I Received System to Become Dragonborn-Chapter 859: Carved A Path

Meaenwhile on the other sidee Darel's party was beginning to falter.

Unlike Jan's group, they had no healer to mend wounds or shields to deflect sudden strikes. What injuries they took they just carried it forward. What blood they lost it stayed lost. And the grey tide was merciless.

Kael was the first to fall. He had just incinerated a cluster of humanoids when a serpent-lion lunged from the smoke behind him. No one saw it until it was too late.

Its jaws closed around his torso and dragged him screaming into the fog, his flames sputtering out with him.

Lira tried to turn her bow while screaming Kael's name but in that hesitation a clawed humanoid lunged and slammed her to the ground.

She loosed one last desperate arrow right into its throat but too late to save herself. The creature's talons tore through her leather armor and ended her.

Varn's roar of rage was deafening. He charged, axes flying, blood and mist soaking his arms as he hacked through anything in reach. But his shoulders and thigh were already gashed open. He bled heavily, his steps slowing as more creatures pressed in, attracted by the sound.

The seventh member, one of the younger fighter with a mace, tried to back him up but a flying beast snatched him mid-strike, lifting him into the fog before slamming him down with a sickening crunch.

Then there were just four.

Darel fought like a possessed man. He had stopped speaking and giving order when screams after screams can be herd. He only breathing, moving, and cutting.

His sword left a trail of gore in the air. But even he was limping, blood matting his armor. The fog clung to him like a shroud.

Beside him, Yara still able to stood firm. Her gauntlets sparked with Magic as she struck and countered, blasting a creature away with a shockwave before flipping over another and crushing its skull with her heel.

Her hair was half cut. Her face smeared with blood but her eyes burned with fury and she gritted her teeth in a snarl.

The fourth survivor who is another sword-wielder managed to last a few moments longer before he was also overwhelmed.

A giant grey brute crashed into him from the side, slamming him into a jagged stone and ending him with a grotesque crunch.

Now only three remained alive, barely. Darel, Yara, and Varn.

They formed a tight triangle, backs together, surrounded on all sides. Darel's breathing was ragged. Yara's left arm hung uselessly after a creature clawed too deep for it to function. Varn stumbled every other step now with his one eye swelling shut.

"I don't think we're getting out," Varn growled, voice low.

"We are," Darel snarled, eyes scanning the mist. "We are! Hold!"

Yara didn't speak. She just raised her remaining gauntlet and cast another blast of wind to knock back a group of creeping humanoids.

In the near distance, Esther's glow was rising brighter like a barely restrained inferno.

But for Darel's party, time was slipping through blood-slicked fingers. More shadows moved and more roars came from all sides.

Esther's eyes snapped open.

"I'm ready." Her voice cutting through the clamor like a knife.

"Shoot it!" Jan shouted without hesitation.

Esther raised her staff, her arm trembling from the strain. The staff blinked with a deep orange light, pulsing like a living heart. A rhythmic thrum of fire Magic building with terrifying momentum. The air around her rippled from the power. Then it released.

A low, thunderous hum reverberated through the battlefield as a shockwave of red and orange light exploded outward. Not with fire or heat or with chaotic flames but with precision. The wave surged across the battlefield, silent at first then the result came.

All at once, the grey creatures within a hundred-meter radius jerked and twitched. Their movements stuttered and stopped as if something deep inside had shattered.

Then came the burning.

From within their bodies flames erupted. Not through skin, mouths or wounds but inside, burning from their cores. Bones cracked under the strain, flesh liquefied, and their terrible green eyes bubbled and melted, leaking down their sockets like wax from candles.

They didn't scream because they couldn't. Their throats were the first things to char.

The monsters around Jan and Darel's parties began to drop from internal destruction. They burned silently and melted into smoking heaps where they stood.

The field around them went eerily still for a heartbeat.

Jan didn't wait. "Run! Now!"

The words cracked like a whip. His party moved instantly, falling into motion without breaking stride as they bolted through the thinning fog.

On the other side, Darel's bloodied eyes widened as he saw the monsters dying. The ones surrounding him halted, green eyes fizzing into sludge.

Then he saw Jan's party running.

"Move with them! Go!" he barked.

Varn didn't argue. Despite his wounds, he gritted his teeth and stumbled forward. Yara gave one last look over her shoulder, then followed, half-dragging her limp arm as they ran after the only remaining path of escape.

Behind them, the fog churned again. More silhouettes were forming.

But for now they had a path. Esther's fire had opened a way.

Then, just as the last footfalls of the fleeing adventurers faded into the fog, something stepped through the lingering smoke.

It was the humanoid grey creature with two green eyes. Black lines carved across its skin, like scorched veins or ancient runes.

It watched the trail of burning corpses smoldering in silence.

Then it saw Yara.

The creature's eyes narrowed, following her silhouette as it vanished into the haze.

Its lips parted into a smile that looks too human.

There was an amusement in it. The faint curl of someone watching insects scramble from a spilled jar.

"How funny they run." The thought bloomed in its mind.

It tilted its head. The black lines across its arms start to pulsed in quiet rhythm. Then it turned and vanishing back into the mist.

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