*****

  A few minutes earlier.

  ***

  “The white fly-thing left skull-boss!” One of Grimbol’s lesser kin said, blinking big dumb black eyes at him. “We chase fly-thing? We could bow-shoot it and it would down-fall.”

  “Leave the fly-thing!” Grimbol barked out, swinging his gnarl-root staff at the dumb-kin like a club. “It has zappy wonder-glow, didn’t you look-see?”

  “I did peek-look!” The dumb-kin said proudly and Grimbol whack-hit him again.

  “Run-skitter to chief-boss,” Grimbol said, thin fingers tightening around his staff as he watched the fly-thing take-steal the man-thing they wanted to hunt-eat. Thief. Thief. Cunning fly-thing, taking man-thing once clan-kin beat it. Thief. “I have a plan-idea! Skitter-run fast!”

  “Yes-yes!” The lesser kin ran as ordered, and after a few more clubbings, Grimbol had another bunch of them skittering along to the other bosses.

  Man-things think their tall-wall will protect-save them. Grimbol thought as his eyes looked left and right, finding the tallest house-building near the man-thing wall. Dumb man-things. Tall-wall not tall enough, Grimbol found a tall-higher spot!

  Soon enough, other hob-kin and wonder-kin came around. Of course they did, Grimbol was an old-elder wonder-kin, he’d lived for ten sun-cycles outside the home-rift already! He was owed lots of bow-respect.

  “Why did you ask-call us here?” The chief-boss, a big-tall hob-kin asked as he towered over Grimbol’s small, skeletal frame.

  “I have a plan-idea!” Grimbol shouted, knocking his staff on the ground because he notice-learned it caught the attention-eyes of the kin. “Man-things are up on tall-wall, if we go skitter-climb a taller house-building, we could down-shoot at them like they are down-shooting the dumb-kin!”

  As he finished his talk-speech, he excitedly pointed towards the tall-wall where the man-things were slaughter-killing the lesser gob-kin.

  The bosses looked together and the two other wonder-kin chitter-laughed in happy-delight.

  “Yes-yes,” one said, a wonder-fellow with a man-thing skull-mask. “Great-smart plan-idea.”

  “True-true!” the other chittered, clutching at his root-staff as he hopped up and down in happy-delight. “Down-shoot man-things! Grimbol smart-wise.”

  The hob-kin looked conflicted, clearly not wanting to anger-upset the wonder-kin, but they also weren’t smart-wise enough to see how awesome Grimbol’s plan-idea was.

  “Why do you need hob-kin help for that plan-idea?” Chief-boss asked, a dark frown-scowl on his mug as he stare-looked down on Grimbol.

  “Protect-save if fly-thing comes,” Grimbol said, knocking his staff on the ground twice because what he was saying was much-very important. “Wonder-kin slow to react-kill, we need hob-kin to protect-save!”

  “You get three hob-kin,” the chief-boss nodded. “Kill-slaughter many man-things, make Gob-King happy-proud! We must kill-destroy the man-thing wall before other tribe-groups come!”

  The gob-kin chitter-laughed in joy, then quickly set off to enact the plan-idea. Chief-boss would go kill-break the man-thing wall while Grimbol and his fellow-kin would down-kill from up-above.

  Climbing the tall house-building was exhausting, and Grimbol had to command-ask one hob-kin to lift-carry him.

  Then they were there, up-above the dumb-stupid man-things. Grimbol skitter-walked over to the ledge, and aimed at a colourful man-thing. Grimbol hated the vibrant-bright head-fur the man-thing had.

  “Skull-boss is using wonder-glow to kill man-things!” One of Grimbol’s lesser kin shouted, pointing at his glorious visage as he gathered the wonder-glow to his hand-digits. “Look-look!”

  The dark wonder-glow spread, snapping into place, and then Grimbol let it fly-shoot at the man-thing. He grinned, drinking in the fear-terror on the man-thing’s face.

  Then he caught a small detail-fact. The man-thing wasn’t a man-thing, but an elf-thing! What a glorious luck-find!

  His hand-digits reached up and lovingly caressed the single elf-thing ear he had on his neck-string. It had been great luck-fortune that he had found it when the elf-thing it belonged to was still warm and not quite a dead-corpse yet.

  This colourful elf-thing’s ears were small-tiny for an elf-thing, but Grimbol knew elf-thing ears were the best for wonder-glow neck-strings. Even if they were small-tiny. He couldn’t wait to cut-tear it off of its dead-corpse.

  Though … it would be even more joy-fun if the elf-thing was alive when he cut-tore its precious-treasured ear off.

  Elf-things always shout-screamed the best when one took-tore their ears off after all. Just imagining it sent a surge of joy-thrill down Grimbol’s spine.

