Chapter 252 - Covering The Bases (8)

After losing that many enemies and getting others injured, as well as being attacked by the orcs on the front lines, the goblins' army began to quickly fall apart. That was good for Luke and his friends since the fight got easier. However, it was also dangerous since it was only a matter of time before the orcs overlord noticed that something was amiss. So, Richter had to hurry up, but there was no sign of him succeeding on his task. Now and then, the fortress would tremble, so it was a sign that he was alive and kicking, though. Luke wondered what he should do... keep doing what he had planned and risk losing a strong ally or go and help.

"I knew this wasn't a good idea…" Rachel said.

"Even though you are older than him, you should put more faith in your brother," Amanda said. "Isn't he in the middle of his twenties? He can choose his own battles."

"Things aren't that simple…" Rachel said and then clenched her teeth. "Don't spread this, but while he is 25, he is also fifteen."

"What do you mean by that?" Amanda frowned.

"When we were young, our family suffered a car accident. At that time, Richter was only five," Rachel explained. "He ended up hitting his head and suffered great trauma that put him into a coma… he stayed like that for ten years."

Amanda stopped attacking for a second since that shocked her. Fortunately, the others didn't hear it. Otherwise, they would have stopped as well, and Luke would have been left in a very difficult situation. Still, she recovered soon enough to continue with her support. From what she saw, Amanda didn't notice anything weird with Richter. So staying in a coma for ten years was something that he completely recovered from. He only lacked some real-life experiences that most people would have during their youths.

While Amanda was getting worried over that, Luke was starting to get wounded many times in a row by the goblins. Now that they were losing the war against the orcs and they couldn't do anything about it, they decided to focus on the cause of that problem alone. While their frontline was being massacred, their backline was working to surround Luke. By sacrificing two or three at a time, they slowly surrounded him and attacked his back. Not even Rina and Shalia's support were helping him enough to deal with that.

So, Luke pointed his ax toward the opposite direction and then used Stinger to escape after splitting two goblins in two. After that, he created several water spears around himself, and then Shalia froze them. She already knew what to do since Luke only used Water Manipulation for a single reason.

When the Ice Spears began to fall, Luke grabbed them and immediately threw them toward the army in front of him. He also aimed at the orcs that were quickly approaching the backline of the goblins. At that point in time, it was unavoidable… but Luke had to go all out and wipe out both armies and then try to attack the remaining flying fortress.

"Come to think of it… I didn't get a quest to defeat those guys. I wonder why," Luke thought while he was seeing the region trembling due to his attacks.

Luke attacked like that for a while until he recovered all of his mana by gathering the potions that had been dropped. If he couldn't count on Richter to defeat the overlord on time, then he had to at least damage the second fortress to prevent it from moving away and possibly alerting the others. However, when he was about to use all his mana to create one heck of an ice spear, the first fortress trembled from head to toe and then completely went silent.

"Hmm?" Luke frowned.

"A powerful source of mana just disappeared," Shalia said. "It wasn't from that guy."

Although he was an ally, Shalia didn't even use Richter's name. Come to think of it, it was rare to see Shalia talking with anyone aside from Sylah or Danielle. It was fine in being focused, but Luke didn't want Shalia to become like Cresta and her friends. Nevertheless, after a while, Richter appeared. He was bleeding a lot, and his whole was falling apart, but at the same time, he could see that regenerating itself.

"It is done," Richter replied. "Let's attack the next fortress right now."

Luke wanted to ask how that armor worked, but it seemed that wasn't a good time. To make matters worse, the remaining fortress began to gain altitude quite fast… the overlord decided to abandon its minions and escape. Luke was left with two options, let that one escape or attack with all his might and end up warning the remaining overlords. In the end, putting some doubts in their minds was the best option… and for that to happen, he couldn't let that one escape, so he jumped toward it with all his might while he created a pillar of water. Shalia froze that in a single instant as well, and then Luke used Weapon Augmentation.

The massive pillar flew toward the flying fortress and hit it before it could become six pillars. The flying fortress was the size of a medium-sized city. Still, the pillars were two hundred meters long and hit its center several times in a row before exploding.

"It seems they didn't have time to use the Mana Shield…" Luke said while he watched many cracks appearing in the whole fortress.

The red crystal hadn't been destroyed. Luke could tell since the orcs were still alive. That being said, the flying fortress began to fall… Luke's friends began to run away since that was bound to create one hell of a shockwave.. However, before it could fall, something jumped from the fortress and then flew toward Luke at a fearsome speed and then grabbed by his neck and pulled him upward.