themonasnovels Chapter 1088: Chapter 1087: Caliph (3)
Chapter 1088: Chapter 1087: Caliph (3)
Chapter 1088: Chapter 1087: Caliph (3)
Launching himself at me from the other side of the library's balcony, the Caliph maintained his maniacal grin even as he was met with a heavy lance of ice that matched his velocity almost perfectly, the warrior almost outright ignoring that lance as he powered through it and crashed down on my side of the library.
The lightning that wreathed him and his weapon zapped my lance and melted parts of it whilst also pushing it aside slightly, ensuring he wasn't completely hit by it straight on, but it still slowed him down enough for me to reorient myself and roll to the side, away from the hammer strike that cracked the sandstone and threatened to tear away this floor as well.
"Many thanks, baby... I really needed this, and honestly... I shouldn't even be entertaining you right now, but we all needed this fight... this rush... it's so nice to experience once again!" Crouching down, he ignored the momentum he had created from before and redirected it with his magic as he launched himself after me yet again, slamming the hammer down where I had been as he kept up the chase, forcing me to evade constantly as I tried to find the best position to begin engaging him in combat that wouldn't leave me dead on the floor.
My longsword trailed along the ice covered ground as I darted towards one of the bookshelves, hiding behind it and silently making my way towards another as I evaded his line of sight, though that was hard to do as he just crashed through them and sent books flying through the air without a care in the world.
"I already have most of what I came for! Hiding behind the books won't save you nor buy you any time at all! Good thinking though..."
I could hear him rushing after me as he tracked my fleeting figure as best he could, the space provided by these shelves and this library only making this a harder task as the available cover was shattered over and over again by this rampaging warrior who was hellbent on finishing this fight here and now.
Darting around some more, I weaved around the shelving and made my way back to the open space near the railings as I once again leapt to the other side, buying myself precious seconds to formulate a Ritual Circle that would work well in this situation; he was no longer near that sphere of flames to keep himself shielded from my Ice Mana, and while Lightning Mana was rather good at creating heat, it wasn't as even of a protective layer as Fire Mana was.
So I altered one of my many gale spells, compressed it down to a relatively small radius beam, increased the speed now that it had less area to cover and added in Ice Mana into the formula, turning one thing into something completely different as I launched two identical spells at the same time.
He leapt to meet me once again, his desire to engage me in close quarters causing me to question if he had any good ranged spells or items at his disposal, so it confirmed to me - for right now anyways - that the best thing to do was to kite him and deal damage that way, but the current plan was a simpler one.
happened.
"They just..."
The library was suddenly silent save for the occasional crackling of a fire that still burnt somewhere inside, so when Jahi stepped forwards and tapped the floor with her boot to speak her voice rang out rather loudly.
"Disappeared? Left us here... What were they here for then? Did they say anything at all? Do we have any hints on what they were doing, why they were here?"
At that I nodded, letting the longsword I hadn't used dissipate as well as I reiterated what I had heard from the loudmouthed Caliph, explaining the goals he had shared and introducing my own theories onto it as I looked at everyone, including the Death Jackals.
We were all just... stumped; they didn't have the upper hand per se in this situation, but they had surprisingly held their own, though perhaps that was simply a fluke of location and strategies as well as having opened up this encounter with potent magics that we simply weren't able to counter right away.
One of the things that I felt from this was regret as I let out a sigh, leaning against one of the few unbroken tables as I muttered "I could've used the Lust Mana on him, but..." to myself, though Leone caught that and turned to me to say "And I could have used my True Vampire Form, I could have summoned Janus, I could have made use of my Blood or Moon Magic... There are so many could have's, Kat, that it just... doesn't matter. We didn't, that's the end of it. Besides, you said that he had told you that he had access to Fiend's, which obviously included Sla Fiends if he was mentioning desires, so... who knows if that would have even worked. I don't think any of us were prepared for them to be like that anyways; were you,
Hera?"
Turning towards the leader of these Death Jackals, we appraised her stoic expression as she focused on the floor in front of us, her eyes narrowed as she thought to herself before she said "No, not at all. They've been well funded before, yes, but not to this degree.
That amount of gear of that quality is... astonishing. High quality materials of all kinds, magics of all kinds, and they clearly knew what they were doing with them... it's odd. They didn't feel like rogues at all, not like how we were used to facing them."
She drummed her fingers on her thigh before taking a deep breath as she added "There's no point standing here doing nothing; we need to ensure the rest of the low level grunts are rounded up and dealt with. The Sultana needs to hear about this soon though, so..."