  “Yes-yes,” he said, grinning as he watched his wonder-bolt shoot at the elf-thing. “Scream-shout, elf-thing. Suffer-cry for Grimbol!”

  *****

  Mia watched the glob of dark mana race towards her with a hint of horror, then … splatter against a Lesser Ward as her Amulet flared to life. It seared into her skin, making her stumble with a grimace and reach up to pull it out of her shirt.

  She quickly sat down, hiding behind the waist-high palisade atop the walls to ward off any follow-up attacks by the goblin shaman.

  The Lesser Ward, a bubble of near-translucent pink energy around her, flickered and died a moment later with its purpose served. The Dark Bolt — supposedly — was gone and Mia was left blowing air on her now scalding hot amulet, before remembering that she could just absorb the heat for some extra mana.

  Touching the spot of skin it had been lying on, just between her collarbones, Mia flinched at the pain radiating out of the piece of well-done flesh. She kept her Ring from activating though; it was at worst a second-degree burn and the damned thing took two entire hours to recharge even with her increasing mana capacity.

  It is such a damned pain that I can't track exactly how much mana I have. Sure, it's roughly proportional with my Spirit, I know that, but would it have killed the System’s developer to include a mana counter? Mia groused, flickering a glance up as Carmilla sent Water Blade after Water Blade flying with a dark scowl on her face.

  A smirk played on Mia’s lips, despite the discomfort of her shirt touching the burnt piece of skin. The presences atop that building were quickly sputtering out one after the other, and with a crash of thunder joining the whizzing crescents of blood, the last two clumps of wrongness died.

  There came a roar from below and another three clumps she came to associate with level 9 Hobgoblins rushed towards the wall at the head of a somewhat reorganised mass of Goblins.

  Huffing, Mia stood back up, paying careful attention not to shift her clothes too much as she did and cast her gaze out over the battlefield. It was … strange. The sun was happily shining away up above, fluffy clouds were rolling by in the blue sky, and a soft breeze was blowing into Mia’s face with a gentle caress. Then, there was absolute carnage down on the ground, gunfire cracking constantly, explosions, screams, roars and the smell, the smell of gore, blood and shit all mixing together with the sweat and fear of so many people clumped together.

  To Mia, who’d grown used to battles of this magnitude usually happening on a dreary day with dramatic music accompanying it from movies. It was a strange sight. Despite the dumb goblins that crawled out of some fantasy author’s asshole, and magic and all this other bullshit, this was real. This was reality. Not a book, a game or a movie.

  She took a deep breath, and the smells invading her nostril almost made her lurch, but she forced it back down with practised ease. Aiming at the biggest, baddest hob-goblin leading the charge, a fellow a head taller than the rest and with one ear missing, Mia sent a piercing Bolt its way.

  It missed, surprisingly. The monster cloaked itself in a whirl of wind and moved with a speed that belied its lumbering stature. Furthermore, it moved to dodge the moment Mia’s fingertips first gave off the characteristic glow of magic.

  “You should stay down while your Amulet recharges,” Carmilla said, following Mia’s lead and sending a crescent of blood racing towards the hob with Water Blade, which it also dodged easily. If it could sidestep Mia’s piercing Bolt which traversed faster than her eyes could track, it was reasonable that it also effortlessly dodge a crescent of comparatively snail-paced blood.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “Probably,” Mia said, grimacing. “Alright, it’s just 15 minutes and it should be back up.”

  “Fast-charge it,” Carmilla said. “15 minutes is the passive recharge I assume? Just channel mana into it. Should be back up in a minute. I’ll take care of this.”

  “Alright,” Mia said, plopping back down with a sigh as she palmed the Amulet. After absorbing its excess thermal energy, it was already back to ambient temperature. Pushing mana in though caused it to start warming up again, too quickly for her to absorb it all, to the point where she’d melt it before she filled it up by her estimation. Even with her absorbing as much of the heat as she could all the while. “Well, this thing is … overloading, I think. I’ll have to wait the fifteen minutes out.”

  “No problem,” Carmilla said, and Mia felt a hob’s presence fade. “That’s one down. Two more to go- Eeeeep.”

  Mia startled at the uncharacteristic squeal from Carmilla, then froze as the girl practically threw herself over Mia in a hurry. Not a moment later Mia felt a powerful wind blast by just above them, ruffling her hair and sending Carmilla’s own crimson locks into her mouth and eyes.

  Sputtering a little, Mia held onto the vampiress as she tried not to think about the titanic amount of Air mana blasting by right above her head. What burned bright though, burned down fast and the same went for the magical Air blast that had far more mana in it than any sane Rank 0 mage would have put into it.

