(Lian Li POV)
Summoning another lightning storm, I watched as another horde of the monsters started to come through dozens of newly formed rifts, all of them rushing towards me with their fangs bared. Flashes of gold lit up the field as lightning bolts continued to rain down on the earth, striking down groups of the monsters with every bolt and annihilating them.
To my right was Manami who had painted her part of the field crimson red with her flames. Anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in her flames were incinerated immediately without mercy. Even now, the fields of fire were expanding to cover an even larger area of land, but the speed at which rifts were appearing was still faster.
Far off at the end of the open field, Cai Hong had transformed into her dragon form and was busy incinerating everything that was in front of her with her dragon breath. Any monsters that tried to step out of the rifts she was guarding were immediately burnt to nothingness. Anyone foolish enough to charge at her was immediately stomped flat by her legs or swept away by her tail.
Another rift opened up a short distance away and Eris immediately rushed towards the opening, her sword slashing out to decapitate the three monsters that tried to step out of it.
A short second later, the bodies of the decapitated monsters turned to stone before crumbling to pieces, joining the rest of the thousands behind Eris who had fallen to her blade.
"'Flesh to dust, bones to dust, all of the living shall be returned to dust. Disintegration.'"
With a short chant from Diao Chan, a huge number of the monsters disintegrated into nothingness. For our Witch who has already mastered shortening her chants, the monsters stood no chance against her.
Covering Diao Chan's back was Kiyomi who had transformed an entire portion of the field into a frozen wonderland. Every single monster that stepped out of the rift was immediately frozen solid before breaking into diamond dust, the blizzard she had summoned as relentless as the horde that was coming through the rifts.
I had half expected Brendan to remain behind the lines to take up triage duties just like the time when we were at war with the Dongs, but the alchemist apparently did not think so.
He had apparently concocted some kind of potion that granted those who consumed it unparalleled strength and dexterity for a period of time without altering their physical appearances, allowing him and his band of merry men to tear the monsters to pieces with their bare hands.
I had honestly thought that dealing with these monsters would be a relatively simple task at first.
They were merely mindless beasts that focused only on killing any living thing they found and were not strong individually.
The problem lay with their extraordinary regenerative abilities where if they weren't completely obliterated, they would regenerate back almost instantly. It was something we learnt the hard way when monsters we thought were already dead came back to claw at us.
What made it even worse was the fact that the number of rifts just kept increasing and for every one of these monsters we kill, five more would come through the rifts to take its place.
With my sisters beside me, it was an easy task to keep them away from the city but over time, the area the monsters occupied started to increase despite our best efforts to curb them.
My sisters and I could hold our ground just fine but we couldn't be everywhere at once and the places we were not guarding slowly started to be overrunned.
The woman who had the audacity to call Master her husband was standing near to the city walls, coordinating her people's attacks to match with our own follower's. It was not much but they managed to slow down the monster's advance considerably.
I originally thought her to be as weak as the other denizens of this Plane that we had come across but when I saw her summon lightning that was similar to mine in strength, I had to reevaluate her capabilities.
Even her maid was flitting around the battlefield and killing monsters left and right with just her knives. Somehow those kitchen knives she was wielding could cut the monsters down into pieces smaller than the eye could see, matching Eris in terms of swordsmanship.
Despite all of that, the number of monsters just kept increasing with more rifts constantly opening up in various places on the field, forcing us to redirect our forces to different parts of the field just to contain them.
And even then, fighting non-stop for all the past few hours was starting to tire us out too.
Just when it seemed like one part of our formation was about to collapse from the monster's onslaught, the rifts suddenly became quiet and no monsters came through for a period of time, allowing us to clear up the remaining monsters and take a breather.
"Is it over?" Manami asked, though fireballs still floated around her just in case she needed them.
The infuriating woman appeared in front of us, "Not yet, this would only end when the rifts finally close. Husband must have done something to give us a break. As expected of husband to still be thinking about us at this time. "
Of course, Master is always so selfless…
He must still be locked in combat with that mysterious girl but yet Master still finds the time to worry about us.
If only I was just a little bit stronger, I could be at Master's side right now instead of dealing with these hindrances.
I turned to look at our followers who were clearly exhausted, "We'll probably only last for another hour or so, everyone else is too exhausted already."
"Have them fall back behind the city walls to rest, we'll have to give up the field to them and fight an extended siege," The woman suggested.
I was just about to agree with her when the number of rifts on the field doubled without warning.
"Everyone! Retreat behind the city walls!" I ordered, just as even more of the monsters came pouring out of the rifts.
My sisters and I did our best to hold back the tide but there were too many of them, the horde rushing up to consume our followers before they could even reach the gates.
Brendan had leapt into the throng with his men, using their own bodies to act as a shield wall to hold back the flood.
The wall held for about five seconds before a black wave of monsters overran their positions, each of them swarmed by dozens of those monsters all at once.
Eris slashed her sword out in an arc, disintegrating the swarm that was on top of Brendan's team and saving them from being consumed.
That only bought us another second as the gap was quickly filled up again, the men doing their best to hold them back.
Even with the rest of us desperately culling as many monsters as we could, the horde continued to grow while rushing towards our retreating lines. At this rate, we might need to give up on those outside the walls to be monster fodder.
That was when Manami suddenly froze and turned to me, "Lian Li… Elaria is coming."
"Elaria? What is she doing here? No, what can she even do here?" I asked incredulously.
"She said to look up."
I looked up and a hole seemed to tear itself open in the sky, not unlike the rifts the monsters were coming through except this one was blue in colour.
There was the roar of thunder before a large triangular shaped object came flying out of the rift, looking like a metallic wedge of some sort except it was large enough to cast a shadow over the field and the city.
"Dive coordinates confirmed, Planar jump successful," A monotonous voice echoed from the ship-like object.
That was followed by the unmistakably smug voice of Elaria, "Oh yeah!! I did it Onii-sama! OSSN Sun Destroyer is ready for business! All cannons commence independent targeting! Prepare all EXOs for drop!"
Master, your family truly is outrageous.
