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I recognized my mistake as soon as my comrades raised the shield above us. The initial direction of the blast might have been upward, requiring us to prepare for a hail of rock and debris, but the subsequent energy flood, once the stream reached full eruption, would be omnidirectional.
“[Shield of Oranos!]” I shouted as I flew forward, pointing the [Qi Blade] toward the town while pouring extra [Aether] into the blade so that Durandal could expand as wide as possible.
I almost overdid it. As the pressure wave rolled toward me, I felt the effigy waver, nearly losing composition. It barely held on as the blast arrived.
Durandal’s shield could stand up to it, because it braced against the mass of the planet below me. No, I don’t understand the physics of how that could possibly work, when I and the shield were both in motion, but it worked. The magic crazy quilt umbrella above the train had small gaps where the screens of the various magic wielders failed to overlap, but mostly they held strong against the rain of debris and magical beasts blown skyward, while Durandal’s defense sheltered the train from the hurricane-strength, debris-filled wind
Thanks to that, we didn’t have to cover or close our eyes, so we could see the silhouette of the nightmarishly large beast descending on the former location of Oseri Town.
A number of smaller figures followed it, clearly flying as a purposeful escort. Why did a giant dragon require an escort?
If the nightmare were an ordinary flying object, such as a jumbo jet of that size, it would certainly have been lifted up and away in the shockwave, but this was the dragon equivalent of an eight hundred pound gorilla. He flew anywhere he wanted, even against an updraft on the scale of a tactical nuclear warhead. His wings remained at full span as he settled into the upward blast, landing on the erupting ground, then opened his maw skyward to let out a basso profondo roar.
Most of the subterranean beasts dove underground once they put the town far enough behind them. A few continued running parallel to the train for a dozen paces or so before following suit.
At that moment, I faced two priorities very much in conflict with each other. Below me, a train full of civilians, most of them defenseless, slowly gathered speed under our protection, but before me stood a supreme threat to my entire duchy.
Yeah, that should take priority, but letting the beast’s first casualties be a trainload of civilians would be the worst possible way to publicize its arrival. I elected to stick with the train and began falling back with it, at least until I had an idea about the beast’s next move.
<Obviously, his next move will be to pursue us, once he confirms that we are his only opponents here,> Fan Li declared.
<How is that obvious?> I demanded.
<Consider who Astaroth set the booby trap for,> she replied.
Rather than make me figure it out, she just pushed the thought my way. Only an extremely powerful opponent, a near transcendental being such as Morrígan or Mother would even be able to disturb the Demon God’s formation. I still couldn’t fathom how Astaroth kept a massive dragon on standby as part of a trap to be sprung who knows how much later, but Astaroth’s plan, in the event a powerful foe ruined his plan, was to take them out in order to cut his losses. After Ascendant Immortal Erebos interfered with the result without touching the formation itself, the booby-trap still sat, armed and ready.
So ‘obviously’, the dragon’s next move would be…
I reached out hastily to find Morrígan’s proxy and found nothing. No Fairy Queen strength aura anywhere in my vicinity. The blast had destroyed it. Would her ‘death’ be sufficient to convince the beast that he no longer had an opponent to hunt down?
No. A proxy leaves no corpse to confirm, so the dragon found nothing to appease him in the first place. Furthermore, his senses showed him strong auras rapidly fleeing. Serera, Kottos, maybe even myself were all flying backwards to face him while trailing the train. With a colossal downstroke, the beast launched himself into the air toward us.
But he didn’t charge. He only followed at the train’s pace, while his human-size companions, who survived the tail end of the mana gush by sheltering in his lee, now fanned out, flying forward to pass him on both sides.
As they emerged from the dust cloud, I could finally see them clearly. Gaunt, brownish-gray winged humanoid nightmares with eyes like baleful saucers, reminiscent of the vampire in the old silent Nosferatu movie. They had demon-style bat wings and six inch talons, and spread their maws wide open to show a mix of lamprey teeth and wolf-like talons.
“Dracs,” Lady Serera spat out with tangible disgust.
“Whats?” I asked. She had just named something considered legendary and fictional. Yes, even in this world we have legendary and fictional things.
She broadcast her answer to not only me but the rest of the vanguard facing them. <Dracs haven’t appeared for three thousand years. You must take these very seriously. They drain blood like vampires, but they do it fast enough to kill in seconds. Their flesh is hard as armor and can parry a strong blade. Stab or go for magic attacks.>
So we were facing actual living, breathing dracs. Well, I guess I’m also considered legendary and fictional in some parts of this world.
A nervous Amana replied, <Maybe we should put more distance between ourselves and the train? We need to keep that dragon far from the civilians.>
Serera’s reply was more-or-less, if we separate from the train, the dracs might swarm to separate us further, but I barely caught the gist of it because of a distraction that appeared next to me at the same moment.
“How many of them are there?” a familiar voice asked from my right. My eyes grew as I glanced that direction to see a grim-faced Sirth facing the beast midair with both blades drawn, just far enough away to stay clear of my wings. She, too, was traveling backward to keep pace with the train, using a Wind Folk technique that was like skating through the air. The dragon and its minions were moving at matching speeds with us as well, not coming any closer, possibly cautious of the weight of strength they faced.
“They keep shuffling around, but I counted twenty six,” I replied. “You don’t have much in the way of ranged attacks, right? You should head down and help protect the train.”
