Chapter 12: Escalation
1420 Words
“By the way, can someone watch over him?” Magnum requested, revealing him who had been standing behind him this entire time.
“Oh my god!” Seeing a five year old is with them in this dangerous place, his cousin Athena rushes immediately to receive him. “What’s this child doing here?”
Magnum sighed deeply before replying, “He’s my brother but he’s supposed to be outside, waiting in our inn.” He told them as per the narrative they’d agreed upon. “You have no idea how horrified I was when I found him wandering around here.”
“Could he have been dragged here by the hex?” Ging presumed.
“Could be.”
“Are you sure he’s your brother?”
“He could be a weird creature here.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s him,” Magnum insisted.
“This is unforgivable!” Athena fumed, interrupting their exchanges. “To drag an innocent child into this!”
Wanda gave her an innocent and confused stare which further melted his cousin’s heart. She is widely known in the Grimlands for her soft spot for children. Her House, House Griffin, even manages Grimlands’ orphanages.
“Are you alright?” She asked him.
Wanda nodded and Athena carried him, bringing him into their newly erected tent.
“We’ll take care of those scary things outside,” she said comfortingly, settling him down. “You just stay here, alright?”
“Okay,” he nodded.
“Don’t worry, we’ll take you home.” Her parting words before returning with the others outside.
Finally freed from everyone’s sight, he immediately released his Reviver and contacted Magnum, “How close are they?”
“A wave will arrive in a couple of minutes.”
“Focus on protecting those kids,” he ordered. “I’ll take of the rest.”
“Okie-dokie, Boss!”
He then coats himself with Mana and utilizes his camouflage method to mask his presence. Afterwards, he roused a silver capsule…
[MIRAGE SILVER]
…to create a stand-in of himself.
Through this, he will vanguard the defence while maintaining the identity of a caught up bystander.
◆◆◆◆◆◆
*Swish!
A rather larger Unkgood that got close from behind while he was occupied shooting the ones above had swung its arm the size of a tree to him at lightning speed.
*Woosh!
However, it struck nothing but air and before it could react, he reappears above its head and put all his strength into a punch.
*BANG!
The Unkgood crashed into the ground, its entire head obliterated.
“Yikes!” But at the same time, the recoil wasted Wanda’s hand before his accelerated regeneration healed it. This five year old body is just a little too delicate.
It had been two days since it all started and as the culprit that caused this mess, he placed it upon himself to enter the heart of the battlefield and gun down the looming Unkgoods before they could reach the Seeds’ camp. Meanwhile, Magnum ensures those kids’ safety while obliterating those that managed to slip. At the same time, he is also guiding them how to battle the Unkgoods properly. A valuable experience for such young cultivators whose lives in the future will be dedicated into eradicating them.
‘Still, enduring them this long is getting taxing.’ Wanda inwardly complained as a new wave of Unkgoods loomed over the horizon.
Again, the root cause is him. If he, the target, was terminated during day one, fulfilling the hex’s purpose, everything would have stopped then and there. However, aside that he has no plan of offering his neck, the threat itself is too poor to end him and hence, the hex will persist until the third day when its juice is finally exhausted.
“How are things over there?” He contacted Magnum.
“Same as yesterday, a dozen to a couple would make its way here in hourly basis,” he replied. Then he asked, “How bad it actually is?”
“They’re more aggressive today,” he informed him. “I’m getting five hundred to a couple of thousands every half an hour.”
“Do you need me there?” He offered.
“Nah, I can handle this,” Wanda shook his head. “Just stay there and continue keeping an eye on them.”
“Okie-dokie. But really, call if the needed really arises.”
“I will.”
Wanda refused but in a similar point if this were one of their expeditions, now would have been the good time for Magnum to take over.
“Man, looks like I can’t be stingy today as well,” he complained as he jumps out a lone greyed capsule before loading a new one.
When dealing with multiple enemies in a form of a consistent wave, the most important is to not drag it into a protracted battle and to accomplish that, an intense firepower must be shot from the very beginning.
[BUSTER BLUE] [EXCEED CHARGE!]
The cylinder was frantically and repeatedly spun, releasing spheres of concentrated Mana which sent out shockwaves to all directions.
*BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The damage was great! The shot vanquished 80% of the approaching Unkgoods while the rest were gunned down manually. However, numerous rifts, amounting at least to a thousand, opened immediately after the wave was cleared, disrupting the originally identified resting time.
Wanda groaned. This escalation had taken a leap again, making it clear now that the hex is doing adjustment the longer the target survives.
“This is Vanja’s handiwork,” he concluded.
If the hex is of this quality, there are only three Witches in the Tree who can concoct it. Shem, Gwyn, and Vanja.
Shem had been his acquaintance for decades and she eventually received benefits from the Grimlands after Lugiel’s creation. On the other side, Gwyn is a Wanderer in which, as part of their creed, the Grimlands is off-limits. Hence, that only leaves Vanja who is a self-proclaimed bringer of discord. Even among the vilest of cultivators, she’s considered a loose cannon.
“Looks like I might make a deal with Gwyn after this.”
Gwyn has a serious beef against Vanja and she’d been hunting her, adamantly in fact, for over two decades now but to no avail. Fortunately for his fellow Wanderer, with this attempt to his life the said Witch had orchestrated, she had left some tracks especially with the people that employed her and he could use those to trace her back.
An intel Gwyn would surely want.
Despite their potential strength as an army, the creed of the Wanderers which encourages full dedication to their respective arts and cultivations limits their interactions to fellow Wanderers to either their master or disciple.
There are few exceptions though. One on which is when a Wanderer owes another a favour. Therefore, such rarity is considered as one of the most valuable assets a Wanderer can acquire.
Wanda then sighed, half of frustration and half of delight.
In a complete 180, this fiasco is no longer a bust. Once this is over, he can potentially earn the service not only of a fellow Wanderer but from one of the most skilled Witches in the Tree.
On the other hand, the reality that it is far from over and above all, it is about to escalate into a huge headache deserves every ounce of his displeasure.
*SWOONG!
Then right about that cue, the new wave of Unkgoods had fully descended from the rifts and the one leading them is a mid-level.
Every level between Unkgoods has the difference like between heaven and earth. Low-levels are mindless brutes that though are greater in strength are no different to an ordinary person or a wild beast. Mid-levels, on the other hand, are equivalent to an Expert. They can utilize the chaos, the Unkgoods’ version of Mana to display greater destructions.
With this development, it had truly escalated into a huge headache now, something which will require his effort to go full force.
Hence, exposing the Reviver’s chambers yet again to load new capsules, he did just that.
*Bang!
- Writer
