Mantle of the Gods

They didn’t wait for us to group up to attack.

The room looked like the Boss Room on the first floor of the Cathedral, which meant we had a stadium sized area to fight in.

Savyn cast multiple fireballs at Aelin, who was still next to me.

“WAVE!” I swept my hand in her direction and a wave of water crashed over the fireball, extinguishing them.

“Ether!” I looked across the room at our Tank, “I’ll handle her, take Francis off the board!”

“LOOK AT ME!” Ether directed her attention to their shooter. The white-haired man pointed his large crossbow at her and focused on firing just at her.

“You’ll handle…ME?!” Savyn pointed at me, “BOLT!”

Another wave would just soak up the electricity, which could be enough to put us out if someone was standing in the leftover water.

“MARK!” I pointed my finger. “EARTH SHOT!” The two marbles that shot out of my finger hit the bolt of electricity and dissipated it. “Was that the best you could do?”

“Rals! Take him! James! Take out that woman!” Savyn shrieked.

“LOOK AT ME!”

I felt a compulsion to look at the red-haired Tank. Everything else faded as I developed tunnel vision.

“Earth Shot! Fire Shot! Ice Shot!” I started firing every projectile I had in my spellbook at his black metal defenses. I needed to take care of him so that I could get back in the fight. I thought about closing the distance and switching to my sword, but there were probably thirty Adventurers out there watching, as well as a bunch of Dispatchers and Authority. There was no way that at least one of them wouldn’t pick up on me having too abnormal of stats. Which left me a couple of options.

“BIND!” I focused on his weapon hand, to make it harder for him to get out. “Back up!” I couldn’t tell where anyone was, which meant that I was going to have to get close to keep from hitting them with this. “WAVE! SPARK SHOTS!”

“SHIELD WALL!” His black shield multiplied and formed a half circle around him, but only six feet high.

“WAVES!” My legs felt weak and my vision blurred. Wave took a lot out of me and casting multiple at a time was even more draining.

I let four build up before I released the spell, I had a ten foot high wave though, which was more than high enough to crash over the top of his defensive wall.

“ELECTRIC SHOTS!!!” I held up both hands and didn’t bother pointing. I just needed to electrify the ground around him.

My vision cleared as his taunt fell. I looked around to see if anyone needed help.

Ether had pulled Francis’ attention away and moved to the left side of the room, keeping him out of the fight. Jovena had taken over harassing Savyn for me and was using her crossbow bolts to throw off the woman’s aim. I had a feeling that these were also laced with status effects. Justia had gotten behind us and was focusing on healing Jovena and me. Aelin was helping Oz keep James worn down, who was the focus of Gileon’s attention. From the look of things, the pair was about to overwhelm him. Just Oz alone looked like enough to beat him as he struggled to keep up with the black-haired woman’s attacks. Honestly, if it wasn’t for Gileon focusing all his healing on the other red-head, that fight would have already been over.

Which only left one person. The whole reason why I’d been feeling so weak was because Andes had been debuffing me. I thought about dealing with the other Noble from my hometown, but at the moment making sure the Tank couldn’t distract us anymore seemed like a better way to focus my energy.

As I closed the distance on Rals, I pointed at the blonde Noble debuffing me, “Fire Shot.” Just because I wasn’t going to take him out first, didn’t mean that I couldn’t couldn’t make him sweat.

I shifted my focus back towards Rals. The mana exhaustion was getting worse not better. With the Mana Recovery passive that I’d picked up, I should have been regenerating mana fast enough that the one fire bullet shouldn’t have made my head start hurting. It was something I’d have to ask Trent about after the fight.

Rals had managed to get up to a knee, but had dropped his shield to switch his sword to his other hand and was almost through cutting the vine on it. I refocused his chest. “Bind!” The vine on his arm disappeared as another pair grabbed his chest and pulled him face first into the puddle he was standing in.

“WAVE!” I kept both hands focused on him and the water from rising up. Instead I tried to hold it in place as much as I could. My vision began to blur as I saw the Tank melt through the floor. I released the spell, but it didn’t help. I felt the floor rushing up for me, but never felt myself hit it.