Chapter 27: Chapter 27: No Rain in Hell

????‍????????????️????

---

Eeya ran up the stairs, her arms waving around above her head. A slight yellow-green energy glowed on her hands’ tan skin. She tripped on the way as her arms were too occupied to balance herself. Her shin hit the last step of the stair, making her kneel down for a moment. Though the movement of her arms never faltered.

She took a deep breath and toughed it out. The soft screams of people outside in the distance made her stand up, and thoughts of her last moments with her family reemerged.

“Sir Archmage, wake up!” She tapped her foot on Jacked’s door.

A muffled grown replied from the other side of the door, inaudible.

“Sorry about this Mr. Door, I’ll fix you next time,” she kicked the rotting plank of wood open.

The broken lock hit Jacked on the forehead and woke him up. He was sleeping on the floor. Nox was on the bed, in a deep sleep, positioned diagonally to take as much space as possible. Though the bed was big enough to let three people comfortably sleep on it side by side.

“Huh, what? Why are you doing a barrier spell?” He asked, his voice hoarse and dry.

“Please, help us, sir. Ms. Sinta, she-” Eeya started getting emotional and hyperventilated. “She’s at the town square. She brought some jewels and stuff to trade for food. It was a few hours ago, but she hasn’t come back! Then, the-the-the,” she stuttered.

Jacked ran to her side and comforted her. “Easy there, collect yourself and tell me slowly.”

She took in a deep breath, but before she could speak. Their neighbor, one of the pimps in the neighborhood, screamed.

“Acid Rain! Help!” He screamed, then a gurgling sound came after.

Nox was already awake at this point. She jumped out of bed and grabbed her broom. Jacked followed her downstairs while he put on his footwear. When she opened the front door, an immense wave of heat came in, forcing her to instantly close it.

“I can only make a barrier on one side, the one above the bar. I won’t be able to hold it for long if I do it on all sides,” Eeya explained. “That’s why I can’t go out there, I need to stay behind and protect the bar.”

They peeked outside the window. The barrier above them made the acid drip down around it, creating a moat of acid around the bar. Buildings next to them already had their roofs missing, some had even lost an entire floor.

“Shit, this is the same one that wiped Grayfield, right?” Jacked asked.

“Yep, and it’s as fresh as it can be. Where is it coming from? I can’t see it from here,” Nox pressed her face against the window.

“Can you make a small barrier against it? We can fly high and see what’s causing it while we try to look for Sinta. Eeya, how long can you hold this barrier for?” He turned to Eeya, his presence has changed from the goofy wizard to that of a leader.

“2 to 3 hours, it depends on the volume of the incoming acid though,” she reported.

“Surely they don’t have enough of this stuff to keep it pouring for hours,” he said.

“I don’t know. But I can make a barrier if you still have some of those capacity breaker pills?” Nox asked.

“I made a fresh batch yesterday. Minimal side effects too, probably give you a fever the next day,” he threw her a pill bottle with two pills in it.

“Wow, two! Heh, I remember when it’d take you a whole month to make this stuff. Gave me nasty diarrhea each time I took one,” she consumed one. “How about those earth mana crystals, you have some?”

He threw her a green glowing gem.

“Ugh, I hate the flavor of these,” she loaded the gem in her pipe and took a long drag. It gave her a coughing fit when she exhaled. “Let’s go,” she said, teary-eyed.

“Stay safe, and please save Sinta,” Eeya sat down and concentrated on her spell. She needed to make the barrier as mana efficient as possible to make it last longer.

 

The small bubble surrounded them and the broom as they blasted upwards towards the sky. A torrent of acid hit their bubble, and neither of them worried that it would fail and burn their faces off.

Still puffing on her pipe, Nox poured all of her mana into both her broom and the bubble. Jacked clung to her waist with his left hand, while he replaced her pipe’s mana crystal with his right when it depleted. The acid was so strong that it ate through several pounds of crystals.

They finally broke through the heavy clouds, revealing a whole army of Flying Foxes. Their uniform formation impressed the two Archmages, not knowing the level of uniformity and synchronization they were capable of.

The Foxes were ten feet apart in all directions, all moving at the same speed. If there was a message that needed to be heard by everyone, they passed the exact message around perfectly, without an error. They were like a wave, a red and brown one.

But what truly shocked the two Archmages were the ones on the Flying Foxes’ backs. A whole army of Goblin Magi that matched their numbers. They were the ones dropping the acid, one droplet at a time. But with thousands of them participating, that one droplet turns into a light drizzle of death; spreading destruction only to the areas within the town’s walls.

The Goblins had conjured a Mana pot to contain the liquid. Then with another Mana construct shaped like an eyedropper, they sucked it from the pot and dropped it into the town below.

