Lan glanced over to Jim and said nothing. He wasn't that type of a coward, yet he was slightly realistic. Fighting this large group of unknown races and might be disciples in the academy wasn't really a good thing to hope for.
Despite the rules here stated that only one grade difference between any disciples fighting even here, Lan and everyone else aside from Jim hoped not to fight this group.
Yet Jim was more realistic than they all thought him to be. He knew this was these thieves' turf, and he couldn't outrun them in their own turf. Besides, he really needed the riches they carried and looted from other travelling disciples before them.
As Jim feared, just as the distant walls of the Sherwid town appeared in the distant horizon, the thieves seemed to be tired of this run and started to show their speed advantage as a part of them.
They sent a group of twenty members to run faster, crossing the bigger group of Jim's team and aiming to block the retreating path of them.
And in roughly five minutes, the path was blocked by this group, forcing Deno and others to stop abruptly with racing breaths.
"Surrender all your belongings and we will let you live," a tiger head with a long moustache moved to the front while saying that. He was one of the few here with giant bodies, rivaling that of Deno. "Resist and we won't show any mercy to any of you."
"You are one of the academy disciples, why are you doing that?" Ashley shouted at him, faking panic and distress.
"Hahaha, who told you about my identity?" the tiger asked but one of the nearby members pointed with his tail towards a badge over his bare fur covered chest. "Oh, this little worthless ornament here? You girl has good eyesight despite being a weak human. Tell me, why didn't you run away with those weaklings from before?"
Ashley didn't answer him while Deno moved to stand in front of her and others besides Gorden and Rick. The three had giant bodies to guard those behind, while the Roo and Kro stood behind them then the rest.
"Planning to resist?" the tiger disciple sneered before adding, "you know this is foolish. If you were a large group then I can understand this, but you? Look at yourselves, you are so few."
He pointed at them and turned to his gang who started laughing.
Just amidst their laughs, the sky suddenly changed. "Is it going to rain again, boss?" one of the gang asked while looking, like everyone else, to the sky.
Just as this happened, Deno and others smirked, and their strange expression made the tiger disciple and his gang look suspiciously at them.
"Have you lost your mind or what? Do you think only two Kroaks and three shapeshifters can use the rain against us? Funny," one of the gang laughed as he seemed to be enjoying the look over Deno and others.
Deno started to move forward, without saying a single word from the beginning to end except for what Ashley said, while the other two beside and behind him moved as well.
"Crazy," the tiger disciple shook his head in fake regret, "boys, go and kill them. The loot will be distributed as…"
Before he could even complete his sentence, suddenly the sky thundered and the next thing everyone saw was thick tongues of lightning falling from the dense clouds above their heads, hitting them one by one without warning.
"What the hell…" the tiger disciple was shocked, yet he suddenly saw the cause of all this.
Without anyone knowing, Jim and the other two moved to reach the main group from their rear. Everyone had already removed them from their minds, while the only thing they were thinking about was the loot they would gain from Deno and his little team.
"Kill him!" the tiger disciple bellowed in rage instantly when he saw the shape of Jim. Jim was now floating inside a ball of lightning, and he was simply waving his sword, and each wave was followed by a brutal hit from the dense clouds in the sky.
"Don't forget us," just as the shout landed on everyone's ears, this loud sneer came from Deno who charged directly towards the tiger disciple.
Gorden aimed towards another giant disciple, while Rick used his roar to stun many of them in this decisive moment.
And then all kinds of attacks landed over the group of eighty disciples without warning.
Water breaths appeared from Roo and Kro, followed by turning the water into ice by the three shapeshifters. This simple transformation did massive damage to many enemies, while the main attackers were Deno, Rick, and Gorden from the front, and Jim with Jenny from behind.
The issue here was that the gang lowered their guard and never expected for this small team to be able to fight them on even grounds. When they started to wake up, they were met with such a brutal momentum, and their leaders were the first to fall as they were already in the front rows.
In less than five minutes, the entire fight turned upside down. It was the turn of the gang members with weak hearts to run, and they ran everywhere, anywhere away from here.
"Should we follow them?" Deno asked when he finally met with Jim, who still had his ball of lightning surrounding his body, floating in the air.
"No," Jim shook his head, "our target is achieved. Go and collect our loot and let's head to the town fast."
They all nodded and started to collect anything of value. Unlike these disciples, Jim and his team had nothing worth of mentioning. So, even any gear these disciples had was taken without question.