"One ready for you here!"
Pulling his light machine gun up in a high hold after sawing the knees, legs, and lower body off of a walking undead, Tom called for Lisa as he surveyed the area for more threats as an uneasy feeling sunk into his gut.
(Where the hell is his ambush? This screams of a defence in depth or a straight up counter, but no signs of it…)
Ever since Tom, Lisa and Victor had figured out how to deal with the corpses controlled by the entity in the sky, the attacks had slowed down to a mostly insignificant drip. Of course Tom expected this act of seemingly throwing their forces into the woodchipper one or two at a time was some kind of ploy.
"Give me a second!"
Steadying her rifle by its reinforced barrel, Lisa smacked the quick release of the barrel and dropped the worn barrel out before replacing it with a new one from her plate carrier as she started loading the chambered round with mana. The act of swapping barrels every 3 enhanced shots, holding precisely 6 seconds to charge up mana and shooting had started becoming routine for Lisa, but using this much mana was starting to take its toll on Lisa's mind.
(Fuck, why is this scope so hard to focus on?)
After fighting for longer than she ever had, Lisa was starting to strain her eyes aiming while her shoulder was too sore to hold her rifle steady, but the worst of all was the mounting brain fog that slowed down her movements and decision making ever so slightly. Still, dealing with the amount of magic she was weaving into a tiny bullet and brain fog didn't mix well.
"Oh shit!"
Watching her spell suddenly start to destabilize, Lisa acted fast and tossed the rifle as she ducked for cover but was then grabbed by Tom who got her down properly as Lisa's rifle exploded in a bright green flash.
"You okay?"
"... Yeah."
After confirming Lisa was okay with a quick pad down, Tom finally remembered how she just crouched down in front of an explosive hazard.
"We haven't done grenade or explosive training, have we?"
"I don't think so."
"Good, because if we had, and you did that kind of shit I would've smacked you."
Still lying down, Tom pulled out his pistol and shot off the living corpse's arms as it had been crawling towards them.
"But now really isn't the time for lessons, I guess."
Getting back up, Tom pulled Lisa up by the scuff of her neck (the cloth handle on the back of her plate carrier) before reassessing their current situation.
"You're banned from using magic for the rest of the day, rest your mind."
"... Yeah, that's fair I guess."
After making sure Lisa wouldn't blow herself up again, Tom was met with a new issue.
Without Lisa's magic, dealing with these living corpses would be vastly more complicated, of course he could solve everything with the age old wisdom "when in doubt: C4" but that amount of explosives would mean running out of points fast.
INTERFACE_CONFIRMED:_ACTIVE.
CONNECTION_SECURE.9.015_POINT(S)_AVALIBLE.
(Yeah, not enough points for the amount of explosives and fuses I'll need…)
"For now we'll advance delimbing these creatures, use-"
Mid sentence, Tom was rudely interrupted by a spear made out of red crystal the size of a building launching near the central castle, ripped through the sky with such force that it created a shockwave which tore through the gardens and nearby noble manors, reaching its target in a split second it burst like a mass of thorns, pricing something in the sky not visible to the naked eye.
As the crystal formation fested and grew by the second, whatever it was piercing started bleeding black ooze as the entity started writhing and screaming.
"What the fuck is that thing!?"
Wincing in the pain of something screaming directly into his mind, Tom held a hand up to cover his ear on a vain attempt to stop the 'sound' as he stared at the mass of black goo, ooze and tumor-like tentacles flashing in and out of existence as the red crystal spear continued to grow inside it like a thorn bush
"That's what I said earlier!"
"You mean that's the thing?"
Doing a double take of the flashing abomination in the sky, Tom finally understood why Lisa had such a visceral reaction to it. Right as Tom was about to ask why they could suddenly see the anomaly, or what that spear which hit it even was, two more spears of the same size, colour and crystalline structure pierced the thing. Another visceral scream-like mental transmission followed, this time of a much greater intensity two more spears struck the thing, bringing the total up to 5 as they all continued to grow thorns, linking and joining themselves together as the thorns continued to grow at an exponential rate. More spears seemed to follow the same kind of exponential curve, as 5 became 12 became 31 in a matter of seconds until the entity turned into a red pin cushion as the spears started joining together, creating one solid mass of red crystal in and around the entity.
"... What is happening?"
"Someone is sealing it away!"
With Lisa's eyes lighting up slightly, she saw what was happening clearly. The eldritch clump of mana in the sky slowly was decreasing in size and in the nearby undying corpse which was now starting to be cut off from its power source and slowly were slowly passing away. As the abomination was fully enclosed it was finally cut off from whatever was powering it from beyond the veil, like a plant cut off from its roots it finally died.
"It's dead!"
With the abomination dead, all of its effects on the world died with it. Living undead were finally released as the abomination's clutches returned to the aether, and its more subtle influences disappeared from the minds it had laid its eggs inside.
"Let's move quickly, there's bound to be plenty of confusion to take care of right now."
Having watched the abomination in the sky sealed, then imploded, Tom figured that the entire city would be in quite a state and that they could take advantage of that to quickly reach their objectives.
"This is where I split then, no way I'll miss out on this opportunity."
Sensing the changing wind, Victor saw an opportunity to collect intelligence, steal funds and swindle noblemen after freeing his kin, so he took it gladly.
"Right then, we'll see you around."
