Chapter 420 - In Trouble

The battle continued for hours and the monsters didn't let up. With how many monsters were felled by the humans, more would just come rushing over due to the large commotion and continue attacking them.

After the first hour of battle, many in the group were exhausted and by the time two hours had passed, there were already some injured fighters being brought to the priests in the center of the formation.

What's worse was that some monsters were able to take advantage of the exhausted fighters to pierce through the line of defense to attack the people behind them. Luckily, Ren and his fellow sharpshooters were able to quickly deal with the monsters that had broken through their defenses.

Their swift actions led to fewer injuries, but as time passed by, the injuries began turning into casualties. With more and more people dying or being injured, their ranks slowly dwindled in number and they began getting pushed back by the monsters.

Slowly, fear and despair began creeping into the hearts of the remaining humans who were still fighting. There was no way to escape with the dense amount of monsters rushing at them from all directions.

The Empire's forces had it worst since the SS-ranked Blaze Foxes were focused on them. Ren and all the other long-ranged attackers did their best to assist, but there were just too many monsters.

Cecilia was keeping a constant eye on her sister and was ready to quickly come to her aid. She didn't want her sister to experience the tragic fate that she had seen in her future vision.

"Celes! Get back, you're almost out of mana, stay behind and recover for a bit!" Cecilia sprinted over to her sister after noticing that she was slowly getting paler by the second.

It was obvious from a glance that she was over drafting her mana.

Celestina turned to her sister and quickly shook her head, "N-no, you go back and quickly heal anyone that's injured."

"Celes!"

"You don't see any other mages around me trying to take a break, do you?!"

"B-but..."

"Just go, I'll take care of myself!"

Before Cecilia could say anymore, the people behind her sister were suddenly thrown up in the air and a large monster appeared just behind Celestina. Cecilia widened her eyes in horror when she saw the monster bearing down on her sister.

"NO!"

Cecilia tried to jump forward and push her sister away, but before the monster could even bite down on Celestina, its body was suddenly shoved away by an explosion which was then followed by a shower of laser beams from the sky.

"E-eh?!"

Celestina quickly turned around and she saw Ren aiming his rifle at the monster that was just blown away and then killed. The large explosion from earlier was from Ren using his rifle's explosion option and the shower of lasers which came after was also from him after he switched the firing mode of his rifle to the rapid-fire laser option.

This option wasn't something he wanted to use a lot because the mana drained from firing just one burst was quite taxing on his body. Ren's face immediately paled after using the rapid-fire option so he immediately pulled out a crystal from his spatial ring, crushed, and quickly recovered his mana.

The crystal was actually the new Elemental Mana Battery that he and his Master had created after they settled down in the Silvaria Kingdom and gained access to an abundant amount of rare materials.

Ren always kept an abundance of these with him because of the magi-tech rifle's mana consumption which was a huge setback and burden for him.

He knew that his cultivation was severely lacking and since the guns he used drained quite a bit of his mana, he always kept the Elemental Mana Batteries with him so that he could quickly recover his mana if he was ever in a situation where he direly needed mana, like the one he was currently in.

Unlike the Mana Potion which acted as a catalyst that would attract and pull the ambient mana in the surroundings into the user's body as a means of recovery, the Elemental Mana Battery was instantaneous.

A mana potion needed time to recover a person's mana since the user's body had to filter the ambient mana in accordance to their dominant elemental affinity, which was frankly, quite long. Only the higher level mana potions would be able to hasten this process but even then, it would still lose out to the Elemental Mana Battery's instantaneous recovery.

This was because the mana inside the battery was already of an element due to its vessel, the elemental crystal. As long as someone used an Elemental Mana Battery which corresponds to their elemental affinity, it was possible for the person to quickly recover their mana by using the batteries.

Before, Cecil and Ren would make non-attributed mana batteries because the materials they were using at the time weren't the rare materials found in the Silvaria Kingdom's mines. Once the rare elemental crystals were found in abundance, the two had the bright idea of making mana batteries with elements for normal people like Ren, Quinn, Yuna, and Cecil's wives, Lucia and Serilla.

On one hand, it was easier for Ren and everyone else to manufacture the new batteries because the elemental crystal already held an abundance of elemental mana inside them. The only thing Ren and any future artificer from the kingdom needed to do was to inscribe the unique runic formation that enabled the user to absorb the mana from the crystals onto the crystals.

It was really simple and only the runic formation was what made the whole process complicated. If given enough time and crystals, Ren would be able to inscribe the runic formations onto 50 crystals per day.

Once Ren regained his mana, he quickly turned around and began firing at the monsters that had broken through their ranks. He took notice of Celestina's mana deficiency so while he was attacking he quickly asked, "What's your mana element?"

