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

Chapter 1998: Chapter 1998 ... But there was Five, or Maybe Six

--- Kat ---

Kat had her attention divided in two. Treant had enclosed the room she was fighting Harold in to avoid the damage spilling out, while in a second room the builders and enchanters cowered for a bit... before one of them, the foreman by the looks, started to drum up support to keep working. Sure there wasn’t as much they could do outside the main room but ’not as much’ wasn’t the same as nothing.

Kat was currently debating what the best course of action for her was. Lily had remained inside the ’locked’ room and could see everything while Kat could see a lot less. Not only did she not have as much water under her control in the room, but it needed to be further spread out to cover everything reducing the quality of what she could see further... alongside the fact that directly around the two of them it was hard to keep such tiny droplets of water in place.

Harold had summoned up a shield of space that kept him safe from spells, and spying from little water droplets while Treant simply had a number of plants nearby that continually swished around, ready to block any attacks that came her way or attack back if they saw an opening in Harold’s fairly impressive defences.

Even after just a few exchanges the fight was at a bit of a stalemate. Treant was clearly the better fighter, able to capitalise on minuscule openings, forcing Harold to waste mana on additional shields or energy on moving out of the way. At the same time... Harold was simply more lethal. He didn’t have a huge variety of spells or great control over space where he could twist things into pretzels. Thyme he was not.

Instead, he just had a solid defensive spell, and a deadly attack spell. The defence was a serious of overlapping bits of hardened space. Lily likened it a bit to rotating shields from a video game. The problem was that he couldn’t completely ’lock’ the space away. Gaps HAD to be left in the construct and Harold got around this by overlapping things, allowing for small gaps between the shields.

The other issue was that Harold couldn’t really shoot through them either. He had a choice of either launching the shield itself as a projectile, or widening one of the small gaps in his shield of choice to attack through. These were both openings that Treant was able to make use of. Even if she couldn’t properly see or feel the spatial distortions, not in shield form anyway... she could still read Harold’s body language.

He was awful at keeping his thoughts hidden. He made no move to hide his sigils, nor did he disguise his hand movements when he was manipulating things. He wielded his magic the same way an ogre might a club. It was big, heavy, and stupid. Admittedly, Lily did really want to steal the spells because they were almost certainly spells Thyme had made. Intricately carved and beautiful things that were deadly in use... Harold just had no idea how to make use of that finesse.

Sadly, Treant wasn’t doing the best either. Harold had worked out that he didn’t really need to target her. Not that targeting her directly worked, but her job was defending the warehouse, and the people in it. If he made a shot through the wall, she needed to reinforce the defences in that area to burn through the magic keeping the spatial cracks he was firing sharp. It also allowed her a chance to attack back so he had to be somewhat careful...

But it was more mana she needed to spend, defending everything not just herself. In addition to this, her attacks were mostly from lashing vines and static defences. They were already in place. While they could stretch, twist, and move a tiny bit, Treant was no Shadowmancer. To attack Harold with anything other than a basic wooden spike, she needed to have plants at the ready to strike through the defences, and their limited range of motion made them easy targets for the attack spell.

If Harold angled it with even the most basic of forethought he could slice through all of the potential attacks, clear out a small area around him, and leave Treant with nothing to fight back against him with. Now, it was costly on mana to do it properly, not to mention mentally taxing, but the RISK of it meant Treant couldn’t commit to properly surrounding him with vines ready to strike. Instead, she had to have a few surrounding him and be willing to accept their sacrifice at any time.

It was this stalemate that made Kat feel like she needed to act... but the risk of doing so was that nobody would be watching the builders. Perhaps one of them was waiting for her to stop watching. One extra traitor and it was possible they’d all be slaughtered. Likely not in truth, but in the scenario at least. It was NOT something Kat wanted to go through. Theoretically Lily could watch them... but she was stuck inside the room with the two idiots fighting.

The issue with Lily attacking was that she didn’t have proper defences for those knives made of space Harold liked to throw out. It was galling to admit... but one strike from them and she was probably out for good. Now, Lily wasn’t too afraid of getting hurt here. She trusted Thyme to watch over her... but not only would Kat lose her shit, it was also quite possible that she would be needed for something later as well.

Lily had noticed that, for all the space seal they were currently in SEEMED to completely close them off from everything else, that wasn’t actually the case. There was a few points that would certainly let someone in if they knew how to interact with it. Lily found it entirely plausible that, should Harold be defeated, he’d have reinforcements. They had no idea how strong those reinforcements would be, or if they even existed. It was possible those backdoors were actually just failures in the enchantment rather then intentional holes.

Kat obviously had no idea, and Lily found that they weren’t quite clean enough to be intentional but also not dangerous enough to be entirely an accident. Her best guess was that they were accidentally created, then hidden and reinforced. The question was... did Harold know and were the Diggers in position to make use of those holes? It was very, very hard to say.

*Do you have any sense of how much mana either of them are using? Sure this looks like a stalemate but maybe it’s not?*

[It’s not something I’ve really study at all... Treant is definitely using more magic but how much of that is the armour and how much of it is her... it’s really hard to say. Worse, everyone has different levels of mana. Different people of the same Rank can have wildly different mana capacities. Even if that’s hard to PROVE without measuring devices. In this case? I’d ASSUME that being compatible with the armour includes a heap of mana alongside a good regeneration rate to keep her in the fight as long as possible.]

[Harold, on the other hand, is using spells that cost so much less then what they ’should’ for the effect he’s getting out of them. They really are exceptionally well crafted... but he’s wasting them. Sort of. A lot of the attacks are going into the walls and shit, where Treant is making it look like she’d spending effort to reinforce them. And like, she is, but a lot of that is automatic. It can regrow somewhat on its own.]

[Still that doesn’t help as much as it should. Her attacks are horrifically wasteful from a mana standpoint. Losing one of those stabby vine things every time she attacks is costing her a lot of mana. Then again, referring to the earlier point, I don’t know enough about how the armour works to really say how much she’s actually losing from the attack. Perhaps it constantly drains the user and stores it for later. Maybe it drains at a constant rate but offsets a percentage somehow? Maybe it’s just Thyme bullshit.]

[We weren’t exactly given details on the armour and if we’d asked I doubt they’d tell us. So now we’re left wondering if Treant is actually a moment away from collapsing. I... I think she knows where here? At least she knows I’m here because she grew that wall right next to me as part of the defence, but it’s a little more ’around’ me then the rest of them. The shadows hide it, but I’ve got a decent launch point here. I would hope she’d give us some sort of signal if she thinks she can’t win.]

*I don’t like this. I just... I wish we could DO something. We can’t even hear what’s going on outside anymore. We’ve got no idea how well the others are holding up outside and the fight inside seems to be balanced on a knife’s edge. Is there... is there a way to make the builders safer while allowing us to fight?*

[Not one that I can think of I’m afraid...]