  Carmilla jumped up the exact moment the magic was gone, and Mia heard the girl growl menacingly. Her arm went up, and a crimson beam of energy lanced off of her fingers with a flash of blood-red light.

  Risking to poke her head out, Mia saw the biggest hobgoblin crumbling into a bloody heap with a fist-sized hole through where its heart would have once been. That might have been a bit overkill. Blood Lance is her strongest spell. I doubt she can use it more than a dozen times a day, even with her drinking my blood daily.

  Glancing up at the pleased smirk on the vampiress’ face and the low purr she let out as her foe finally fell with a wet squelch, Mia didn’t have it in her to speak up about the girl’s wastage of her lifeforce.

  The rest of the group fell into disarray with the big fucker’s death and the two remaining hobgoblins even ignored the defenders to instantly pounce on the other. Which earned them a beam of death from the woman with the huge magical rifle.

  Who, by the way, turned out to be called Amelia and was happy enough to share with Mia the name of her Skill when she asked: ‘Ethereal Mana-Cannon’.

  She only asked for the info about where Mia got her Amulet, which she happily shared too. There was no need in being secretive with stuff Amelia would have figured out herself. Even less so considering they were both currently fighting off a horde of monsters, the stronger each of them was, the better. At least in Mia’s opinion.

  The next group of monsters to come was smaller in number, but much more dangerous overall. The fifty-strong group was cautious, and at least a quarter of them were hobs with five shamans and one … “what the fuck is that?”

  Mia snorted at the question the fireball-guy asked, who came to stand only a dozen metres away from Mia and Carmilla. Not for any personal reason though, it was just the best spot to shoot down the street stretching from the intersection towards the inner city.

  The ‘that’ in question was a two metre tall female goblin-like thing with the physique of an amazon and the head that looked like the lovechild of a donkey and a boar that then ran face first into a wall until its face turned largely two dimensional.

  The result wasn’t pretty, but for whatever godforsaken reason the thing had two jiggly breasts the size of watermelons displayed to the world at large with absolutely no shame. Which was likely what earned the fire mage’s disbelieving question.

  “That’s what you might call a Jade Beauty, I guess,” Mia snickered under her breath. It had jade coloured skin and was sort of a beauty if you put a bag over its head.

  The joke surprisingly earned a small giggle from Carmilla. Seemed like the girl really did read every book under the sun while hospitalised. Which blessedly saved Mia from the embarrassment of having to explain an inside joke about Jade Beauties and cultivation stories.

  “What?” Fireball guy looked over, cresting an eyebrow with a strange look on his face. “Looks like an Orc to me.”

  “That fits too,” Mia mumbled. “Let’s kill it.”

  “Too far away for me,” the man said in irritation, leaning over the ledge to stare at the distant green form at the centre of a greenskin formation.

  Yes, the ‘orc’ somehow beat the goblins into an honest to god formation. It was a bad one, sure, a simple square formation without even shields held by the frontline, but it was leagues above the tactic used by every group till now.

  Which boiled down to rush the wall and hope for the best, and of course, don’t forget to scream as you did so.

  Apparently though, the downside of being smart enough to strategise was the lack of the nimble speed the previous group’s hob leader had. Which meant the Orc couldn’t dodge Mia's piercing Bolt in time and lost an eye along with a chunk of its brain as a result.

  Not that it would have lived much longer even if it had managed to dodge, as a beam of mana took out half of its face and an arrow of mana went through where its heart had been just mere fractions of a second after Mia’s spell hit true.

  Then, as if to make sure it was dead, a sniper up on some roof blasted what remained of its head clean off. Mia doubted it could get any deader than it already was, but oh well.

  Cleaning up the rest of them was a damned slog, every second hob having some Air magic or another. One moved fast, another threw pebbles that nearly broke the sound barrier and a third just ran up to the wall and boosted itself up to its top with a burst of wind coming out of its feet.

  What caused that particular hob’s downfall was the dubious decision it took to land right in front of Carmilla. The vampire took the challenge, or the mere presence of the repulsive monster as a great offence and ripped its head right off with a disgusted scowl before kicking its corpse back over the palisades. Then she threw the detached head and had it splatter against the Aegis of a shaman.

  Mia and Carmilla took a small break about three hours after the start of the fight, the stress of waiting and being under near constant threat of death having strained Mia’s nerves more than she could handle.

  She was jumpy by the second hour and far too slow to react to quick attacks by the end of the third, so here they were, sitting a few dozen metres behind in an open-air cafe and drinking hot chocolate while the sounds of battle echoed all around them.

  “Feeling better?” Carmilla asked, slowly sipping on her own mug with a blissful smile on her face. White chocolate with a bit of orange and cinnamon. Gotta remember that.

