Chapter 92 To the Rescue

Breaking the silence, the loud noises continued to ring out but what was concerning were the cries of agony that came from beyond the wooden bleachers that now filled the once festive atmosphere.

The first to react was Shizu, who prompted the nearby guards to get her a report on the situation. Yashimu then directed everyone to stay calm while Kajima and Elder Sung aided him.

Azi, who was left standing at the front of the forge, quickly helped Yashimu to calm the crowd as he directed the speaker at the side to call out in his loud and affirming voice to calm and instruct the now panicking villagers.

10 minutes passed and when he felt that everything was in a somewhat orderly state, he then made his way to Shizu who was listening to a report from a guard who was attending the festival. She grimaced at what she heard which made Azi ask.

"Shizu! What is happening?"

"A large horde of monsters are attacking the southern entrance, we suspect that all the southern guards were killed. Luckily the alarm bell was heard by a festival patrol so the festival guards were not taken off guard but there were too many. The monsters made it into the festival grounds. For now, I need you to join me in clearing the festival grounds."

Shizu then turned to the Yashimu and spoke in a commanding voice,

"Brother, get these people to safety and set up a perimeter around the southern part of the village. ALL GUARDS WITH ME!"

"YES MA'AM."

Snapping to attention, all the guards and even Azi and Yashimu intoned a response with vigor in their voices.

Before leaving, Azi grabbed a couple bags filled with blood steel squares and hung them to his tool belt. Now fully geared, Azi joined Shizu who rushed off to meet the intrusive monsters.

*****

As the pair left with the guards, Yashimu directed the villagers to evacuate to the northern part of the village as it was well fortified and the guards were less spread out in the north than in the south.

He noticed that a group of men were rifling through the wooden crates at the back of the forge and asked.

"What are you doing? Get to safety. You can't…"

"Fight?! No offense but if we can make weapons we can use them."

The bearded old man then continued to equip himself as he muttered to himself.

"This is what Jerome has prepared. I won't let that upstart steal the spotlight."

Not over hearing his words Yashimu attempted to order them to evacuate but they continued with their actions and soon ran off. Yashimu was powerless to stop them as Shizu had taken all the guards with her.

The festival staff that was left with him could help, but they were mainly made up of frail housewives who likely could not restrain the rugged men. Thinking fast, he would ensure the stubborn blacksmiths' safety.

"Kajima! Go make sure that those idiots don't die." Throwing over his sheathed katana, Kajima caught it from Yashimu and nodded in agreement.

"I'll do what I can. Elder Sung! Go with the ….."

"Can it! I may be old but I can still heal the wounded. Saki! Get my bags from our stall!"

"Yes teacher!"

Yashimu then laughed a bit as he grinned at Elder Sung and Kajima.

"It looks like the old timers are getting into the thick of things now. I'm glad you both are here."

The two returned Yashimu's grin with wry smiles before running off to do what they can to help.

*****

Young Airi, a village girl, was with her father who had a half day off from the village watch. She held his hand as he guided her around as they tasted the variety of foods and saw numerous goods that shined with a variety of colors that were new to the young girl.

She basked in the festive atmosphere but it was soon broken when the cry of a woman rang out. Young Airi had no idea what was happening but seeing the look her father made had her worried. It was like the time that monsters attacked and she met the black hair boy named Azi.

Her father told her that he was a special person that was super strong. She wondered how such a small boy could be considered strong, but breaking her out of her thoughts was her father who had picked her up in a hurry and began to run through the crowd of now screaming people.

The noise overwhelmed her ears but she put up with the discomfort she felt as she grasped her father's clothes as she was carried in his arms. Looking up and over her father's shoulder, she saw long black figures attacking the screaming people.

The snow turned red and Airi tensed up at the sight of spilled blood. One of the figures noticed her gaze and began to chase them. The father noticed the stalking creature and quickened his pace, but the crowd of people got in his way.

Soon the creature was upon them and it pounced at the girl's face. She flinched in fear and she held onto her father for dear life as he continued to desperately move forward even a step faster.

*Slam Crunch*

A dull thud rang out and Airi opened her eyes to see what had happened. There she saw the young boy with black hair. His arms were covered in a red fire. Recognizing him she waved to him and he waved back. He then turned to a beautiful woman who walked up beside him.

"Was that someone you know, Azi?"

"I think that's one of the village children I played with but I can't tell. There were too many to remember."

"I see, children." Shizu let her mind wander for a moment but hurriedly got her attention to the situation at hand. "In any case it seems the main monsters that got in are gengiri. The guard should be able to handle them for now and we have more guards from the west and east coming to help. We've killed enough for now, we should move to investigate the southern gate."

