At Charles's command, the storm domain nuns immediately grew solemn. They swiftly spread out across the battlefield, each taking up position and silently chanting the incantation to guide Divine Power.
Fierce winds billowed around them, threads of lightning flickering, as if each woman was the very source of a storm.
Vast Divine Power was drawn down through them, all flowing to their hands and into the mighty Ion Beam Emitters.
In the next moment, accompanied by a thunderous roar, lightning bolts even more immense and savage than before shot forth, tearing through the battlefield!
Normally, any form of energy—whether heat, electricity, or otherwise—loses power in transmission. The larger the flow, the greater the loss, and the smaller the effective result.
At Rockseeker's Outpost, these Ion Beam Emitters had overheated and exploded after just a few shots for exactly this reason.
Their actual efficiency for harnessing electricity was less than half, with most of the energy simply wasted.
This law should have been insurmountable. But Divine Power can turn the impossible into reality!
At this moment, every electric charge was perfectly constrained, surging outward without a single spark leaking: this doubled the power output, so the lightning bolts that shot forth were even thicker and more fearsome than before—like blades of bright silver cleaving through darkness, instantly rending the battlefield to pieces!
"Rooaaar—!"
One unlucky ape demon was hit by two lightning bolts at once—even with its massive demonic body, it couldn't withstand such force. Its body was reduced to ash by the furious energy, and in seconds, vanished without a trace!
"Keep going!"
Charles shouted again: "Free fire—destroy them!"
No need to refill emitter coolant; the device remained perfectly cool, with no wasted charge escaping at all.
The storm nuns shifted positions, seeking new angles, and thick lightning burst forth again, shredding the battlefield!
Under this near-relentless bombardment, swathes of demons were destroyed. Countless fiends fell to the lightning before they ever crossed the thorn field.
Even the mighty ape demons, by the time they made it to the front lines, were usually barely clinging to life—a few warriors could slash them down with a flurry of blows!
And the few that remained whole would be swiftly overwhelmed as soon as Anno joined the fray.
Charles finally breathed easier and, alongside Theresa, focused on handling the vrocks overhead. Under their furious barrage, the vulture-headed fiends were soon reduced to just a handful—making the air above the warriors' heads almost safe.
"Good boy! Good girl!"
A booming voice rang out, oddly familiar. But as Charles glanced upward, he saw it was the Griffon Knight diving down in a wide arc, calling out encouragement as he swooped overhead—not his friend Bruno, but another dwarf, with a similarly booming voice.
Both Storm Warhammers had apparently depleted their charges; now the knight was flying in evasive patterns, only striking at a vrock's head with the hammer when necessary.
"Hold on, lads—reinforcements are on the way! The Griffon Knights will arrive soon and we'll all be saved!"
"Got it!"
Charles waved his arm and shouted back with all his might. He couldn't tell if he'd been heard over the wind, so he just kept casting spells, firing at the fiends above.
This was another advantage of spellcasting: in these gales, neither longbows nor heavy crossbows could shoot straight, but spells were unhindered. No matter how bad the weather, each energy bolt landed true!
Time crawled by as more fiends crossed the thorns, surrounding Charles's group. The pressure on the front increased; the storm nuns' weapons were pushed to the edge of overheating.
More ape demons reached the front, and under their massive blows, the warriors' shields were beginning to falter.
Let alone the less-experienced Life nuns—if they weren't able to pause to heal wounds now and then, there would certainly have been casualties by now.
Fortunately, just when things seemed dire, the dwarven reinforcements finally arrived.
"Aaaaargh—!"
A piercing eagle cry came from the horizon, amplified by magic—"Hold fast, brothers on the ground—we're coming!"
Charles looked up and saw over a hundred powerful griffons streaking across the sky. Warhammers streaked with white light fell like meteors from the riders on their backs, smashing into every great fiend in sight!
Boom boom boom boom—!
Each warhammer landed with a crash, releasing a tremendous wave of energy that shook the field. Every ape demon or vrock caught in the blast had their skulls crushed, their minds blanked, paralyzed by the thunder's might!
That wasn't all—crackling lightning and thunderwaves rippled outward, laying waste to the surrounding Dretch as well, leaving the weaker fiends dead or severely wounded!
And this was only the beginning. As they struck, the Storm Warhammers magically whipped back into their masters' hands, ready for another volley!
From the backs of griffons, the knights hurled them down again and again—fly, throw, recall, repeat.
This was the dwarves' elite arm: the Griffon Knight's unique art of war!
They were like nimble bombing machines, scourging everything in their path, feared throughout the known world!
"Well done—proud sons of the dwarves, every one of you!"
The circling Griffon Knight laughed aloud, overcome with enthusiasm as only dwarves can be.
Then, guiding his griffon through the wind, he landed behind Charles and the others.
As the party looked at him in surprise, the dwarf grinned awkwardly and explained: "We've been flying so long, my mount needs a break too—it's only right I let him rest!"
Charles didn't mind; he knew that no matter how sturdy, even a griffon gets tired carrying a dwarf and two great iron warhammers so far.
Now the crisis had truly abated, victory assured. No longer a cold, mechanical Eldritch Blast battery, Charles drew his sword and leapt in as the battle ended, summoning the force of purification to try and harvest a few more Purification Points.
Soon, the battle was truly over.
The Griffon Knights landed on distant hills, and their riders slid from the griffons' backs, feeding jerky and water to their mounts and recharging their Storm Warhammers.
The captain of these knights rode his biggest, proudest griffon down to Charles's group.
He stayed mounted as he called out, "I am Kato, Captain of the Second Battalion of Griffon Knights. Thank you, everyone, for fighting to save our kin."
Before Charles could reply, the dwarven captain shouted over to the other dwarf who'd just landed, "Report—what happened?"
"Oh!" bellowed the dwarf. "We came to investigate the new demons in the area, discovered a fresh abyssal portal, and ran into this swarm of fiends!"
"The survey team is trapped behind the mountain—most of the demon horde I drew this way, so they should be unharmed!"
He proudly pointed at Charles and his group: "Thanks to these folks luring the vrocks and the main wave here, otherwise I'd have died out there myself, ha!"
This was one thing about dwarves—they were never stingy about giving outsiders credit for aid, and always loyal to those who helped them.
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