It wasn’t long before the rest of the monster horde still noticed their presence. The stone-controlling ants paid no heed to them – they continued swarming the wall, where the defenders desperately tried to fight them off. The nearest Vinebears proved to be the most immediate threat. Several of them broken off from the wall entirely, and whirled towards the group with hungry expressions. Allira started singing of a lost city, and of rocks that fell from the sky as an army ruined everything bright and happy in the world. The air around them rippled, and buildings and corpses started to appear in the midst of the battlefield. Children and adults huddled in broken buildings, as Sigmusi Mages rained death upon the town from outside the walls. The vinebears seemed stunned by the disappearance of the natural plant life in the area – and much to Alice’s surprise, some of the started to retreat. This wasn’t behavior that she was used to. Most monsters simply charged until they were dead. For a moment, Alice was relieved. If the monsters started fleeing from this battlefield, it would be a good enough outcome. The city would be saved, and the group would be free to continue on their journey. However, it only took a few moments for her to realize she had been too optimistic. The Vinebears were fleeing from the battlefield. They were just regrouping. The Vinebears had clearly realized that Allira’s illusion nullified their strongest weapon, so they were trying to find a way to get their advantage back. A moment later, the first Vinebear awkwardly clambered over to one of the non-illusory ruined houses. Then, as if it were an Olympic champion winding up, it grabbed one of the rocks and awkwardly threw it at the group. A moment later, one of Ethan’s shrapnel pieces ripped through its throat, killing it instantly. Alice resisted the urge to swear. The damn creatures hadn’t even used a Perk, but they had somehow figured out a way to counter Allira’s illusions. Luckily, it meant almost nothing to the group. The moment the rock was close enough, Alice reached out with a magic tendril and stopped the rock. It was surprisingly difficult – while bears didn’t have thumbs, making their grip on the stones awkward, their limbs had an awful lot of power behind them. That meant she needed to sink a lot of mana into the rock to stop its motion again. Alice also noticed a small cluster of moss on the side of the rock that felt oddly… sticky. That was not good. The group was barely holding on as-is. If the stone ants joined the fray, Alice wasn’t sure if they would be able to survive. At best, they might be forced to retreat, and at worst, the group might actually die. Just as Alice started sweating, a giant maw made of shadows suddenly tore out of one of the ruined buildings in Allira’s illusory city. It grinned at one of the densest clusters of stone ants, before it surged forwards and snapped shut with a resounding crunch. The sound had an unnerving note of finality to it. Just like that, nearly a third of the stone ants that had been heading towards them died. The remaining stone ants froze in their tracks, before they eyed Ethan’s group more warily than before. More importantly, they stopped moving to reinforce the birds and the bears. Alice glanced at Allira, and saw that the Immortal of Song and Shadow was panting heavily as she eyed their surroundings. Clearly, the shadowy maw, as well as maintaining the illusory city, had taken a lot out of her. Allira noticed Alice glancing at her, and she gave Alice a strained smile. “Don’t worry, I’m not out of Perks quite yet. That one is just unusually exhausting,” she said, shaking her head. “I still have more tricks up my sleeve.” Alice hesitated, before she nodded. Ethan typically fought with Kinetic Magic, but she still remembered just how many weird and unusual perks and items he had pulled out when the Sigmusi Immortal [Assassin] had come for her a few months ago. She didn’t doubt for a second that all Immortals had a wide variety of powerful Perks that could be activated in emergencies. Even so, seeing Allira so worn out was worrying. Most of the walls were still under siege, and the number of monsters heading towards them was increasing rapidly. A few of the walls were starting to resemble swiss cheese. Alice could see a few [Masons] and [Laborers] repairing the wall at a speed that even modern machinery could never have achieved – but it just wasn’t enough. The monsters were punching holes in the wall and the defenders faster than reinforcements and repairs could take effect. Worse, after Allira’s intervention, even more monsters started to take notice of their little group. Another five hundred stopped besieging the walls and whirled towards them. Alice felt the back of her neck prickle with fear as she realized that nearly a hundred monsters were now fixated on their group instead of the defenders. At this rate, the defenders would finally get a real break – but their group was about to be in deep trouble. Alice started straining her brain to think of another strategy, but she just wasn’t coming up with anything. She flipped open her Status Screen, just to see if she could find anything that could help her. Flooding the area with {Anti-Magic} mana was impossible. {Adrenaline Rush} had already been used, and she only had two uses of {Reflection} left for this battle. Most of her Perks helped with research and growth, instead of direct combat, and that made scrolling through her list of Perks far more difficult than it would be for a proper combat class. Alice resisted the urge to growl in frustration as she came up blank. Nothing she