Mages Are the Toughest

At three in the morning, an annoyed voice suddenly came from the dwarf tent, where the snoring rumbled like thunder. "Hey, Toad, did you fart? It smells so strongly of rotten eggs that it seeped through the tent and woke me up!"

"Shorty, your nose has been pickled in alcohol until it's a drunkard's nose. What smells could you possibly detect?" the rogue shot back without ceremony.

"Stop arguing and get some sleep," the captain, Slicked-back Hair, urged.

Marvin was also awakened by the commotion.

After hearing their exchange, he instinctively felt a sense of danger. Rotten egg smell? No, that's the smell of sulfur!

"Enemy attack! Prepare for battle!"

Marvin shouted and immediately pulled a bottle of Lesser Arcane Nourishment Elixir from his storage ring and drank it.

Although his rest had been interrupted, Marvin had kept all his spell slots. Combined with the extra spell slot gained from drinking the Lesser Arcane Nourishment Elixir, he could now cast a total of four first-circle spells.

Together with the pile of scrolls in his storage ring, that was more than enough.

After crawling out of the tent, Marvin looked around but found no sign of movement.

"The Alarm didn't trigger. Strange." The priest also noticed that something was wrong.

The sulfur stench was clearly growing stronger, yet there was no enemy in sight.

The half-elf rogue casually glanced upward, and his rough voice immediately shattered the valley's quiet. "Watch out, they're in the sky!"

By the cold moonlight, the members of the Goddess Body Fragrance Squad saw two orange-red figures wielding flaming tridents and beating their wings as they dove toward the camp.

As the priest with the highest Perception, Slicked-back Hair was the first to make out the enemies. "They're Spined Devils. Besides the tridents in their hands, watch out for their tails. They can fire tail spikes with the force of a light crossbow bolt, and they deal fire damage too!"

Before he had even finished speaking, the two Spined Devils rapidly whipped their tails.

A dense barrage of whistling projectiles tore through the night.

The group had just gotten out of bed and were all in their nightclothes. Though the Spined Devils' tail spikes were not terribly powerful, taking a full volley without armor would still hurt badly.

Toad immediately crouched down, using a rogue's specialty to hide himself in the darkness.

Marvin immediately took a scroll from his storage ring. "Shield!"

The magic in the parchment was swiftly drained, turning it into scraps that scattered in the wind.

At the same time, a force shield appeared before Marvin.

"Get over here!"

Slicked-back Hair and Cellar immediately scrambled over and huddled behind Marvin.

Thud, thud, thud...

Dozens of tail spikes buried themselves in the ground where the two had been standing, igniting several clumps of dead grass.

One was a priest trained in medium armor, while the other was a warrior capable of charging through enemy ranks in heavy armor. Yet after being caught in an ambush with no time to don their gear, they could only rely on a cloth-robed mage for protection.

If Scumbag found out about this embarrassment, he would probably turn it into a little song and mock them with it for a year.

But Slicked-back Hair had no time to worry about the bard's ridicule. He only felt that having such a cautious mage in the party was truly wonderful!

Before going to sleep, Marvin had refreshed Mage Armor on himself. At the moment, it was as though he were wearing a chain shirt.

Spined Devils were exceedingly cunning devils, usually serving as scouts and spies.

From the air, they had immediately seen that, protected by spells, the seemingly fragile mage was actually the toughest target.

That was why the Spined Devils had gifted their first volley of tail spikes to the two people who had not had time to put on armor.

If the party's mage had not been the careful Marvin, but someone else without the habit of sleeping with Mage Armor active, he would likely have been chosen as the primary target in the ambush and turned into a sieve by more than a dozen tail spikes.

Not only would the party have suffered casualties, but losing their crucial spellcaster would have put them at an extreme disadvantage.

Though Slicked-back Hair, as captain, was crouching behind Marvin in a sorry state, he still swiftly made the correct judgment. "Spined Devils need roughly thirty seconds between volleys of tail spikes. That's enough time for us to reach the woods. Once they lose sight of us, they won't be able to attack from above."

"Run over there empty-handed? Without our equipment, hiding in the woods is still a dead end!" said the dwarf warrior.

"Don't hesitate. Get into the woods. I'll carry your equipment."

"Our armor and weapons alone weigh over a hundred pounds. How can a mage like you carry them?" The priest rejected Marvin's suggestion. "Don't force yourself. Let's all retreat somewhere safe first, then figure something out."

Marvin did not answer. He merely cast two spells in succession:

Tenser's Floating Disk

Enhanced Mage Hand

Afterward, he commanded four Mage Hands to search the tents one by one and collect the essential equipment.

The floating disk followed close behind, allowing the Mage Hands to immediately place the equipment on it after picking it up.

Marvin himself ran toward the woods with his teammates.

The camp was about twenty feet from the woods, just within the limit of the caster's control over the floating disk.

Half a minute quickly passed.

In the night sky, the two Spined Devils discovered with anger and surprise that their enemies had managed, in such a short time, to retrieve the weapons, armor, and other items they had not had time to equip from the tents and transport them toward the woods.

As the floating disk was about to enter the trees, the two Spined Devils let out a simultaneous shriek and fired their tail spikes at it in frustration.

Obviously, their attacks were completely futile.

Then, one of the larger Spined Devils raised its flaming trident, let out a shriek, and issued an attack order in Infernal.

Around the woods occupied by the Goddess Body Fragrance Squad, behind the rolling hills piled with massive rocks, writhing sounds suddenly rose one after another.

Clusters of brown monsters, vaguely humanoid but covered in twisted deformities, crawled toward the humans.

Only then did the Alarm trigger, its jingling bells echoing through the night.

"Lemures. At least twenty."

Toad promptly reported what he had observed.

Devils were immune to poison, possessed darkvision, and had passive awareness. It could be said that they completely countered a rogue's combat advantages.

Thus, in this mission, Toad could only handle some miscellaneous tasks.

Fortunately, his equipment was relatively light. He had already put on his leather armor, held a silvered shortsword, and prepared himself for battle.

As Slicked-back Hair labored to put on his breastplate, he said, "Take four bottles of holy water from the bag of holding. In a moment, you and Cellar will clear out those Lemures and protect the flanks and rear."

Though there were many Lemures, their combat power was truly poor.

It was best to leave them to the rogue, who was not good at fighting devils, and the short-limbed warrior.

The truly threatening enemies were the two Spined Devils, who moved quickly and had ranged attacks.

Only the mage and priest could deal with them.

Marvin directed the Mage Hands to help Slicked-back Hair and Cellar quickly put on their armor.

If the Purple Dragon Knights of Cormyr saw this, they would surely be envious.

With these convenient energy hands handling chores, even something as troublesome as putting on armor became easy. Why would anyone need those stupid, clumsy, cowardly servants who also had to be paid to serve them?