The Call to War

Chapter 19

"DURDEN, COVER ANGELA AND LILIA!" Helen called out as she released an arrow.

The arrow went through the neck of an Alacryan augmenter as soon as Lilia's spell shattered the mana barrier protecting him. A few feet away Jasmine was running through the Alacryan ranks, taking down their conjurors, as several augmenters tried to stop her.

The Twin Horns, along with roughly fifty soldiers were escorting another convoy of supplies to The Wall, when they were ambushed. Being the Captain, Helen responded quickly and ordered everyone into position. The previous Captain gave Helen a thorough debrief, so she was prepared for an attack here, and was able to come up with a proper defensive plan before they even left the city. Most of the soldiers weren't mages, leaving only the Twin Horns and another team of five adventurers having the only mages. The other mages were near the back, as the Twin Horns covered the front, both using the same attack strategy.

They both possessed two conjurors specializing in ranged attacks, one specializing in area of effect spells, and three augmenters. The only differences between them was that Helen was a ranged augmenter, while the other team all three were close range. However Jasmine being as deadly as she was, along with being in the solid silver stage, was more effective than all three of their augmenters combined.

Alice was moving with the cover of two tanks, as she worked to heal the severally wounded near the front. Despite not being mages, the shields the tanks were carrying were specially crafted artifacts that were especially effective at withstanding any spell from mages in the light orange stage, with little effect to the user. The down side though was that when being used by non mages, it would have to be recharged with mana after every battle, usually with a C rank beast core, or a mage that was in the orange stage.

As the battle raged, a small group of augmenters rushed the convoy, conjurors and archers quickly focused on these augmenters. Hitting them with everything they had as the Dicathen augmenters were tied up with the other Alacryan soldiers.

"Angela, keep supporting Jasmine and Rey, I'll cover these guys," Lilia announced as she redirected her focus.

Lilia began rapidly conjuring wind blades, chipping away at the mana barriers around the augmenters. One by one the mana barriers began to shatter, and Lilia created several tornadoes of wind blades that finished most of them off. Only one burst out of the tornadoes alive, and for the most part unscathed, as he was running straight for Lilia. Again she released a torrent of wind blades, but this time they were focused on him. He ducked and weaved to avoid her spells, with only a few hitting the barrier as he became completely focused on her. He was only a few feet away when his barrier finally broke, him raising a flaming broadsword to strike Lilia down.

This wasn't the first close call for Lilia, so as he brought his sword down, she jumped to the side to dodge it as she formed a blade of wind along the end of her staff. Then as he turned to follow through and continue his attack, Lilia lunged forward while swinging her staff. The augmenter was tall and burly, while Lilia was over a foot shorter and fairly petite, so while the opening that he left would have been too small for the average augmenter to take advantage of, Lilia was the perfect size to take full advantage of this. Lilia's staff went across his stomach, and the attached wind blade went several inches deeper. The blade cut through his leather armor as well as his flesh. The augmenter froze with wide eyes as he spat up some blood, and his organs began to pour out.

The sight of this was nothing foreign to Lilia, but this time something was different. Lilia fell to her knees as she began vomiting uncontrollably. During this time, an augmenter that survived one of her tornadoes reached her, his stone battle ax raised over his head. Just as he started to bring his ax down on her, a set of stone hands shot out of the ground hitting him in the stomach and face. He stumbled back from the surprise attack, and was then tackled by Rey, who began delivering a rapid assault of yellow flaming punches.