  “Yes?” Mia said, twitching as an explosion rumbled through the earth below her feet. She’d been sitting there, sipping on drinks and nibbling on some pastry for the last half an hour, so she really was getting better. “I could use a bath and a nap, but I’ll be fine in a bit … sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” the vampire said quickly, reaching over to awkwardly pat Mia’s hand over the table. “Even the soldiers are getting rotated in and out of the fighting. No one can expect you to be hardier than career soldiers.”

  “You didn’t look even a bit tired or fatigued,” Mia grumbled, looking down into her own mug of swishing brown deliciousness. She was whining, she knew, but …

  “I am a vampire Mia,” Carmilla nearly rolled her eyes out of their sockets before she switched over to a softer tone. “I am less a living being and more a machine of flesh and bone fuelled by lifeforce. I practically don’t have nerves to strain.”

  “A machine?” Mia looked up, looking dubiously at the girl. “You have a bit too much emotion to be a machine, no?”

  “A turn of phrase.” Carmilla rolled her shoulders. “But it's true that my body almost runs itself just off of instincts if I don’t pay attention. Also, I can just burn a little lifeforce away to banish any muscle or nerve fatigue.”

  “Now you’re just bragging,” Mia smirked. “Endless stamina. Hmmm. The things I could do if I had that.”

  No more need for sleep, or rest. I could read all the books, train at night, get my Base stats up much quicker. Maybe I should take that Fatigue Resistance Skill once I get one of my current secondary skills incorporated into my Class Skill …

  Looking back up at her maybe-girlfriend, Mia saw a slight blush on her face as she stared at Mia. Blinking in confusion, Mia tilted her head. “What?”

  “What?” Carmilla said, twitching a little under Mia’s inquisitive stare.

  Then Mia played her words over in her head again. Once, then twice and blushed a little at the unintentional insinuations in it. Looking up though, seeing the vampire practically squirming and blushing slightly made her more thrilled than the most adrenaline-inducing rollercoaster ride.

  “I was thinking about getting to spend each night studying magic and training,” Mia said, a smirk playing on her lips. “I wonder what you were thinking about?”

  “Nothing?” Carmilla asked, uncertainly scratching at her cheek before realising that she could escape Mia’s mirthful look by hiding behind her mug of hot chocolate.

  So cute. Mia thought, smiling. It was just so … gratifying to see the gorgeous vampire being embarrassed about the idea of sleeping with her. It caressed that Fae pride and her own pre-existing wounds of insecurity just right. Plus, it was adorable.

  Her smirk died off as she caught a deep, resounding roar from the distance. Then a crash, heavy footsteps accompanied by hundreds upon hundreds of smaller feet stomping.

  Mia stood, her face grim as she glanced over at Carmilla. “I think our main guests have arrived.”

  Just as she said so, a massive clump of repulsive wrongness stepped withing range of her Spirit Sense. More powerful than before, the Troll ran towards the wall with slow, lumbering steps that send echoes through the earth. Shit. That thing is at least Level 14, if not 15.

  “This might be really bad,” Mia said, setting off at a dead sprint towards the distant form of Major Waters who commanded this quarter of the walls. “That thing will need a whole lot of firepower to take down. Could you fetch Avery and the others? I’ll notify the Major that we are up to our chins in shit.”

  “I’m on it,” Carmilla said, but hesitated for a moment. “What got you so worked up, didn’t you say you almost killed the thing the last time?”

  “It was at most level 12 back then,” Mia shouted over her shoulder. “It’s at 14 now, maybe more. Feels more dangerous.”

  “Okay,” Carmilla said, Mia’s ears catching her words even with the distance increasing between them. “Meet up back here after?”

  “Sure!” Mia shouted, her heart beating a thundering rhythm in her chest. This was it, this was going to be what it all depended on. Either they killed that Troll here, or the district would fall and they’d be forced to run with their tails between their legs, leaving the city to its inevitable fate.

  It was going to be dangerous, but it was likely the last chance they had at saving Graz from becoming a den of monsters where humans — and the other, awakened species — were nothing more than game to be hunted.

  That knowledge sent a surge of purpose through Mia, making her straighten up and set her face into a resolute glare. She would be ready to run the moment the situation turned untenable — she didn’t want to die, and wasn’t willing to change that for strangers, even if there were thousands of them —, but she’ll be damned if she didn’t give her all before that point.

  That was the least she could do with this power provided to her, what she felt she owed to other doubtlessly terrified people sheltering in the district behind her and the least her Fae pride demanded of her.

  If she had the power to purge a monster from existence, it was her duty to see it step through the gates of oblivion.