Boulders tumbled overhead, barely visible against the darkness of the sky.
They slammed into the approaching horde.
The demons kept charging uphill, even as dozens of them were crushed beneath the tumbling rocks.
Their war cries grew in intensity.
More demons collapsed on the front lines, ballista bolts sticking out from their chests and heads.
Their brethren trampled them.
The automaton ballistae let out an endless series of thunks and plinks as they fired their stream of bolts.
Their mechanisms whirred noisily as they reloaded.
Larger ballista bolts soared over the wall and into the enemy, spearing several demons at once.
"More of them," Sen gasped.
Another mass of demons spilled out of the portal.
The tear in reality fluctuated wildly but emitted no light onto the volcanic rock surrounding it.
The new demons wasted no time in summoning their weapons and joining the reckless charge toward the keep.
"Don’t worry about their reinforcements. Just cast," August said.
"Fei, pick a group of demons and stall them. But don’t let them surround you."
"Eh? I can charge into that?" Fei pointed between herself and the hundreds of demons still unharmed by the onslaught of catapults and ballistae.
"They’re only regular demons. You’re a monogem Champion now. Take your sapphire out for a whirl." August ruffled her hair.
She stared at him for several moments.
Then her tail tocked once.
She nodded and leaped down from the wall.
Her reckless charge toward the demons kicked up a trail of dust.
Next to August, Sen ignored Fei and instead focused on her spellcasting.
A pair of triangles hovered in front of her palms.
Two massive orbs of fire appeared in front of each hand, each as wide as August was tall.
No, not fire. Lava.
The surfaces of the orbs swam with molten rock, and their interiors were more liquid than fiery.
Sen pumped her arms back and forth in a single motion and let out a "Hah!"
The orbs of lava flew across the battlefield.
Flames burst out from where they landed, and demons exploded into fiery glory.
The lava orbs bounced.
A trail of lava dripped from them, igniting demons below the orbs.
With each bounce, more demons melted and collapsed to ground as a pile of burning ash.
The beasts fled from the lava oozing along the ground, fearing it.
Their charge split along the path of each orb and faltered briefly.
Boulders crashed into them.
More demons went down.
For a few brief moments, the demonic assault stumbled.
Then a roar went up from the rear lines.
It rippled along the horde.
Soon all the demons waved their weapons in the air, their mouths wide open and bellowing their strange language.
They charged forward.
Sen held a fist in the air.
A pair of squares glowed around it.
She cast her fist down.
A meteor turned half of the demons into a smoking crater.
Bodies flew.
Many of them crashed into the cliffs and some were speared on jagged rocks.
Some demons tried to crawl from the crater, their bodies still working despite missing limbs or entire chunks of flesh.
Hundreds more demons spilled forth from the portal, replacing the losses almost instantly.
"Is this normal?" Sen asked.
She held her hands together, a single square appearing in front of her.
"Look at how many you’re blowing apart," August said.
"If this wasn’t normal, do you think we’d need trigem or duogem Champions?"
Sen grimaced.
"Goddess. How long will this go on for?"
"This wave? Maybe fifteen minutes. The whole invasion? Hopefully just two waves. Maybe three," August replied.
He didn’t mention that this portal felt wrong to him.
The actual demonic assault had yet to surprise him, but he disliked the intensity of the portal itself.
Sen’s spell activated and a jet of flame gushed forth.
Every demon it touched melted, their bodies blackening instantly.
"I can’t believe how little magic resistance they have," Sen mumbled.
"I told you that lower rank spells would be your bread and butter. Stick to them. You’ll need to do this for a while."
On the left flank, Fei made contact with her prey.
She grinned and drew her scimitar.
The demons screeched at her.
A moment later, their screeches transformed into screams of panic and pain.
Blue flames ate at their flesh, armor, and weapons.
Fei darted into the mob of beasts, cutting a path through the hulking monsters.
Those same blue flames wreathed her scimitar and coated her entire body.
When her sword touched a demon, it melted its flesh as if it were butter.
Molten droplets of red and black goo pooled on the ground behind Fei.
The demons collapsed into pieces.
The flames around her body melted weapons before they struck her.
Fists and entire arms liquefied like candle wax.
Fei spun through the demons at top speed, whirling around with her sword.
Her eyes glimmered, and she suppressed an obvious desire to laugh.
August watched as the demons recoiled in fear.
They tried to give her wide berth, but she danced up to them in the blink of an eye.
The entire left flank became her playground.
The panicking demons barely noticed the boulders and ballista bolts raining down on them.
Hopefully, she didn’t get in over her head.
She was using her flames at full intensity.
Every swing of her scimitar sent embers flying across the battlefield that could turn a demon into a candle.
She was effectively invincible against demons this weak.
But the moment she ran out of power in her gem, she’d be crushed by the horde within moments.
August surveyed the battlefield.
The demons slowly pushed forward despite his efforts.
Countless more monsters pressed the hesitant front ranks forward, like lemmings pushing their brethren over a cliff and to their deaths.
Except these lemmings might have enough numbers to fill in the chasm beneath the cliff with corpses, thereby making the cliff safe.
The demonic horde appeared to be limitless in number.
Leaping over the wall, August drew his sword.
A green square shimmered over his hand.
He slashed the air.
A hundred meters away, the front rank of demons was sliced in two.
Those behind shoved the dismembered bodies out of the way.
They charged forward, their bestial faces twisted in fury.
August darted forward.
His sword and free hand glowed.
The demons stood only meters in front of him.
He flung his hands out and unleashed two blasts of wind.
Armor shattered, horns crumbled, faces fell in on themselves, and a mass of demons crashed into one another.
Despite the show of power, August quickly found himself surrounded.
The demons kept their distance but shuffled around him in a circle.
Explosions and bursts of flame disintegrated masses of demons nearby, and blue fire licked up in the distance.
Holding his fist up, August cast a supercharged fourth rank spell.
The demons stared at his upraised hand for a moment.
Then they bellowed and charged.
Did they even understand what he was doing?
August didn’t know or care.
Before they reached him, he unleashed his spell by opening his fist into a palm.
Countless blades of wind turned every demon close to him into a gory mess.
August lowered his hand and scanned the battlefield.
Nothing had changed, he realized.
More and more demons poured forward.
He needed a better way to hold them off.