Chapter 29: Round 1: Fifteen Vs One

I walked into a carriage door alone.

Geez, how should I explain this. Well, let talk fight scene.

We saw it all the time—movies, anime, cartoons and whatever. Humanity had been associated with the adrenaline rush of some guy punching another guy hard enough that he emerged the uncontested victor. We loved violence.

But is it?

Violence and battle was like a match of football. It got old fast and basically made no sense when you think about it. Choreographing, special effect and expert can only carried you so far. The secret to fight scene was the philosophy and impact behind it. For the fight to be meaningful it had to have meaning.

Typical fictional novel crash and burned in this. Some movie treated it as spectacle and long running novel, most of them Chinese, overused the same tactic over and over to the point anyone with dignity would drop the damned thing.

Why am I talking about this? Because I was about to enter a fight.

Behind this door was at least fifteen fully arm mages and warriors possessing a threatening stat to mine holding at least a few hostages, maybe five at most. No need to mention that these guys won't move out of the way when asked nicely.

That was the set up. People need saving. Bomb must go bye-bye. The folk who started this mess need to take some visit to good old Morpheus.

Now question the goal was to disable the bomb they were guarding while securing the hostage. In this case I had to scout through the library of options I had.

'Inferno, Silver Stardust, Buster Blade, Desolator Blade and Banishing sword wouldn't work Milord' Central suggested. 'Those blade was too dangerous and one of the was only anti-magic.'

Restraining option then. Central, which was better Solitude or Black Spider.

'Solitude was not ideal and its side effect were concerning. Black Spider was the best option.'

Good.

I summoned the sword, locked the target using thier mana signature. In time like this speed and precision was the key. In this case we also need to concern with the hostage's state of mind to prevent mass panic.

I touched the door and my Sixth Sense blasted a warning.

Dammit! [Photon Shield]!

The blast of fire, ice and wind hit the shield hard enough to pushed me back an inch. But it took a lot more than that to break my mana and slowly I powered through the massive surprise attack. It appeared they knew some detection spell. Need to find a way to counter that next time.

My feet slid back from the force and I plunged Black Spider into the ground and activated it special ability.

'Love of Arachnid activated at 25% capacity. 15 target locked, set and released.'

Black webs sprung from the sword and tied up fifteen different people and slammed them into carriage wall painfully.

I sigh in relief, but I didn't took any chance. I summoned the Blade of Ar'maskur and marched into the room. As expected they didn't go down easily. A guys busted out of the binding in a burst of fire but I cut him down in the knee. Lux's experience ran into me. Countless of her training with sword I received from her made my movement natural. I also took the liberty of stomping out the fire that started spreading.

Two guys tried to cut there way out of the binding and thus I causally introduced their head to the wall. Then another warning arrived...my sixth sense detect a killing intent. So they had one of their own in the hostage.

I deflected the spell coming at my face with [Photon Shield], it was a blue ball of rippling energy that splashed against the carriage wall into countless tangling strand. Three terrorist tied up near the energy started crying in agony as rash grew on their skin. Nasty...need to invent a counter for that too.

My newest assailant reacted quick. She aimed for the hostage but a small [Photon Ring] sent her flying back. She was good enough to blocked the blow in time.

The hostages screamed.

"Help us!" One of them tried to grabbed my leg. Sorry I couldn't. Had there been one seeded terrorist there could easily be two. So Central, please perform critical baggage removal.

A black thread from Love of Arachnid shot from Black Spider and tied up the four hostage.

"Eh," one of the hostage, a woman by the way, looked puzzled at why she was tied up. "What are--"

"Toss." I cut the mid sentence and instruct central to thrown the hostage into the next carriages.

The web retract dragging them with the momentum that launched them through the wrecked door and too safety. Now that they were out of the vicinity, let tried area control. Wait a minute, that what the hell was that woman doing. Oh crap!

She launched a spell through the wall that burned away the spider thread and freed all the assailants. Good new was that, despite losing the element of surprise, I still managed to took down 6 out of 16.

Ten VS One it is, but first let created a little barrier.

I summoned the blade of Solitude and activated it special ability. They tried to stop me but I created four [Photon Shield] all around me.

'Ice Age activated at 25% power. Construction mode engage.'

A wall of Ice sealed away the gaping hole that was a remaining corpse of the entrance I came through along with the four hostage I rescued, namely 2 boys, a woman and a frail middle age man. In a rare moment I never imagined myself doing, I smiled at the kid as the wall of ice rose to shield him from any harm. Then I created the lance of ice to take out several overly opportunistic spell caster.

That moved was fast enough to knock down two spell-caster and froze another one guy solid. I capitalized that moment and blasted the downed casters with small [Photon RIng].

