–The early bird catches the worm.
This quote perfectly described the current situation. If the Kitsun Lord's army had been ordered to attack a few seconds earlier, they might have been able to prevent the worst-case scenario.
However, since they didn't move to interfere with Mika's attack, the heirloom arrow's power came to full display. It destroyed the southern wall, killed thousands of Kitsun, and injured just as many.
Mika was the early bird and he caught the worm before the Kitsun could do anything.
Unfortunately, Mika was rendered incapable of continuing to fight. He used one of his few heirloom arrows before using every bit of power inside his body to kill as many enemies as possible. Therefore, Mika ended up utterly exhausted and unable to move now that he achieved his goal.
Opars was exactly the same. He was barely conscious after his continuous usage of fully charged Energy Imprints. His stamina had hit rock bottom, and all he could do at this moment was to smile foolishly.
"Stinger," Michael called out through a pull of the Link of Loyalty, while trying to suppress his shock for a moment.
The Golden Stinger Wasp sensed the Link of Loyalty's pull and began to swap places, bringing Opars and Mika to the place where the Greater Eagles were resting safely for the time being. The Greater Eagles, Opars, and Mika wouldn't be moved away immediately. Instead, they would recuperate a little bit to wait for the rest to arrive. Once everyone was present, they would leave right away to return home.
They were far enough from the battlefield allowing them to rest up a little. Nonetheless, they couldn't be careless. A single vicious monster of the Savannah region was likely to be strong enough to kill the two Forest Elves and the Greater Eagles if they dared to be careless for a moment. Opars couldn't afford to collapse right away. He had to endure a little longer until Mika woke up.
Once Mika and Opars left the battlefield, Michael could focus on the Kitsun once again. However, he couldn't hide his shock well. The power Mika displayed with a single arrow was too devastating to ignore. It was only obvious, but Michael was left speechless for a moment.
The only downside of the duplicated heirloom arrows was that two powerful Adventurers collapsed, and that they wouldn't be able to fight for quite a while. Nonetheless, it was worth it. The heirloom arrow was truly powerful. There was no doubt about that.
The heirloom arrow decimated a large chunk of the opposing army, leaving Michael, Tiara, three Forest Elves, an Elemental, and a Wasp without any combat power to fight against 15,000ish unscathed enemies – though most of them were on the stronger side.
"I wonder if we can recreate these heirloom arrows in the future. If not, weapons similar to the heirloom arrows would be great as well. This is…too amazing!" Michael exclaimed, momentarily forgetting that they had yet to deal with the remaining enemies.
There were still more than ten thousand uninjured Kitsun, and a few thousand injured Kitsun waiting to be killed.
Michael cleared his throat and began to release energy arrows at the enemies. He shot them one by one, with his focus on Low Tier-2 Kitsun. A single energy arrow aimed with great precision was enough to kill a Low Tier-2 Kitsun Summon. Therefore, he reaped their lives one by one.
Meanwhile, Lilica, Pheli, and Liopham did the same. They used Pieckers as if they were cheap, ordinary arrows to kill as many enemies as possible.
In response to their attack, a loud chiming resounded through the surroundings.
The Kitsun's charge began at last.
The Kitsun Lord's forces began their counterattack. Various long-range attacks were released. There were arrows, crossbow bolts, long-range projectiles conjured through Soultraits, and other special devices that resembled rocket launchers.
The rocket launchers were something Michael never expected to see. They looked quite expensive, and one could tell that every charge of energy damaged them a little bit more. However, that was not something the Kitsun cared about at this point. They were forced to ignore their own well-being and told to use any means at their disposal to injure Michael and his people.
The Kitsun Lord was fuming in anger, which resulted in the cloudy lower body of the Kitsun all over the battlefield to expand and spread further. The black cloud was about to reach Michael and his people when a golden sheen emerged from Michael's body.
The golden sheen slowly began to expand. It spread all around them and extracted the energy within the black cloud. The black cloud resisted at first, but given that the Kitsun Lord was too far away from Michael and the expanding black cloud, Michael could easily anchor a few threads of Extraction within the black cloud.
He began to drain the energy and annex it to form a handful of enhanced Qi Glacicle Swords. Michael released the enhanced Qi Glacicle Swords with a burst of energy to propel them into the masses of Kitsun. The enhanced Qi Glacicle Swords burst six heads before they shattered, releasing a massive amount of freezing mist in an explosive manner.
