D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

--- Lily ---

Lily quickly realised she was being silly. She was a paper mage, and while she currently lacked the mana to summon large amounts of paper, her storage ring contained plenty. More then plenty. In truth, when Lily investigated she found a veritable mountain of paper inside of her storage ring, perhaps enough to crush the drake from the weight alone.

For a few moments Lily contemplated using that to take out the drake somehow… but doubted it would work. Sure it was a lot of paper but it wasn't dense or special, just present in large quantities.

So with that known, Lily and Kamiko decided to sneak over to Bower, talk with him for a bit, see if they could come up with an idea, or two, and then send a paper with a message on it towards Hunter. Kat could be contacted over the link, and then everyone would be on the same page.

Lily took off first. There really wasn't any cover so she simply transformed and ran along the ground as a Memphis. Kamiko debated what the best choice would be before eventually settling on simply walking. Kamiko was banking on the slow speed and non-threatening demeanour would cause the drake to ignore her for now, especially with Kat and Hunter acting as much more threatening targets.

Bower noticed their approach early on and decided to start inching his way over. Hands on his crossbow and one eye constantly keeping the drake in mind. He didn't relax at all despite seemingly being out of the line of fire. He had enough experience with animals to know that they could change targets if they got frustrated and he had no desire to be a chew toy.

Eventually they met up and Bower crouched down somewhat and Lily transformed back. "Got something on your mind Lily?" asked Bower. Lily nearly fell out of her crouched position, Bower had just used her name!

"Um… yes…" Lily really wanted to ask but now was NOT the time. "Kamiko and I were trying to work out what's going on and our best guess is that the drake is eating time when it regenerates… and we're not sure how it works at all. We couldn't think of a way to kill it without making the problem worse because we both, and Kat too, feel like letting those crystals get bigger is a bad idea,"

Bower's hands twitched, wanting to fiddle with something but unwilling to put down his crossbow for it. "I see… well I can think of two obvious answers, the first is that you kill the dragon in one attack, not giving it any smaller wounds to wind back… and the second idea is that you take out the crystals,"

"But Hunter tried that once and they just grew back," pointed out Lily. It was also around this time that Kamiko caught up to the group but she kept quiet, not seeing the need to say anything.

"Right, but what if we can get all of them?" suggested Bower.

"I can see it working, but I suspect at least some of the crystals are deeper in the dragon's skull then we realise. We cannot simply slice a line across the top and call it a day we'd need to dig down into the drake and I do not know if we could cut through something like that.

Hmm… the best chance I can think of would be to pass my weapon off to Kat and let her make the attempt with Rank 3 strength… but I am unsure if my naginata has a long enough blade for that," retorted Kamiko.

Bower nodded, "Right, didn't think about that. Hmmm… explosives? Got anything like that in those fancy rings of yours?"

Lily frowned and turned her mind to the storage ring with explosives in mind… and found she did have some. The problem was, Lily had no idea how powerful the blast radius would be nor how any of it worked. Well, except for the obvious few sticks of dynamite. They at least were easy to understand. "I do… but I've got not context for them.

They could be mild explosives for clearing away weak people, or mountain destroyers…" answered Lily.

"I'm in the same boat. Explosive handling was never something I was taught in my time at school, though I have heard that it is offered as an elective in some institutions so Hunter likely would know," said Kamiko.

"So it comes back to Hunter… we can compose a message for her and I can send it over. Maybe a few copies just in case?" Lily paused as she looked over the fight that was definitely still going. Hunter was regularly tearing chunks from the drake with her bullets and Kat was keeping it from advancing too much.

Hunter was easily able to back up between shots so the drake was making no progress at the moment… but it did swipe at Hunter occasionally. It was nowhere near close enough to do damage, but if it released some energy from its claws even once it could be a different story.

Lily shook her head, she was getting distracted. "So we compose a message, I send it off… what do we want to convince Hunter to do?"

"We just put on both right? Ask her to try and destroy all of the crystals at once, and if that proves impossible we have her tell us how the explosives work… or maybe get her to just set them up?" suggested Kamiko.

"Sounds good to me," agreed Bower, and with that they got to composing the message. It was pretty simple. Lily did consider making copies with magic… but she hadn't practiced that spell at all and she was low on mana so the idea was scrapped. Copying by hand it was.

As Lily was writing out a second slip of paper just in case, and sending the first on its mission, Lily contacted Kat. *Kat, hopefully you're getting this clearly. Our current plan is to see if Hunter can take out all of the crystals, and if she cannot, use some explosives to make the attempt. We don't know if it will kill the drake but it's the best idea we have so far.*

[Yup, I hear you. How risky will that be?]

*Yeah that's part of the issue. We realised we've got explosives in our rings but we have no idea about the yield on them so we're hoping Hunter knows. It's considered plan B if she can't just shoot the crystals away. Which means she'll either need to do it herself, or come over and talk so you might get more busy shortly. Sorry.*

[It's fine just keep me posted.]

Lily elated when she saw Hunter snatch the paper out of the air and read it over. A moment later she'd swapped out the bullet that she'd chambered and took aim at the crystals once again, waiting for just the right moment. When the drake's head came down to attack Kat Hunter launched herself up into the air and fired.

The bullet impacted right in the middle of the drake's head before exploding. The let out an annoyed growl, nothing like the pained ones earlier. Despite Hunter clearing off most of the crystals, when the smoke around the drake's head cleared it was immediately obvious she didn't get all of them…

And as expected they reformed after a moment of stillness from the drake itself and… perhaps slightly larger? Lily narrowed her eyes as she struggled to tell. If there was a difference it wasn't anything major, especially compared to all major change that clearly took place when it rewound everything in that large area.

Lily watched as Hunter took another shot at the drake, this time peppering its head with three quick shots blowing away a large chunks of meat from around its head. This certainly pissed it off more. The drake slammed its talons into the ground in response and a wave flew out from the impact sight. Lily's instinct screamed at her and she launched herself into the air.

Not far behind her were Bower and Kamiko.

The wave passed beneath them, to seemingly no effect but Lily couldn't help the shiver running down her spine. She didn't understand exactly what that was, but she could tell with her senses that it would've been quite a devastating blow. Lily looked over at Hunter, as she felt no pain from Kat's end of the link, indicated her girlfriend must be fine.

Hunter appeared to be ok as well. Lily didn't know if how she'd managed to avoid it, because she should've been coming down from the air at the same time as the wave rolled out… but Hunter was experienced. Lily could only assume she knew a few tricks to stay out of danger.

The drake was fine too. Annoyingly. The crystals rewound back to their previous state… and the rest of the damage was quickly regenerated. Not rewound, notably, but regenerated. The blood stains and meat chunks were still visible after all. *Now… does that actually MEAN anything of importance?*