Chapter 257: Dealing with Some Monsters

It would seem that they weren’t the only ones who had sensed it. There was a signal to halt all of the wagons resounding throughout the caravan.

All of the wagons swiftly came to a stop and as they did, everyone except for the merchants got out of the wagon. Matt’s entire team had taken their weapons out and prepared their equipment very quickly, jumping out of the wagon with serious faces. The previous joking atmosphere was no longer present.

Julius was not surprised to see that all the other teams were filing out of their wagons as well. There were a couple dozen fighters who were participating in this mission, quite a large number for a simple escort mission.

He turned to look back in the direction he had felt the surge of aura.

The first thing his mind assumed was that this was the Conclave making a move on them. But after a minute, he realized that it would be silly if they announced their presence this easily.

Furthermore, the auras he sensed did not feel particularly well controlled. This made him believe it was some sort of group of monsters instead.

“You don’t have to worry,” Stephanie said to him reassuringly. “It’s probably just a random group of monsters who sensed all of us.”

Beck gave him a pat on the shoulder, the time spent in the wagon talking seemed to make Beck much more friendly. “It’s pretty common to see if this area. A lot of monsters like to roam these parts. That’s why having an escort is important. Don’t feel bad about hanging back to see how the other teams deal with them. We probably won’t even have a chance to fight unless the mages miss everything,” he said with a laugh.

Julius didn’t try and argue with the man. He was more than fine with staying back and allowing the rest of the people to handle this. His mission was to fight the Conclave, not some random monsters. Although the battle-crazy part of him really wanted to test out his new body enhancement skill and he had to cram that part of him back down into its hidey-hole.

It wasn’t time for it to play just yet.

“Stephanie! Take Pamela and go help the other mages,” Matt ordered calmly while pointing at the area where some of the other team’s mages were congregating.

“See? What did I say? This is the best part about having mages on your team. You can just sit back and let them do all of the work,” Beck whispered to him as Stephanie and her teammate jogged off to the other group of mages.

“You can go along with them too Beck if you are going to keep on talking,” Matt warned the man.

The man held his hands up pleadingly. “I’m good. You know that I don’t really have many options for long range attacks. I would just be wasting mana.”

“That’s why you should go, perhaps it would be good practice for you. Your [Firebolt] could use a lot of work anyway.”

Julius stifled a laugh as the man visibly deflated at the statement. “You didn’t need to bring that up,” the bearded man said depressingly.

“Well then be quiet and pay attention in case they need us,” Matt told him.

Interestingly, it worked and Beck no longer said anything else.

Soon after, he managed to get a good visual of the monsters that were coming toward them.

There was a surprisingly large number of them. At least several dozen monsters were running on four limbs. If he had to guess, he would say that they were some sort of canine monster around the size of a large human.

These monsters also had light green fur which helped them blend into the tall grass that surrounded the area. From what he could tell from this distance, there wasn’t any monster above Tier 3. But it was also too soon to tell.

Julius watched as the assembled mages lined up and faced the incoming monsters.

At this point, the monsters were full-on running at them now and were impressively fast.

However, that made little difference to the mages as a large number of attacks were released toward the monsters in a dense stream of multi-colored light.

He watched in awe as the entire horde was torn apart with brutal efficiency. The first attacks to make contact were several large-area spells.

A large blast of frost was detonated from the center of the group, covering a significant portion of them with ice. The following large area attack was a bomb that released some sort of black misty substance. This substance floated in the air and was absorbed into the monsters’ bodies.

Honestly, just these two attacks might have been enough on their own. The frost caused significant damage and also managed to slow down the monsters by a lot. Then the black substance was even more insidious.

Whatever skill it was, it was terrifying to see. The black flecks literally ate away the skin of the monsters and rapidly grew like some sort of infection. Until finally, the monster’s flesh was gone like it was dumped in a vat of acid.

The following salvo just took care of the stragglers.

“I see Pamela’s acid attacks are just as scary as ever,” Julius heard Beck mutter. And he had to agree with the man. Seeing that black mist of acid corrode the monster’s flesh was not a pretty sight.

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George, the man who had been with Stephanie when she met Julius heard him and commented too. “For such a sweet woman, she has some very evil abilities.”

“I know, but we should just be glad that she’s not evil. Otherwise, that would be a much more terrifying thing to imagine,” Matt added with a happy smile.

***

The cleanup and departure went off without a hitch. It was done with extreme precision and he could tell was something that was only possible due to their experience.

All of the monsters were broken down for their materials or what was left of them anyway. And most importantly their cores. These cores were then distributed evenly throughout the mages who participated.