The freezing mist spread through the Kitsun's masses, and weakened the black cloud-like lower body of the Kitsun. The freezing mist slowed down the circulation of the black cloud, thus decreasing the movement speed of the Kistun considerably.
Michael's Soultraits were strong enough to deal with dozens of enemies at once. Nonetheless, he wasn't invincible. The bombardment of projectiles affected him and everyone around him as well.
Michael could evade most attacks thanks to his exceptional predictions. Eagle Eyes and Spirit Gaze used together was simply too useful. It allowed him to move through an arrow shower consisting of more than a hundred arrows. Meanwhile, the arrows he couldn't avoid were blocked with Qi Swords or a thicker Glacicle.
One time, Michael lowered his body and burst forward to pierce a Kitsun with the Wyverntooth Spear that had manifested in his hands – replacing Zark. He used the Kitsun as a meat shield to block a dozen arrows before throwing the severely injured and bloodied body aside.
Michael didn't spare the arrow-spiked Kitsun a second glance. Instead, he focused on his subordinates and the enemies that lay ahead.
At first, the situation all over the battlefield was still somewhat fine.
Tiara could still make use of her powers when she charged into the crowd of Kitsun ahead of her. Instead of hesitating and waiting for the Kitsun Guards to arrive and reach her, Tiara pushed forward. Her transformation Soultrait was already fully unleashed to enhance her strength, flexibility, and agility drastically. Adding Inner Force, and Spirit Whip's power, Tiara was able to advance through the horde of her enemies without further issues.
The problems that followed were simple yet not. First of all, Tiara couldn't replenish her origin energy storage as she fought. She could retrieve energy potions and Energy Nourishing Pills, but that would affect her movement, leaving her vulnerable amid a dozen enemies. It was more likely that she would sustain heavy injuries while consuming energy potions in this situation rather than replenishing energy to keep up with her energy consumption.
The energy she consumed while fighting against a single Tier-2 enemy wasn't that high. Unfortunately, Tiara didn't have to deal with a single enemy. Her enemies were numerous – too numerous to deal with all of them simultaneously.
While Tiara had no problem dealing with the crowd of enemies at first, it grew into a big problem as her stored energy decreased slowly. The number of enemies didn't seem to decrease either.
Lilica had it even worse than Tiara. She could detect the weak spots of her enemies using Weakness Detection, and accurately target them with Precise Aim using any type of weapon, However, Lilica couldn't move as fast as Tiara after the woman of the Silverfang Tigerfolk transformed. She was put in a prickly situation as several Peak Tier-2 Kitsun attacked her simultaneously.
The Kitsun were weaker and had a less refined body. Nonetheless, Lilica was only a Low TIer-2 Adventurer. Even though her Innate Talent, her constitution, and her Soultraits were much better than her enemies, she was not like Tiara, let alone Michael.
Even Liopham was doing better than Lilica. The Swiftness Soultrait improved his movement speed drastically, allowing him to fight several enemies at the same time. This was even easier with Pheli by his side. Pheli used her Battle Cry Soultrait to enhance the allies in her range consistently. Simultaneously, she made use of her other Soultrait, Repelling Shield, to block the most threatening attacks and repel some of their force before counterattacking.
The shield could be used to protect herself and counterattack right away. Meanwhile, Battle Cry was perfect to give her allies an additional edge to their combat prowess.
It was only obvious, but Michael's impact on the battlefield was the most crucial. As the others around him killed a dozen enemies in total, Michael's enhanced Qi Glacicle Swords had already reaped the souls of a few dozen enemies.
He didn't have to pay too much attention to his energy consumption. His energy was rapidly drained, but it was refilled just as fast. Using Extraction with two layers of Enhancement was enough to cover up the energy consumption of Eagle Eyes, Spirit Gaze, and the manifestation of six enhanced Qi Glacicle Swords.
It affected his focus quite a bit, but the external enhancement of his mind owed to the Legendary Ring Artifact allowed Michael to maintain his peak form.
Meanwhile, the Elemental Empress stayed in the back with the Golden Stinger Wasp to make sure that they could rescue everyone if the situation grew worse.
And that was exactly what happened once the strongest Kitsun decided to join the battle.