Understanding that Victor had his own goals, Tom saw his comrade off with a handshake and watched him disappear into a nearby mansion before returning his attention to Lisa.
"Let's get going."
"Right."
(Wrong!? How the fuck did this all go so fucking wrong!?)
Stuck with a horrible feedback induced headache as his connection to his patron was greatly reduced with its sealing made Adam in quite a mood. Nothing seemed to have gone his way recently, and Adam wasn't just angry, he was fucking mad.
(This fucking scab has been picking at my side for over a year now! What the fuck have I ever done to deserve this fucking shitshow!?)
Not able to see anything other than his own ass, Adam handley ignored all the wrongs he had done in his second life so far, the way he saw things he was an unfortunate victim to unfair and unjust treatment.
(How the fuck did he even use that kind of magic? I thought the only cheat he had was bringing weapons from our old world to this one and now I learn he's a magical fucking schoolgirl too!?)
Of course Adam had no way of knowing that Tom had nothing to do with the spell which killed the child of his patron, but even if he saw it happening his state of mind wouldn't have let him admit it to himself, as defeat, humiliation and constant annoyance had driven Adam to a state near delirium.
Running through the inner city on his way back to the castle while letting out a nervous laughter, he was no longer mentally able to see his imminent downfall.
-
"Let's make some headroom while the lines are still disrupted."
"Yeah, on you."
Switching up his tempo as the enemy lines were disrupted by the sudden appearance and death of an eldritch being in the sky, Tom changed the barrel on his M-909X and reloaded before breaking into a sprint with Lisa following him. While the wide, clean streets that divided the great horses and mansions of the inner capital made for poor concealment, that hardly mattered as what few knights Lisa and Tom came across were busy either crouched over cry and puking, or imobile on the floor in a fetal position
"What the fuck is going on here?"
Although Tom had seen mass psychosis in his past life, this was clearly something else, something related to the thing in the sky.
"I think that thing must have been controlling or at least influencing a lot of people here in the capital, when it died with its tentacles still in the minds of so many people it must have created some sort of the feedback in the people still connected."
While Lisa was far from an expert in the theoretical side of magic, she had seen what kind of influence the thing in the sky had exerted, and she figured that just going away would create at least a few phycological issues in whoever the thing had under its control.
"Sucks to be them, don't waste bullets on anyone not resisting. We can't spare them."
"... Understood."
Caught in the middle of multiple conflicting sentiments, her desire to get even with every single knight she passed, the excitement of soon meeting her mother after so long and the pity she felt seeing these people in pain from messing with something they clearly didn't understood, Lisa deferred to her teachers judgement and ignored the people they passed without issue. Passing the slew of mansions containing renowned houses and filthy nobles, Tom and Lisa finally reached the border between the inner city noble district and the central castle grounds; a final wall to separate them from what they wanted.
"Hmm."
"How's it looking?"
While her teacher was stuck in his 'old man ways' Lisa figured what he was seeing from his uplink wasn't good as he had silently put out a hand blocking Lisa from going around the corner and looking at the wall with her own eyes.
"A whole lot of robed figures on the wall, I'm guessing mages, and their discipline doesn't seem to have been affected by the overall unrest so I'm guessing they're pro's… Fuck."
Tom was running low on points at this point, and although he could use his last available boarhound to breach the wall, making it go out in a blaze of glory was what he had planned for exfiltrating the city, so he couldn't really afford to waste it now.
(Do I hope for a massive reward from getting to that shitstain to get out of trouble after?... No, that's far too risky given the fact that I still don't know how to counter that jamming.)
Given Tom's luck, he figured that all of the castle where the shitstain was currently hiding was covered in the same kind of field which had kept him from resupplying before, so he found himself out of ideas on how to proceed, knowing full well that the window he and Lisa needed to make it out of all this alive was rapidly closing.
(What I wouldn't give for an armoured drone detachment, or just a tank really…)
As Tom still wasn't sure to proceed, the mages he was watching through his neural uplink suddenly came alive as they turned to something inside the wall, creating fireballs the size of houses and flinging them at something.
"What the-"
Their attack didn't last for more than a few seconds, as the mage's various spells were countered by floating, torso sized red crystals that each sought out a mage and ventilated their chest cavity as a crystal the size of a house flew into the wall, burying itself halfway into it before exploding with a considerable magnitude.
"Shit!"
As the wall exploded, Tom decided to throw caution to the wind and left cover with Lisa close behind to find out what the fuck was going on.
"Stay close."
"Rog'"
Bringing up his LMG and scanning the area for threats, Tom didn't miss how every single mage in this area of the wall had been skewered by the same kind of red crystals that had killed the thing in the sky, but he couldn't just assume that who or whatever was doing this weren't going to treat him and Lisa the same.
As Tom and Lisa carefully inched closer to the rubble that was the inner wall a few seconds ago, his intuition was screaming there was something wrong with the current picture, something he wasn't seeing.
"Contact front!"
Seeing the outline of something in the dust, Tom took a knee behind a particularly large piece of the wall and brough the outline into his sight.
It wasn't until a few seconds passed in silence that Tom realised Lisa was still just standing in the middle of nowhere staring when he realised something was up.
"Lisa?"
Glancing back at his pupil Tom only became more confused as he saw her face, tears were welling up in her slightly glowing eyes as she lowered her weapon and continued just staring at the figure emerging from the dust.
"Mom? Is that really you?"