"Stop them! Don't let them get close to Scarlet!"

Orphne and the other fairies rushed forward to intercept the assassin as the two men in plate armour charged forward, their visors lowered. A wolfkin in loose fitting all black clothes dashed low to the ground, circling around everyone while the last two started to gather mana.

As I was the obvious target, I quickly jumped back, increasing my distance from them even further. But as I landed, the sock of the motion caused pain to spike up my from my lower back making me visibly wince.

(Damnit! Why now?)

There was no way it was deliberate, but the timing of the attack could hardly be any worse. Being so close to term, my back hurt from almost any movement and my balance was poor from my new centre of gravity. On top of that, a bout of morning sickness could hit at any time with little warning.

But running wasn't an option.

Orphne and the other fairies were risking their lives for my sake.

While there was no way I'd obediently fight at melee range where more than half of the enemies seemed to prefer, I could help quite a lot to reduce everyone's burden at my own preferred range.

Passing my aura through space itself, I activated [Dimension Magic] and bent the space below my right foot to connect it immediately behind the elf.

Extending the claws on my foot, I kicked down and racked them quickly and hard.

"Kyaaa!"

The woman fell over as my foot receded and I closed the little worm hole, removing all evidence of my attack aside from the result.

But contrary to my expectation, the spirit who the now prone figure was channelling mana into continued and unleashed the built up power despite its master being stunned from the attack she had just received.

Together with the other woman, a powerful vortex of wind drilled its way between the two metal clad figures, bursting in a wild explosion in the middle of the fairy formation as they charged. The little figures were flung in all directions from the unexpected attack. Only Orphne and two others being able to stop themselves from being taken away from the battle itself.

But the two mages did their job. The moment's delay for the remaining fairies were enough for the two in front to get through their cordon, and had an unimpeded path towards me.

Things were quickly looking worse and worse.

I gathered my mana into my shadow below me, but before I could thrust them out towards my attackers, the one in white suddenly tilted to the side, accompanied by a flash of light to my side. Sparks showered from his pauldron and there was a clear dent in it which wasn't there before.

A fraction of a moment later, a deafening boom echoed as the man was forced to roll on the ground from the sudden impact.

"Tch!"

To my left a small distance away, Sarah scowled as she lowered her smoking rifle from her shoulder. But after a momentary pause to confirm her work, she racked her weapon's bolt, inserted a new bullet, and closed the chamber before shouldering it once more.

"Damnit!"

The short man in all black metal raised his shield to cover his fallen comrade.

In turn, I used this as an opportunity and shifted my mana from below to in front of me and fired a barrage of ice lances, flying as quickly and massively as I could in such a short period of time. Just as the magical ice shattered against the man's armour, another flash of light came from Sarah.

A cacophony of loud sounds passed through us as sparks blossomed across the man's shield as the bullet fragments splayed tangentially from the mostly flat surface it had impacted.

But to my surprise, the armoured figure didn't budge in the slightest.

Nevertheless, easing up here wasn't an option. Instead, dividing my concentration using [Parallel Thought], I pushed my shadow out towards the excessively stoic acting man while splitting my attention to fire a continuous barrage of ice lances at the prone man in white.

My shadow entwined itself around one of the armoured man's legs and I pulled as hard as I could this way and that, trying to break his stance while Sarah rapid fired her weapon at him, trying to find a way to get past his massive shield. A part of my mind was surprised at the speed at which she could fire. At over two rounds a second, she somehow racked the bolt, pulled out a new round from her bag, inserted it into her weapon, sealed the chamber, aimed, filled its compression chamber with magic, and fired.

Part of it must have been due to her stats, but another from pure practice. There were no skills in the world to assist her actions, yet her pure dedication to her favourite weapon made her capable of firing it as fast as an experienced shooter on Earth could accurately fire a semi-automatic weapon.

It reminded me of those stories about the mad minute, where the British army would have their soldiers compete to hit a roughly human sized target at almost 300 meters. The aim was to hit it fifteen times in a minute using a rifle which only held ten rounds, yet apparently the shot was so easy that it was quite common for soldiers to massively exceed the minimum number of hits, with the record before world war one being over double that. The modern record being fired more than triple that.

