The World Dragon's Heir

Chapter 395: Minotaur Charge

The Minotaurs didn’t take long to realize that the force they could see was not the entire enemy army, especially when Dominic and Amie were adding fire magic to their gunshots.

"You really need to make me a Firebolt spell gem when we get back. Fireball takes too much mana, and that blast is just enough fire damage to keep them spicy." Dominic joked as the herd began to turn to guard against them.

"Arcane Blast seems to be doing just fine. Plus, it smells better than burning Minotaur fur." Amie laughed, then fired a round through the throat of an axe wielding monster.

"Can you two not do that now?" The other gunslinger on their side of the line pleaded.

"It helps with the tension. You should try it, it’s cathartic." Amie suggested.

"Just kill the damned things before they get here." He swore, then ducked as a hurled sword nearly took his head off.

"Trade me for one with mana regeneration." Amie complained as she reloaded.

"Fine. Here, take good care of it and I’ll trade you back after." Dominic agreed.

His own pistols were significantly larger than the ones he made for her hands, but her grip strength was surprisingly good. She didn’t have any trouble holding onto the pistol as she fired, and the exhaustion that was creeping up on her seemed to fade as the returned mana on hit refilled her mana pool.

Soon, she was down to simply shooting, with only one fireball per reload. That was about what she was regenerating from the pistol shots, but Dominic got more than enough back from the Arcane Blast that he could keep them up indefinitely.

The problem was that every wave of Minotaurs was dying a little closer to them than the last one was, and more kept coming from somewhere.

They were well past the two hundred that Dominic had estimated earlier, and there were still more joining the back of the herd.

"This is getting out of hand." Wiz complained as he cut down another of the oversized beasts.

"We might need to take another math class when we get home." Bella shouted back, her voice nearly lost in the noise.

"I blame the dragon kin. He’s supposed to be the educated one."

Bella laughed at the berserker as she kept firing. Her flank had only attracted a little attention from the monsters, as their pistol shots were not visible, and the damage wasn’t as obvious as the fireballs that Dominic and Amie were using at the start.

But they had cut down so many of the Minotaurs now that they were being forced to retreat into the trees, as the bodies were piling up.

That was an advantage for them, as the Minotaurs couldn’t see the defenders until they were past the piles of bodies and into the edge of the forest, but it also made it more difficult to target as the trees got more densely packed and thicker in the trunk.

Amie retreated up a tree, where she could shoot down at the monsters, her preferred battle position, Dominic noticed.

Being elevated gave her the ability to shoot past the front rank of monsters to take out ones that looked stronger, or who were distracted and easy targets. That increased her kill count, and the density of the horde that was making it into the woods to chase Dominic.

"Retreat to the warriors, keep the beasts from flanking them. I am going to move further out to split them further." Dominic instructed the third member of their flank.

"Got it boss. Good luck."

The Minotaurs could sense and smell the magic of their attacks, making Dominic and Amie the priority targets away from the main group of warriors, and they followed easily when Dominic began moving through the woods.

Amie smiled as she realized the Minotaurs had forgotten that she existed, and were running right past her to follow Dominic away from the group.

They thought that he was running away, and were intending to chase him down and punish him. But that was the opposite of what he was doing. He was stretching out their lines so that they would be approaching him one or two at a time.

A rate where he could easily cut them down and keep moving.

Once the line was thinned, Amie got back to work, killing off random Minotaurs with their backs turned.

They never knew that there was danger, and with the mage moving silently through the trees, they couldn’t locate the source of the threat when one of their numbers dropped in front of them.

So, they assumed that the one they were chasing was setting traps for them, while Dominic worked a serpentine pattern through the forest.

He didn’t want to get too far from the others, but he also didn’t want to let the Minotaurs group up and attack him from multiple sides at the same time. His limited close combat skills weren’t up to that sort of challenge, and he would have to switch to a melee weapon, which would reduce his effectiveness.

The pistols were more effective than his innate magic, which he had originally wanted to avoid, for safety reasons. But they weren’t for general purpose sale, so the chances that one would be used against him were low.

Amie dropped from the trees next to him, and gestured toward the front.

"They’re starting to run low on monsters to fight. Let’s push forward and rejoin the group, Just follow the same path back, so we can loot the bodies." She explained.

Dominic charged at the closest Minotaurs, firing with both hands, then kicked the bodies as he passed, tracing a path of carnage back through the battlefield. Hopefully, he would get some good loot out of this, but he was certainly getting a lot of level ten monster cores for the communal pot.

Just this one battle would have tripled the total level of cores that they had collected for this trip. They just had to find out where all the Minotaurs were coming from.