"Shit!" Gabriel raised his rapier.
There were piles on both ends of the bridge. They stood still, waiting for the right moment to attack.
"Done!" Naomi said with a satisfied smile and closed his stat screen. "I put two points into my intelligence."
"Why did that take so long?!" Gabriel yelled.
"I had to think of every possibility! What if I run out of mana? I need Intelligence to raise my mana regeneration. But what if a spell requires too much time to cast? Well, I still need Intelligence to lower its cast time. Overall, I think I made the right choice."
"Wonderful!" Gabriel said mockingly. "Let's see how your Intelligence fares against a hundred enemies!"
"What…?"
Naomi looked around and noticed how one of the stone piles was closer than the last time he looked. He squinted to better see the stones and saw one of the rock monsters lick its lips with anticipation.
"Guehh!" Naomi recoiled. "What is that thing?"
"I don't know, but there are more than I can count and they want to eat us!"
"What?! What do we do now?"
"That's what I've been wondering…" Gabriel said, searching for a way out.
Both ends of the bridge were blocked. Chains were hanging from the bridges above, but they were too old to be used for climbing.
He needed to think outside of the box. Or rather, inside the box.
"Hey! Do you still have those slimeballs we earnt?"
Naomi gazed at him, confused. He opened his inventory and handed three slimeballs to Gabriel.
They were baseball-sized sticky goos. One would mistake them for children's toys, but under their membrane was an acid that could easily burn steel.
"These are all we have."
"Quite enough." Said Gabriel, before throwing one of the balls at the rock pile behind them.
The slime burst open as it struck the sharp stones and spilled its acid all over the rock monsters.
It seemed to not affect them at first. But after a few seconds, the monster cried out in pain one by one. They got up from the pile and ran around crazily, trying anything to get the burning acid off of themselves.
They had no arms to wipe off the goo. It burnt through their armor, then their flesh, until their insides looked like an overcooked soup.
Naomi watched in horror as Gabriel took another one of the slimes and threw it at a stone pile. Even if these monsters were not alive, the sight of their painful death made his stomach turn.
"It's not enough!" Gabriel said as he threw away their last remaining slime. "I slay ten of them and twenty more appear. Where do they come from? How are there so many?!"
Their situation was even worse than before. Four individual piles block the road on both sides, waiting for the two's options to run out.
Naomi summoned one of his mana potions. He chugged down the blue liquid and threw the bottle at the rock monsters.
"Enough is enough! I'm not going to die to some low-level eggs!"
The grimoire in his hand burst open. Naomi began drawing his hand in the air while murmuring something specific.
A blue circle appeared below one of the piles. It grew thicker, reaching below the monsters at that end of the bridge.
When the spell was fully cast, Naomi stomped forward and shouted its name.
"Whirling Sea!"
The ground below the stones liquified. The bridge turned into water that whirled around a center point, scattering the monsters and pulling them underwater.
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But that was not the end of this attack.
"Gabriel!" He glanced at the demon. "Defend my back while I prepare my next spell!"
The stone monsters on the other end of the bridge saw how their comrades fell. They did not waste any more time and charged straight towards the two heroes.
Gabriel grabbed his rapier with both hands and rushed towards the charging monsters. As they were just in hand's reach, Gabriel leaped into the air and aimed his weapon downwards.
The monsters followed him into the air. They shot out their long tongues and wrapped them around the demon's leg in an attempt to restrain him.
However, this is what Gabriel wanted.
Before he would have fallen to the ground, he stabbed his rapier through four of the rock monsters, impaling each on his weapon. When he hit the ground, he swiped his weapon around himself, pushing away all of the rock monsters.
The weapon in his hand was not a rapier anymore. With the four stone monsters impaled, he grabbed the handle with both hands and held it like a baseball bat.
"Come on!" He yelled as another wave of monsters approached. They were fast and sturdy, but weak against a bludgeoning weapon. Gabriel hit them like a professional baseball player, sending half of them down the depths of the mine.
"I'm ready!" Naomi yelled as he began casting another spell. "Watch this, Gabriel! What I'm about to show you is the fruit of creativity! Magic is an art and I am its Michelangelo!"
He put his hands together in the shape of a gun and a white crystal formed at his fingertips.
"The following spell is called 'Ice Shard'! It's a long-range projectile with a notable size and mana requirement! It's difficult to cast for a beginner like me, however, there is a catch written down in the book's description! Mana is used to summon the crystal and not to enhance it in size! That said, even a small crystal like this one bears an incredible amount of mana, all in that cramped space! Do you know what happens if I shot this into my 'Whirling Sea'? Do you?"
The crystal shot through the air like a sniper's bullet, hitting Whirlwind Sea right in the center. The shard broke apart, releasing all its pent-up mana into the water and freezing it!
"Grawr?!" The rock monsters growled in confusion as they lost the ability to move their limbs. Their shells froze with the ice, crippling them in place.
"This is the wonder of human creativity!" Naomi approached the frozen lake. "To create is to live! To live is to win! To win is further the human mind!"
Naomi stomped on the frozen lake, exploding it into a cloud of ice. The rock monsters caught within broke apart, dying as their bodies turned into a rain of ice.
Naomi did not step away. He embraced the rain of ice and watched as a cloud of pixels washed away the monsters' remains.
"So?" He turned around. "What do you think, Gabriel––"
Naomi caught his breath.
Gabriel was bleeding from multiple wounds. Even though he managed to fend off the monsters while Naomi cast his spell, it came at a cost.
Slowly, but he tired out. His movements slowed and he couldn't parry the monsters' attack like before.
Naomi quickly reached for his grimoire and began casting another spell. However, a message appeared before him.
[ Not enough MP ]
"Shit!" Naomi reached into his inventory to search for another mana potion.
Their supplies were running low and Gabriel had a hard time controlling his breathing. He was used to fighting multiple opponents, but this was just too much, even for an expert duelist like him.
One of the monsters jumped right at his face. Gabriel raised the improvised bat to defend himself and it would have been effective, were it not that the monster flew away with an arrow in its head.
"What…?"
Suddenly, a barrage of arrows rained down around him. The arrows pierced the monsters' shells and killed them with ease.
Coming from the arrows' direction, a powerful voice echoed throughout the mine.
"Fear not, young adventurers! Team Dynamite has come to the rescue!"