Leaping to my feet, I mustered all my essence threads to defend the people. Too many corpse flies slipped in during the brief moment, and they weren't stopping, having found an entire open section in the barrier.

The first line of defence—the militia and the sentries circling the sacrarium—were essentially ready for the monsters to break in. And while they did not manage to dispatch most of their numbers, they did well to detain the first wave of demons. Only that it made it difficult when another slew of them joined, surpassing the number they could handle.

I flew over them to surge towards the couple of corpse flies that managed to break through their line, cerulean flame ablaze on my left palm, the complex shaping coming easier than it ever had.

Before the spell could even manifest fully, I shot it at the demon closest to me. The corpse fly attempted to angle away, avoiding the spell, but as soon as the harpoon took shape entirely, I put my effort into directing the spell. The fiery harpoon twisted in its path, plunging into its sinewy wings before surging towards its companion, which was already closing in on the scurrying folk.

With its wings ruptured, the corpse fly tumbled down. Despite its efforts to keep flapping its wings, it only made things more difficult for itself and the people on the ground. There were too many townfolk down there for it to fall anywhere empty, and it would inevitably chase after them.

The searing spell turned from its path to chase after the corpse fly, as the lightning sword manifested in my palm, surging with golden currents. Connecting only a few of my threads, I thrust the lightning-charged blade towards the other corpse fly, ready to prey upon the common folk.

I did not have high hopes of ending them. These two corpse flies were as large as they came, their unfurled wings spanning over three metres. Perhaps I would stand a chance if I faced the wounded one alone.

A solitary figure shot from my left to take on that exact task. I did not linger to see who it was. Pulling my blade, I surged downwards to the demon trampling on the ground with my fire spell assailing it. And when the lightning blade joined in the assault, the threat became outrageously dangerous for the wounded fly. With the element of surprise, I managed a sneak attack, plunging the blade into its chest, as people gave wide berth to our conflict.

A savage mania gripped the monster. It ignored everything to rush at me. With accelerated thoughts, I decided against avoiding it. The faster I finished it, the better it would be for us. The [Band of Protection] would defend me anyway.

A corpse fly of this calibre could supposedly contend with an augmenter of prestigious class. Of course, in isolation, the augmenter would have the upper hand even without any good equipment. The bestial instinct was barely capable against a shrewd human mind, and having good equipment only made it more difficult for the monster.

Here I bore four great pieces of gear—something hard to come by for anyone below fabled class. Hell, most fabled-class warriors did not even have an artefact like my bracelet. However, most significantly, I was a Shaper.

The demons might have a resistance to essence-based attacks, but that was highly dependent on how much of the force they could withstand.

So as the demon lunged at me, I did not evade. I did not slink away. All my essence threads flung out to ensnare the monster, as my sword plunged towards its hideous skull, where its demon core was located. The corpse fly did not cower, it could not cower, but that made it all the easier when the lightning blast penetrated its skull.

A slew of black ichor and repulsive brain matter flew, as the corpse fell. Ahead of me, no more than twenty paces away, another one lay resting, its head severed, and beside it stood Dalin Stonecutter, giving me an unreadable look. The sword in his hand was of a more common variant, his class was at the peak of Noble at best, but Dalin Stonecutter was a True Swordsman.

I guessed what Prestigious Class augmenter could accomplish was hardly any more impressive than a True Swordsman. I wish Eran could see that.

Another demon prowled at me from behind. Once again, I turned to fire shaping, but before even the spell could form, Uncle Dalin's figure shot through to engage the monster, his breakneck pace nothing like the easy-going spars we had.

"We need to close the blighted barrier," swore old Rowin, standing on one end of the militia, whilst his counterpart on the other side did not seem to be in any good situation.

As though the horde of corpse flies were not enough, even the daemon drew near to the sacrarium to make it difficult for us. With the bone sword resting over its shoulder, it sauntered in with swaggering poise. Yet before it could cross the broken arch, a couple of runic chains clung to its feet, yanking it backwards.

Mum stood not far from it, her palms clasped with the golden chains of her soulward, her face a mask of grim determination. More chains of runes sprang to restrain the ash lord while it steadily undid her work, still pushing towards the sacrarium.

Like a grim reaper on duty, Father surged forward, his sword falling into Water resonance, forming a great tidal wave surrounding him. The torrential wave rushed towards the restrained daemon, who raised its dark essence to swallow the resonance, but to its surprise, the sword wave twisted in its path to scour over the slew of corpse flies. The demons were cut in half if they were lucky, as many limbs and ruptured wings and black blood showered down along with the tidal wave.

That one sword easily ended a third of the corpse flies flying within the dome. Father swiftly followed with Whispering Gale, easily achieving similar results, although in lower numbers.

With the number of threatening corpse flies abating, we had better control over the situation, allowing Father to charge the ash lord. As Mum impeded its movement, Father attacked with tearing force, ignoring the elemental resonance to unmake the daemon's powers with his nullifying force.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Forcing it back proved to be not that difficult with both of my parents playing their part, though they had it harder than anyone else.

Magnus Julius Daenerys finally unsheathed his sword, though the only things he engaged were the corpse flies; his knightly "duty" seemed to be limited only to the few occasional corpse flies that found their way to him.

I did not rest easy either. Unless we blocked the barrier once again, the corpse flies would keep slipping in. Old Rowin was already on his way to rectify it, only that he was beset by dozens of corpse flies. There was Delric in the heavy bastion set to defend him, swatting away the flies with his bastard sword. Aleya was faring better than in her earlier demonstration. The trick had been to use flight as little as possible to dispatch the monsters. Even though they could not quite kill the larger corpse flies, they defended the guild master as he ignored his own life to form a barrier again.

