The thought of a water park, where the kids were playing on waterslides in the rainy season, where everyone traditionally hid inside to stay dry, made Amie laugh along with Dominic as they fought.

The explosions were enough to quickly diminish the number of Gnolls in the area, but more were still coming out of the portals in the tents, and they were spreading out to attack the full force.

"I think that they have a commander staying behind to guide them. They have adapted to your plan, and they’re coming to target us." She informed Dominic, who didn’t appear to be planning at all at this point.

"Excellent news. We are going to have so many monster cores when we finish here. SO many." Dominic joked.

That seemed inevitable when you had a mage who didn’t run out of mana. But magitech pistols were an unfair advantage over the common monster.

It had changed the whole way that battles were fought. But Amie was sure that she was hearing the sound of artillery in the valley as well. Alexis’ Royal Guard should have mortar launchers, if she recalled correctly, and they were putting them to good use.

"Push forward, let’s collect some of this loot while the gnolls are confused." Dominic instructed, already putting his plan into motion.

The line had spread out, but Dominic didn’t want it too thin, as that reduced the number who died to every fireball. What he needed was a dense wall of monsters, spread out so that the cavalry could get a good shot at them.

They all had rifles and pistols, so they were mostly stationary. But with the ability to move quickly, they could flank the Gnolls to attack at any weak point, or reinforce the edges of the ravine if the monsters tried to push forward and surround the Paladins down below.

"Reinforce the mages!" Dominic heard someone in the Cavalry shout, moments before he realized what their actions would look like from their allies’ point of view.

To them, it looked like the Duke and his assistant were being overrun with Gnolls. But really, Dominic just wanted to grab a few hundred monster cores before changing positions.

However, there was no way to relay that back to the cavalry.

They wouldn’t be able to see his hand signals from their position, with the Gnolls in the way, and their hearing wasn’t good enough for him to just shout at them.

"Make it quick, they got the wrong idea." Dominic instructed as he quickly loaded up on monster cores.

"Got it, boss. But should we use this chance to push further into their lines? We could let the cavalry get all the way to the front of the ravine again, so they can funnel them down to the Paladins and the mages." Amie suggested.

"Oh, I like that. Let’s go with your plan. Fireballs it is."

The mage just laughed as the monsters charging at them vanished in a wall of fiery death. It burned through an impressive amount of mana every second, but the Gnollish horde was being moved back by twenty metres every few seconds as well.

"Don’t forget the loot. It’s all about the loot." She muttered to herself as she saw Dominic dodging through the dead to tap as many as possible for their monster core drops.

At that rate, the horde was all the way to the entrance of the ravine by the time that her mana was running low, and Amie whistled to Dominic that they had gone far enough.

She was going to need some time with just the pistols to recover from the exertion, but she knew that Dominic could keep up the effort much longer than she could, with his mana recovery advantage.

They both pulled back from the battle, grabbing a few more cores as they retreated, while the Cavalry pushed forward to hold the new line.

That let them send a few men on foot to loot the back lines, which were now behind the main force, and recover as much of the loot as possible.

They were here as mercenaries, at least in theory. They were still Cygnia soldiers on Cygnia territory, though. So, they were under no illusions of being able to keep everything that they grabbed.

However, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t get to keep any of it.

Dominic and Amie moved to the side of the horde again, thinning the crowd, but this time with the intention of moving forward and closer to the portal beacons.

The number of monsters coming through was insane, and unless they had just relieved a major city from being under attack, it didn’t make any sense.

They had to investigate.

But more than that, they needed to know if this same situation was playing out all over the horde. The Duskblade Sect had sent nearly all their combat capable members to this fight, and if the tide was unending, they could suffer heavy casualties that would impact not only their ability to teach the students next week, but their future as a Sect.

There was always a risk to a large job like this one, and that was part of the reason that the pay was expected to be so high. But no Mage Clan would take on a suicide mission.

Down in the valley, Alexis was thinking the same thing that Dominic was.

If this monster tide didn’t thin out soon, they were going to have to send messages to entirely too many soldiers’ families, informing them that they had been lost in battle, when their nation wasn’t officially at war.

That was never an easy letter to write, or an easy burden to bear.

However, far from their battle, the Capital City of Skiple had a very different outlook on life.

Over the course of the last few hours, fifty thousand monsters had left the siege of the city, vanishing through portals. Now, all that was left were a few dozen mages and five thousand Ogres.

The remainder of their Royal Guard was ready to push out and eliminate this threat from the traitor armies once and for all.

They didn’t know who had called away the monsters, or if it was just a trap to lure out their forces, but it looked like this was the only opportunity that they were going to be given to attack the mages directly, and that was the only way that they could end this siege.