Getting glances from the two sirens keeping the area secured, they turned back the moment they recognized him, focusing instead on preparing for any more demons to make it through while he went inside the house they were protecting, surveying it as he did.
The first thing he noticed was Delair, his eyes locking onto the girl and just how much blood she was covered in, with his senses catching up to tell him that the vast majority of it wasn’t her own. A few cuts on his student but nothing serious, letting him take in the rest.
With one of the siren guards on the ground, missing an arm, Woszan tending to her while Mirrian and Kalley sat nearby, gripped in their own fears, it wasn't hard to put together what happened. In the initial attack, it seemed the injured one had lost her brace with her limb. Something that should have been manageable, all of the sirens who’d been sent to protect the young demigod and her mother had a level of charm that meant it should have been controllable, but it was still a passive skill and as such, needed a certain clarity of mind to really do so. As it was, the downed woman was trying, but she still let a bit get through, just enough to draw a touch of attention from any further away demons.
It was even affecting the rest there to an extent, five other dryads stuck with them beyond just his student, but at the very least, the strength of that passive magic was far more manageable. For Thera or even Kalley, the nature of that power may have been so great that it essentially suppressed the higher functions of anyone unlucky enough to be in their range and made them the sole focus of their thoughts, but for the dryads around them, it seemed the fear was keeping that effect in line in a way similar to how enough willpower would protect one from the same.
Well, for the most part at least, he acknowledged, seeing his student had been dangerously drawn in for a moment and saw in other minds that the timing lined up with a wave of pain that had made the woman on the ground lose control.
As he processed all of that, he materialized a new brace on her remaining arm and dark resistance amulets on the dryads’ necks, all of it done in a fraction of a second before anyone there could react to his arrival, with his student being the first.
“Ben!” she yelled, running to his side the instant she stood and clung to him, letting him feel her shake from the fear of it all as he reached down to gently rub her head.
“I’m here, kiddo. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Seeing her like that, all thoughts of giving her trouble for running back into that mess left his head as he instead focused on comfort, applying a subtle bit of calming to all who were there, even if that only made what they were going through more manageable, leaving the most composed of them to speak next.
“How’s the rest of the village looking?” Hentath asked, her thoughts with her people and filled with her own worries.
“At least a third of the village should be safe. I got as many to the gate out as I could on my way here, and I cleared all of the demons I saw on the way too, so it should be easier for the rest to work on evacuation.”
“Bodies then?” the older dryad asked, not truly wanting to know but getting relief as he shook his head.
“Not that I saw, but plenty of injuries. I’ve made arrangements on the other side to get them looked after, but for now we need to get all of you moving as well. We’ll… I’ll handle getting you all to safety.”
Despite killing his way to them and leaving a mass of corpses in his wake, from what Ben could see, he couldn’t just simply have them follow along as he guided them. They were too injured, too scared from the experience, with only two warriors really available to help. Even Hentath, who seemed the most put together, was too low on mana to completely depend on, the older woman having expended so much of her power setting up the tree barrier that had protected them. With her soul modified, she’d be back in shape to help soon, but with more people potentially still in danger, they couldn’t just sit there and wait.
Leaving him with one option for managing them all, even if the cost on him was going to be high as he broke down the house containing them and, as he’d seen Thera do before, spent his power to raise them all on a platform of dirt beneath them, beginning to fly them to their escape.
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Ninth level of material manipulation and nearly fifty thousand points of mana, but still he could feel his power draining from the cost of it all. Despite his recovery rate being in the thousands, he’d been wasteful the entire way there already from the many other dryads he’d saved and now carrying thousands of pounds of weight on top of it was beating out what he could take back in, his magic having no affinity to help reduce the insane cost of the act like his partner’s did and left him feeling it from the very start, only made worse from what he found when he rose above those protective treetops.
Impossible.
If it weren’t for their corpses still littering the ground, he would have thought he must have hallucinated all of the demons he’d killed on the way there; the village swarmed with them again. Too many to have all run in from the woods, he wondered briefly if there was a substantial group of them coming in from below the ground before seeing through one of the dryad's eyes a glimpse of what was actually causing it as a quick portal released another group of ten.
Space magic, he cursed. So is this swarm filled with demons who use that affinity, or…
A far worse option he didn’t want to consider, with the new volume of them it meant he couldn’t focus solely on getting the group he had to safety and he began his slaughter anew, materializing more balls to shoot out and pulling what materials he had stored in his rings as well to help reduce the cost on his slowly draining mana, lightly syphoning from those with him as well to help manage his losses.
He used the group's eyes too, watching all around him to manage his aim and look out for more dryads in need, finding none at least on that side of the village, meaning he’d hopefully be able to omit that area from a further search once he went back to help more, even as he was left wondering how bad things might get. If the demons were teleporting in from somewhere, then that meant he couldn’t properly judge their numbers, with other implications impossible to escape.
If these are only ninth leveled space mages then they’d still need to be fairly close to teleport in. A swarm like this, the gods would be able to find it, even if their main force was a few kilometers away. If they’re coming in from farther though… damn it.
If they were coming in from farther away, that meant they were dealing with something far more powerful than a ninth leveled space magic, with his god having already made him aware of just such a threat.
Okay, Myriad and Thera are both right, I really do have the worst luck in this universe, Ben complained silently to himself, seeing no other way to look at it as he accepted the horrifying truth. On that big wide world, he'd somehow managed to run into another one of the demon contenders.
At least, that’s my best guess, but if that’s what’s managing the attack, it doesn’t seem like they’re in the fray of it all; otherwise, I’d have probably noticed it by now. So what? It’s hanging back, attacking from a distance somewhere, or just forcing the demons it’s controlling to fight for it to come in and take what it wants from the rest after? Okay, get this lot to safety and then after, warn the others coming through to be prepared for something like that. Myriad?
He didn’t just call but instead sent a part of himself up, wanting his god to hear his thoughts but found the realm empty, making him frown as he materialized a note in the plane explaining things before he came back down. The cube was no doubt doing as Ben had asked and gathering the needed help, but if any of said help arrived uniformed of the danger then things might only grow more complicated, another variable for him to try and plan for while they finally arrived back at Fontesh’s home, the gate just within reach.
More adventurers had arrived than he’d thought would in that time, the demidemons having received his and Myriad’s call and rushed to get there with weapons in hand, meaning that there had to be a good number of them ready to act as healers waiting on the other side too, giving him just a bit of comfort as he set his group down.
“Go,” he told them, command in his voice to make them move as he examined the battlefield to figure out where he was needed next. He’d need to get within range of all combatants on his side to make them aware of the likely threat, and from there he’d need to try to find the demon bringing so many others through. Kill the contender and stop the swarm.
Although if I keep letting it send them through like this, then we can keep lowering their numbers too, even if that might mean missing out on the big one. Mmh, since I’m done protecting them, I can try to get close enough to a few demons to read their minds and see if there’s any useful information, but-
His thoughts cut off with a scream, turning to see the group he thought he’d gotten safety not making it through his gate but instead falling through a portal opened at their feet, panic and incomprehension in their eyes as the mage who opened it warped space itself to suck them through with enough power that Ben’s own spells couldn’t pull them out, leaving him only to react.
The portal having claimed its victims, he could see it start to close and without another thought he threw himself in, joining to protect all he could on the other side.