could think of was enough. Alice briefly thought about all of the abilities Ethan had displayed during the fight with the [Assassin], and started to feel frustrated. Why wasn’t he using any of them? Wouldn’t a few of the things he had used during that fight help? Alice glanced at Allira, and saw that Allira was firmly eyeing their surroundings. It wasn’t just to keep track of all of the potential threats. With a flash of realization, Alice understood why the Immortals were mostly sticking to ‘normal’ combat. They were still prepared to escape if anything went wrong. They were trying to help – but they were also fully prepared to abandon the city and flee if things went wrong. She could understand that… but she wasn’t happy about it. The idea of leaving the city to die if the defenders failed didn’t sit right with her. She wanted the people of this city to survive while she searched for a final solution to this world’s problems. She turned back towards the approaching army of monsters. Above them, ice birds soared through the skies like kites in the wind, preparing to unleash frozen hell upon the group. Vinebears tramped through the illusory city of Allira’s creation, their vine control magic weakened but their massive forms still providing cover for their allies. Stone-manipulating ants strolled towards the group like death on six legs. And then Alice seized upon a new idea. Something that might actually let her help. She wasn’t sure if it would work or not… but it was her best idea. Anti-magic mana was useful, but it chewed through her mana reserves too quickly. But a big part of her anti-magic mana was wasted. After all, she was flooding an area with anti-magic mana – that meant that a lot of the anti-magic mana just ended up floating around in midair, not hitting anything important. There were far too many monsters for Alice to target each individual monster with anti-magic mana and sever their connection to their alpha. That was totally unrealistic. But what Alice did have was Communication mana. Mana that, when used in the System, was capable of making other types of mana ‘share information’ with each other. And pure mana, which seemed like it was capable of manipulating other types of mana, at least to some extent. Maybe… it was possible to make her anti-magic mana itself find the targets she wanted to hit? Alice closed her eyes, and tried to push the invading monsters out of her thoughts. Ethan could keep her safe for a few seconds, or even a few minutes. She couldn’t just stand around with her eyes closed forever, but she had time to concentrate, at least. Then, she put three magic tendrils in front of her face, and started to experiment. What she wanted was simple – she wanted to use communication mana and pure mana to create a sort of ‘monster-seeking’ missile. This missile would be composed of anti-magic mana, and would hopefully only target the connection between monster alphas and their subordinates. If she succeeded, she would have a way to seriously weaken most of the approaching monsters, and with any luck, they might start fighting each other instead of the group. After all, monsters working together was a very new thing, and only happened with monster alphas were controlling their subordinates. Alice suspected that cooperation would fall apart the moment the alphas lost control of their minions. She activated {Speed Experimentation}, since this was one of the few scenarios where it was incredibly useful. Instantly, Alice felt time start to pass more quickly for her compared to her surroundings. She paid all of the mana out of her half-build System seed – she had a mana conversion ratio of 182% for that seed. It was far more mana than she needed right now. Then, she started rapidly assembling and disassembling different types of ‘anti-magic homing bullets.’ At first, the anti-magic mana simply outright deleted the pure mana during her attempts to make everything work. It was as if the communication mana were an unwelcome visitor being kicked out by security. But Alice kept trying. After a few failed experiments, she started creating ‘communication-disrupting projectiles’ that had multiple layers to them. One layer of mana was made of anti-magic mana, and the other was made of communication mana and pure mana. The pure mana ‘commanded’ the entire projectile, sort of like a homing device, while the communication mana relayed information between the pure mana and anti-magic mana. It wasn’t perfect – the anti-magic mana still ate through the communication mana, so each projectile would break down after about five seconds. Alice tossed in some math mana, and tossed in a few more specific ‘targeting’ specifications. It wasn’t perfect, since she wasn’t as familiar with math mana as she wished she were – but it was at least good enough to clearly define targets. Alice quickly ‘programmed’ in roughly what a monster core looked like. It was a bit of a mess – but it was good enough. Alice held her breath, and then released her monster-core seeking anti-magic bullet. The little speck of mana lazily sailed away from her face, before it locked onto the nearest vinebear. In a flash, it sped towards the creature, and then burst into a small cloud of anti-magic mana a few meters in front of its face. The projectile hadn’t quite made it before it imploded. However, she was on the right path. Alice spent the next few minutes refining her idea, trying to make the whole mess more stable, while the three Immortals and the others kept the monsters off of her. Until, finally, on her sixteenth try, another communication-sealing bullet flew out of her hands and hit a Vinebear.