Even if she was only standing a few dozen meters away from her target, beating those records while having to reload after every shot rather than every ten really impressed on me.

All the while she pinged shot after shot at the tanky figure, I tugged at his leg as best as I could, doing what I could to destabilize him or at the very least, keep him too occupied to do anything more than continue to defend against Sarah's constant barrage. As long as he couldn't do anything to turn things around, things would go in our favour as more and more people realized what was happening and joined in on the battle.

I could only hope that Sarah's ammunition would last, as well as her MP.

While all that was going on with that figure, I continued a constant barrage of ice lances at the man clad in white.

Annoyingly, he managed to raise his shield in time to prevent any direct hits on him. While his shield was much smaller than the black armoured one's, huddled in a small ball, it was more than big enough to block any direct line of sight to me.

While a bit frustrating, my MP was holding out reasonably well in this situation as my ice lances were cheap to produce. Continuing this state of affairs was desirable.

"Oh no you don't!"

While I continued my two attacks, my attention was further divided by Orphne's yell and I turned my head in time to see her and the remaining fairies still in the battle charge a lone wolfkin in black far off to the side.

I had forgotten the man in the handful of seconds I was occupied with the two armoured figures.

In that amount of time, he managed to circle all the way around the battle and had gotten dangerously close to my flank. But with Orphne and her subordinates intercepting him and engaging the black clad infiltrator, I had one less thing to worry about.

With him temporarily out of the picture, I was able to rest assure that I wouldn't be forced to face anyone in melee for the time being. In the far back, the two mages weren't being suppressed at this point, but the elf had been injured already, and the human mage was supplying healing magic to deal with the wound I had inflicted.

But that wouldn't last very long, and splitting my spells even further would drastically affect my ability to suppress the two armoured men as my MP would drop like a rock if I had to cast more spells against even more targets.

"Die you swamp addled rot weed!"

Like an archangel swooping down from the heavens with righteous fury to dish out her own brand of insolent justice, my cheeks couldn't help but rise up as I heard that all too familiar voice that belonged to my dear familiar.

My eyes quickly caught the sight of that black robed spirit diving down from the colourful background of fluffballs as she gathered her mana in her body. The greater dark spirit's shadow extended down towards the white armoured figure.

I cut off my own barrage moments before the black sheets struck its target, pinning the figure down as they wrapped themselves around his limbs. The man fought back impressively, but even then he was in a bad position.

With my highest MP consumption target occupied, I was able to redirect my attention to the two mages at the far back.

The elf was already rising to her feet, while her healer pulled out a glass phial from a small bag on her hip.

"Lovely pretty super annihilation!"

But together with the strangely cute high pitched cry, a large blazing ball of fire fell on top of the duo. The elf mage quickly abused her poor fluffballs to erect a powerful barrier just before the spell hit and engulfed the rear line.

"Just hold on a bit more! I have people calling for help from rest of the council!"

Aurae's words significantly brightened up my mood.

With fairies speeding their way over to the dark side settlement, powerful reinforcements would come in short order. We had proper confirmation that we only had to hold these five for a short amount of time rather.

Aurae continued to throw spell after spell at the two mages while I supported her with my own barrage of magic, pinning them as they desperately defended against her powerful attacks. Claret wormed her shadow around as she constricted the man in the white armour. Orphne traded blows with the wolfkin in black as more of her subordinates returned to the fight to help tip the odds. Sarah's rifle continued to ring the black armoured man's shield like it was a bell while I kept tugging at his leg with my shadow in an attempt to trip him the moment he tried to go and help any of his comrades.

Things were looking real good. My MP would hold out for as long as it needed, and none of the others seemed to be pushing themselves too hard. We would win this without any serious risk.

I couldn't help but grin, and since I didn't have to concentrate so hard on suppressing the assassins, I took the time to use [Scan] on each of them.

Their levels weren't bad at all. The woman in the dress was the lowest at level 237, and the man in the white armour was the highest at level 269. None of them were higher than me. Though I suspected that their equipment was vastly superior to ours, there was a limit to what they could accomplish.

