Of course, I had no other choice but to rise up at that point and hit the ball of lava with Oceans Maw. It stopped it, but just like the first time I hit that giant wall of lava with the skill, steam and the sound of boiling water filled the air. I didn’t have time to worry about that.

  They were still coming, and they were angry as shit, but my uncles and dad had already made it to the house, and I could hear one of them yelling that they got the book. Now the task was to make it home, but at the same time I couldn’t leave all these people out here for Rakeon to deal with when he exited the gauntlet dungeon.

  We needed to cull the numbers even a little bit. Thankfully, I adjusted the idea when one formed as I was dodging what looked to be little bullets of lava being shot in my direction from somewhere behind me.

  Ignoring that, I made it to the compound to find my father and uncles posted up with the book and weapons at the ready. They realized just as well as I did that there was no easy way of getting out of this. We were going to have to fight, but at least we accomplished one task before we had to do so.

  Thankfully for us, though, there was a river running through the compound right in front of the node, and there was nothing I needed better than a body of water right now. I jumped in it just in time for the first of the lava people to make it past the walls of the compound, and I immediately activated Crushing Descent once more as mana surged within me from being in the water.

  All the bastards who made it into the compound at that point were pretty much immobilized, but the strain came back, and this time it was stronger than ever, and I could immediately tell even if I had unlimited mana, I wouldn’t be able to hold them indefinitely.

  If they were resisting the use of the skill, then the resistance to it was only growing stronger the more time passed.

  Since I didn’t know how long I’d be able to hold them, this was the best chance we were going to get to eliminate as many of them as we could. The only problem was all of them weren’t trapped in the area of effect of my skill.

  Only some of them had actually made it into the compound and got near to us, while others lagged in the back and stopped themselves once they realized what happened. Now they were sending various attacks towards us of different shapes and sizes, but every single attack was made of lava.

  Whether it was balls, arrows, or just a giant vertical slash in the air, all of it was coming towards us.

  But we weren’t just standing here waiting for things to get better. My father and uncles, without needing any prompt from me, had dove into the fray. Although not every single one of them were immobilized, quite a few were. Unfortunately for them, they were easy prey for the members of my family, who could obviously move through the field of Crushing Descent.

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  Honestly, it was all a big mess, but without taking any casualties of our own, we managed to kill about fifteen of the twenty that were caught and immobilized. Then I had to turn off the skill.

  The other five had nearly broken free, and the strain I felt finally became too painful to justify using it any longer.

  I was practically threatening to be on my knees myself, and I was slowly losing the ability to dodge all the lava projectiles coming my way, so I deactivated it and went back into the water for just a few seconds before coming back out and joining the fray, this time in full.

  Not even ten of us against around thirty of them. The numbers did not look good, but if they thought they were the only ones with a proper ranged attack, they had another thing coming.

  Aqua Barrage!

  Water bullets formed around me and quickly shot out at the lava people as I danced around the battlefield, seeking to kill every single one of them I could. And of course, standing still and shooting at a moving target was hard enough.

  Doing it while moving myself was even harder, so I didn’t have a good hit rate against a lot of people.

  In fact, I think only two of the first dozen bullets that formed even connected, but the rest were all aimed in the general direction of the lava people, which forced them to dodge or move or attack differently, and all of that gave me room to swing my spear with conviction and the determination to kill.

  Things weren’t so bad at first, since most of them were kept at range, and we managed to kill a few of them that couldn’t necessarily fight back. But once we lost that hold on them and the rest of them joined in the battle, things very quickly began to tip in their favor.

  On average, they were stronger and faster than us. And to make matters worse, they weren’t using regular weapons. It was nothing but lava being thrown around, which made it harder for us to block, and we pretty much had to dodge any and everything that came our way.

  “Dad, on your left!”

  He turned just in time to see one of the red bastard throwing a punch covered in lava towards his head and he ducked before bringing his sword around to try and pierce him in his belly, but the man dodged.

  Unfortunately for him, the dodge was short lived as a bullet of water shot at the perfect time, sailed right into his head, knocking him off his feet and causing blood to be spill. Dad didn’t miss the chance and drove a sword through his skull.

  But despite that kill, and the best efforts of my family. We were losing.

  I was causing as much chaos as I could and being as problematic as I could possibly be, but I was failing to deliver any decisive killing blows as there were too many of them. Ocean’s Maw would definitely be able to reap a few lives, but not when they were spread out like this.

  At most I would spend a lot of mana, to kill one or two of them which wasn’t worth it.

  And just when I was getting ready to activate Crushing Descent once more, even if just to catch them off guard for a moment, the entire battlefield descended into darkness.

  It was like someone flipped a switch, and now I couldn’t see a single thing, my first instinct was to follow through with the activation of the skill, but I stopped myself as I realized where this probably came from.

  Rakeon.

  And if I wasn’t sure of that guess before, then I was sure as hell when I started to hear yelling in a language I couldn’t understand. Then very quickly that yelling of words I couldn’t understand turned into screaming of fear that defied any language barrier.

  It really is Rakeon.