Chapter 26: Long night
The sun was finally setting as we arrived at some spike I remembered crossing a few hours after leaving the campsite we had made days prior. We would either have to make a new one here or continue until we reached the site. Having slept half the day inside the cave left us with enough energy to move on some more, the problem would be having to sleep around 4 to 5 hours.
the stars above us shined bright and beautifully albeit a bit shined by the setting sun, the temperature of the desert also fell sharply along with the setting sun.
Jessie and Tifa were still giving each other the stink eye, even as I was looking at the stars I kept tabs on Tifa who kept herself silent, staring at the floor with her eyes and arms crossed.
Haruhiros party kept making small talk about anything and everything they could think about to stave the boredom away.
"Hey, hey Entei. Do you use magic?" Ranta asked me switching from asking Mary about the same thing, "Mary says she can only use healing magic while I have only seen Shihoru use support and weak dark magic. But your sword had a fire tail, like a fireball."
"I can use magic yes," I paused when it suddenly hit me I did not use magic in my last fight, neither strengthening magic nor any offensive. "The trail of fame on the sword was some illusion magic or something, I really have no idea. Do you use magic?"
"No....?" He answered with another question, albeit shaky, and half of the question was directed at himself. "Yes..." He placed his hands behind his head with his elbows and leaned his head back before continuing. " I can summon a demon -low level called an imp- it does not help in a fight tho, though it is just an annoying flying rat until I offer more kills to our Demon god SkullHell. Some of my moves also make me jump or move backward very fast I don't know if it is magic or something else but that's about all the moves I know that might include magic."
"Huh, well if they do use magic or not they are still quite useful in combat." I brought my right hand up to my chin and the other on the pommel of my sword resting on my waist. "And sound quite useful even outside of it."
He stared at me for a second or before his face split with a toothy grin, "I know right, I'm super resourceful even outside of combat GYAHAHAHA!!!!"His laugh came as a mix between a mad scientist and an oujo-san.
"We got company!" Haruhiro alerted us to a pack of fire dogs resting in the spot we had used as a camp before.
"Parupiro! What's up with you and dogs huh?" We all drew our weapons and went into formation.
"Haruhiro think you can sneak up to them and kill a few?" Briggs asked while counting them. "And what is Ranta referring to?"
Haruhiro was silent for a moment, his eyes getting a more sleepy look to them, making me think he was about to fall asleep. His eyes opened as wide as I have ever seen them which made them look like almost every other person I have seen. "Wai- what? I don't think I am stealthy enough to sneak around them without being detected by them."
We all bundled up like they do before a big soccer or football or another team sport, "You can do it, man." Briggs encouraged.
"C'monn Parupiro it's your time to go down in flames or more like become a dogs chew toy! Gyahaha!" Ranta kept making fun of something half of us did not know about prompting Haruhiro to give him a scary face.
"If you think you can just take one down," Tifa chimed in.
"I'll back you up if you get surrounded after," Jessie added.
"As soon as you take one we will all jump in the fight, make them focus on us so you can go get another sneaky kill," Briggs told him but even to me those words did not instill much confidence. Being mauled and toasted before getting eaten by a bunch of fire-breathing super dogs did not sound like a good way to go to anyone here.
Haruhiros expression went through the spectrum of expressions shocked they or we told him to do it even though he had no confidence in his skill. Sad he was -in his mind- being sacrificed for our greater good like the trolley problem, mad because no one wanted to listen to his - frankly- downer opinion of his skill. And finally acceptance of his fate, with a heavy sigh he accepted everyone's plan.
"Let me just use the light of protection on everyone before we start." Mary clasped her hands together and started saying the chant of the spell.
I took a knee beside Haruhiro who was squatting low with his elbows on his knees and his hand behind his head, with it facing down. "Don't worry, it's just a bunch of bitches that will come after you. What guy wouldn't want that?"
"Haha," he said with as much sarcasm as he could muster. "Why don't you do it then huh? Bet you would be over the moon." He leveled his gaze with mine, dead like a fish.
"Eh..." I looked over at the dog from behind the rock hiding us, "One's enough for me, but good luck I know you can do it." I gave him a thumbs-up and stood up while pointedly avoiding his glare.
Mary finished chanting and a faint white glow encased us, I could see a faint white aura or glow around everyone present.
Haruhiro took a few deep breaths before moving forward in a low stance, one of his daggers in one hand and the other one free.
Even acceding the see-through world I lost sight of him after he stepped around the second spike closest to the dogs.
"Parupiro might not be confident or dashing like me," Ranta commented from behind another rock close to the one I used to hide. "But he is quite something at this sneaky crap."
I had to agree with him, he was indeed good at sneaking around.
We did not see movement from the dogs for a minute. Then two minutes but halfway to the third we saw a bit more than half the pack wake up and we all knew they found so we jumped in, vanguard first to hopefully draw aggro from the dogs away from Haruhiro and mages and archers from behind providing cover fire.
It started like expected fighting normal mobs, with us killing them like... well dogs. The range attacker where doing more damage than the vanguard thanks to us having to defend or evade attacks. Our sleepy thief would attack unsuspecting beasts with quick stabs at the neck or another vital spot.
Soon however it devolved into a more chaotic struggle when more dogs joined the fight. Briggs used both the shield and sword to attack and defend while Ranta was flying all over the place with his skills to dodge or close the distance to a dog. I used both of my swords following the saying a great defense is a good offense. My blunt sword did great hitting and crushing bone while my sharp one was good at well cutting off limbs.
The girls either did not have enough confidence in their aiming skills or they just decided to take down enemies further away so we did not have to worry about another wave of them coming after we took care of the ones in front of us.
Some of the dogs decided to target our back row, seeing as we were already swamped with their friends, when we noticed them moving Haruhiro was already on the move. Tifa jumped from behind a rock and landed a spectacular punch that reminded me of Luffy punching the celestial dragon in Sabaody. With a new target on display, the dogs targeting the range fighters, and our healer switched their attention to her.
Even though we suffered some wounds during the struggle we managed to take them down while other dogs who were smart ran away after suffering a few hits.
"This healing over time magic you used in these hard fights is a goddess sent!" We heard Briggs proclaim to Mary who gave the cold star before rushing over to check up on Haruhiiro who had been licked by flame on his left arm.
I on the other hand went to check up on Tifa, "That was a phenomenal punch you dished out back there, and you managed to fight off a number of them by yourself." I took a step back to see the carnage around her, some corpses were bent in forming the shape of either a V or a U while others had their skill caved in. "That was an amazing display of skill."
She folded her hands infrooont of her and looked down and to the side either in shyness or not wanting to talk to me, either way I did not care at the moment I was too tired to think too deeply.
The smell of the carnage around us might have bothered us but we did not have the energy to either move it or burn it with magic, as soon as we laid down our sleeping bags we crashed on the like logs that were just cut falling to the ground.
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Word count 1607
If there are any grammatical errors let me with a comment on the paragraph.
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