3 more down 7 to go. Two of them produce a sword, the woman get out a knife, another guy summoned a flaming spear and two more guys tried to hide behind the bulkiest one in the group. So 2 sword man, 1 knives, 1 spear-man, 2 mages and a bruiser--this will be interesting.

...

What the hell is this.

The woman with a knife asked herself. Who is this boy right in front of her? Why was he not afraid despite suffering a seven on one disadvantage.

The fight had begun when one of their mage detection spell went off. They proceed to do as planned and opened fire on the door before the ambush can even begun. This would turn any mage or warrior into a mush before they could do anything.

Yet, the boy predicted their surprise attack, erected defense powerful enough to block it all and restraint all of her friends in a move. If she had not infiltrated beforehand as hostage, then it wouldn't even be a fight. She had to revealed her self sooner than expected and launch a surprise attack. To her disbelieve, her perfectly silent surprise attack was detected before it even launch and the boy easily batted the spell toward her tied up comrade. Taking two of the mages and their engineer with him. She was force to aim for the hostage but the boy spell was ridiculously fast...too fast even.

So that how they ended up here. Nearly half of them were gone, and she was winded. One of their strongest fire user was downed at the start. A range expert and a spell caster go down the second round. Two mages and one engineered loss by the friendly fire. And the little monster's counter attack on all of them destroy anyone too slow to react, this meant all two healers and another range expert got creamed.

A sweat flowed across her brow. Half of them was taken out by this seemingly invincible boy. It was like he had everything under controlled. Like all the path to victory was in his grasp.

Surrounded by that 4 translucent circular shields of light, the boys snapped his finger and sent the shields sailing toward them. Four out of seven assailant dodged. Two of them launched a spell disruption code. And their commander wave his flaming spear and blasted the shield.

That was a disaster.

The spell disruption, designed to alter the code formula of the spell did nothing. How could this be? What type of spell is that? The swordsman and the strongman behind the disruption received the attack head first. Her commander's flame clashed against the shield,. The clash dissipated some of the power but the shield still knocked him off balance.

The boy capitalize with the speed that should not be possible for average spell caster with no buff on him. A claymore was drawn from the air and ,in blink of an eye, their final two mages went down with a slice in the leg, a bashed from the sword and a pommel strike. The mage had cleverly hidden behind the strongman and the sword man to prepare a spell that might pierce the little monster's shield but they never expected his speed which capitalize an opening the very instant the meat shield went down. The swordman barely recovered before the boy knock him out with the flat of his blade. The tank activated a skin hardening spell that make his skin tougher than steel. But the boy summoned a familiar ring of light and blasted him.

Crashed!!!!!

"Oops." The monster in the guise of a boy said looking at the massive missing chunk of the carriage where her co-worker used to be. "I know that he used a good defensive spell so I amp up the power a little. To think that it blew him along with the entire wall away."

The devil himself gave her a passionless smile.

"Don't worry about him. The force of my attack just sent him flying out of the fight. He is still alive but probably broken half his bone right now," The boy said looking disturbed. "Quite nasty...now I have to work out a way to bypass armor. Well, for my first spin in combat scenario this sure taught me a lot."

The sunlight shined through that hole a gave the shadow of the boy from hell an even more terrifying visage.

Upon seeing the symbol of dawn itself, they finally freak out.

"Attack!" she yelled. "Threw everything at him!"

All two remaining people, with the commander quickly recovered and charged at the devil. She was one of them, of course, but the injury stopped her from fighting competently. Her knife was knocked out of her hand and the kick in the face blacked her out for a second. What type of savage kick a woman in the face?

She didn't get up. She need to convince the kid that she was down and stab him from behind.

Her swordsman friend and the commander regrouped and came at the boy. Their lone challenger slid past the blade, knocked aside the flaming spear and blocked the followed up shaft strike. He instinctively dodged the sword slashing at his head and duck away. Using the swordsman as cover for the spear, he summoned that shield of light and shoved it at the swordsman.

The commander dodged as the shield carried the swordsman past him and into the wall hard enough to knock him out. He come at the boy again but that bastard conjured up a translucent string which tied up his leg. The chain was not that strong, given that it cracked the moment her commander got tripped, but that was enough for the boy to tip the fight.

Finally, she chose this moment to stop pretending to be sleeping and strike but the boy conjured up an extendable black rapier then sliced her arm. She couldn't moved. Some kind of paralytic poison forced her to watch as the commander managed to gain his foot in that split second only for that monster to bring that shield of light slamming down from above him, pinning him to the ground.

A bash in the head stopped him from struggling.

The monster turned his attention toward her, leaving behind bodies of her comrades and a hole in the carriage wall.

She wanted to scream but no voice came out.