The first monsters stepped onto the shadow-covered ice and felt their feet and ankles disappear. The corrosive shadows ate away at them with a strength and speed the others could hardly believe.

Alli followed that up with a renewed round of shadow spikes. She had a higher level than the others, and her extreme affinity for shadows made each attack extremely efficient. Yet, she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep this up forever.

It was an unsustainable pace they were working with.

Sierra was standing in the middle of the group, her fists clenched in useless anger. Without her bow, all she could do was stand there. They had mentioned rocks, but the road didn’t even have them within reach. She was completely useless in this fight.

The number of faceless monsters dwindled by the second, as the four active participants expended their energy.

Inara was the first to falter. Blood was seeping from her tail where the quills she threw formed. They had never experienced such a large group in the past, so they had never known her limit to form them. Now they had found it, and the pain was causing her tail to droop limply.

She could no longer use her long-distance attacks. Any further attacks from her would have to be done up close.

Kate shifted her focus in order to take up the slack and reached for the quillcat’s collar. As long as she sent her mana into it, the collar would speed Inara’s healing up some. It was unknown how much it would help in this instance, since this was the first time they had run into the problem. However, it would stop her tail from bleeding more, at the very least.

Unfortunately, doing both simply drained her of ever more energy.

Even Beth was slowing as each time she fired she came closer to reaching her own limit.

The horde had been comprised of hundreds of monsters when they started, and they had made an impressive dent. Yet it just wasn’t enough. There were too many of them, plain and simple. The only reason they hadn’t been overrun was because of the ring of corrosive shadow around them.

As soon as Alli let that drop, their situation would go from bad to dead in seconds.

It wasn’t a stretch to say she was carrying them at the moment, because she absolutely was. It was a stark reminder of the kind of powers they were dealing with.

Alli growled as she saw more of the dark, light-sucking monsters run out of the trees. That hadn’t been the deal. She needed to do something more, something that ended them while also giving the rest of the party some breathing room.

Her first thought was, what would Charles do, before shaking it away? She knew he was a creative person when he needed to be. However, when it came to fights, he had been able to overpower nearly everything. The same went for Kira, who just bashed things until they stopped moving and hoped she survived.

Charlotte was the planner, but they hadn’t fought together enough for her to understand how the woman came up with them. Besides, they were already in the middle of the fight. A plan wasn’t exactly useful at this stage, she figured.

No, she needed someone creative. The most creative person she knew was naturally Myri. Her mind was a wonder at times. Alli just didn’t know how to apply that kind of creativity to her attacks.

All she could do until she thought of something was expand on what she had already done. Literally in this case.

Alli grew the circle of her of corrosive shadow, no longer leaving it contained to just the ring of ice. It was a struggle to focus on launching her shadow spikes while doing that, and she had to stop for the moment.

Dust flew through the air as each monster was slowly eaten away to nothing. The entire time, a solid stream of dusty matter was being deposited behind Alli. The remains of each being the corrosive shadow had consumed.

She could feel herself beginning to strain as she pushed the circle wider. Desperate to get as many of them inside the attack as possible. Trees toppled and fell as their bottom’s abruptly disappeared, no longer able to hold them up.

In seconds, Alli had cleared a swath of land around them, demolishing the army that had threatened to overrun them. Most of them weren’t dead just yet, but they were all severely injured. Easy pickings for the rest of the group to finish off.

Alli pulled the corrosive shadow back when she saw there was nothing more coming from the woods. It hadn’t exactly been creative in the way she wanted. In fact, she had more or less done the same thing as Charles and Kira, and simply overwhelmed them.

However, it had worked, and she had learned something about her abilities that she hadn’t known before. They were more versatile than she gave them credit for. Her control and elemental race made them useful beyond the simple spikes she had been utilizing up to that point. The cost to do so was also relatively minimal, especially in a dark realm like this one where shadows were everywhere.

It was something that she was determined to explore more in the future, assuming they survived.

She took one last look around and shifted forms. By this point, she had gotten enough practice that her clothes all appeared where they were supposed to.

“Is that good enough?” Silvi asked to where Oddom was hovering in the air with Balor in his arms.

The two drifted down and took in the moaning and wailing forms of their savaged horde.

Balor nodded. The grip he had on his throat had loosened considerably. “Yeah, I think that’ll do. You did better than I thought you would. I’m tempted to not even eat you now.”

Silvi looked at her tired companions and felt at how worn she herself was. Just this one battle had pushed them to their limits. The monsters had just kept coming. Far more than the original number had appeared from the trees to attack them.

“What now?” She rasped. Her throat was dry, and she wasn’t sure how much more she had in her for another battle. She needed to think of something that would give them an edge before it even started.

Oddom stepped forward, an ugly look on his face. “Now we fight, and you die. All that has changed is when we win, we won’t feed your corpses to anything.”

Balor stared at them, not saying anything.

Kate and Beth were leaning against each other, and while Inara’s tail had finally stopped bleeding, no new quills had formed on it. Sierra was standing behind them, trembling with silent anger, as tears fell down her face.

There was nothing any of them could think to do at that moment.

Until Sierra had a thought, it was a long shot and probably wouldn’t work, but what if…

The disciple system.

Charles had designated her as one of the disciples because of her friendship with Kira. It had been easy enough to fulfill the requirements and have him train her a little. The only spells she had ever used with it though, were healing based when the kids she looked after were injured. It was too easy to forget about it in the heat of battle, and she preferred to use her bow for most things.

Still, this was an extraordinary circumstance, and she was willing to give it a try. She remembered that the disciple system had originally broken because of Charles’ divinity and approaching Godhood. Now that all of that had been sealed, things should have gone back to normal.

No one had thought to try it out again since their return before that moment.

She hadn’t done anything the entire time and was in the best condition as a result. Sierra only had a few moments to review the list of spells she had seen Charles use and then think of her own compatibility with the element. The more compatible she was, the lower the cost and the higher its strength. The opposite was also true.

If she chose one that she wasn’t suited for, it could potentially drain her dry while only tickling the two in front of them.

Silvi glanced back at everyone again, noticing that Sierra seemed to be thinking about something.

“You okay Sierra?” She wondered.

“Hmmm?” The older woman looked up. “Yeah, just thinking about something is all. Hey, Silvi, do you remember what that weak point of the dragon was? The one Kate mentioned like a crazy person.”

“Hey!” The teen girl protested weakly.

She nodded. “I do.”

“Good, I think a certain gargoyle needs to be taught a lesson.”

“It won’t do any good. It’s night. Remember?” Beth whispered, stealing a peak at Oddom to see him growing impatient.

“Just bear with me. I have an idea. If it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work, but if it does…” Sierra didn’t bother finishing the sentence. They could figure out the rest themselves.

“Alright, fine. Do whatever you’re going to do. I’ll be ready.” Silvi whispered to her.