TBATE| The Demon of Elshire

Chapter 21 - Midnight stroll

The two of us flew quite quickly and I realized that I was able to subconsciously maintain my second phase for quite a while if my only purpose was flying. Despite the fact that in battle, I couldn't hold it for hours, it seemed that my training had unintentionally raised the duration of my subconscious activation.

It wasn't like I trained the duration outside of combat specifically...Icarus was sure that I would end up flying on my own eventually by way of reaching the white core stage.

After a while of flying, the two of us finally made it to a teleportation gate that could lead us to our desired location. 

With several shouts of protest from the soldiers around, we flew right through the teleportation gate and into the beast glades. What we found, however, were soldiers scrambling through, trying to get away from something.

Elijah and I stopped someone long enough to ask what happened, and the soldier was barely able to stammer out that they'd been attacked in a dungeon not too far away. She had mentioned that there was a mutant beast leading the horde and he instructed the two of us to escape while we still could.

I looked over at Elijah expectantly before the two of us took off in a dead sprint toward the dungeon. 

When we finally entered the dungeon, to the dismay of the shouting soldiers yelling at us to go back, I told Elijah to help everyone out as best he could as I ignited my second phase and flew deeper.

When I saw the line of mages fending off various mana beasts, including Princess Tessia, I figured that they were the last line of defense and dismissed my beast will so that my presence didn't scare any of them too badly. Icarus had told me that my pressure released in it would likely scare most lessers if they sensed my approach.

"Everyone get out of here!" I shouted, gaining the attention of the soldiers, "I'll hold them off!"

A few of them looked back but dismissively turned around to fight the first few beasts of the horde that had ambushed them.

With an exasperated sigh, I went back into my second phase and launched a wave of fire that decimated the majority of the beasts, completely incinerating some of the weaker ones almost instantly.

Again I shouted, "GET OUT!"

Now, the soldiers heeded my advice and began to retreat, throwing nervous glances at me as I hovered above them trying to withhold my pressure.

I landed in front of the familiar girl with gunmetal gray hair and began mowing down the fresh wave of mana beasts. They seemed to be only made up of weaker, smaller enemies, and I couldn't even locate the mutated beast just yet.

With the entirety of the first wave cleared, I turned back to the few stronger soldiers who had stayed behind, all of which were trying to convince Tessia to escape.

I locked eyes with my friend from Xyrus who wore an expression of shock and awe, and only then did I realize that I hadn't mentioned to her that I'd survived.

"Firae?" She finally said, almost in a daze.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm back from the dead. Where's Arthur?" I asked, my tone coming across as more impatient than I intended.

She visibly recoiled from my voice, as if that were the final confirmation about the situation she was in, "H-he left before we got ambushed," she sputtered out, still in shock from seeing her former friend alive.

"Got it, now get the hell out of here and make sure everyone leaves. Elijah is escorting people back, now go!"

She gave me a terse nod and left along with the other remaining soldiers; the veterans seemed hesitant to leave behind a single teenager to fight off the ambush single-handedly.