Chapter 27: Chapter 26: The 12 demons

Eirlathion moved quickly through the village. He had lived in this area for centuries, and had personally witnessed the planting of every single tree here, and those few members of this village he had not witnessed the birth of were those few who immigrated into the village.

This was the home he had lived in for centuries, and a place he knew intimately. That was why hearing it filled with screams of panic as the night was lit up with boughs of fire that threatened to burn through the foliage filled him with such a sense of violation and horror. Even more disturbing were the death wails of the children. To some, they may have been adults of fighting age. But to him, every single one of them were mere young kids being made subject to a fate that made the stomach churn.

He tried the best he could not to think about the number of faces that would be forever missing come morning and simply sought to eliminate these invaders as quickly and brutally as possible in order to reduce the harm that they could do.

As soon as he knew what they were facing from Kiiria’s warning, he immediately cast two second tier spells on himself. The first was ‘woodland stride,’ which slightly increased speed in heavily forested areas and also caused him to be completely unhindered by any form of brush or foliage. The second was ‘hand of the woodlands,’ which turned one of the arms of the target into wood and caused it to grow a bark-like exterior.

The former was essential for the sake of mobility, the later gave him a slight increase in strength and protection against attacks. It even slightly raised this arm’s resistance to fire. Contrary to what some humans may believe, trees and wood were actually fairly resistant to fire. Or, at least they were far more resistant than flesh. Wood was filled with water, much like flesh was filled with blood. That water had to be burned away before the wood could ignite. However, a living being’s fat burned a lot hotter than wood, and a tree was more able to sustain localized damage.

This was not the main benefit of ‘hand of the woodlands though.’ If those benefits were all he wanted, he would have cast ‘bark skin’ which turned the skin into bark and gained the entire body the same benefit as ‘hand of the woodlands.’ The reasons he cast it on only the arm were two. First, ‘hand of the woodlands’ simply lasted much longer. Second, because ‘hand of the woodlands’ turned the entire arm into wood instead of just turning skin to bark, it was considered a tree for the purpose of any other wood magic he wished to cast.

This second effect turned the arm of the subject into an excellent medium for more powerful magic within the scope of the green word. This weapon had already served him well in this fight too, claiming him the first kill of the conflict against one of those demons. With a simple casting of the third tier spell ‘greater control wood,’ he had been able to extend the arm he had enchanted to grasp a dark-elf’s skull and crush it. After this, with the arm still extended, he had thrashed it about like a whip and swept those who accompanied this dark elf off their feet while battering their bodies to a point where they were then unable to protect themselves effectively as they were filled full of arrows by the archers of the village who had arrived to back him up.

Just like that, three of the invaders were dead.

Despite this early success though, this fight was not going well for the people of the village. It was only due to Kiiria’s warning and their preparations that they even managed to take out this many. The dark-elves seemed to be few in number, likely a typical 12 demon raid force. They loved to move in groups of 12. It was a number that was blasphemous against the 11 gods, and against a simple small village of just over 50 adults of combat age they would likely not feel they would need much more. Although the villagers had over four times their number, the dark-elves simply had too many advantages such that 12 normally should have been more than enough, as it likely had been for several other villages before their own.

One of the most significant advantages was that it was night and the dark-elves, just like all other demons, had the ability to see in the dark. The second came from the tactic they were using which maximized the first advantage they had. This fire-attack tactic. Dark-elves had the ability to easily cast elemental magic from any of the 4 basic elements, but every single one of the attackers had chosen to launch a very heavy attack using only fire. This was not just because fire burned the trees or that it swept a large area with fairly little effort, although those were certainly advantages as well. No, the more significant advantage which fire granted them was the fact that it let out light.

Against the back-drop of night, the sudden explosion of light would dazzle the eyes of those trying to defend against their attack. What light the fire gave off to see by would be useless by comparison to how much it would disorient the archers and those attempting to engage in a melee. What’s more, the dark elves would be on the move immediately after their use of a fire-based attack, and so they would not be in the same place the dazzling light just came from a second before.

In this way, they continuously hid their movements while destroying the night vision of everyone they were fighting against. And they who had the ability to simply see in the dark were able to adjust to these dazzling blasts of heat and light as well as if it was daylight, making them far less susceptible to these same deleterious effects. It was a practiced tactic of a team of professionals who had practiced and used this method numerous times, and it would easily allow them to take on numbers far greater than their own.

Eirlathion scanned the nightscape to find the other 9 demonic elves. The one downside of their fire tactic was that it at least made their general location fairly easy to find. However, the heart of Eirlathion felt like it was being squeezed inside the chest when he spotted an immolated body and heard the scream of the woman inside those flames as she fell from a tree that had just gone up like a torch.

