This Quest is Bullshit - Chapter 174

Chapter 174 - The Battle of Pyrindel

Eve stood atop the city’s northern wall, staring across the empty fields and farmland at the wall of unnatural mist rolling in. It moved far faster than fog had any right to, which was to say a bit slower than a person’s normal walking pace. But it came.

The Man of the Mists didn’t show himself. He made no threats, no grand speeches, no declarations of their doom. His fog simply crept inexorably onward, death obscured in its opacity. Eve knew that even if the heartiest among them could survive within the mist, humanity could not. But they’d had time to prepare.

Their plan, at its core, hinged on a single person, the only person, far as anyone could tell, that had any sort of hope of stemming the white tide.

Alex leapt off the wall.

Her face of stone, her actions smooth and resolute, the Indomitable Defender stepped into the field alone. One, two, three long strides away from the relative safety of the city and into the open, Alex stared down the coming fog. Her jaw set, she unbuckled the shield from her back.

Lowering her stance to brace herself on the loose earth, she raised her shield and slammed it into the ground.

All onlookers felt the shockwave.

It had only been a few weeks, but it felt like an eternity ago since Alex had “trapped” Eve underneath the Burendian capital. Of course, the leylines had always been there as a way to escape, but even empowered by such an overwhelming source of Mana, Eve hadn’t been able to get past Alex. She’d beaten Mila in single combat, but hadn’t made it past Alex.

After all, Eve wasn’t the only one with a Unique ability.

Alex’s Impenetrable came with as little description as Eve’s Defy, but testing proved it simply enough. The skill stopped a single thing in its tracks, no questions asked, for as long as Alex could hold her position.

A hundred feet in front of the Defender, the mist struck a wall. Its creeping base and forward tendrils came to a halt as an invisible barrier stopped its progression. Moments later, the body of the fog caught up, forming a arched outline with a hundred-foot radius.

One hundred feet, that was their wiggle room.

Tense seconds passed as those up on the wall held their breath. Nothing happened. The mist didn’t stir, the earth didn’t quake, Alex’s position held.

“Where is he?” Preston whispered.

“He’s coming,” Eve replied. “It can’t be this easy.”

“It isn’t,” Mila growled to her right. “The mistlings are coming.”

They burst from the fog all at once.

A thousand vaguely humanoid forms charged into the open field, their mist-formed bodies clad in scattered pieces of rusty iron armor, their hands clasping a myriad of simple weapons. They moved nigh silently, incorporeal feet not slamming against the earth, mouthless faces screaming no battle cry. The only noise they made was the soft clatter of iron against iron whenever two or more bumped into each other.

A hundred feet separated the wall of fog from Alex, a hundred feet the defenders of Pyrindel could not allow these mistlings to cross.

Eve Charged.

A terrible chorus of hope and rage rang out behind her as a thousand voices unleashed their battle cries. The air around Pyrindel quaked with the clamor, beautiful and horrible at once. Messages flew past Eve’s vision.

You have heard the song Last Hope!
+100 Willpower
+50 Strength
+50 Dexterity
+50 Intelligence

You have heard the Berserker’s Chant!
+10% Strength!
+10% Willpower!

You have heard the Packmaster’s Call!
+15% Strength!
+15% Dexterity!
+15% Intelligence!

Eve swiped away the dozens of other buffs and battle cries from her notification list, a slight grin crossing her face as she noticed Preston’s at the end, somehow more powerful than the rest.

The men and women of Leshk, guards, soldiers, mercenaries, and adventurers, raced forth to meet the coming tide. They spilled through the gates, leapt down from the walls, burst from beneath the earth, and fell from the sky above.

Evelia Greene, Queen of Burendia, Aspect of Magic, The Defiant, led the charge.

She took out three with the first swing of her club.

You have defeated Level 42 Mistling: +0 exp!
You have defeated Level 41 Mistling: +0 exp!
You have defeated Level 43 Mistling: +0 exp!

Eve let out a sigh of simultaneous disappointment and relief. In the low forties, the mistlings were worth no exp for her, but wouldn’t be too powerful for the city’s defenders to stand against. Better still, her club had killed them, meaning even with bodies of mist the things were susceptible to physical force.

Her brief half-second to think came to an end as four more mistlings came forth to replace the three she’d slain. All around her, the forces of Pyrindel collided with those of the mist, and the chaos of battle began.

To her left, a Spearmaster lanced two mistlings in a single lunge. To her right, a Bladecaster took an iron flail to the side of the head, his body falling limp to soft grass. Another adventurer stepped over it to take his place.

Eve waded through the fray in a fury, taking out huge swaths of mistlings with every swing of her club and burst of annihilation Mana. She noticed, as each mistling died, that a thread of Mana seemed to leap from its corpse and return to the wall of fog from whence they’d come. With a bit of trial and effort, Eve could she could steal it for herself, keeping her Mana bar topped off throughout the melee.

Others weren’t so lucky.

The alchemists’ guild, the medic corps, the entire church of Ayla, and dozens of unaffiliated healers stood back atop the city walls, lobbing spells and tinctures into the human side of the battle as quick as they could, but even they couldn’t heal a blade through the throat, a spear to the heard, a knife in the eye.

