Karl joined the fight just before the farmers who had run after the retreating group, hoping that they might either rescue or recruit another group for their fight. The relief was visible on the faces of the defenders, and Karl called Remi out to toss a couple of [Healing Splash] spells onto the worst injured members of the Minotaur Clan.
None of them appeared to be dead, at least not here at this house, and a bit of healing was all it took to close their largest wounds.
Unfortunately, Healing Splash wasn’t an instant whole body heal unless Remi soaked them in it, or got the spell inside them somehow. It would leak in through the cuts, and spread through the body when it stayed in contact, but that wasn’t nearly as fast as a Cleric’s minor heal spell.
She had been preparing for this situation, with a number of vials of healing potion. Hawk had made the containers for her with flames and sand, and she was delighted with them. The bottles even had their logo on it, a Naga with a Hawk on her shoulder.
Remi had made the logo out of clay, and Hawk had set the vials on it to cool, imprinting it on the bottom of the potion bottles.
“Open up. There you go, and one for you and for you.”
Remi took mental notes of how long it took for the potion to start working, as she had never made someone drink a diluted Healing Splash before.
Her pleasure that she had found a way to run experiments that she couldn’t get in trouble for was clear through the link with Karl, but he was busy with other tasks, and didn’t have the time to praise her ingenuity.
He had hit both of the Copper Drakes with Rend already, and they had moved away from where Dana was fighting the third member of their flight.
But they were retreating to hundreds of metres in the air, giving them plenty of time to dodge Karl’s attacks, so he had to chase them with the skills.
It took far longer than it should have, as they were incredibly agile flyers. But Karl had a lot of practice controlling his skills, and with dozens of deadly arcs of energy chasing them, the monsters were taking steady damage, no matter how hard they fought to avoid his attacks.
[See, not as easy as you thought.] Cara laughed as she sensed Karl’s frustration.
[Change of tactics.] Karl agreed.
Arrows with Disintegration on them were much easier to work with, and the targeting enchantment on the bow did half the work for him.
The first shot was a direct heart shot, as the drake was already trying to avoid the Rend attacks, and the second was not off by much, punching a clean hole through the drake’s rear hip and out its back.
It howled in pain, but the effect hadn’t been set to spread on contact, so it was a clean injury that the Drake would be able to heal with a few minutes of effort.
However, when the next arrow came, the Drake caught it with a smug smile on its draconic face.
Until the [Disintegration] spell exploded and removed the front half of its body.
[That’s cheating. You can’t just trick them into holding a bomb to kill them.] Cara complained.
[No, I think that he’s on to something. Watching stupid monsters explode is kind of fun.] Hawk countered.
Karl let the beasts argue as he began to fire at the Sand Yeti, taking out the last few who had started to flee.
If they were left alone, they were a threat to other farms and homesteads. That shouldn’t actually concern Karl, but it was still the right thing to do.
Dana finished her Drake and landed next to Karl as Thor and the clerics finally arrived. They started right in on the healing process, helping the farmers recover.
“Thank you Priestess.” One of the older Minotaurs, a massively muscular woman, greeted them in a deep but somehow feminine voice.
“Are there other survivors or wounded? I see that there are many damaged farmhouses.” Tessa asked.
The Largest Minotaur shook her head.
“No, the wee ones are in the house here. The only ones who didn’t make it this far are unlikely to be making it anywhere else.” She explained.
That must mean that they had some sort of plan in place, in case of attacks. If all of the children had made it here, where the adults had gathered to fight, it meant that the plan worked.
But probably not well enough to prevent casualties among those who tried to slow the approach of the monsters, or who were caught out unaware.
At home, Karl knew that shepherds stayed out in the fields all night to watch over their flock, so the same might be true of some of the farmers here. Those would be the most likely casualties, as well as the ones to alert the others to flee to the meeting point.
Remi passed over a few more potions with a smile on her face that Karl always thought looked like she wanted to eat someone. At least it was a mouth closed smile this time, so she wasn’t showing fangs.
“Just in case there is another need for healing in the near future. These keep for a few months, at the very least, so you don’t need to have a Dragon Cleric around all the time.” She explained in Serpent, but at least a few of the Minotaurs seemed to know the language.
The Minotaur looked at the potions in shock. “These are proper healing potions? I haven’t seen one of these in ages. Not since that Beast King came down from the north, selling them to the rich folks.”
One of the older men laughed. “That’s been nearly eighty years. I wonder whatever happened to him? But thank you, Queen Naga. Our herd is in your debt.”
Thor snorted happily. They were herd monsters.
Karl hadn’t considered that before. The bestial half of them was a herd animal, but they were classed as a monster species, not a beast species. He had previously assumed that meant they didn’t take on bestial traits, only their appearance.
“The sun is up enough to travel now. We should get moving.” Karl sighed, looking at the horizon, and knowing that there would be a lot more encounters like this in the next week or two until the anomaly ended, and the monsters stopped spawning at midnight.
“You should keep everyone close. These monsters are likely to appear again at midnight for some time. I don’t know how long, but I don’t think it’s over,” he added.
The farmers nodded. “At least they’re not interested in destroying the crops. That’s a good start. If we travel in groups, we should still be able to do our work. It will just be uncomfortable for a while until we can rebuild everyone’s houses.”
[There are more coming. Do you want to do something about them?] Hawk asked as he continued his patrols.
[How close, and what direction?]
[Ten kilometres, from the south. They’re past the city and headed this way.]
There should be quite a few farms, and a couple of bandit traps, in that direction. If these farmers were lucky, the Sand Yeti wouldn’t make it this far.
[No, let the locals deal with it. We will get what trade goods we can and move on.]
The Minotaur group was already busy with that. They weren’t gathering food or goods they would need, but they had quite a few tools made in identical copies.
Karl looked at what they were laying out and realized that what he had taken as tools weren’t actually tools. They were all combat weapons designed to look like farm implements.
They could be used as farm tools, but they were designed to either do double duty, or be partially disassembled to make them into proper combat weapons.
That must be a Minotaur thing, as they were all Minotaur scaled. But the designs were brilliant. Some of these could become quite popular with farmers at home. They might not be as strong as Minotaurs, but Karl had a suspicion that as the Elites learned more, they would be able to help the rest of humanity even the odds.
