I attacked with my sword again and again. However, I wasn’t alone. Lydia fought beside me, and Shao was continuing to provide side support. All six of us were attacking at once. My hope had been to overwhelm the King with a barrage of attacks. Without me focusing on support, we couldn’t keep this up for long, but I was hoping it’d be enough.
“Is that all you have?” He snorted, his sword glowing as he executed a skill. “Precision Strike!”
I just managed to block it, but the strength was many times greater than my own and I went flying back. “Create Cushion!”
I hit a cushioned spot behind me and fell to the ground. I had been getting better at that. In fact, this was the first time I had cast such a high-level White Mage spell without White Mage equipped. It seemed like having it not equipped so often had been good for me, as I was picking up more spells. It wasn’t ideal for casting spells this way. They were clunkier and used more mana, but when your job system was limited, it was either make them work or not have them. It was like having to learn a foreign language. It’d take years under instruction, but If you dived right into a foreign country and had to learn it or starve, you found your mind could pick it up remarkably fast.
Even then, it wasn’t like I could cast every spell up to level 16s Create Cushion equally. Some spells would fizzle and fail every other attempt, while others I just hadn’t picked up. It was only the ones I used a lot, like Weak Heal, Refresh, and Light that I retained. For that matter, Light was a continuous drain rather than a single time cast. Normally, I regenerated magic faster than it worked, so I could basically leave it on all the time. In current circumstances though, my magic regen was lower, and my Light cost would be higher, so it actually was a continuous drain, and I could only use it in a burst of about an hour. That was the difference between having a job and not, although I bet continued practice would close that gap.
I considered sending Faeyna away while we covered her exit. If push came to shove, that would take away his greatest threat. However, I had a feeling he’d focus on one of the other girls instead. In fact, he didn’t seem that interested in any of the women. I had a feeling he was just trying to anger me so that I’d attack him aggressively. Perhaps… of course!
My eyes snapped to the Queen, still trapped within the magic restrictions on the bed. I may have had my weaknesses, but so did he. I had ended up taking the wrong lessons from General Tibult. I was trying to protect myself for fear the King would focus on me, but the situation in this case was completely reversed. The King had only himself and the one he was trying to protect, while we had a large formation of six fighters.
The King had realized this from the beginning, and thus he had been throwing out vitriol in an attempt to bring all attention onto himself. After all, if we went after the currently restricted Queen, it would be too easy to cut her down. Once she was defeated, the dungeon lore could be destroyed, and then the King would no longer have any need to be here. It was absolutely his greatest fear in all of this. It was time to change my strategy.