forced to stop what he was doing and focus on strengthening the barrier instead.

  Unfortunately, that drew the ire of the golden-furred dogkin. She slipped between Kal'daeryn and Sibyl and shot like a rocket toward Morrigan. Our mage had been paying attention though, and the dogkin smmed into a fire barrier that burned the woman on impact. Morrigan was being suppressed now. She couldn't keep up her assault, but she was able to hold the woman off surprisingly effectively.

  Glowing roots burst from the ground and whipped toward her, but the dogkin danced away through them. For a moment, her eyes were trained on Bel, but that was a mistake, because Morrigan took advantage of the pse in attention to fire a bst of fire at her. The dogkin crossed her arms and took the hit head-on. Once the wave of fire passed, the woman looked unharmed, even if her clothes looked a bit scorched.

  Throughout all of this, I was assaulting the barrier protecting the ritual in Morrigan's pce, but I wasn't able to maintain the same level of pressure she had. Still, the cultist focused on the barrier had completely given up on helping with the ritual and was now entirely working on strengthening the shield instead, buying us a little more time. This was a race. We needed to defeat the golden-furred dogkin before they could complete whatever they were doing.

  Silva caught up to the woman and thrust at her from behind. The golden-furred dogkin continued to dodge out of the way like a slippery eel, but at least she wasn't pressuring Morrigan as much. Morrigan continued to try to send magic toward the barrier, but every time she began to form a spell, the woman was quick to get a hit in on her fire shield, diverting the magic away from Morrigan's attacks.

  Until now, Raya had been focused on illusions and trying to distract the woman, but it had been completely ineffective. When she realized what we were doing, Raya changed her strategy to attacking the barrier with us using her blue foxfire. Just like Morrigan, this drew the woman's attention, but she couldn't be in two pces at once. Raya, with Kal'daeryn's help, slowly began to move away from Morrigan, forcing the woman to make the obvious choice of continuing to suppress the more powerful mage.

  A loud crack cut through the sound of battle and one of the cultists behind the barrier fell over dead. While we were fighting, Torien had managed to charge one of her arrows with enough shadow magic to pierce the barrier and hit one of the cultists behind it. Now there were only three cultists left, and one of them was entirely focused on maintaining the barrier that was keeping us away from them.

  The dogkin swore under her breath, but didn't stop her attacks on Morrigan. Now, she was dancing between Silva, Mimi, and Sibyl, while continuing to try to crack Morrigan's defensive fire magic. I would have been worried if not for the strong confidence from Morrigan that she could continue to protect herself as long as she needed. All the unarmed dogkin was doing was slowing her down.

  If this had been a battle of attrition, we would have easily won. It was eleven versus five, four now, but their goal had never been to win.

  ("Guys! The ritual is getting close! We need to crack that barrier, now!") I said through the bond.

  ("It's not as if we have a choice!") Silva growled back.

  This entire time, Silva's frustration had been building. The dogkin was flighty and fast. Despite Silva's advantage in reach, the woman dodged and weaved around Silva's spear thrusts. Even when fighting as a cohesive group using the advantages of [Pack Tactics], the woman was still managing to avoid getting trapped, or even getting hit, most of the time. The only hits the woman was letting through were gncing blows. If she had been fighting any one of us one on one, she would have mopped the floor with us. Luckily, we had been able to learn enough about her fighting style to lock her down as a team.

  Even with Lori's unpredictable attacks between shadow leaps, the woman still managed to dodge every one. Mimi was too slow to do much more than corral the dogkin woman around, but that was barely effective against her. Sibyl's acrobatic attacks seemed easy for the woman to read, and Kal'daeryn had been forced to back up from the fight to protect Raya. She was holding all of us at a standstill while the barrier mage on the other side protected the other cultists. For the most part.

  Another loud crack rang out and a second cultist fell over dead. As if the cultist possessed some uncanny sixth sense, he had thrown himself in the way of the barrier mage and died protecting him. The barrier mage grit his teeth and quickly closed the gap that Torien had punched through the barrier, but it was already too te to save his ally. There were only two cultists left, and the barrier mage had long been focused on defense. While the dogkin was suppressing Morrigan, Raya and I had kept up a constant stream of attacks, forcing him to focus solely on repairing the barrier to keep us out.

