Chapter Twenty-One: Save Me

Because the types of powerful beings from other worlds with whom pacts were made varied, the familiars summoned by warlocks were equally diverse. Each type of familiar was endowed with unique traits and abilities—some excelled at close combat, while others assisted their warlocks in wielding magic.

The half-orc warlock, Dingding Little Axe, had an Ice Witch as his familiar. This was a fairly common familiar, likely hailing from a plane eternally shrouded in snow and frost. The demoness’s entire body gleamed with a ghostly blue hue, her face marked by bluish streaks, her feet ending in cloven hooves, and a pair of stubby, fleshy wings sprouting from her back. Most of her alluringly contoured body was left exposed, save for a few strategic spots draped in thin crystalline shards, exuding a wickedly seductive beauty.

The moment the Ice Witch appeared, Nocturne in B-flat whistled playfully. “Hey, that’s not fair. We’re helping you with this quest, and you’ve been hiding this treasure all along?”

“…The more people… the more lag I get… If I can do with one less… all the better…” Dingding Little Axe replied at length, in his usual unhurried manner.

The Ice Witch was innately adept at ice magic and typically used “Icicle Strike” for long-range attacks. This advanced skill, evolved from the basic “Ice Arrow,” inflicted greater harm and left a hard frost coating on the wounded area, slowing the target’s movements. This, precisely, was why we summoned her.

Among us, only Dingding Little Axe’s familiar possessed ranged attack capabilities. Our plan was to have the Ice Witch use “Icicle Strike” to assault a target from afar, lure it and a handful of nearby skeleton warriors toward us, and then surround and annihilate them.

If it came to true battle, given the half-orc warlock’s sluggish reactions, there was at least a fifty percent chance he’d be hacked to bits within two rounds—or perhaps even before he realized what was happening. But with this strategy, he finally had a chance to engage the enemy. Overjoyed, he accepted the task and promptly summoned his familiar.

Dingding Little Axe was a slow and brooding soul; time seemed to hold a meaning for him altogether unlike our own. Bound by the unseen web of the world, he seemed like a leaf caught unexpectedly in the current of time—always trailing behind the flow, drifting at his own deliberate pace.

Such an idiosyncratic traveler through time and space had a familiar touched by a hint of that same philosophical outlook, evident in her spellcasting. Blue light, shimmering with frost, gathered in the Ice Witch’s hands. We could sense a host of chill, crystalline magical elements coalescing under her control. Suddenly, one of the skeletal warriors ahead glowed blue—clearly struck—his body sheathed in a tough, blue crystalline shell, movements instantly hampered. Then, a biting blue icicle shot from her hands, hurling toward the already injured skeleton. But most astonishingly, just as the icicle was about to strike, it vanished into thin air, leaving not a trace.

You might think me mad, but so it was. Dingding Little Axe’s Ice Witch struck the target before actually casting the spell—a temporal paradox of an attack that left me dumbfounded.

In my view, only one who had unraveled the secrets of time and possessed the power to alter its flow could wield magic to such a “post-cast, pre-strike” level of mastery—such beings were veritably godlike. What baffled me most was that Dingding Little Axe would expend such vast power to twist the course of time, yet begrudged enhancing the icicle’s destructive force.

Perhaps, to true sages, all arts of slaughter are but base and sordid details, paltry compared to meditations upon the world’s temporal essence…

I found myself filled with reluctant respect for the seemingly dull-witted half-orc warlock.

Yet my admiration was short-lived, soon replaced by exasperation:

“Idiot, you hit the wrong spot!”

Ahead, five or six skeletons were clustered together, with another group wandering off to the left. Our intent had been to attack the nearest skeleton, which would at most draw six enemies. With our current strength, dispatching these slow-moving undead was no great challenge.

But unexpectedly, Dingding Little Axe struck a different skeleton, one that happened to be pacing between the two groups.

Now we were in trouble!

