"They're here."
Those horrible words tore through the silence and the calm atmostphere. The scarlet wall was now reduced to sparse bonfires, an environment far more forgiving.
However, these remnants could still cook an organism alive, and sucked up so much oxygen the squad could only run for half an hour in there without passing out.
Thankfully, the cave they were in was pretty huge, so the air in the entrance was still comfortably breathable. In here, they could wait until the fire completely passed.
But until then, they were trapped.
And Baoba had exactly zero doubts about wether or not the abominable tide survived this foretaste of hell.
He was pretty sure the damn things came from there anyway.
'But I've been wrong about a lot of things, why not this ?'
Unfortunately, he was not.
They were here.
A few of them, at least.
Even the cursed and their mysterious ways couldn't just ignore the flames. The first of them were obviously going to be on death's doorstep by the time they reached their targets. But as time went on, the fire's intensity would decrease, and the flow of beasts would increase, until the elven cohort eventually died.
At this point, only a miracle could save them.
And Baoba knew better than to believe in them.
He got up, gravely, summoning his bone sword in his right hand and habitually swinging it a couple times.
"I'll take the first round, we'll switch when I'm tired."
He went and posted himself right at the entrance.
After a while, he noticed the first monster.
Out in the distance, a charred, limping hound was charging at maximum speed towards him. That is to say, it was really slow. Its fur was almost completely burned off, one of its eyes was missing, and the remaining one was deathly still. Only three of its legs worked, the other one had apparently slowly cooked under the torturous heat.
Thirty seconds later, he reached the cave's entrance, and unsuccessfully tried to jump at the captain.
Baoba cut its throat in one, clean motion.
'One down, and..'
Looking up, he shook the blood off from his weapon, and stared into the distance.
'..basically the same number to go.'
Only when they killed a myriad would a dent appear in the opposing army's numbers.
This bleeding corpse was a promise : they would not get out of here alive.
'I guess we're doing this again.'
Baoba was still sore from the first time he had had to hold back an endless amount of beasts, just like Urtica and Pando probably were.
On the other hand, Pando had other problems right now, so she wouldn't be able to fight anyway.
'Maybe I should break my leg, too. At least we'd die quicker.'
He closed his eyes with a sigh. Standing motionlessly, only his breathing could be heard. He was surprisingly calm.
Until suddenly, he gritted his teeth, clenched his hand around his sword and kicked the hound's head with all his strength, sending it flying.
And then he kicked the body, too.
His face showed unparalleled anger. His previously calm breathing was now rough and coarse.
He turned to his baffeled team, with a fire in his brown eyes that could put the previous inferno to shame.
"You know what ? Fuck all that. So what if we have no chance to win ? So what if all the monsters in this whole forest fall right on our noses ? They are trying to kill us, and we are going to kill them instead. That's all there is to it, that's what we've been doing, and that's what we're going to do right now ! I won't allow these pathetic mindless wretches to bring me down, and you're not going to either !
"Did you not have hopes ? Did you not have dreams ? Did you not throw five long years away for this exact moment ? Do you not burn, do you not hate, are you not sour ? If you did, and you do, and you are, then how can you not fight with your whole soul ?
"I, for one, am livid right now. I refuse, I won't accept that some fucking animals get my skin. We are hunters, not prey !"
On that note, he sprinted towards the next limping hound and punted it with all his might, and then some. The poor thing's ribs all broke, as it folded in a horrifying way around his leg.
It flew straight into a fire without even getting the opportunity to make a sound, dead.
After this blow, Baoba's leg hurt a little, but he still wished he had kicked harder.
"I swear on everything that ever saw the light of day, I will outlive every single one of them ! They will die, here, now, by our hands !"
"HELL YEAH !" Venus stood up and rushed out, excited. "Let them come, and let them attack. We are not going down easy !"
Capcsium was already charging more projectiles with a scary grin on her face. "You know, I think this forest could use some more flames. Am I right ?"
Urtica also got up, laughing while taking his gloves off. "Hell no, we're not nearly far enough from town. But what are they gonna do ? Kill us ?"
He unsheathed his spotless silver sword, and it slowly started glowing a deathly purple.
"I'd love to see them try."
Sometime during the night, Baoba had treated Pando's leg with a brace. She stood up the best she could and picked up her bow.
"I wonder just how many of them I can get from back here before we run out. Maybe a tenth ? Regardless, I'll make them pay. This actually hurts quite a lot."
Knocking an arrow on her string, she actually smiled wide. "They should not have found trouble with the heir of Solaris."
The previous plan was promptly forgotten. No on would accept lying down, not now.
The four valid hunters were almost out out their cave, and Pando was behind, readying her bow.
Baoba turned back to see the already increasing number of charred beasts running at them.
'Bring it on, then. Let's see which one of us lives through this.'
A group of three monsters reached them. The miserable meat sacks soon lost the ability to do anything after that.
Then, a group of five suffered the same fate.
Then, eight. Then, eleven. Then, the groups started to come so often they melded into a continuous stream of punching bags.
The members of the cohort had spaced themselves about five meters apart from each other. This gave ample space for the assailants to go through the formation, however, the only thing the team was really defending was their own life. Since the goal of every monster was simply to kill elves, they had no interest in going around them.
