Gacha Leveling

Chapter 197 - 58 – The Harp of Dagda 6

"Why didn’t they do it from the start?" Michael pondered looking as the pale woman descended from the sky onto the cultist camp."I think they wanted to keep it a secret." Vanessa responded. "They were hiding inside a burial mound. They brought a huge party inside the gate without Claudio knowing about it. But, now that we intervened, they don’t have any reason to hide anymore."

"How did they get in?" Paula pondered.

"They might have a Gravitomancer and teleported in." Michael said. "There are a lot of them."

"Do you think Matthew will be fine?" Cathbad asked them.

"He’s very powerful." Vanessa said. "But he’s reckless and there are a lot of them." She looked at him approaching their camp walking on his own.

"I did cast all my buffs on him. And he has that strange sword and the dragon armor." Paula noted.

At this moment, Ffyr flew high and made it rain fire over their camp, throwing fireballs from high up.

As the cultists gathered to try to hit her back, a party of them came to meet Matthew who was slowly approaching them.

At the same time Lumi flew in from the side sending freezing winds at the cultists who were rushing to organize themselves to fight Ffyr.

Matthew engaged the men in front of him shooting his gun enhanced with unholy fire bullets that were deflected by firewalls.

Matthew noticed that all the cultists had the same build. Impiomancer mixed with Pyromancer. As it was expected from a cult. They had a rigorous approach towards their belief system that reflected on their builds. Not even the military had such homogeneous builds.

Covered by his miasma, Matthew dodged the fireballs flying at him. He killed one of his attackers with a bullet to his head and then got near the others forcing them to stop using fire spells to not hit each other. They changed to their swords and engaged Matthew in close quarters.

Meanwhile, Ffyr and Lumi flew around causing chaos in the camp with their spells.

"Let’s move." Vanessa said, leading the others inside the camp taking advantage of the chaos caused by the attack.

Tylith stayed still while the others moved.

"You’re staying?" Michael asked her with a sweet tone.

"Y-yeah." She answered. He could hear the fear in her tone.

"Okay. Run if they come your way." He said, squeezing her hand, and then followed Vanessa, Paula and Cathbad.

Michael put an arrow in one cultist that tried to defend himself with a mana wall, but his arrow easily pierced it and exploded when embedded itself in the man’s chest.

Cathbad suddenly turned invisible while Vanessa stabbed another cultist on the back, killing him.

Paula looked around the floor while Michael and Vanessa kept sweeping in their camp. They were mostly kids. Younger than Matthew. They were powerful because they had demonic mana empowering them, but, as they couldn’t conjure flames like the older cultists, she concluded they weren’t above level 10.

They left their weakest on the flanks of their camp, meaning the true Impiomancers would be at the center, closer to the lake.

Matthew killed the last man who came to stop him, slashing off his head with Belial’s blade. It made no sense. Where was their Leader? Where was Valac? Why would they let their camp be attacked like that?

Lost in these thoughts, he failed to notice the blood of the dead gathering behind him in forming a summoning circle in midair.

Matthew was caught by surprise when an imp stabbed him on his back, his Sixth Sense skill was not enough to allow him to dodge before the little demon attacked.

However, the infernal iron of the imp’s dagger just glanced at Matthew’s armor not even scratching it.

Matthew quickly moved over his heels and cleft the imp in twain with Aym’s dagger cutting bone with the ease of butter.

Around him, hundreds of summoning circles appeared. All created from the blood of the ones laying dead. From each of them an imp appeared laughing armed with crude weaponry.

On Paula’s side was no different. They were now surrounded by imps, hundreds of them.

Paula raised a wall of ice around them, creating a barrier and holding the imps back. Next, she called Lumi to her side who came flying in with great speed and making rain sharp icicles that pierced the lesser demons’ skin.

Vanessa and Michael used the ice wall as cover to shoot their bullets and arrows on the charging imps.

Matthew summoned Ffyr to his side, he needed her spells to attack in a wide area and not allow the imps to surround him.

The fairy appeared in a flash of light and immediately blew away the small creatures with a gust of wind, giving Matthew space to shoot them down with his gun.

"This reminds me of the good old times." Ffyr joked.

"Good?" Matthew protested, using his Shadow Form skill to change the magazines of his guns without having to let go of them.

"You had a bit of fun, didn’t you?" Ffyr smiled at him.

"Sometimes." Matthew smiled back.

It was then that deep dark clouds covered the sky and from the highs a flash of light illuminated the lake in front of them. From the clouds, solid stairs made of light with the colors of the rainbow descended to the lake.

"We’re too late. They opened the way." Cathbad lamented, appearing before Vanessa and the other two.

"There’s still time." Vanessa exclaimed.

"It’s been just short past an hour." Paula protested. "The Tower will not arrive in time."

"We need to do something." Michael shouted while killing an imp with his sword that got over the ice wall around them.

From where they were, they could see a man dressed in thick red and gold robes carrying a staff with the head of a dromedary sculpted on the top of it and with a ruby in each eye of the animal.

By his side they could see Valac with her white wings spread wide.

Both started to climb the stairs.

At this moment, they saw a dark cloud of miasma plunge into the sky.

It was Ffyr carrying Matthew with her hands by his armor. He had both guns in his hands and rained unholy fire onto the man and the demoness shooting down with his guns.

The robed man simply raised a mana wall impeding his bullets from reaching him and Valac.

The man laughed, but too soon.

Ffyr then flung Matthew with a gust of wind at high speed at them. Matthew took out his swords and landed with a heavy impact on the cultist’s mana wall using Belial’s blade to strike down.

He felt the force of the impact shake his Vital Shield and the tremors to reverberate in his body. Despite that, the wall broke under the pressure of such a strike.

Valac smiled at Matthew and just took a step sideways crossing her arms suggestively.

The robed man reacted as soon as Matthew got to his feet. He blasted him with a fireball straight on his chest sending him flying backwards.

However, Matthew landed on his feet unharmed by the flames. His red dragon armor made him immune to fire as the beast that gave its scales to the armor.

The robed man gnarled at Matthew.

"Who are you?!"

"Matthew." He answered, taking a step forward slowly.

He was now surrounded by cultists holding swords and staves and wearing red robes. In front of him was the lake with the rainbow stairs coming out from its shallow waters.

"You’re from the Tower? The Church?" The robed man asked.

"Just an adventurer." Matthew breathed deeply and drank a mana potion.

He then used Identify on the man, but couldn’t see anything. He must’ve also had the Secrecy skill.

"Well, Matthew." The man sounded polite, but irritated. "I have somewhere else to be. Die now." He added, gesturing for his man to kill Matthew.

Matthew got ready for a difficult battle, but then he heard a horn. The horn blasted twice and then thrice.

They all looked up to see what was happening.

Matthew saw a familiar visage on the top of the stairs. With dark flames instead of a head and riding a dark horse who snorted unholy fire, it was a Dullahan. This one was not wearing heavy armor as the one he fought before. He was wearing a green linen shirt, red pants, a red cloak and iron chain mail. The undead carried a spear resting against his horse and a wooden round shield with blue spirals painted on it in his left hand. It had a sword sheathed in his belt and a big horn shaped as a dragon in his other hand.

It put the horn in its flames and, as the flames seemed to grow like being fanned, the horn blew loudly.

Vanessa and the others looked at the sight of the undead horseman with awe.

"What is going on?" Paula asked out loud to anyone in particular.

"Is that... Goltraige?" Cathbad said, surprised.