  Despite killing two of the cultists and distracting a third, the st cultist hadn't wavered and continued to single-mindedly work on finishing the ritual. He moved his comrades' dead bodies out of the way and began working on the parts they had left unfinished. We were running out of time. We needed to end this.

  I wasn't sure how wise this was, but I began to collect mana for a [Brilliant Laser]. One of the things sers were best at was focusing a lot of energy into one small spot. My [Blinding Crescents] had been weakening his barrier and forcing him to pour his mana into it, but this spell was more likely to punch through and kill him instead. Just as I was nearly finished collecting the mana for the spell, the dogkin woman had leapt high into the air and forced me to dodge her attack. She had somehow sensed that I was about to use something big and came just in time to stop me.

  During the window that Morrigan was left unsuppressed, she had begun to rain fire arrows at the barrier again, forcing the dogkin's attention back onto her. Either I would pierce through the barrier and kill the barrier mage, Morrigan would overwhelm it with her volume of attacks, or Torien would punch through the barrier again and take the st of the cultists out. We would have won... had the cultist not just finished their ritual.

  The giant runic circle began to glow a sinister looking dark purple light. Several runes had been written in my blood around the ritual circle. The head of the skull from the boss was positioned at the top of the circle, and its rge core was helping to power the design. Like the previous dungeon, four identical looking corpses were spread evenly along it and were being used to power the circle further. The cultist that we hadn't been able to stop yet began to cackle maniacally as the ritual magic began to activate, and a hole in the dungeon started to form.

  Up above them, the dungeon crystal suspended in the air began to descend into the growing rift that was simir to the one from the st dungeon. Off to the side, Mimi fell to her knees and held her head while screaming. Nothing came through the rift right away, but the same blinding light made the ritual impossible to look at for long.

  "It's finished! We did it!" The cultist yelled in triumph.

  The dogkin disengaged and took cover inside the barrier while covering her eyes from the blinding light. She was just as affected by it as the rest of us were. I flew down to my friends blind and nded in the middle of them before casting [Light Siphon] to stop the disabling light from affecting them all. I quickly redirected the mana into [Blinding Crescents], since I didn't have enough time to cast [Brilliant Laser] without getting overstuffed with mana.

  The barrier began to crack as our magic smmed into it, but the dogkin was now completely ignoring us. She had uncovered her eyes and was staring into the blinding hole of light as the dungeon crystal slowly sank into it. At the halfway point, the entire dungeon rocked as if there were an earthquake, and Mimi's scream abruptly cut off as she fell over unconscious.

  ("Kal'daeryn! Grab Mimi!") I yelled.

  Kal'daeryn ran on unstable feet over to Mimi and managed to pick her up despite her enormous dead weight. I knew that Mimi was dense and heavy normally. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to try to lift her while she was knocked out. The entire dungeon was vibrating, and despite our best efforts, we were unable to destroy the barrier in time to prevent them from finishing.

  A strange looking humanoid creature rose from the hole once the rest of the crystal had slipped through, and the intense light from the portal suddenly winked out. The creature was skinny, eight-foot tall, and had a pair of long fangs peeking out of its mouth, yet its eyes looked intelligent and happy. The blond dogkin was now kneeling before it, bowing as the creature spread its arms wide and smiled with an inhuman grin.

  "I've arrived! Good work, my champion!" the creature spoke.

  "Felketh!" Nelly choked out.

  Despite the distance, the creature clearly heard her and grinned even wider as he turned in her direction. "In the flesh!" he said with a dramatic flourish.

  Saine

  Hello! Our intrepid party of adventurers have failed to stop the ritual! Oops! Looks like the ultimate goal of all of this was to summon the demonic god himself! Things are really going off the rails now. The next few chapters are gonna be fun! I hope you enjoyed the chapter, thanks for reading!

  As a reminder, I'm going to be posting Umbral Feast only on Mondays from December 1st till December 29th and posting Lilith only on Wednesdays from December 3th until December 31st. The schedule will go back to normal on January 4th for both stories. Happy holidays!

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