Chapter 176 Pillage
'Damn it! I was looking so cool too.' Kiruya wanted to be a role model for them, and so she tried her best while they were in the Freya forest to not trip over anything. However, now that she had tripped over once more, the image she was trying to build was ruined.
'Ahh whatever, let's just destroy the town.' Planning to release her frustrations since her plan was ruined, she pulled out her blades and propelled herself with her wind.
The dark elves spotted Kiruya running into the town and, going into a similar state like the guards, they grabbed the closest weapon to them. Soon, the group chasing her grew in size as even the children joined in, resulting in a cacophony of screaming and yelling.
"Die!"
"Leave now!"
"You dare enter our territory!"
Kiruya made her way to the middle of the town to gather the elves that were chasing her. Jumping on top of a small fountain, Kiruya waited for the dark elves.
40 elves reached the fountain, trying to stab Kiruya. They rushed inside the fountain, trying to get closer, and even started to climb on top of each other. Since they were unable to use magic, it took them a moment to get in range with their pitchforks and knives.
"Alright let's begin." Seeing the elves getting too close, Kiruya jumped up into the air while coating her blades with wind. Kiruya then slashed towards the group of elves, sending wind slashes that were too fast to dodge.
Making use of the newly created opening in the crowd, Kiruya landed on top of the dead bodies, now standing in the midst of the elves.
The elves all turned with their weapons, randomly striking for any part of her body.
Kiruya dashed forward into the group of elves and deflected many of their strikes, giving her an opening. Slashing the chest of elves of varying ages, Kiruya started to shred through the group, not allowing any of them to get close with their weapons.
Slowly, the group of 40 dwindled while a pile of dead bodies was building up.
Blood covered the central area and the first group of elves were dead. Many were children, young adults and even elderly, but no matter what you did they would continue to attack unless you killed them.
However, once they were killed, their bodies deformed into that of a beast, revealing what they truly are.
"I wonder if the others will find out." Kiruya knew that sooner or later the girls would notice the changes and was curious how they would react.
While she was speaking to herself, more shouts rose from another part of the town as well as the clinking of armour, suggesting that guards from the castle were coming.
'Seems like I will have to use some bigger skills.' Kiruya turned and saw a few hundred elves charging towards her.
Spinning her weapons in her hand, wind swirled around her arms creating small tornados.
Sprinting forward right into the elves, Kiruya slashed forward while running, shooting tornados into the massive group of Elves.
Many tried to dodge, but the wind current stopped them from moving out of the way and dragged them into the tornado. Blood spewed everywhere as they were torn to shreds by the constant wind pressure.
Kiruya kept running directly into the group, starting a repeat of the previous events as Kiruya tore into her enemies while deflecting their attacks. She also used her tail to kill elves by stabbing them in the neck or pulling them onto her weapons.
Noticing that there was a significant amount of elves beginning to stack, she realised she needed to push them away or else be overwhelmed. Kiruya responded by setting up a two-layered wind barrier, the inner layer swirled like a tornado while the outer kept getting compressed.
The elves trudged through the compressed air, but got deflected by the constantly swirling inner layer. Shortly after, the compressed air exploded, killing 50 elves at once as they were torn limb from limb. Blood rained down onto the town, but her inner layer of wind kept kiruya in a dome of dryness surrounded by a sea of blood.
Turning on her heels, Kiruya saw more guards coming from the castle alongside some more civilians from the surrounding town.
'Geh they just keep coming in greater numbers.' The rest of the town's population was now rushing to her location and now the city guards were coming as well.
'I need to be more careful.' Knowing that a significant amount of guards were coming, the use of magic will become more prevalent, providing more of a challenge for her.
Stretching her body out like a cat, Kiruya was ready to take on the next wave of elves.
However, even before the mob could get anywhere near her, a squad of elven archers released a volley of arrows at her, propelled by their wind magic. Kiruya was able to sense the mana fluctuation in the air and easily moved her body as if she was dancing, dodging the arrows with aplomb.
Not wanting to deal with the archers longer than necessary, Kiruya connected her two weapons and suspended them in the air in front of her. Aiming it towards the castle where the arrows came from, she built up wind in the center of her spinning weapons, forming it into a ball.
