D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

— Kat —

As both groups of fighters made their way higher the guards started to get more organised and grabbed some better equipment. First, they all made sure to have their helmets on and billy clubs at the ready. Some even started to bring out their own personal weapons… which were usually just swords. Then, when they were just about to make their way out of the bottom floors the shields started to come into play.

Not the little bucklers and hand shields that had been shown off before but massive tower shields that covered the lines completely. The guards started to form up. One line of three shield bearers, which was just enough to fill the corridor and behind them were another two guards that could actually attack over the shields. Usually with spears.

For Kat this was no issue. She just passed Gareth off to Kress and slammed right into the shields. It didn’t matter that they had enchantments to lock themselves onto each other and the floors and walls. Kat was simply strong enough that it was everything else that gave way first. It did mean they needed to be a bit careful, as some of the missing chunks were quite large and the holes led to lower floors, but otherwise it was quite easy to deal with.

Lily and her group didn’t have quite so easy a time. The guars were much more careful about avoiding hits to the chin, either by standing far enough back to be out of range or hiding below the shield so that Nixilei would be exposing herself to a bit too much retribution should she lean over to attack them. Which meant, despite Nixilei’s pouting it was up to Lily to deal with the shield wall.

Lily tried to simply claw her way through but the shadowy nails scraped against the shields leaving only small marks in them. It was possibly with enough time and effort they could get through but it would be a lot of time and effort. Lily swapped to paper swarms soon after but they did even less damage so Lily quickly went to switch tactics again.

Only for one of the guards to throw out a net over the shield wall. Lily easily avoided it… and then hundreds of spikes exploded from the discarded net, attempting to impale everyone there. Green reacted swiftly, twisting herself around the two that were headed for her. Nixilei reacted faster if anything… but while her reaction speed was up to snuff her body was not quite so ready to follow through.

One spear ended up digging into Nixilei’s leg a good way and the other was caught by a hand moments away from her neck. Apparently they didn’t have that much force behind them? Or wait… Lily was distracted for a moment as she tried to figure out why it stopped considering the net seemed to generate sufficient metal to keep the spear growing until it hit something and the ceiling was a lot further away…

Lily’s distraction cost her as a second net was thrown over the shield wall. Lily quickly coated it in shadows to try and prevent more spikes but instead of the expected metal spears the whole thing exploded into lighting. Sadly for Lily her shadow was completely tangible in that moment and an excellent path of minimal resistance. The lighting arched straight into and through Lily cooking her slightly and leaving a notable burnt smell in the air.

Lily felt Kat’s anger explode on the other end of their link and… got a bit caught up in it herself. As the guard went for another net to capitalise on Lily being shocked Lily backhanded the thing into the ground. The guards let out a gasp and tried to stop it but a wave of ice exploded out over the floors. The guards clicked their boots together, locking themselves in place in response… and Lily was annoyed.

Half a dozen shadowy hands stretched out over the shields and just started to whale on them as best she could. Each individual hit didn’t do much damage but the large number of hands meant there was never a chance to really do much about it as Lily’s attacks struck repeatedly against their helmets. It was… surprisingly draining trying to bash her way through the enchantments but Lily wasn’t going to give up.

Neither was Nixilei. With Lily ‘distracting’ them it was easy for her to make a small jump over the shields and with none of the guards able to properly defend themselves Nixilei went about pulling their helmets off. This wasn’t an entirely quick process, she couldn’t just cut through the straps with her brace knuckles after all, but soon each of the guards in this section were taken out.

Lily and Green hopped over as well, though Green stopped to try and free one of them to be used… but the shield remained locked in place. Green poked it a bit with her mana as Nixilei and Lily scoped out ahead a bit. The next corridor was filled with more guards. Lines and lines of guards. It was five to a set but unlike before there were three sets of guards and they were close enough together that their little trick might not work out.

Green gave up on the shields. As nice as they would’ve been now wasn’t the time. Instead she settled for grabbing both of the spears that had been ‘discarded’. She was tempted to strip someone down and take their armour but Green wasn’t sure if those enchantments also had locks of some kind on them and quickly decided it wasn’t worth the time investment. Especially when they weren’t quite the right fit for her body anyway.

On the other side of things, a few extra guards weren’t going to stop Kat. She simply shoulder charged the first line, smashing apart the shields and when the guards tried to stab her in retaliation… well Kat just grinned as the spears broke upon her skin. She was expecting to be cut at least a little bit but apparently not. Kat slammed the two spear wielding guards against the wall and then charged again. They were ready for her and unleashed a set of three nets.

The first tried to shock her. Kat didn’t even feel it. The next coated her in frost but the ice didn’t even slow her down. The final one was the metal spear net and that did dig into the walls a bit but it wasn’t effective. The guards swiftly abandoned their shields at that point, running back to the third line of defence as Kat trampled the shields blocking her path. Kat felt like laughing, she wasn’t even using anything close to her full strength and they were terrified. Served them right for trying to seriously injure her girlfriend.

The final line threw a bunch of nets out with the effects overlapping a bunch. Not usually in a good way either. The metal spokes grounded the lightning nets, and the ice was quickly burnt away by the lightning. There was a water net that froze over and a few others that got destroyed before Kat even made it to them. The only one with any real effect was the acid net that seemed to still be hissing and boiling… but the range was small and Kat just jumped over it and slammed feet first into the shields.

The metal buckled under her strike and send chips of metal flying. Some of which embedded themselves in the guards armour but nobody seemed to be in critical condition. Kat cleared the way through the rest of the stragglers and soon they were breaking out into the clean air… but Kat had something else to do before they left.

Which lead us back to Lily and co. As they were still trying to work out what to do Kat just broke down the wall and started to toss them all about. The guards hadn’t been ready for an attack from behind and fell apart rather quickly. Lily interfered with the ones closest and prevented them from throwing any nets over at Kat just in case they affected her girlfriend… ok even though she already knew through the link that they didn’t do much against her girlfriend. It just felt nice to help out even if they didn’t.

Soon Kat had completely cleared the hallway and the group made their way back outside… only to be confronted with a much, much stronger shield then had been in place during the day. This one had so much power running through it the entire thing was visible. Plus, they’d even bothered to close things off at the top making sure that the attackers were well and truly boxed in. Still… “Nixilei, do you think I can just break this down? Like how strong is it really?” asked Kat.

“You definitely can Kat,” said Nixilei. “The only issue is… if they’re smart about it they’re sending the force somewhere as well. The worry is that they’ve set the enchantment to essentially blow us all up afterwards. Technically illegal and very expensive… but that doesn’t mean much at this stage,”