[i]"Unless something goes miserably wrong, we're not going to be fighting them head-on. Am I clear?"[/i]

"I... I think so?!" Viri honestly wasn't sure she'd caught all that, but then there wasn't going to be time to review, was there? [i]Why did all this have to start happening so fast? I'm not good with quick decisions like this![/i] When she'd arrived in this alternate world, she'd been able to suppress her panic and focus on moving forward based on logic and consideration. Now, though, there was no time to think. Her heart was racing a mile a minute, her teeth chattering from fear and impact both, and all her tramped-down panic was coming rushing back. [i]This is all a dream, right? This has to be a bad dream![/i] As Deneb pulled her roughly up one final hill, she squeezed her eyes shut, her fingers clutching the ninja's arm with desperate strength. [i]WakeupwakeupwakeupwakeupWAKEUP—[/i]

And then they hit the ground, and she didn't wake up.

[i]Five seconds.[/i]

With Deneb now taking on a combat stance, Viri scrambled behind her, cowering in the ninja's shadow. Her eyes were wide and rimmed with tears, her fluffy ears folding back against the side of her head as the first of the beasts crested the mound before them.

[i]Four.[/i]

She wasn't waking up. There was no easy way out, no way to blink and reappear safe in bed as the morning sun leaked through the windows. There was only her, and a magical stick, and the lithe figure of a young woman standing fearlessly in front of her, knife bared against the coming onslaught.

A young woman counting on Viri to back her up.

[i]Three.[/i]

Fear crumbled and drained from her mind like sand falling through splayed fingers, replaced by icy calm. [i]Multiple attackers, mounting a frontal assault from above. Commanded by 'field boss,' likely more dangerous than the others. Traps laid in front, goal is to maximize our advantage to prepare for a fighting retreat.[/i] She'd cast a spell just before, so she knew how this went. Knew what her character could do, how Viridian Daeva was meant to operate in situations like this.

[i]Two.[/i]

Her staff began to glow, and she raised it high. [i]Self buff: Multi-cast.[/i] Her eyes, now sharp as daggers, stared out across her battlefield and marked out her target locations.

[i]One.[/i]

She brought her staff down, slamming its lower end into the grassy earth hard enough to punch straight through the topsoil.

[i]Zero![/i]

Barriers burst into existence in front of the wolves, panes of what looked like green-tinted glass suddenly blocking their path. Positioned so that they interlocked, forming two walls that extended diagonally forwards, with a small gap between them leading to Deneb. Not a barricade, but a [i]funnel[/i].

The first wolves, already slipping over the ninja's traps, tumbled down the hill and struck the barriers, sliding against them as they were funneled into a single chokepoint. There, furry bodies crashed together, tangling in each other's legs and writhing in pain and confusion, some even scratching and biting at each other as they struggled to break free. The next wave coming over the hill were unable to slow down in time to do keep themselves from running into that same funnel, unable to keep themselves from slipping up on Deneb's oil and then sliding down into that same trap, more bodies added to the chaos.

The next wave, though, had already smelled the blood and fear in the air, and were already slowing when they crested the hilltop. They hesitated, seeing the funnel up ahead and the fate of those who had charged so blindly into its jaws. Animals or not, they weren't stupid. Already they were spreading out, moving to try and surround their targets rather than run straight at them.

Their prey, however, was already deploying countermeasures.

Ripping her staff out of the ground, Viri dismissed the walls of barriers forming the funnel— they'd have disappeared on their own after a few seconds, but making them vanish early refunded a little bit of mana, and she needed every drop she could get right now. Stepping backwards and keeping well behind Deneb, the cleric began spamming her barrier spell, green panes appearing sporadically in front of the moving wolves.

Not vertical panes, this time, but horizontal ones.

Orientation had always been an option, though in [i]Emerald Odyssey[/i] she'd only every used horizontal barriers to protect a group from aerial attacks raining down from above. In this case, there was no need for air cover, so she placed them in front of the flanking beasts, [i]edge-on[/i]. Running into a wall would have been painful enough, but running into was was effectively a stationary floating guillotine was a lot worse. Even if the barriers didn't have sharp enough edges to actually to much damage to the wolves, there were still howls and the unexpected impacts yielded bloody snouts, the mobs crashing straight into thin obstacles that were almost invisible at their eye-level.

There were only so many she could cast, and they weren't doing much other than slowing some of the wolves down. That was the point, though. As beasts saw their pack-members intercepted in painful fashion, they slowed their own movements, wary of running into one of the cleric's shields. What had been a relentless assault that threatened to surround them was now looking more like a creeping threat, still imminent but no longer immediate.

When a white-furred monstrosity finally came into view, Viri tossed a spirit its way, and then paused, catching her breath. [i]Conjure Spirit... Speed DOWN.[/i] That ought to make it a little easier to kite. Her mana was already down to less than half, though, and for all her aggressive tactics, she didn't seem to have crippled or killed any of the enemies.

But then, healers like her had never been meant to inflict much damage. They had others to do that job for them.

[i]Show me your claws, Deneb.[/i]

[@PKMNB0Y]