"Huh?"

"Tell me what your mana element is!"

"I-it's water!"

"Water? Crap, I'm fire..."

Once all of the monsters who were lucky enough to break through their ranks were taken care of, Ren immediately began rummaging through his spatial ring and soon he pulled out a sleek-looking pen and a blue crystal.

"Wait a bit. I'll give you something to recover your mana!"

Ren tuned out the noise in his surroundings and with extreme focus, started inscribing the runic battery formation on the crystal. It took him about 10 minutes to finish the inscription and he inspected it for a moment before tossing it over to Celestina.

'Phew, I broke my 30-minute record...' Ren proudly thought. The corners of his lips couldn't help but raise a little, but after seeing the confused look on Celestina's face Ren immediately explained.

"Crush it. The mana inside the crystal will flow into you and it'll quickly recover your mana."

"O-okay!" Celestina said before immediately crushing the crystal.

Once she did, she immediately felt a large surge of mana gush into her and her mana levels were quickly restored.

"W-wow!"

"I have fire batteries in abundance, but other elements I don't have much of. I'll create a few more, use them sparingly," Ren said before he took out 3 more water crystals and began inscribing the runic arrays on them.

It took him quite a long while and Celestina was getting a little antsy, however, Cecilia didn't let her go back to support the frontlines just yet. Cecilia was still shocked that she had nearly lost her sister earlier. If it wasn't for Ren, then her sister may have just died now.

Cecilia had Celestina waited for Ren to finish the mana-restoring items before she let her go back to support the frontlines.

"Ren, do you have any more of those? I'm sure a few of our mages could use some!" Celestina said after receiving the Mana Batteries from Ren.

Ren looked a bit exhausted from focusing too much. He pulled out a few random batteries from his spatial ring and handed them to Celestina.

"The elements correspond with the colors, red is fire, blue is water, green is wind, and yellow is earth."

"Okay, th-there's not much of the other elements besides fire, huh?"

"...I'm a fire element myself so I have plenty of those. I don't need the others so I don't have much of them..."

"It's alright, thanks, Ren!"

"Y-yeah... but please tell Karen or any of the leaders this, we'll die if we continue staying here and fighting the monsters. There's a nearly endless amount of them. We'll only exhaust ourselves and our casualties will continue to pile up..."

"...I'll go tell them."

"Everyone's too focused on the battle. The most important thing is to figure out how to get out of here..."

"..."

"Dammit, if only my MID was inside my ring! I would have been able to call Master and—"

"Ah, that's right!" Celestina remembered something after hearing Ren's words. She sifted through her spatial ring and immediately pulled out the MID that her younger brother-in-law had handed to her on the day they met at the starting area.

Ren saw the MID and his expression lightened up.

"T-that's—"

"It's something brother-in-law handed me in the starting area of the trial. I almost forgot I had this!"

"Q-quick, call him and tell him that we're in trouble!" Ren urgently exclaimed.

"Right!"

*****

Back to where Cecil was at by the pond, another grueling battle was currently taking place. The Baphamet Clan members who were blocked by Cecil's barrier had no choice but to stand their grounds and fight against the Crimson Blade Foxes.

They were in a rather dire situation now after a few hours of fighting, but Cecil was impressed that they could last so long against the SS-ranked monsters. They had even managed to kill 2 of them.

They were in dire straits right now only because they were all exhausted from the long fight.

Cecil was only waiting for them to properly ask for help before he stepped in and made a move. However, even after so long, they didn't utter even one word of the sort. They just ardently chose to fight against the monsters despite them piling up on injuries and casualties.

"Heh~ they sure have spirit... I wonder what kingdom these guys belong to?" Before Cecil could contemplate any further, he pulled out his MID and saw that someone was trying to call him.

"...Is it Celestina?" He picked up the call and immediately a familiar voice was heard.

"B-brother-in-law?!"

"Yes, it's me. Please don't yell. I can hear you loud and clear."

On the other side, Celestina immediately heaved a sigh of relief after hearing Cecil's voice.

"Brother-in-law...w-we're in trouble."

"Do you need my help?"

"Yes! We're going to be overrun by monsters at any minute now!"

"Huh?"

"We've been fighting for almost half a day! The Empire's people had suddenly come and—"

"Never mind that, where are you guys right now?" Cecil asked. He took down the barrier and without batting an eye towards the monsters and the Baphamet Clan members, he immediately took to the skies.

"U-uhm..."

"Can you tell me a landmark or give me a signal—"

Before Cecil could finish saying anything, a long stream of lasers broke through the forest from the west of his position.

"Okay, I see you."

"Huh?"

Cecil ended the call and immediately flew fast towards the location where the laser beams came from.