Without much of a choice in the matter, the whole group fought the enemies. However, Billy's focus was starting to wane due to exhaustion. He should have rested more when he had the chance...
"Summoning more clones will only make things harder…" Billy thought. "It can't be helped…"
Billy summoned some spears using Mana Constructs and made them spin insanely fast while they were moving to the monsters. The creatures tried to block the attacks, but their weapons were pierced, followed by their heads.
The skill Spearmanship obtained 500 experience points.
The skill Rage obtained 500 experience points.
The skill Fire Resistance obtained 500 experience points.
Your health, mana, and stamina were restored by fifty points.
Billy used the souls around to recover a little, but that was just the first step. After taking a deep breath, a weird aura began to envelop his body, and his body began to increase the temperature around him. Once that happened, the spears also began to burn the opponents and break their weapons a lot faster. That was the power of Beastly Possession…
While Billy was with the tribesmen, he decided to look for an elemental. Finding one would let him use Beastly Possession and Shamanism. Still, that was difficult because they tend to move around, and their traces don't last forever. Moreover, once one begins to work for a human, they can't work for anyone else…
Regardless, Billy found a fire elemental. Thanks to that and the skill level, his powers had a bonus attack added with the power of flames. That was really useful since he didn't have to spend any more mana to make his attacks more powerful. Nevertheless, that was only helping him conserve energy, not actually rest.
Billy, Icarus, Meryl, and Lucyna kept working like firefighters that could extinguish the flames for several hours. Eventually, since she didn't have much of choice, Meryl called her zombies to help. However, she had to split them to make things more efficient… apparently, that was what Uvish had been aiming for because when that happened, he created some portals and forced the zombies to cross them.
"This is bad… really bad," Meryl said.
Meryl explained the situation to the others via Telepathy, and they couldn't help but get pissed. Uvish sure likes to annoy them with those underhanded tactics. Before doing anything else, they had to carefully consider the cards they had.
"For now, you should move around and turn the enemies into skeletons and force them to defend the cities and towns," Billy said. "You can worry about the losses later."
"Even with their help, I can barely protect all the camps here," Meryl replied. "The enemies can fly, but my skeletons can't."
"That is a problem indeed…" Billy rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I will make my golems emerge as well, and they should be able to help with the extra power they have obtained."
Billy did exactly that, and while the plan to connect all the dungeons of that continent was put to a halt, it couldn't have been helped. Fortunately, things improved quite a bit when that happened on all sides of the continent. The number of golems was high, after all. Even if they were weaker than those enemies, their numbers were massive. Eventually, the enemies stopped coming, and aiming any more than that would be stupid on Uvish's part.
"I guess this is it…" Lucyna said and then sighed in relief. "This battle didn't last long, but we lost a lot…"
"At least we learned a lot, Uvish is a coward, but he has many cards up his sleeve," Icarus said. "We will have to be more cautious for this kind of incident in the future."
"He can only use this kind of tactic to get us by surprise since the enemies can't use their powers as rulers. They can only decrease our forces at certain locations," Billy said. "We need to think of a way to counter this… unfortunately, my mind isn't working properly due to the exhaustion, so I won't be able to help you guys with the thinking for the time being."
They knew Billy well to understand that he was overworking himself, so that it couldn't be helped… the others tried to be considerate and not bring any more problems to the conversation and let him return home to rest.
Once Billy did, he used Invisibility not to let anyone notice him since it was noon, and he disappeared for a few hours. After making his clone disappear, Billy felt his body and mind getting more rested. However, he still threw himself at the bed and fell asleep instantly.
When Billy woke up, the sun had set yet, and while he hadn't rested his body completely, he was feeling a lot better than before. After having dinner with his family, he went to give the final touches to his armor. Still, then he saw some messages that the spies had sent… apparently, some adventurers had died in some dungeons all around the world. While that wasn't uncommon, several parties were wiped out.
"Uvish… you son of a bitch," Billy said while clenching his teeth.
Considering that Uvish was the one who created the current dungeon that existed, it didn't surprise Billy that he knew how to bypass the dungeon's defenses and send some minions to attack adventurers there. It was another way to decrease their forces and land a blow on the economy of the world. He probably sent the same creatures as before to do that.
"Since they probably can appear anywhere, just sending some monsters and clones won't solve anything," Billy thought. "How can I solve this and the previous problem?"
That was a tough question, and he couldn't waste time coming up with a solution. He could send some of his clones to the dungeons and help the parties, but at such dungeons, more than dozens of dungeons worked at the same time, so they would learn that he had some weird powers…