With the attack, both clusters of skeleton warriors immediately became aware of our presence. Their bared jaws ground together in ghastly excitement, producing a chilling “clack, clack,” and they rushed at us, brandishing their crude, heavy weapons.

“Damn! Too many are coming!” Nocturne in B-flat cried out, drawing his dagger and shouting orders, “Fall back! Retreat to the footbridge. Warlocks, leave your familiars on auto-attack!”

Even Niu Million, usually so eager to outdo the elven druid, abandoned all pretense in front of the ladies, shrieking and bolting for dear life—I suspected he’d so thoroughly forgotten himself that he no longer cared about maintaining his composure before the girls.

In that chaos, I caught a glimpse of our half-orc warlock. He behaved most strangely, standing by the cavern wall, wildly butting his head against it beneath his unruly braids. I couldn’t tell if he was panicking or what; though his feet mimicked a running motion, he stayed rooted to the spot. Most ridiculous of all, he seemed oblivious to his predicament, continuing to push himself into the wall with desperate determination.

“Dingding Little Axe, what are you doing? Get over here!” Despite his role in our predicament, I didn’t want to see him torn to shreds by the oncoming skeletons. Just as I braced myself to drag him back, something strange happened again…

The half-orc warlock by the wall suddenly vanished, as if a mirage had flickered and then disappeared without a trace.

I’d seen space-walkers traverse time and space before; though they too vanished on the spot, it was more like a mist dissipating, gradually fading into the air. But this abrupt disappearance was a first for me.

“…The skeleton I hit… was the closest one… who could have guessed… my delay would be so long…” As I looked around, startled, Dingding Little Axe suddenly reappeared beside me, his face drawn and mournful. He seemed to have a peculiar fondness for his “moonwalk” (as Nocturne in B-flat called it), running in place without moving. After a few words, he’d freeze again, only to instantly reappear beside me when I glanced away, and so on.

It seemed this erratic, elusive fellow was in no need of my concern after all.

Dingding Little Axe’s familiar bought us precious time. As the skeleton warriors swarmed in and tore the voluptuous Ice Witch to pieces, we managed to retreat to the entrance of the footbridge. Before her death, the Ice Witch fired off two more icicles, reducing the targeted skeleton’s health by half.

“Warriors, block the entrance! Warlocks, fall back and keep summoning! Druid, get ready to heal! Niu Million, give all your potions to Fairy Descends to Earth!” Nocturne in B-flat continued to bark commands. We needed no prompting; we obeyed at once.

The wooden aerial corridor could fit only three abreast—meaning Niu Million and I needed only to face three skeletons at a time. With the terrain in our favor, the enemy could not use their numbers to surround us, and I felt much more at ease.

This was by no means an enjoyable battle.

The skeletons, though clumsy and slow, attacked with brutal simplicity, swinging hammers and picks with wild abandon. Had this been open ground, I’d have had no trouble handling two such monsters alone. But that was only hypothetical—our foes were legion, and the passage was narrow. While the confined space spared us from being attacked en masse, it also deprived us of room to dodge; we had to withstand their blows with flesh and bone, sidestepping only within the limited space to avoid mortal wounds.

Their accuracy was not high, but when their relentless strikes landed, the force was terrifying, inflicting grievous wounds.

And that wasn’t all. Besides their heavy weapons, we had to endure the stench of rotting flesh and bone—a suffocating miasma laced with some corrosive toxin that rapidly degraded our armor.

At such moments, thought was a luxury we could not afford. There was nothing but to stand firm, fighting with all the courage and fury we could muster, to vanquish these mindless monsters and slay their evil bodies a second time. There was no other choice.

That is precisely what I did.

I braced myself, muscles aching with tension. The idea of saving my energy for a crisis never crossed my mind—this was the crisis. I expended all my battle spirit with reckless abandon, unleashing the “Cleave” skill without regard for the cost. When my vigor was spent, I hacked on with brute strength, waiting for the warrior’s power to recover so I could wield it again.