There would not be much he could do for that poor woman. He tried to drive out the thoughts about who she was and whether or not she was the mother of one of the children currently hiding in the nursery tree. Instead, he focused all the attention he could on eliminating the dark-elf who had done this to that poor woman.

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He ran with all haste to the place he had just seen that fire come from. He heard chants for the protection of water spell, an apprentice level wood magic that strengthened the water element inside of a tree in order to extinguish fires. He was torn between the thoughts of whether it was better to save the trees, or if it was better to just go straight at the enemy casting all these fire spells.

He ultimately decided it was probably fine for those weaker in the green word to do such simple fire fighting. After all, it also put out some of the flickering light that distracted the eyes of the defenders. He just wished similar aid were available for the villagers who were caught up in the flame.

Eirlathion caught sight of a white-haired and dark-skinned woman running along. Both were characteristics of the dark-elves. She suddenly stopped as Eirlathion gave chase. She turned around instantly and threw a hand toward him. Eirlathion immediately cast protection of water on the arm he had enchanted without a chant, expending greater amounts of mana in order to do so. He folded the wooden arm and used it as a shield to protect the more important face, but the side of Eirlathion was burned in the scorching fire. However, he continued to run right through it as he ignored the pain, and then tackled the woman to the ground. A moment later, he was repeatedly hitting the woman in the face with the heavy and bulky wooden arm.

The dark-elf woman pulled a dagger she had on the belt, but he managed to hold the wrist of the woman to the ground with the hand he had not enchanted as he kept bringing down the wooden fist repeatedly with all the strength he had. The dark elf woman raised the hand Eirlathion was not restraining and launched a burst of fire. Due to the angle, it missed him completely but he could still feel the heat aggravating the wounds he had received before. The robes he wore had already been on fire since before he even got this far. The extra heat meant little to him. After a few more hits, the arm of the woman laid limply on the ground. But still, he continued to repeatedly hit the demon in the face and did not seem to mind the damage that had been done to himself in the exchange.

He kept beating the woman’s unmoving corpse for several more seconds before he was finally certain enough the demonic elf was dead. Only after he was certain of this did he begin attending to himself. He reached down with the wooden arm and ripped the burning robe. He hissed in pain as the motion agitated the severe burn injuries he had received.

The belt he was wearing kept the still burning robe draped around the legs, so he quickly ripped the offending upper garments from the still mostly intact lower garments, patting out the few flames that had spread onto the area of what was meant to cover the legs. In this case, it was fortunate that the flames had been so intense. Rather than fully igniting the garments Eirlathion wore, the flames had immediately charred the robes to ash in the most severely affected spots and the flame was not on him long enough to cause more than a few lingering flames.

Eirlathion let out a sigh and looked down at the bashed-in face of the dark-elf woman he had just been in a life or death struggle with. After this, he noticed the cold wind which stung him and was horrified to see rib bones through the charred flesh on the side that woman had burned as he looked down under the arm he had enchanted. He was rather surprised at how the pain he felt did not match up to the clearly severe state of the injury he had received. He did not know a lot about the structure of muscles, but he was aware that with this injury the only reason he was able to keep moving that arm was because of the ‘hand of the woodlands’ spell he had cast at the beginning.

He used the hand he had not enchanted to reach into one of the pouches on the belt he wore in order to pull out a handful of berries he had enchanted. The spell gives the berries a miniscule amount of healing magic, and also allows them to last for about as long as the berries do not get squished. Although each berry only heals a small amount, around enough to heal a small cut, in large numbers the healing can stack up to even heal severe injuries like the one he is currently suffering from.

He had no idea how many berries it would take, and he most certainly did not have the time to eat only a few at a time to make sure none were wasted until he was fully healed. Therefore, he just took an entire handful containing over half the enchanted berries and ate them all at once.

He stood up and examined the rapidly regenerating flesh that had been in such a horrible state before. He knew he did not have time to just be standing around like this, but he could not simply ignore what had just happened to him. He was not some battle-hardened veteran. He was simply old beyond what his appearance implied, even for an elf, due to the extension to his life he had gained from his advancements in the green word.

With him presenting such an easy target, it was little wonder he wound up with an arrow in the gut. He may have not been a combat veteran, but age-won wisdom was still enough to allow him to react effectively to this attack despite the sudden injury. Without screaming, he looked up and identified the silhouette of the person who had shot him. From the profile and the flash of silver hair, it seemed to be a male dark-elf. They were typically far weaker with magic, but with the female mages giving them such cover the males could afford to be more stealthy.

As he ran for cover, another arrow came from a different direction and embedded itself in the shoulder of Eirlathion. It seemed he had been marked by their assassin team as needing special attention. With the enemy gaining up on him in numbers, Eirlathion knew he only had one chance to survive this ordeal. He was going to need backup. So, he began running toward the far better defended nursery tree.

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