I led the team with Ana by my side ready to intercept any attack that appears in front of us, even though she must focus on the leader of these magic beasts nothing prevents her from killing as many magic beasts as possible before he gets close to her.
Even as we approach the source of the previous roar, I can't find the magic beasts; it shouldn't be hard to see them in my forest even if their element is earth and they are hidden under the ground.
When a cry for help came from our right, I was able to be absolutely sure that the magic beasts have a higher intelligence than expected, it's too much of a coincidence to have a new victim just now when we're tracking the magic beasts.
But when we head towards the woman screaming for help because we can't do anything different, even though I know it's a trap sometimes I hate being an ethical soldier. I started to doubt my absolute certainty that this is a trap when the woman was approaching us instead of standing still or running in a different direction than we were.
My doubts disappeared when I saw the woman's mana, she is an earth element mage. There's definitely something wrong here, an earth element mage who doesn't have a stellar core in her body but a core of a magical beast, I've read about magical beasts that only disguise or deceive adventurers by pretending to be human, but this one not only it will be the first time that I encounter this kind of magic beast so rare at such a low level.
Magic beasts with the element of illusion are found at level two, but a magical beast that is wearing a large wizard's cloak while running through the forest pretending to be a desperate adventurer is unheard of. I've never read about this kind of beast, should I try to capture the magical beast?
I'm sure they would pay a lot of gold for this magical beast that is coming to deliver to us, their group is running through the trees of the forest several meters from the fake mage. Probably her plan is for the magical beasts in the forest to draw the group's attention when the false mage directly attacks the mages or archers on our team.
I didn't have time to alert my team to the nature of the false mage, but I had time enough to signal to Ana that the mage was our enemy and must be captured. Ana didn't show any emotion with my statement, it seems I'm not the only one to notice that something is wrong with the presence of someone in the forest self-pursued by magical beasts at the moment we are behind them.
Before the false mage came within sight of my team, I had already unsheathed my blades and a few seconds later I saw a hooded figure running towards us.
The magical beast really puts a lot of effort into this disguise, the blue weeds cover a good part of her body without looking too exaggerated and the size of her cup matches the normal shape of a mage, but the best part of her disguise is her hands they are really normal.
I didn't expect this detail, the hand that holds your staff is thin, small, hairless and their nails are normal. The only visible 'flaw' in her disguise is that a mage running for her life desperately wouldn't be so covered, the hood would have been thrown back so it wouldn't get in her line of vision when she has to run through the woods.
"Help!"
Her voice is well done also at this distance she is completely normal. By the time she approached us asking for help, black shadows were appearing in the tops of the trees. As we expected most magical beasts appear to be level two and have the earth element, their leader is out of our sight but i can see their energy she is a level three beast with the life and earth element.
Looks like this is going to be a tough fight for Ana.
"Help me!"
When we opened our formation so she could be protected by us, the poor naive magical beast passed between me and Ana only to be hit by Ana's violent kick. The false mage was thrown to the ground breaking it.
"Knight, bind her to the ground and beware of earth element magic."
Before the beast could even try to get up, it was crushed by Fim who threw himself on it like a project, using his shield full of mana and his elemental energy, hitting the false mage's head against the ground. A minor problem to worry about, but now we have to deal with the magical beasts that are surrounding us.
"There are about twenty enemies, but their leader is still coming!"
With Fim holding the fake mage to the ground, Tania and Quinn stayed close to them while the rest of the team formed a circular formation around the four of them to protect them. A good part of the beasts is still in the trees, but the four magic beasts with robust bodies and lots of mana one of them even has the fire element in addition to the earth element.
But the most troublesome beasts are the five that have gone underground and are making their way underground to attack us but unfortunately for them it won't work. Even without looking back I feel Quinn casting a large-scale spell that is spreading across the floor hardening him.
"Prepare to clear the area, Terra. We're going to need a clean battlefield."
"OK."
The magic beasts' first attack was not what I expected, two magic beasts above the trees jumped into the trees near our formation and started attacking compact wind fists. Just from seeing the distortion in the air it was apparent that the strength of these two blows was compatible with the peak power of a normal tier two fighter, which is quite surprising since these two magical beasts aren't that close to the mana level of one. level three beast.
The air fists were blocked by Ana who used the same type of attack as a more efficient miner, and this was answered by several elemental attacks coming from the tops of the trees near the group. The magic beasts only moved very fast and positioned themselves on top of all the trees around us, it looks like they will use their advantage to wear us down, a good strategy but useless now.
A massive amount of mana and elemental energy passed under my feet and spread over a great distance moving the earth in a circular fashion.
All the trees near our groups tumbled down as their buried roots were moved in a clockwise direction, Quinn's magic was like a wave of earth that toppled the trees by layer. Without the protection of the trees most magical beasts had nowhere to hide, with their bodies revealed by the morning light everyone could get a good view of their bodies.
We thought they were a type of primate, but looking at scales glistening in the sunlight revealed that we're facing tailless bipedal lizards. The lizards have green and brown scales and red eyes, but other than the fact that some of them appear to be carrying rusty or damaged weapons they don't look any different from normal beasts, if they walked or crawled along the ground with their four limbs, they would be no different. lizard-type magical animals.
Climbing into the fallen trees the flock of lizards only made you visible, except for an unlucky one who was digging through the earth and was caught by Quinn's magic. The lizard had its body broken into several pieces when it hit the hard roots of the trees as the earth twisted its body.
This lizard's limbs are pointed the wrong way while a good part of its body is still buried in the ground.
Lizards were very angry and advanced directly against our team from all sides, it's a shame for them that without the cover of the trees it was Tania's turn to shine, when they only approached us, several fireballs crossed the air and detonated destroyed the disharmonized attack of the magical beasts.
Few died but gave the opening for our side to take the initiative, taking out Abel who stayed behind to protect the mages and the captured beast the team advanced as the true predators of this fight.
I went straight into one of the larger lizards that should serve as the main attack for this pack of magical beasts, like a whirlwind I used my sword to attack the lizard that was kneeling on the ground after being hit by Tania's fire blast the right side of his body was well burned, a good part of his scales was black.
I aimed my sword directly at his burnt arm, but when I hit his burnt scales, my sword tore a good slice of flesh from his shoulder didn't stop him from attacking me with both his left claw and his jaws.
A nice double strike that I faced head on releasing a good dose of lightning to burn even this lizard, but all my elemental energy entered the lizard's body and it barely made him recoil back. This damn lizard not only has a tough body because of its earth element, but their body has a strong healing ability even though they don't have the life element in their body.
The bleeding from his shoulder has not only slowed down considerably, but some of the burnt scales are being replaced by pale green scales. This is getting complicated.
When I turned to take advantage of the injured side of the lizard, he only pulled away from me, but when he jumped back to take his eyes off me, he was hit by a black sword that slashed his neck, decapitating him. Ana had already killed two lizards and started targeting the strongest lizards to eliminate them before their leader arrived, which surprisingly is taking time.
As I look around, I notice a strange thing, the number of dead lizards on the ground has increased, but the number of lizards around us has not decreased. When I looked at the large body that carried a lot of aura and elemental energy, only approaching I realized that he was not alone.
The four lizards smaller than their leader are still larger than the one I just fought. I doubt I can fight for a long time against one of them alone, the four lizards are tier three magic beasts their mana is too concentrated to be a tier two beast.