I flew towards him, having the same purpose. And it was not only I who thought the same.

Headmaster Larius was on the far end, defending the defence line, whilst Uncle Dalin was helping with any demons that got away. There were others with them, though none faring as well as they. A few of them had already fallen, though we did not have the time to see if they were dead or alive.

As I fought the demons in the air, Lucien made his way to Rowin. He had a couple of protective amulets on him, which were the only thing that kept him alive, much like the [Band of Protection] for me. Even with all my mastery over the sword and shaping, I fell short tremendously against the overwhelming numbers of foes.

If it were only evading, I would have been fine with my artifact and fabricators. Killing them became nigh impossible when more than a couple of the larger ones came, and the dome was littered with them in no time. The corpse flies festered in all my surroundings, surging towards the common folk. There were already more casualties than I had time to count. At least, Magnus was finally showing some of his skills.

"Lad, Larry," shouted Rowin. "We need to close it. There's no end to them."

I could see that too, though my heart tore away seeing corpse flies scourging the common folk irrespective of gender or age. Tearing my eyes from them, I drifted down to land beside Rowin. He was already defending against the overwhelming numbers of corpse flies slipping in. The corpse flies were still breaking through the defence to attack him.

I swiftly undid the ward over my form to expand it towards the weakness in his barrier. With the task only requiring my Will to remain firm, my hand was busy with swordmanship, defending myself and Rowin. Without the protection, I was not as bold as before, only keeping their numbers from drawing closer to us.

"Larry!" cried the guildmaster again. "Larius!"

The wrinkled face of the old man was pale as a sheet; even his skin seemed shrivelled away from the exhaustion. Fractal Sight revealed his essence reservoir was almost empty, and even though he drank another recovery potion, nobody could tell for how long his Will would remain. But before that could even happen, his protectors failed, as a smaller corpse fly slipped through our defence to plunge into the elder.

He fell down, the corpse fly clinging to his body, drilling its jagged claws and proboscis to devour his life force.

I was about to come to his rescue, but the man snarled at me, eyes bloodshot, "Defend!"

A surging force erupted to send the demon flying, as once again he sprang all his threads to defend the barrier. I did not slink away, but using my own essence was so very limited. It would not even be a quarter of an hour before my recovery rate would not be able to supply essence. The others were in no good condition, either.

Recovery potions might give us a few minutes, but that would not be enough for the conflict to end. The only thing that could solve that was... my gaze drifted to the broken column.

I poured out as many essence threads as I could exert to contact the essence vat within the column. The previous probing proved it was useful, so I did not linger on experimenting and sucked in a large chunk of essence.

A searing force surged through my channels. Unlike any other time, it was violent beyond reason. While the sheer amount of it was a problem on its own, the bigger problem was that it was not my essence. Mingling it further with my own would only make it difficult.

Being fastidious, I immediately channelled that violent force into my bracelet.

"What are you doing?" Lucien asked, watching the golden radiance drifting into my bracelet.

"Umm," I answered in a groan. Ignoring the difficulty of controlling the rebellious energy, it was delicately intricate to push the essence through the essence threads within the artefact. After all, 256 were a lot more than I could handle.

"Arilyn?" Uncle Dalin cried, jumping at a corpse fly about to have its way with me.

I drew in a cold breath. "Sorry. Trying to see if I can use the essence reservoir of the column."

Uncle Dalin did not know what I was talking about. But there was Lucien, busy channelling essence through his wind to cast wind blades at the monster.

"Don't be rash," barked the auxiliary. "You don't know how complicated that thing is."

Actually, I did know, though that did not make it any less rash. I was feeling my way through the searing pain in my channels. Instead of telling him all that, I began to move to a more hands-off approach. After all, the artifact was more of an external object. Rather than investing my own essence threads into the violent reservoir, I directly bundled up one end of all the threads within the artefact and connected it to the column whilst Lucien and the others defended me.

"Arilyn," this time it was Delric. "This is not a time for experimentation."

"It's working," I said, mustering all my will to make sure the connection was secure. To my surprise, once the essence threads connected to the vat, they were attracted to it by a severe force. I did not split hairs over that problem, and cast the protective weave as wide as possible. "It's working!"

The radiance that glowed in the forcefield was far deeper, and so was its defensive capability, rippling with a superimposed oscillation. The only problem was that it could barely envelop the entire open section, even with Old Rowin doing more than half of the job.

Despite still being an external item, the band's range was directly proportional to my zone of influence, which tottered with barely two points in it.

"How is this happening?" Lucien said. "Never mind, I—"

I pointed the blade towards the monster he was tackling, as a ruinous charge of lightning blasted into the chest of the corpse fly, leaving a large burnt hole.

I shot lightning a few more times, but only two of them hit a target, before my gaze was drawn to the artifact once again.

A terrible amount of essence was channelled through the sleek bracelet, so much so that even a trickle of it converted into heat and burned my skin. Promptly, I removed it from my palm. It was still connected to my threads; there was no complication in removing it.

It floated above the crumbled column, glowing in searing golden light, essence threads spread out of it like a great spider's web.

Unfortunately, that was not enough. The spider web was not reaching all the way to connect with the other section.

Larius was likely not faring well, since he could not even reply to Old Rowin's call. I deemed it was all on us then.

"Uncle Dalin," I shouted, tossing my lightning blade to him. "Defend me for a minute."

He caught the blade with his other hand and spared me a look. "What are you attempting?"

Something a little unhealthy, I muttered inwardly, hearing all the cries of people through the ruckus of demons.

Releasing a heavy breath I did not know I was holding, I brought out all three vials of essence tonic I had gotten from the institution.

There was a good chance of my gamble paying off, so I did not dawdle any further.

Uncorking the vials, I chugged down all three essence tonics.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.