Beside me, the minotaur warrior did the same. Despite his apparent terror and the absence of any “bravery” in his eyes, his great wooden club was already stained with the bone dust of our foes.

We traded blows with the skeletons, weapons flashing between us. Their hammers struck my shoulders and chest, the pain sometimes so intense I thought my arm had snapped, but there was no time for pain or fear—only the red haze of battle and the resolve to return more damage than I received. The life-draining icons hovered above our heads like vultures circling a corpse; when they ceased to appear over one side, it meant another strong body’s soul had departed.

Though we fought with a kind of desperate frenzy, causing our enemies much trouble—within moments, two skeletons were reduced to fragments, and a third reeled under Niu Million’s heavy blows—this was a losing battle for us. Whenever we felled one foe, another immediately took its place, attacking with the same brutish ferocity. Only the two of us stood at the front, with no retreat.

Had we relied solely on Niu Million’s stock of healing potions, we’d never have lasted this long—not for lack of supplies, but because our rate of drinking couldn’t keep pace with our dwindling health. The only reason we still stood was thanks to the elven girl, Fairy Descends to Earth, who ceaselessly cast her healing magic from behind.

I had received such divine healing before when fighting alongside the archer Sunshot. That magic, a direct infusion of life energy into the soul, worked swiftly, restoring hundreds of points at once. The elven druid’s healing, blessed by the goddess of nature, Natchenya, could not mend the soul directly but hastened the body’s growth, allowing wounds to close more quickly. Though not as immediate as a cleric’s sacred healing, it lasted longer, steadily restoring the life lost to heavy blows.

We were fortunate: among these terrifying undead, none were skilled at ranged combat; they could only attack us in melee. Had there been an archer or spellcaster bolstering the three before us, we’d have been routed in no time.

Even so, we often skirted disaster. More than once, my health dropped to a perilous five percent, and it was only thanks to the human “Endurance” trait that I survived long enough for the potion to take effect.

“My gut tells me, if this keeps up, we’re all doomed!” Niu Million shouted in terror, smashing another skeleton to pieces.

“I’m sick of your ‘gut feelings’—every time you mention them, disaster strikes!” I snapped, angrily gulping down another viscous potion. “…Only girls believe in that nonsense!”

“We are girls, not ‘nonsense’!” The druid girl stamped her foot in mock fury behind me, though her hands never stopped weaving another green wave of healing to Niu Million.

Just as we reached our limit, a stirring, rousing song burst forth from Nocturne in B-flat, piercing our ears:

“…One and a touch, two and a touch, touch the edge of little sister’s hair…”

The song startled Fairy Descends to Earth so much she nearly cast a healing spell on the skeleton in front of me.

Soon, we realized the song’s effect. Within the gnome bard’s battle anthem, our muscles felt tougher, as if a thin membrane enveloped us, shielding our bodies. When the skeletons’ weapons struck, the pain was much dulled; my skin felt as resilient as stone, offering protection akin to armor.

“If you had your Iron Wall anthem, why didn’t you use it sooner? We wouldn’t have been in such danger!” Niu Million yelled, feeling cheated.

“I was… heh… editing the source file for the anthem—had to tab out and tweak it. The default system song is just too corny.” Nocturne in B-flat paused his singing to reply with a grin, then resumed with a lewd tone:

“…Three and a touch, four and a touch, touch the edge of little sister’s cheek…”

Hearing this, Fairy Descends to Earth blushed scarlet. She stomped her foot and scolded him, “Where did you even find… that kind of song?”

The gnome bard, obviously pleased, boasted, “It wasn’t easy! You can’t download it anywhere—I dug it up at an old record market, a true collector’s classic… five and a touch, six and a touch…”

“No more… you can’t sing another word…” The elven druid, mortified, lunged to cover the bard’s mouth.

“Don’t! Let him finish…” Niu Million shouted, desperate, “Without his battle anthem, we can’t hold them off any longer…”