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And so, I took the user called Omega down, after which I looked around to check the situation. The allies looked to be an even match against the enemies, perhaps because I had taken down the leader who was the most dangerous out of the group.

“Ellie!”

Katalina yelled at me as she was continuously dodging the enemy’s attacks, irked because I was standing there with a stunned look as the battle was still going on.

“Sorry, sorry.”

After apologizing, I escaped from a daze-like-trance and joined forces with the allies for real.

“Wha!”
“Argh!”

When an overwhelmingly powerful force joins in a battle with equal sides, the effectiveness of the powerful force is maximized to its potential. They already had a tough time fending off the enemies in front of them, so having an extremely powerful top ranking user attack them from behind meant that there were no users that could hold out.

Among them were a few that tried to attack me first before I did anything, but…

“Die…! Blegh.”

They simply ended up as kill points for me.

My kill points kept exploding. Looking at my numbers, Katalina kept grumbling to herself, but since mages can only maximize their killing potential in wide-open areas where they can have space, there was nothing she could really do about it.

“S… Save m… Argh!”

After the allies were successful in removing the last of the enemy soldiers from the area and pushing out the enemy forces from the castle walls, they collapsed in exhaustion. This was much more exhausting than just hunting AI controlled monsters.

“We’re really indebted to you both.”

One mercenary among the group who wore a red outfit came up to me. With a powerful body structure reaching 2 meters high, he was a knight class character with axe as his main weapon, which was actually quite uncommon. He seemed to be taking up the temporary leadership position of this group, as he had the highest level among them before the two of us came over.

“We’re allies, no need to be.”
“Oh, so you are a female? You look quite high ranked as well. Could I perhaps know your ID?”
“Hm…”

He was simply asking for my name in our first time seeing each other, but I felt iffy about it. I could come up with a bunch of reasons‌, but I suspected that he was trying to hit on me.

“I’m sorry, but that isn’t possible.”

Katalina appeared suddenly, getting in between us and blocking him.

“Who are you?”
“As I said, we don’t want to exchange ID information with you.”
“Excuse me, but I don’t have any interest in you though.”

Feeling that they would end up in a fight real quick, I took Katalina and left the area immediately.

“Ugh! I swear I’ll destroy him!”

Katalina was ready to throw all sorts of swears at the man like some pissed off women would do in Korea, but she suppressed that anger and instead threw a middle finger up at him¹.

“You damn b̲i̲t̲c̲h̲!!!”

The man also seemed angered by her threat and yelled unfriendly words at us, but thankfully the situation didn’t get any worse as other mercenaries in his group came over to calm him down.

“There’s the enemy!”

Just in time, the second wave of enemies started to attack.

The numbers they had were still greater than ours, and they didn’t seem shaken by our last successful defense. If I considered them as just experience points, it sounds good for me, but they’re not AI. They can always turn a situation to their favor completely‌, and it means that I could end up with a Game Over at any moment.

“Ohh? Ellie, are you nervous?”

Katalina spoke to me with a playful tone as she watched the enemies coming in.

“Instead of nervousness, I’d say I’m feeling hot.”
“Hot?”

Her voice became curious and high pitched towards the end.

“I mean that the tension I feel from knowing that this is a close battle makes me feel more pumped up. I kind of like that feeling. Don’t think of any weird stuff now.”
“I… I wasn’t!”

I couldn’t see her face, but I assumed that it’s probably quite red with a blush right now.

“They say that the stronger the fire burns inside you, the stronger determination you have.”
“…”

Seeing as how she didn’t retort at all, it seemed like I had really pulled one over her. It had been a long time since I could make fun of her like this, as I was the one who was teased by her all along. It brought a smug smile to my face.

She can’t see my face right now anyway, so I should enjoy it as much as I could, right?

Hm?

Hey… Hey!

“Phew…”

As she had dispelled the curse she cast on me just before the enemies closed in; I let out a sigh of relief. Although I wouldn’t be in too much trouble from the restrictions put on me by the curse, you can never completely be guaranteed your victory in an all-out battle, so no one would ever be happy to have a curse put on them for no reason during a battle.

Although no one would usually intentionally put a curse on an ally, Katalina went out to use an actual magic scroll to put it on me as well. An S-tier magic scroll worth several hundred thousand dollars on top of that.