 

You are reading story Strangler at novel35.com

The two had been spotted, but the vermin continued on with their work. Nox brought them higher up, above the flying army. This gave her a break from the barrier spell, temporarily reducing the strain on her Mana channels.

“Great, we got the pests committing war crimes now too?” Nox complained.

“How are we going to stop them?”

“We don’t, we’re not prepared to fight in the sky.”

“Shit, is this an invasion? Drive through them, just get me close enough to attack,” he ordered.

“Fine, but I’m telling you it won’t work,” Nox puffed on her pipe before maneuvering back down into the army.

With the Flying Foxes all lined up uniformly, it looked like it would be quick work. Nox got close enough for Jacked to reach, he swung once and twice. The Fox dodged it with ease like it wasn’t getting attacked. Once they went through, the Fox would go back to their original position. They tried this a couple of more times, but the Foxes and the Goblins just ignored them.

“They’re too agile for my broom to catch up. Even doing it manually would be impossible. It’s why most people are glad that they’re herbivores,” Nox said.

“I don't have the gong with me to disrupt their flight, I left it with Dumog. Alright, bring us down. Let’s just go find Sinta. Looks like they’re nearly out of acid for now.”

 

Going down was easier than going up. The only thing Nox had to focus on was maintaining the barrier and letting the brook fall.

The whole surface of the town was devastated; Roofs and whole top floors were gone, several holes on the streets like it was bombed, and the trees and greenery burned up. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Bodies, dead and dying, littered the streets. They were the people who were unfortunate enough to be outside when it started, or the ones unable to seek shelter in time. Hope wasn’t truly gone as there were still a lot of survivors, all huddled up indoors.

In one of the apartment buildings, a mother wrapped her daughter in several layers of clothing. She even placed a cooking pot over her head. The kid cried and struggled to breathe properly because of her tears. The mother was hit in the leg, splashed by a tiny amount of the acid. It slowly ate through her lower leg, but she did her best to cover her daughter up.

A man that was not related to them, their neighbor, went inside the room and talked with the mother. With tears streaming down her face, she nodded and hugged her daughter as tight as she could. She made sure not to show her leg to her or get it too close.

The man frowned at the sight and picked her daughter up. She tossed and screamed, reaching a hand out to her mother. The mother remained on the floor.

 

“This looks like a damn warzone,” Jacked commented.

There wasn’t that much movement in the streets; some bodies were twitching here and there, the bodies that were still alive but had a lethal injury. Their last few moments of life were spent waiting and praying for death.

Puddles and craters of acid were starting to form. Even if vermin stopped their barrage from above, it would still be too dangerous for the people to go outside.

Nox and Jaked saw familiar faces as they flew down the road. Disfigured and melting on the same streets that they last saw them on.

She saw her favorite hair stylist, the one she had been going to for the last 2 years. He wasn’t able to reach shelter in time before the acid ate through half of his boy. The acid was strong enough that one drop could eat through an entire human torso.

A heavy pressure started to grow inside Jacked’s chest. He had no hope to see Sinta alive anymore. And he wouldn’t know how to face Eeya and the others when he inevitably goes back to the bar.

“Hey, I think we need to go back and evacuate the druid out of here. And tell the other two to not enter the town, meet somewhere else,” Nox suggested, her voice grim.

“I’ve actually been trying to contact them since last night. Both of them were unresponsive. And we have a few more crystals to spare, we should keep searching,” it was hard to tell what Jacked was feeling.

“If they were the ones responsible for the Grayfield farms attack, then the acid rain is just the start of it,” Nox tried to reason with him.

“Look, over there. There’s movement by that fountain,” Jacked pointed frantically, ignoring her logic.

 

A giant man crawled on the ground, his back towards the sky catching every drop of acid. But he was somehow still able to move despite his organs starting to spill out of the sides of his body. The two slowly approached him not knowing how he would react if he saw them, as he could be a potentially dangerous man.

They got a closer look. It was a horrible sight, he should’ve been dead. And he was, none of his limbs were actually moving and the top of his head was gone, eaten away by the acid; only the lower part of his jaw remained, with his tongue sticking out.

Someone was carrying him from underneath, using him as a shield against the acid rain. The person was small enough to be fully covered by the corpse and make it look like they were crawling.

“Are you two just going to watch or will you help this tough old broad out?” It was Sinta’s husky voice.

Sinta raised the corpse a bit higher to show her face. Pale and sweaty, it was clear that she was in a lot of pain. She gave them a smile while lifting the corpse up with a bloody stump where her right hand was supposed to be. The unnecessary effort exhausted her and caused her to collapse, the body squishing her to the ground.

---

---