Pulling her arm back, she punched with all her strength, launching the wind ball as if from a cannon towards the archers. Crashing into the wall, a burst of wind exploded from the point of contact, causing the platform the archers were on to collapse, dropping them to their death and burying them under the rubble.
Punching a few more times, Kiruya eliminated the long range threats and now had to deal with the small army.
Moving her focus back to the larger group of enemies, Kiruya hopped on top of a building and then on to the air, suspending herself with her wind magic. Once she gained her balance, she positioned her weapon in front of her and suspended it in mid-air once more.
'Now let's see how many I can kill.' Kiruya planned to do a larger scaled spell to get rid of most of their forces.
Spears were being thrown from the ground, but Kiruya was able to deflect them or move out of the way as she pushed herself with her wind.
Kiruya then coated her arm with wind, moving it around in circles like a miniature tornado and letting it gain in power as it moved more and more air towards the tip of her fist. Kiruya let the air compress at her fist until she could no longer control it, then punched out once again with all her might, aiming through the centre of her suspended weapon and towards the ground. A massive boom echoed throughout the dungeon as the compressed air expanded in an explosion of wind, crashing down on the elven army.
The elves that were underneath got instantly crushed to mush as the impact of the wind flattened them on the ground. The ground itself turned into a crater with cracks running through it. Blood coated the ground and flowed through the cracks of the crater, creating a small pool at the bottom.
At least 3 quarters of the elves that came out were crushed. However, instead of making Kiruya happy, this only annoyed her as she wanted to kill them all.
"Tch." Clicking her tongue, Kiruya softly landed on the ground and brought out her weapons once more.
'I was hoping the magic amplifiers I got on them would increase the area of effect, but it seems to only increase the strength of my magic.' Kiruya looked at her weapons as she recently got them upgraded, which was one of the reasons why she wanted to fight.
The remaining elves, not caring about the people that just died, sprinted at Kiruya in desperation.
Rolling her eyes, Kiruya threw her blades going right through the elves with ease, killing them.
Using wind to control the rotation and direction of the blades, she was able to kill the rest of the elves before they even got close.
*Sigh* "Finally, that should be most of them." Kiruya was feeling exhausted as she used a lot of mana on the large scale attack, pushing herself to use more mana than she usually would.
"I don't think the stronger dark elves will come out." Kiruya looked over to the castle where the second part of the dungeon mainly took place and waited to see if the higher tiered elves would come out.
"There is still 30 minutes left so hopefully they can finish up before then." Kiruya, having some more time to kill, went to look for a high place to observe from while she waited.
***
<Shaman POV>
"What the fuck is this thing!" Shaman and her group had encountered a group of elves while going through the outskirts of town.
Elysia had just finished killing them as she was curious how they would react, but just as they were leaving, they noticed the elves taking a new form. The bodies retained the same colour as the elves, but turned into large dogs with rather large mouths.
"It looks like a beast." Elysia picked up a stick and was poking at what they thought was a dark elf but now turned beast.
"It's happening to the others too." Clara looked over to the more fresh bodies and saw that they were also transforming back their natural form.
"So they are not elves but beasts in disguise?" Shaman wasn't too sure what to make of it and found it a bit bizarre.
"Well, we learned from Silver's dungeon that there is a story to every dungeon, so maybe whatever this beast is, it took over the local race and is pretending to be them?" Elysia recalled the time in the dungeon with Silver and how the boss had a story behind him.
"Hmm their status says nothing other than dark elf still so I think we need to kill the boss before we find out more information." Shaman was intrigued by the 'dark elves' and now knowing they are not truly people made it easier for everyone to kill them.
"Phew, at least now I know they are not actual people." Clara let out a sigh of relief knowing that it's all pretend and not real.
"You sure are affected by this whole thing a lot more than us." Elysia turned to Clara and was a little surprised that she was so emotional to the elves.
"Well ever since my memories were unlocked, my emotions have been haywire. Even during the bit of training I did as an assassin, it was a rule to never hurt children under a certain age. So it was hard to go against that since I lived by those rules for quite some time." Clara explained more about her situation and it made sense why she had such a strong reaction.
"Alright we still need to scout the outside of the castle, so let's not get too distracted." Shaman was able to hear the fighting in the town and knew that they shouldn't stay idle for too long.
Bringing Elysia back into the shadow and Silver with Clara, they continued down the outskirts to the castle's edge.