As someone who had lived for decades, always barely making enough money to live, doing something like that to tease is something I can’t even begin to imagine, but they say that humans are adapting animals, right? Perhaps one day I may use crazy expensive things for petty reasons like her as well.

“Die! Die!”

Katalina fell into an obsession of trying to level up as much as possible as she massacred the enemy forces, and the allies simply stood far away from her, fearing her violent nature.

A mage that had been given enough range and space to cast all of her spells ‌is something to be fearful of. It looked akin to watching a natural disaster happen in front of me.

“Aaargh!”

I wasn’t sure how many siege towers had been burnt down by now. It was to the point where the remaining siege towers all headed towards the walls while specifically avoiding walls where Katalina was.

Of course, we weren’t just standing around watching that happen. We would be on the move, intercepting their movements and achieving more victories by taking the towers down. However, to cast magic, let alone advanced high-level magic, you needed to be stationary in order to do so. Naturally, I would end up lucky sometimes and come across siege towers that had already been deployed on the castle walls.

“Kill ‘em!”
“Die!”

And those places were in pure chaos, filled with screams and curse words all over the place. Now came the moment where ranged magic attacks lose their potential as the enemies were already in close range.

“Tsk…”

She looked disappointed, but this is when having skills effective in close-up battles are most important.

“Lina.”
“I know, I know!”

Katalina’s body glowed brightly, and the magic effect flowed from within her and spread towards the ally mercenaries.

“Oh? This is the first time I’m seeing this kind of buff.”
“You’re right…”

With mages that specialize in offensive attack spells, they don’t have that many supportive magic spells, but once they reach higher levels, they gain one or two useful spells. They’re usually buffs that give them additional elemental damage, and it certainly helps ‌to make allies stronger.

Of course, if you are hunting down AI monsters it would be more effective to shoot one more offensive attack magic rather than casting supportive magic, but that changes if you have plenty of mana potion.

But who would waste a precious and expensive potion when hunting monsters? It meant that it was very rare for the average user to receive a mage user’s buff spell.

Their reaction to the spell was quite understandable from my point of view.

The battle was truly fierce from both sides. Those trying to get over the walls and those stopping them from getting over were both fighting for their survival, so the battles were fierce and chaotic.

There were few users that looked to be top ranked ones, and they would always be very careful in picking their battles and assessing the situation. They would sometimes just escape the dangerous situation by jumping off the castle wall, and some would just drink down some potions.

And it was also natural for those high-level users on both sides to identify each other on the battlefield and avoid a confrontation as much as they could. Katalina and I acted this way as well.

Of course, it was more apt to say that instead of us avoiding a confrontation with them, it was the enemies that were trying their best to avoid us.

“Hmm, looks like these battles are going to take longer to finish.”

Katalina spoke while a fierce battle was taking place. Although others may not agree with her statement, as I was taking my sweet time taking down the enemies from my point of view, I agreed with Katalina. Most mercenaries are already locked into a battle with the other’s sides. As they’ve already spent most of their energy by this point, the low level users or those that are greedy for more experience points are the only ones fighting with all their strength. Meanwhile, the high level mercenary users which could be called the real backbone of the army weren’t acting that way at all. They knew that the easiest way to dominate over the enemy mercenary forces is to wait for the main allied guild member forces to come over and combine in a joint attack to truly make a fierce attack forward.

However, even though the battles have progressed by quite a lot already, the allied guild members still didn’t seem to look like they were going to join the battle. Naturally, those who have quick wits would have realized that this current situation differed from the usual battles that take place in siege battles.

“Hmm?”

Only then we started seeing movements from afar. The Shining guild’s main advance force which had been standing still for the entire time now had suddenly started moving forward.

“Waaaagh!!!²”

Shouts of war cries rang out from the mercenaries from the enemy side, which was watching the rear forces finally moving in to help them out.

And as if to retaliate for their advances, the main forces of the Chaos guild slowly moved forward as well.

“Waaaagh!!!”

This time, the mercenary line from our side shouted out war cries.

I thought that the actual real battle is finally beginning. I bet that it’s not only me, but Katalina and other mercenaries are thinking the same way as I am as well.

“Huh?”

But my assumption was completely shattered.

1. Silva: Katalina is supposed to be a “high-breed” woman right? How could she do something so vulgar? * smile meaningfully *
2. Lilith: For the Horde