Preston flew above it all on Reginald’s back, bringing direct healing and a few swipes of the drake’s claws to wherever they were most needed.

Mila cut through mistlings by the score, weaving hundreds of razor sharp obsidian shards through the air with impeccable precision. Thirty men and women who each looked suspiciously like Rel swept through the battle with one mind, working in flawless tandem to plunge identical mirror-blade knives into the necks of mistlings.

Rorick whirled through the fray with his dual axes, his exposed upper body littered with minor cuts and bruises that seemed to empower the Hewer of Bones more so than slow him down. Emily watched it all from up on the wall, her Inspiring Presence empowering the defenders of Pyrindel far more than any one fighter could.

All around Eve, familiar faces fought and died to hold the line, guards she’d seen a hundred times in passing, adventurers she’d shared a drink with at the guild hall, soldiers who’d watched her train for months under Rorick’s steady tutelage. A hundred names she knew and a thousand she didn’t all laid their lives on the line to defend what they held dear, and one by one were those lives snuffed out.

But the line held.

As Mana Burst came off cooldown again, Eve let out a particularly expensive and wide-angled blast to clear out the cluster of mistlings before her, opening a gap wide enough to buy her a bit of time. She took it to Jet into the air, channeling hundreds of Mana per second to suspend herself there as she looked over the battlefield.

Lumy, unable to harvest enemies that weren’t actually alive, played lookout. The moment Eve made herself available, the message came.

Sixty yards to your left, the phantasm sent. They’re gaining ground.

Eve didn’t question the instruction, launching herself immediately to the segment of the battlefield Lumy had mentioned. She landed hard, plugging the hole in their defenses with a few decisive swings of her club.

The battle raged.

Eve, Mila, Rel, Rorick, Reginald, and a thousand others cut through mistling after mistling, paying in blood for every foe they slayed, for every minute’s survival they purchased. Still the things came, pouring from the fog in an unceasing tide of enemies. The assault was unending.

The defenses were not.

Mages burned through their Mana. Archers emptied their quivers. Alchemists ran out their potion satchels. Healers downed the last of their Mana tinctures. Every mistling that fell came at a cost, in blood, in Mana, in supplies. One by one the defenders left the field, out of Mana, out of Stamina, mortally wounded, or dead. Still the mistlings came.

Eve filled the gaps where she could, Jetting back and forth across the battlefield in mounting desperation as the line faltered around her. Mila pulled out the big guns, burning thousands of Mana to tear open great chasms beneath the charging mistlings. Rel split themselves even further, multiplying into a small army in and of themself. Preston kept the defenders on their feet, channeling spell after spell from the vast sum of Mana stored in his Ar-gold scepter.

Together, the Uniques on the side of humanity stood stalwart, holding strong against the swarm of foes that would seek to slay Alex and allow the encroaching mist forward. For a time, it worked.

But no matter how many mistlings fell to Eve’s club, Rel’s clones, or Mila’s obsidian, more emerged from the fog.

“We can’t outlast him!” Mila’s gravelly voice scraped across the battlefield.

“Like hells we can’t!” Eve shouted back, drawing more Mana from the corpse of a mistling she’d slain.

“I’m running on fumes!” a Rel called as two more took down a mistling and a third took an axe to the temple.

“Lumy!” Eve yelled into the air. “Are they slowing down?”

A little, came the reply. But not as much as you are. Half your forces are already out of the fight.

Eve didn’t need to toss her gaze across the battlefield to know Lumy spoke the truth. She could feel it. More and more did she find herself the only barrier between the mistlings and Alex. More and more she found herself stepping on or over the corpses of her countrymen.

The forces of humanity had held valiantly, but they couldn’t hold much longer.

Eve gripped her club tighter. “We have to go on the offensive!”

“Are you crazy?” Rel shouted. “We’re barely holding on out here, and you wanna fight in the mist?”

“We won’t be holding on at all soon if we don’t do something!”

“Eve, no!” Preston called from above. “Whatever you’re planning, it’s not gonna work. You won’t even be able to find him in there, let alone kill him!”

Eve ignored him. “Lumy?”

Go, the phantasm sent. Your odds inside that fog aren’t good, but neither are your chances out here.

Eve paused to slam her club through another pack of mistlings before turning to shout at Mila. “How long can you hold without me?”

“Five minutes!” She Beneath the Earth growled back. “More if he withdraws some of his forces to deal with you.”

“Eve, this is a bad idea,” Preston tried once more to call her plan off.

“It is,” Eve admitted, a slight smile stretching across her face. “I kind of specialize in those.”

Before Lumy could urge her on, before Preston could argue her down, before Rel could shout disdain or Reginald make another silly comparison to dragons, Eve Charged forward.

She swung her club wildly ahead of her, sweeping mistlings from her path by the dozen as she bowled through them. On her own she couldn’t stop the ceaseless tide, but even outnumbering her a thousand to one, the mistlings couldn’t stop Eve either.

With a mighty leap, Eve Jetted from the ground, launching up and over the mistling army. As she flew, she spared one last thought for the men and women who had already fallen and those who still fought with all they had to stem the tide.

She didn’t have time to take a breath or shed a tear before she passed beyond Alex’s protection and the world went white.