"I'm sorry." The man gave her a deep bow. "I contacted central command for reinforcements the moment the sentinel spotted the monsters, but the army is spread thin. "The situation in Thrud's former regions is highly volatile and we can't afford to withdraw troops. We have just a skeleton crew in Ne'sra because it's supposed to be a safe area. By the time the reserve troops get here from Valeron, it will be too late." "Then we'll have to make do." Solus nodded. "Mage Palaar, please go relay my instructions to the city guards and the rest of the mages. They won't trust me whereas, with your seniority and reputation, they will listen to you." The Head Healer nodded, glad that the young mage had asked instead of ordering her. It saved Palaar a lot of face and made her role seem much more important than it actually was. "Thanks, Great Mage Verhen." The Healer gave Solus a deep bow. "You heard her, mages of the Kingdom. I order you to perform your duty and I forbid you to die. We already have too much to do in the field hospital and if you dump your work on me, I'll kick your ass!" Some of the veteran mages chuckled, others just smiled at the joke, while the youngest among them were so tense that they seemed to be about to faint at any moment. As the mages fanned out and approached the monster horde as fast as they could, Solus offered Nyka a copy of the Fury. "Don't worry. I have everything I need with me." The Vampire rapped over her chest, where Dawn's crystal was. Then, she turned around and bolted toward the rear guard of the monster horde at breakneck speed. "Don't worry about me." Tista said. "Worst case scenario, I can grow bigger and these cuties will still fit like a glove." She wore the enchanted Adamant claws, Sunder, and charged at the frontlines, breaking through them with a barrage of magical fire and Origin Flames. Tista breathed them from her mouth but took care of disguising them among her spells. She wanted to avoid shapeshifting exactly because they were in a friendly territory. Everyone had heard about the Tiamat bloodline but they had a hard time believing that Tista was not human until they saw it with their own eyes. Another of the oddities caused by the War of the Griffons was that while in Thrud's regions, beasts were respected and considered to be equal to humans, in the rest of the Kingdom they were now feared. 'How do we do this?' Nyka asked. 'You start.' Dawn telepathically shrugged. 'You can use some experience whereas these guys are too weak for me. When you get overwhelmed, we can switch.' 'You mean, *if* I get overwhelmed, right?' 'I know what I said, kid. Now stop yapping and get to work.' Dawn inhaled sharply. Nyka clenched her war mace in frustration and dive bombed to the ground like a small Adamant meteor. Her Nightshade armor covered her from head to toe not only to protect her from incoming attacks but also to hide Dawn's presence in case they needed to switch bodies. 'I wish I could use my mace. Too bad that Trolls heal so quickly that physical wounds don't matter and if I splatter them, I'll end up increasing their numbers.' She thought. All Vampires were naturally attuned to air and darkness but they were as useless as her weapon. Air blades would cut the Trolls and create a new one from every fragment, lightning would do little damage, and darkness would make them more dangerous by temporarily undoing their fallen state. It was an ironclad rule to never use darkness against Trolls unless one had a death wish. Luckily for her, after Awakening, Nyka had also developed an affinity toward the fire element. A tier four Flaming Tornado erupted from each of her hands as she spun on her point of impact, engulfing the monster within twenty meters from her. Even without Nightshade, Nyka would have been immune to the natural fire that spread from the burning mass of Trolls. Their dried-up skin was highly flammable so the more they flailed in the attempt to put the fire off, the more it spread among their ranks. 'Wait a second, something is off.' Nyka thought as despite the flames, the Trolls kept recklessly charging at her. Those who were still burning sniffed the air with a hunger that she knew all too well, straightening their lanky bodies before emitting an ear-piercing shriek from the many mouths all over their limbs. The nearby Trolls did the same in what the Vampire recognized as a pack-hunt signal. Half of the white tide of Decay turned their backs to Ne'sra and charged at Nyka as one. She punched and kicked those who came in too close despite her spells, sending them crashing into their companions and keeping the swarm of hands at bay. From the sky, the mages of Ne'sra followed Solus' instructions and rejoiced at the results of their efforts. Hundreds of Trolls were already dead and the mages had yet to suffer a single wound, making the numerical disadvantage null. "Something is really wrong here." Solus took over part of the mana geyser below the city to fuel her abilities and conjure the Eyes of Menadion without compromising her already dwindling strength. Ne'sra's arrays were only partly operational, leaving her enough to fuel the tower. They Eyes could see as far as a Phoenix and read the flow of mana like a Dragon yet nothing they showed made sense. The Trolls were dying much more slowly than they were supposed to and some of them were even countering the flames. According to the Eyes' readings, it was just Tier zero light magic to hasten their healing even further and darkness magic to weaken the flames once they ran out of mana and turned into natural fire. 'Since when can Troll use any kind of magic, let alone darkness?' Solus thought. 'Also, I've never seen them have any form of organization. When the food starts to get scarce, they even cannibalize the weakest members of their tribe. 'How can they stage a clumsy but still coordinated attack on Nyka?' The Vampire was asking herself the same questions but she had no time to waste with hypotheses. She took flight to escape the white tide when a pale hand grabbed her right ankle. It would have been easy for her to escape with a kick if not for the mouth on the palm biting at the Adamant of her armor like a second grip. Another hand grabbed her left foot while many others in turn grabbed the Trolls that were holding her until their collective weight dragged Nyka back into the scrum. The Trolls bit at her from every side, uncaring for the broken teeth. They had many mouths all over their bodies and their fangs started to regenerate the moment they were damaged. More and more monsters piled onto Nyka, darkening the sun until the only noise she could hear was the gnawing at her armor. A human would have fallen into panic and despite being a Vampire, Nyka felt almost the same way.