She frowned. “Yer Grace, how do I remember yer fight with that first dragon better than you? Ranged attacks are useless against ’em! That’s why you closed on it with yer sword, right?!”
It was the original Tiana who did that, but yeah, I should have remembered. But other than refreshing my memory, why did she come here?
<Two Spiritual Refinement stage effigies will be better than one,> Fan Li explained. <We only own two effigies of that degree though. Daq who just arrived on the train is using one of our Qi Condensation types.>
I was learning this information for the first time but apparently the [Blood Effigy] technique doesn’t create new ones on the spot. It summons ones she created in advance and kept standing by for us. We normally pull one out of storage either from the main body’s Spiritual Vessel or through another effigy, but when one gets blown away, only the concept and pattern survive. The form requires time to reconstruct.
Thus, I shouldn’t recklessly throw my Spiritual Refinement effigy away. I too would have to fall back on an effigy at only Qi Condensation strength in order to return immediately. That’s only the second stage of cultivation. Fan Li had to work for quite a while, gathering enough spiritual energy, mana and pneuma in Sky Ocean to construct third stage effigies, because she refused to weaken our main body by tapping its reservoir.
<Can you use your attacks, Old Man?>
Durandal hesitated to answer, but Fan Li did. <He can, as the [Qi Blade] is a separate attack that allows him to draw from his own reserves, but as you just learned, you may destabilize the effigy if you add too much of your own mana to his.>
“No such thing as a free lunch, in other words,” I muttered to myself.
“Never was, Yer Grace,” Sirth answered cheerily, then added, “They’re ’bout to make a move.”
<Here they come!> warned Serera a half-second later, as the dracs suddenly advanced. But they remained split into one group of thirteen slanting to each side, circling us with clear intent to attack the train behind us while leaving us facing their boss. Perhaps they meant to split our power, expecting those they saw as less impressive to need our help, or perhaps they wanted to separate us from them to attack us from behind. I’m not adept at demonic beast mind reading.
<Back us up! Leave the train to our comrades below!> Sirth called out as she ran forward, with me scrambling to stay just barely behind her. Bitch used my voice to say it though?!
<Don’t put words in my mouth!> I yelled at her through our spiritual back channel as we spread to each side to pincer attack the beast. I received an equally private raucous laugh in return. No shame, that woman.
“You Grace!” the captain of the fairy warriors scolded, but a merry “O-hohohoho!” followed as I sensed Serera charging from behind, rushing forward and upward to attack the beast on the descent.
One of us would surely receive the dragon’s breath weapon, and I had no confidence in our Spiritual Refinement effigies surviving it. Sirth’s original plan had been for one of us to somehow manage it while the other got in a strike. Now, Serera would look like the bigger threat. The beast raised his head with his maw open and a dense mass of miasma and mana grew within.
With his target decided, Sirth and I both rushed in, both targeting the wings that had proven so vulnerable on the dragon in Tavital. Coating Durandal’s blade with Fire, I inverted and swung mightily with intent to slash the wing membrane. As our foe let loose on Serera, my sword struck a solid surface and only blazed a fiery scratch on the dragon’s hide.
<This one’s a bit tougher, I guess!> Sirth judged, having a similar result on her side. She had dug parallel scars with a [Wind Scythe]-like application on her own blades, also failing to do more than scratch the surface.
Serera continued her jolly laughter as her own [Wind Wall] shield, skillfully formed at a 30 degree angle to the dragon’s attack, deflected it into the sky. The miasma portion, probably a Demonic mana component, decayed into a spray while the Fire portion flew upward and away.
As I flipped upright with a half-somersault, to run at the beast again from behind, I also took in the tableau below. Most of it I already knew through my fairy senses, but it was quite a sight. The guardians of the train were successfully keeping the dracs occupied. If their feint toward the civilians was intended to become a surprise attack on us, it failed, turning into a full-on battle as they discovered that those guarding the train were far more powerful than they expected.
Arken the elve and his conjured bow firing [Magic Arrow] bolts, Lady Ilni the gorgon, Kottos the hecatoncheir, and Shindzha the disguised hellspawn were a highly improbable quartet hurling ranged magic attacks. Even more improbable was Daq R’mion joining them to make it a quintet, looking a bit Warhammer as he carried a massive sci-fi projector weapon on his big shoulder that was firing repeated blasts of plasma.
The others were split between casting shields to cover the mages or going into melee with the dracs who made it through their defenses. And mixed in with them, the soldiers who came with the train to assist the evacuation. It might have been their job, but they were out of their element. Still they did what they could.
The demonic beasts were already fewer in number, but they were tough critters, perhaps equal to Class A demons, and it was all the fighters could do to keep them off the mages and the train under their feet.
Then, while Sirth and I struck the beast’s wings a second time, one of the dracs made it past everyone, and it chose Shindzha as its first victim. A soldier wielding a pole arm bravely imposed himself between them, but his strength wasn’t sufficient to slow it down much. The drac batted his weapon aside and attached like a leech to his neck, draining blood and pneuma. Before it finished him off though, Shindzha jammed the claws of one hand into the creature’s back and clamped the claws of the other around his throat. It stiffened with wide eyes and died.
The half-stunned soldier probably didn’t see the claws through Kiki’s disguise, so he just blinked dumbly at the apparent human girl who had killed a drac with her bare hands as she tossed the corpse from the train. Fortunately, she then caught him as he fainted, so he didn’t also tumble from the train.