Therefore, everyone could move unhindered in a large area and unleash their blessings without fear of stray attacks or encirclement.
It was just them against the cursed.
Around the middle, Baoba was culling lives at an unprecedented pace. He was almost hungry for some kills, going out of his way to actively attack instead of staying on the defensive. Projectiles flew out of nowhere, metallic walls grew and fell on a whim, several different swords danced in a violent whirlwind of bone, blood and shell.
Drenched in crimson, he smiled.
'I knew it, this colour really is the best.'
He specifically targeted an artery and kicked his victim to another coming hound. The red washed over it, and as it tried to shake the blood off, Baba summoned a pike and drove it through its back, piercing its heart.
Laughing maniacally, he let go of the pike, produced two metallic swords and severed both heads of two other hounds that had lunged at him in a heavy, wide arc. Not bothering to bring his weapons back around, he let go at the end of the arc and immediately took out a two handed bone sword to handle the next threat.
The battlefield slowly became littered with blood and corpses of his enemies, as well as a pile of his own weapons.
To his left, Capcsium was unleashing a remarkable amount of destruction, often throwing out small explosions as if it was normal. During the previous days, not only had they not encountered any real threat, but she also had to hold back in order to keep the forest intact.
Now, though... Well, let's just say she wasn't worried about that anymore. If she had ever actually been.
In this moment, she used flames like it was a natural thing to do, mines constantly exploded, the terrain was completely dominated by her. This mortal dance would have been stunning, if not for all the blood and limbs flying everywhere.
She also wielded a one handed sword, with her left hand. In direct combat, her strategy relies way more on her thermal bombs than her sword skills. So, she had learned to be at least passable with a sword in her left hand, so as to have the most precision with her throwing skills.
However, her shortsword was perhaps even deadlier. Ever since the first day, she had been carrying it around without relying on Baoba's ability to create weapons. This was because this one was special, it had been enchanted with sharpness, lightness and heat resistance back in Medio. Baoba could not replicate those externals additions to the object, so he could only let her take care of her own weapon.
As it flew around in her hand, its tip was constantly glowing intense red. Any beast that came close to her and met the blade's edge lit up from the inside, dying instantly.
Some exploded, too.
Regular skin was actually surprisingly heat resistant. Without this layer of armor against the might of the flames, the monsters were powerless.
And it also didn't help that Capcsium was in a murderous frenzy ever since the first hound fell.
Or rather, it did. This was great news for the hunters : Capcsium had ranked around the 40th place in the placing tournament, but if she used her blessing like this, she could only have been rivaled by Urtica. These two belonged to the category of fighters so deadly they could not show their worth in a friendly match. This was part of the reason Baoba didn't attach too much importance to his third place, it wasn't in real conditions.
Urtica, himself, at the other end of the formation, was murdering his enemies with a frankly scary amount of skill, efficacy and resolve. Even though every shallow wound he inflicted was absolutely lethal, the true reason he was doing so well was purely due to his fighting technique. It felt like it was second nature, but also looked extremely well thought out.
His body moved in a slightly disturbing way, like it was going too fast for a normal elf. However, the purple light losing from his veins easily provided the answer : he was constantly doping himself. Adrenalin, endorphin, those were only a few of the chemical compounds that he used to control his body's level of commitment precisely, and the only naturally occuring ones.
There were so many more.
Thanks to those, and the insanely strict training he put himself through for five years, his body was showing remarkable strength, speed and precision. It was too bad even this impressive display still paled in comparison to what was going on to his left.
There, almost hidden behind the blood mist and motion blur, the large majority of the expedition's muscles, in the form of an imposing, smiling, ridiculously tall elf, was showing all its might. Venus's hunk of metal almost looked light, seeing the way she wielded it. Constantly illuminated by lime green light, her muscles were producing impossible strength, changing the direction of the swing on a dime, cleaving through five future lumps of fertilizer at once, and throwing the occasional earth-shattering punch. The sheer weight of the blade, combined with a pretty sharp edge, made it unstoppable.
Although it looked like she didn't need a strategy, every move was still obviously calculated to slice the most monsters possible at once. The mindless beasts, attracted by the overbearing smell of blood and the high blessing use, concentrated over there the most.
In between the sounds of flesh parting and bones crushing, the occasional giggle could be heard coming from the eye of the cyclone.
At the back, Pando could not see much, could not do much, and did not have much to do either. But she still somehow found a way to make herself indispensable.
Even though the mist, the lights and the flying corpses that obscured her vision, she did not need to see to know what was going on.
Her arrows always seemed to find the crucial spot, killing a scary foe in one hit and using the fall of its lifeless body to sap the incoming group's momentum. The fight only looked so easy because all beasts basically walked to their target, slowly. If such a number all ran at the squad all at once, it would be a different story altogether.
But with her support, and the exquisite performances displayed by each of the fighters...
'It's looking like we might actually surviv- oh no.'
He stopped that thought so abruptly he almost stopped moving for a second.
If feeling stupid was to be a holiday from now on, Baoba would do all he could to make sure it was on this date. It just happened too often to be a coincidence.
'Now why the hell did I go and think that one out loud ?'
One one hand, Baoba was not a superstitious guy.
In the other hand, he definitely did not have much luck to push right now.