While I hadn't checked anyone else's levels, what I was seeing proved that nobody in this fight was a slouch in that arena at all. And the fact that they were successfully suppressing these assassins ended any other argument.

"Raaah! Enough of this!"

"Kyaaa!"

But my smile quickly inverted as Claret suddenly retreated from the man in white.

His sword was drawn, and while Claret was still close by, she wasn't using her shadows or casting any new spells. Instead, there was fear on her face for some reason.

The man waved his sword towards the greater spirit before turning to rush towards me.

"Master! Get away from him! His sword! It's dangerous!"

I wasn't quite sure what it was that Claret had figured out about this guy, but there was no way I'd let this guy get close to me.

Bending space once more, I connected two spots near the armoured figure. One in front of his leg as he ran, and the other directly behind his back. My foot went through the hole in space connected from below to his leg, while my hand to the one behind him, claws extended on both appendages, ready to reap what I could.

The man swung his sword down in front of his leg, either not noticing my arm behind him or unable to do anything about it. I withdrew my foot to avoid the swipe while I raked his back, but unexpectedly pain flared up from my leg even before he could cut it with his blade.

Clear as day, I could see my severed foot as the white armoured figure ran past it.

I was confused.

I was in the middle of retracting my foot and his blade wasn't close enough to cut me before I could escape harm, yet somehow my foot was severed.

"Scarlet! That's a cold iron sword! Don't let it touch you!"

"Wha?"

(Cold iron? What's that?)

My mind was occupied by the words which Orphne yelled out.

It wasn't a term I was aware of, and that scared me.

The blade which the man held out was a dull black, lacking any form of lustre. For some reason, it felt like the sword was darker than it should be, like there was a void around it sucking in any light which approached.

I channelled my mana into my leg, providing just enough healing magic to stop the bleeding while also redirecting my shadow from the black clad man to the white one. He was approaching far too close for comfort and had instantly become my priority.

While the cost would be a bit high, I also fired off a barrage of ice lances towards him as well. A momentary suppression would be enough to make my shadow catch him and then I could focus on the two mages again once he was immobilized.

As expected, the figure blocked the ice with his shield, giving me the opening needed to suppress him with my shadow. But once again, the unexpected happened.

He swiped his sword behind himself and my shadow instantly lost stability and faded, leaving nothing behind.

I grit my teeth as fear threatened to grip my heart. Once again he did something and my attack was entirely neutralized somehow.

(Is it some sort of skill, or the sword?)

Orphne's words suggested that there was something special about the sword, but as to what, I couldn't say for certain. And that uncertainty was making everything fall apart.

To make matters worse, the momentary lapse caused by the shock of my attack being stopped in a way which I couldn't understand, the white armoured figure's shield flashed brightly. Before my mind even registered the flash, pain erupted all throughout my face, and the world around me grew dark.

"Grh!"

This, while also unexpected, was something I could understand at least.

My greatest weakness was used against me. Nothing more.

Gritting through the pain, I focused my remaining senses on the man rapidly closing into melee range. While my eyes couldn't see any longer, I still had another set of 'eyes.'

My [Mana Perception] allowed me to continue seeing, even if what I saw was limited. And without my normal sight to add to the usual mana sight, I was able to confirm something which terrified me.

I could clearly see the mana which made up the man's aura along with the infusion of [Light Magic] in his armour. But his weapon was entirely invisible to me.

No, rather than invisible, it was a dark spot which blocked out the ambient mana from behind.

What that meant, I didn't even have the time to contemplate nor comprehend it, but all I knew was that it was bad.

No longer in a position to conserve my MP nor wait for reinforcements, I threw up pillars of ice from below in a jagged wave while thrusting my shadow once again from the sides, all the while air compressed into little balls and rained from above, invisible to any observers relying on ordinary sight.

But with a few quick swipes of his sword, all of those spells were immediately erased, no signs of any of them having existed just moments before.

Fear and frustration coalesced into panic as the man took even more steps and arrived only moments before being in range of attacking me with his weapon.