Azi nodded in understanding but had to gulp down the feeling in his throat when he looked at the bloodied remains of the villagers. This was a first for Azi, monster guts were one thing but human looking corpses made him feel sick but he swallowed his discomfort and put on the best brave face he had.

He hid his fear from Shizu and followed behind her as she began to run through the now empty festival grounds. It had been an hour since they started their cleaning operation of the festival grounds and they have had great success in the evacuation and the protection of the endangered villagers.

Shizu had split her group into teams of 2 or 3 people who worked to kill the monsters while also rescuing villagers to get them to safety. Shizu instructed them to gather the other guards on the way to help kill the monsters.

In a short amount of time, thanks to Yashimu, their defensive lines were in place and started to be reinforced. Now, Shizu needed to advance to investigate and find the source of where these monsters came from or plug the hole in their security. The ways to solve the issue are either permanently cutting off the head of the snake or killing all the monsters until they are dead.

Shziu opted for the first option as she noticed the somewhat intelligent action of the monsters. Usually gengiri would move in large swarms, but it seemed that the swarm was broken up into smaller groups to act as scouts.

As Shizu thought about her options, they moved to the southern outskirts, the number of gengiri increased and they had to deal with a few kengiri. Luckily, Azi's new equipment made quick work of large monsters like Kengiri. Loading another metal piece into his gauntlets, they began to shine blue, red and white.

Azi then rushed forward and Azi jumped to meet the Kengiri head on. He then landed a strike at the front of the Kengiri's forehead carapace. The surface cracked and then exploded its head into a ball of fire. Pieces of its brain stained his clothes and covered the other surrounding gengiri and kengiri.

Quickly rebounding from the shock wave, he landed on the ground on his feet and rushed again to another nearby Kengiri. Evading the gengiri, Azi weaved his way through to the kengiri and doing the same with his other gauntlet, Azi exploded another Kengiri's brain to bits.

The metal piece in the gauntlet's indentation shattered and turned to dust that was blown away by the light breeze, but noticing that one of his white kengiri carapace pieces on his knuckles also shattered, Azi clicked his tongue in annoyance.

This was Azi's solution to his issue of extended use of prolonged magic infusions. He had little time and knew that he needed to make equipment like Shizu's magic infused umbrella, but the time and risk it took to make something like that worried Shizu and Kajima. They repeatedly told him to find another way so he racked his mind for a solution.

Eventually he came up with an idea that might work.

From this previous prototype glove, Azi noticed that the black gengiri carapaces broke from his previous trials as he thought that the material was lacking quality, but his test of Nosuri's and Ougi's weapons made that point moot as only a couple of gengiri pieces broke when they should have all broken if the damage incurred was across them all.

After a few more tests he found that yes, the quality did have a part in the degradation of the black gengiri piece but that was only for the cases where the rune was inscribed on the one piece. With his goggles he found that the reason why the pieces broke was not because of excess stress but was instead a lack of magic energy remaining in the black gengiri pieces.

The rune's magic channel does damage the material but if they are sufficiently filled with magic, they can last longer before breaking. So Azi created his gauntlets with the idea of indirectly inscribing runes onto his gauntlets to allow for magic spells to be casted with his weapon of choice.

This option was now plausible since all Azi had to do now was supply the rune inscribed pieces with magic energy from another source. Azi thought that perhaps a kind of external battery could work. So Azi thought of using his own tethers but found that activating the rune with his own magic energy took too much concentration and wanted a way to automate the process.

So he infused small square pieces of blood steel with his magic energy. This took considerably less magic when compared to Shizu's large plates of blood steel for her umbrella.

All he had to do was charge the blood steel pieces that were stored in a hollowed metal buckle on his tool belt. Azi would be able to charge them as he worked throughout the day and did not have to worry about concentration on maintaining his magic tethers as the metal pieces were so close to his body.

Also as long as Azi had blood steel squares, he could punch out fireballs, reinforce his equipment or body, and cast other spells. This allowed him an easy way to also infuse magic into his arms as it cut out the need to focus as much on his spells since the rune's reduced his casting time.

After battling their way through the horde of monsters, Azi and Shizu were able to catch a break as the surrounding monster ran off in fear. While not desirable, Shizu did not worry as she had instructed some other guards to tell the eastern and western guards to help set up a defensive perimeter with Yashimu.

The monster would not slip past them into the main part of the village but time was ticking.

In the distance, as she rested on a nearby boulder, Shizu saw a mass of figures make their way through the snowy ground. The snow would do little to impreded the monsters' advances as it was only a few inches deep, but this notion was thrown away as Shizu's voice tensed as a massive figure came into view.

"Azi. Prepare yourself. Something is coming."