Nateaser: Reborn As My Love Interest

Emi - Ch. 117

My skin burned.

Even if it was just a fleeting memory, I remembered my childhood. I knocked over a teapot running around in the kitchen, and its scolding hot contents poured on my clothes, resulting in a similar sensation I felt now.

At that time, my brother jumped to catch the pot without thinking and burned his hands rather seriously. I recall crying a lot, but not because of my injuries. My skin only got a little red thanks to the thick clothing I wore, not even an itch the next day, but Nat's hands needed medical treatment for an entire week. He never complained, but I was extra careful from that point onwards, mostly for his sake, not mine.

The current situation mirrored this perfectly. Ember's red dress or my uniform must have given away our position, but Nati was the first to reveal herself, rushing to protect me from the enemy barrage. Sure, they burned, and if I wasn't wearing this magically enchanted uniform they would have cut clean through this reinforced body, but it was nothing compared to what she got, trying to protect me. Why did this always happen like this?

I do something stupid, and my brother gets punished for it. I felt terrible and launched a counterattack. My target was clear as a day, I pulled out the short sword I got from the dwarven smith and dashed for the beholders. The enemy was well organized though.

One of the beholders blinked, the one with the smaller eyes floating around it, and the minotaurs blocked my way. Another row of monsters was already attacking, and disarming them wasn't as easy as training with the orcs back in the village.

They were slightly larger, to begin with, and armed with enormous weapons. We only did a little fencing before, most of my training focused on unarmed combat, and how to defend myself against foes larger than me.

These guys were larger, but I was trying to slip through them and attack. When my movements were restricted by the thick undergrowth, dodging their slow and heavy swings was rough, but poking their thick skin with my sword turned out to be even more difficult.

The ogre and the hobs engaged with them as well, but we faced two dozen minotaurs at once, each of us fighting at least three at the same time, not counting the ones that blocked my way towards their floating comrades, or the ones that began to flank us.

The beholders fired one beam after the other, but most missed thanks to the raging chaos. Our magicians couldn't get a clear aim either because the minotaur meat shield closed their path.

Those creeps weren't limited to firing those annoying beams either, they appeared capable of any kind of magic, from barriers to force fields, that also slowed me down, trying to break through towards them.

They deflected Omerta's chain lightning that wiped out the bulls at the roadblock so easily, sucking up all the electricity, as if they just wanted to recharge their batteries. The answer was more beams, deflected by Gitaut's magic. Nati was hit multiple times and visibly struggled with the pain they inflicted on her, but she seemed fine otherwise, just slow to respond.

The moment she cast it, Ember's firewall was blown away by another defensive magic. The situation quickly turned into a draw, except they seriously outnumbered us. The heavy double axe came down on me like a meteor, and even though I held my sword up to deflect it, my arms were almost torn out of their sockets.

The monsters growled, their muscles rippling under their short-furred skin, but I wasn't so easily intimidated. I kicked between their legs, and the axe fell from those massive hands. I stabbed my sword into their torso, but it just got stuck between the insane muscles.

The battle around me was bloody and desperate, and it seemed like the enemy had the advantage in discipline. We only practiced one-on-one combat, and our formation had no clear leader, while the bulls knew exactly how to work together, forming an impenetrable wall even though they used no shields. They utilized their numbers advantage to separate and overwhelm each of our fighters, while their casters blocked most of our back row's magic attacks.