And so, I did the only thing I could to preserve my life and kicked off the ground with my only foot to back off while bending the space around me, connecting it to a spot far above me to escape.

Perhaps he noticed what I was trying to do, so the man threw his weapon. But even with all the unease I felt my lips curled into a smile, confident that the attack was far too slow to stop me.

But that curl quickly inverted as the warped space suddenly returned to its original form. The sanctity of my escape path was suddenly crushed as if some sort of greater force denied my path to escape.

My body was filled with an indescribable chill which was quickly followed by a dull pain. It felt like the two were one and the same, yet the chill permeated my entire being, as if my body had suddenly turned into some sort of conductor for it.

I was knocked to the ground from the impact of the flying sword into my left shoulder.

I tried to get up immediately, but couldn't as my left arm didn't respond.

There was no feeling coming from my shoulder, nor anything past it.

Without working eyes, I couldn't see what was happening. My [Mana Perception] only showed me a dark spot originating from my shoulder, obscuring everything below and past it. The sight simply didn't make any sense to me.

With so little I could understand, my survival chances were quickly dwindling, so I was forced to put my one working hand on my face and fix my eyes as fast as possible.

Soon, light entered and registered in my eyes, but the suddenness of it blinded me for a moment before my newly working eyes adjusted.

Thankfully, I was properly in the shadow of a tree so I was protected from the sun at least.

Once again I looked down. The man in the white armour was approaching me, his visor raised, revealing a disgusting grin.

"I don't know how you got those fairies to help you, but it doesn't matter now. There's no way you'll survive this."

Panic started to take over me and I tried to crawl away from him, but my robes were pinned to the ground, and I couldn't easily shift my body. Looking down, I finally saw what was going on, and the sight of it only further induced confusion and panic in me.

The black sword of the white man was clearly stuck where my shoulder was supposed to be, but the spot on my robes was flattened against the ground as if it was empty. It was as if rather than piercing my shoulder, the blade was simply in the space where my shoulder was supposed to be, but the upper left corner of my torso was simply missing.

A small distance away, I could see my arm. It was severed just below the shoulder, but that shouldn't have been possible. I was simply pierced by the blade, and there was no way I could think of that would've caused my arm to be severed, especially that far down.

It was as if part of my body was simply erased or consumed or something.

Once again, I tried to drag my body away from the menacingly approaching man, but the sword was firmly embedded through my robes into the ground, making any movement difficult when missing an arm and a foot.

"I don't like killing pregnant women, but when I think that she's just some blighted vampire, it suddenly stops feeling so bad."

His smile grew even wider.

I couldn't let him take hold of his weapon and finish me off, so I used my one good hand and grabbed the blade which was black like wrought iron, and tried to dislodge it to make my escape.

"Gyaaaaah!!!"

Coldness and pain rippled from my hand as tears fell down my cheeks.

I felt so cold, as if my entire body was made of ice.

When I finally forced my eyes open again, the sight shocked me to the core. My hand was gone. Everything halfway down my forearm was gone without a trace. Just the end of my sleeve was flopped over with a blood stain slowly spreading from the stump.

"That's a cold iron sword, made by god himself. Wretched beings like yourself can't even touch it."

It felt like the man's smile grew even wider while the fear made it difficult to even get a breath into my one remaining lung.

In desperation, I used my shadow this time to try to knock the sword out of the ground, but even before it could touch the cold metal blade, the end of the shadow diffused into mist and faded into oblivion, leaving nothing but a stub of a black limb.

This thing, this cold iron, whatever it was, it neutralized mana itself. It was the only thing I could think of.

Normal physical beings like humans could handle it without any problems, but mana based beings like myself or any of the spirits couldn't even touch it. And that also meant that all my spells would be completely ineffective against it.

I glanced at my status window, desperate to find anything I could do to save myself, but the sight that greeted my eyes intensified the fear that was filling my entire being.

My HP was below half, and slowly draining. Most likely because I was bleeding out. But even worse, was my MP, which was down to one quarter, and also draining, but at an alarmingly fast rate.

Even if he didn't do anything, I would die, unable to do a single thing to save myself.

I would die, and together with me, Alicia would die, not even aware what was happening.