Another loud boom erupted, the lightning arrow exploded and forked into a few lightning bolts. The shockwave from the explosion pushed Katrina back a few steps. On the other hand, Lia closed in while on Eric's team of three while she was sliding on the ground like she was skating. When Eric paid closer attention, he noticed that Lia was sliding on a strip of thin ice that grew in front of her as she slid forward.
"Leave the package, or you're dead!" Lia raised her voice as a long and thin sword of ice appeared in her hand: "Leave it, now!"
"You fucking wish!" Igor Vankov clenched his left fist, then turned back and unleashed a full forced punch with his left fist. The bright white power of his concentrated and became that of a shadow of a giant fist, launched right at Lia.
Lia swung her thin ice sword at the shadow fist, and an even thinner crescent shaped ice energy blade was released right at it. The ice energy blade and the shadow fist collided into each other, and both of them exploded, and splinters of ice shards and fragments of bright white energy were scattered into almost every direction. Lia hopped and floated to the side like she was in a figure skating competition, and then thrust her ice sword forward. An icy white energy line shot out from the tip of the ice sword, and impaled Igor Vankov's shoulder like a high speed bullet of extremely small caliber.
"Fuck!" Igor Vankov cursed and he immediately backed off, but the thin energy line had already left a see-through hole on his shoulder. What was more horrifying to Eric Partizan was that the hole did not bleed, its surroundings just went dark, frosty and hardened, just like what would have happened if one had suffered from really severe frostbite.
"If you don't stop, the next target's gonna be your worthless stinky little heart!" Lia's voice resounded in Eric Partizan's ears.
The images got more blurry and shaky, Professor Barnes could sense the regret and anger intensified. But since this was just a replay of past memory, Eric Partizan just kept going as he had intended at the moment, and he dragged Igor Vankov by his side, while calling out to Ailyn Shrier to follow him into the "safe house" they just decided less than half an hour ago.
With a blurry and shaky vision, Eric Partizan cast a spell in front of him. The effect of this spell was to create a temporary confusion energy field that could disorient and slow all individuals inside. Then, he reached into his own pocket and took out a hollow metal ball with patterns of flowers and cloud carved on it and a small piece of round purple gem inside and tossed it at Lia and Katrina.
The metal ball was an expensive one off artifact Eric Partizan acquired quite a while back, one that he had saved for all this time waiting for only the opportune moment. And right now, this seemed like an opportune moment.
"Crack!" the gem inside the metal ball cracked up then exploded. The metal casing on the outside was instantly turned into hundreds of small pieces with the exact same shapes and sizes. After exploding, the round purple gem turned into a big patch of purple fog in the area. And with the effect of the purple fog, Eric Partizan's confusion spell was intensified exponentially. Katrina and Lia were not prepared, and were instantly caught in the effects of it.
"Kill them!" Eric Partizan yelled at Aily Shrier: "Kill them, Ailyn!"
Ailyn Shrier had already pulled her bow and readied another attack. But she hesitated, presumably because she knew very well that even though rivalries and even armed conflicts were not that uncommon between different groups of spies in the Grant Academy, it was unheard of that any of them would dare to actually commit murder, or at least not this publicly.
This short moment of hesitation proved quite critical, as Gregory had caught up to them and nailed a blow dart onto Ailyn Shrier's left shoulder. The blow dart was coated with some kind of hardening and sharpening spell, so that even though Ailyn Shrier was wearing a layer of mesh armor, the dart still went through all of her defenses and pierced her skin and flesh.
The wound was only skin deep, but the poison it carried had already started to take effect. Ailyn Shrier's left arm had lost almost all strength in mere moments, and had to retreat along with her two teammates.
"Stop there!" Eric Partizan raised his hands and yelled at Gregory: "If you dare take another step, I will activate the explosives in the mist, and your team will be blown to fucking pieces!"
Gregory was an expert in medicine and toxicology, but he was no schemer or someone with a lot of street smarts, as he actually believed what Eric Partizan told him. This then gave Eric Partizan a chance to flee the scene and head for their "safe house".
On their way, Eric Partizan removed the dart from Ailyn Shrier's left shoulder, and he had put a simple healing spell on Igor Vankov's puncture wound with a sign of severe frostbite.
"Fucking hell." the effect of the healing spell brought back the sensation of the shoulder area around Igor Vankov's wound, and he couldn't help but groan: "Lia, that fucking bitch. I think she really meant it when she said she'd aim for my heart."
"Even they wouldn't want to cross that line like this." Eric Partizan said: "Let's regroup in the safe house. We've got the shipment already. Contact Mason and arrange a drop."
"I - I think I'm gonna need some antidote." Ailyn Shrier swallowed a pill from her pouch, which, as Eric Partizan remembered, was a general purpose antitoxin. Sweat was running down her face, and her skin was turning red: "I don't think what I have is gonna cut it."
"Hang in there, we have everything in the safe house."