Chapter 29: Force of nature (1/2)
'ding' ‘You have heard a mighty being’s cry, you are paralyzed for thirty seconds.’
The message appeared for all the present warriors, merchants and even Nazark. The time of paralysis was rather different for each individual. Ilea’s mental resistance and high Vitality and Endurance resulted in only thirty seconds. Some of them couldn’t move for up to three minutes.
The cave was quiet, not a single one of the monsters or people moving a muscle. An eerie quiet was what Ilea thought, just before she felt an incredible buildup of mana around a hundred meters behind her. She had never felt mana from that far away.
The mana vanished and the sound of approaching wind could be heard, even with Ilea’s only partially healed ears. The paralysis only affected the body and not skills or the circulation of mana after all and by now healing herself was mere instinct.
A massive wave of air disrupted the frozen scene as wagons, stone and people alike were flung in their frozen states. The circle of wagons was rapidly pushed together to first form an oval and then a line as people in between them were crushed by a cacophony of wood, stone and metal, their screams silent, frozen by paralysis.
The lucky long ranged guards atop the wagons were flung towards the Nazarks, while the unlucky ones were impaled by flying debris. A few of them got completely crushed while others were dismembered or torn apart.
Ilea was hit by a massive impact to her back, flung towards the monsters in front of the caravan. The bone plates and scales in her armor reduced the damage to only a cracked spine and around twenty shattered ribs.
She would’ve been torn apart like some of the other unfortunate souls on top of the wagons if she didn’t have her high defensive stats and the buffs she applied to her body.
The fighters fared a bit better as the second line of wagons somewhat stopped the first. Some of them were still crushed but most only got injured, the impact waking them from their paralyzed state.
Only a couple of the Nazarks were hit by debris, most of them remained in their frozen state.
Ilea was thrown towards the monsters, tumbling several times before heavily impacting into a large boulder. This injured her further but not as much as whatever had impacted her before.
The broken ribs however punctured her lungs and other organs as blood oozed from her mouth and newly made holes in her body.
Her second stage of Reconstruction shined as she focused on the most dangerous of injuries. Her consciousness a testament to the toughness of her stats, body and mind. She was lying with her face towards the caravan and to the side of the frozen Nazarks.
Bones were reset and regrown as new tissue formed in and around her organs. The cracking was unsettling to hear but Ilea was most shocked by the first injury she had already healed.
Her heart had been punctured by a rib. ‘How do you even survive that… that’s impossible…,’ her half working mind told her as her skills and instincts slowly reconstructed her body.
Groans and screams started to fill the space as flung bodies came to a halt, some only skidding for a few meters while others impacted into the waiting Nazark, breaking both their own bodies and the monster’s.
Ilea’s body started to twitch as feeling returned to her. Behind the caravan she saw two battered scaly wings rising. She gasped and started coughing up blood when a head lifted itself between the wings, a long green and scaled neck supporting its ascent.
Two white eyes stared into her blue ones just as another hiss entered her ears. She felt a pressure similar to the Demon’s, much more raw though and even stronger.
The still standing people and Nazarks fell to their knees, holding their heads as Ilea gasped for air, finally having coughed out more blood than she wanted to question.
She got on all fours when the hiss finally receded, checking herself up and down even though her healing skill told her she was mostly fine again. Her HP took a hit but she kept healing the damage as she slowly got to her feet.
Facing the monster nearly two hundred meters away, she finally managed to use identify.
[Basilisk – lvl ????]
Ilea in that moment didn’t want to know what the four question marks meant and simply stared at the mighty beast. People started shouting again while everyone that could move started running or crawling towards the rift’s exit.
“Flee!!! Run for your lives!” Arven’s voice overpowered the shouts and screams for a second as the seemingly uninjured guard captain walked towards the fleeing warriors and towards the Basilisk while unsheathing his sword.
‘What is he doing?’ Ilea thought, removed from her awed state by his display of stupid heroism. She noticed that some of the warriors and mages stopped running at his shout. Others apparently didn’t run to begin with.
“Do what you can then Ilea.” she said to herself as her eyes focused. She slapped herself on her cheeks turning them red and blinked towards the nearest fallen warrior.
‘Head injury but still alive…,’ her touch told her as she pumped mana into the half dead man.
“The fast one’s with me, we can’t tank that one. Rock mages form deflective plates. The rest try to save as many as possible!” Arven’s instructions were overheard by Ilea as she told the groggy man on the ground to run.
He looked at her confused and then towards the Basilisk and the carnage around them before nodding. “Don’t run too fast, you’re not out of the woods yet.” she said and blinked to the next fallen human.
Three of them she found to be dead, the next one was woken up from his unconscious state by a pulse of reconstructive mana.
Ilea continued her work as pieces of rock impaced close to her and gushes of wind sliced into the stone around the rift.
‘To know there’s a Basilisk so close to the entrance… new roads will have to be built further away...’ Arven thought as the mix of snake and dragon before him bit down on a too slow mage.
The victim managed to detonate a massive explosion inside the beasts mouth as his last act of defiance, managing to stagger the beast for a split second.
Seven warriors had stayed with him, four mages were still standing and even two rangers were firing their ineffective arrows at the monster before them. Five of the defenders with classes that didn’t have speed enhancements were rummaging through the wagon wreckage to find survivors. Their high stats in Strength helped tremendously.
A blue and fiery glow caught his eye as a smile spread on his lips. ‘Perhaps not all hope is lost…,’ turning away from the teleporting healer, he faced the Basilisk again.
“Deflect!” he shouted as the monster opened its wings. Ice formed before himself and the two mages that stood close to him right before the powerful wind magic impacted them. Most of it was redirected by the quickly cracking ice before them and cut into the ground or the rock behind them.
One of the mages was flung back but still standing. Mia focused back on the creature after having saved the three people’s lives. “Ice Blade” she said with her hands outstretched, wincing at the cut in her left side.
The massive blades of ice impacted the Basilisk’s head without doing noticeable damage. It did change its focus towards the woman though and slithered towards her with incredible speed and an open maw.
One of the warriors impacted the beast from the side with a powerful shield bash, redirecting it enough to miss the dodging Mia.
The snake smashed into the stone wall as the survivors regrouped. “We need to get further away from the carts! We still have a healer!” Arven shouted and gestured them to follow him.
“Keep attacking!” he shouted to the mages and Rangers who continued to shoot fire magic, rocks and arrows towards the beast that slowly emerged from the cracked stone wall.
Its mouth opened as Arven shouts “Fortify!” the hiss made them all clench their teeth but they were not overwhelmed by the pressure anymore with the support of his ability.
“Now COME! we’ll show you humanity’s power!” Arven shouted in defiance as the Basilisk lifted its head, towering nearly twenty meters high with a wing span of fifteen meters.
“RUN!” Ilea shouted at the slowly walking woman she had just healed. All the adventurers and guards that were still alive were now on their way outside the cave. Some of them started helping to clear debris and help the civilians out of the wreckage. The ones still alive at least.
Ilea turned back to the wreckage, working even faster at clearing it than the warriors and defenders close to her. She flung hundreds of kilograms worth of wood away as if it was tinder.
‘Another one…,’ she thought, as she grabbed the half mushed corpse from the wreckage. She held back a choke as she unceremoniously tossed the corpse behind her. ‘I don’t have time for respect nor revulsion…,’
She knew that she’d have to work over what she was seeing right now at a later time, should she survive. That time wasn’t now though, there still were lives to be saved.
A whimper could be heard as another piece of wood was thrown away. “Chloe… o no…,” she whispered as she carefully started healing the woman.