[Ilnori]
Following their movement as they descended from the skies, Darganth let the three newly arrived mana users land in front of him without interrupting.
"Retreat, you'll only be in the way."
Addressing the low rank mana users still forming a circle around Darganth, the woman standing in the middle position among the three took the lead and ordered them away.
"Thanks, fewer distractions I have to take care of. But I assume you won't be doing me another favor and just get a mythic rank here without me first having to deal with you, would you?" Darganth asked half-jokingly in response.
"What an arrogance." The man to the woman's left muttered under his breath, with the second woman in their group nodding in agreement with his words.
"Don't let that distract you, stay on guard and get into formation." The leading woman interjected immediately.
Nodding half hardheartedly at her orders but not taking them seriously, her two colleagues both didn't focus fully as they did as she asked and spread out. As such, the man couldn't even react when Darganth abruptly sprang into action.
Momentarily flickering out of view as he accelerated forward under the effect of both a light aura and time magic, he dashed toward the man only to return to where he stood before his opponents could even register that he had moved. In the brief moment in between, he thrust his spear forward, slicing open a shallow cut on the man's cheek.
After returning to his starting position, Darganth then watched with a slight grin as the man froze up. Shakily lifting his arm and tracing his fingers across the wound, he was in disbelief all the way until he saw the blood on his hand.
"If you're going to waste my time then the next strike will be a little bit further to the left." Darganth said with his head turned toward the man.
Using that moment of seeming inattentiveness, the woman who had been moving further to Darganth's left opened the fight with a sudden spell. Swinging her arm up and closing her fist, she let massive quantities of water burst out of the ground around Darganth.
Following the motion of her hand, this mass of water coalesced into a sphere around Darganth's position. Consisting of hundreds of individual, rapidly spinning rings of water that moved with enough force to tear through most matter, this construct sealed off anything caught inside of it.
But while moving out of the formed spell would have been difficult, Darganth hadn't been as distracted as he seemed. Jumping backward the moment he felt the spell being cast, he first dodged out of its range before circling around it.
Dashing forward as soon as he caught sight of his target, Darganth closed in on the mage.
Having thought him trapped, the woman's eyes widened as he suddenly appeared in her line of sight. Using that to approach her unopposed, he reeled back his spear and took aim at her.
Swinging it upward in a diagonal slash, Darganth felt an impact rock the spear just centimeters before it reached the woman.
Both surprised and impressed, he shifted his gaze a bit further to the right. There, the group's leader stood, barely managing to reach past her colleague with her sword to block Darganth's strike.
Grinning despite having his strike blocked, Darganth pulled back again a moment later. Spinning his spear around in the same motion, he readied himself in preparation for the leader's counterattack.
Initially waiting as she charged at him, he sprung into action as soon as she came within five meters of him.
Ever so briefly letting go as he accelerated forward, Darganth repositioned his hand further up the spear. Now holding it near the center, he wielded it more like a sword as he intercepted the incoming swing.
Diverting the strike past his right shoulder, he pushed it toward the ground with a twist of his wrist. Simultaneously, he turned the blunt end of his weapon forward and thrust at his opponent with it.
Closing in as she stumbled back from the strike, he balled his free left hand into a fist and punched. First landing a hit on her nose to further disorient her, he then grabbed a hold of her right forearm before slamming up with his knee and into her elbow.
To his surprise, this only strained the joint and made her hiss in pain instead of breaking her arm. As such, she managed to exploit the small gap before his intended follow-up.
Forced to jump back as the woman swung her sword horizontally, Darganth brought up his spear to catch the second strike. Pushing back as the two weapon's blades pressed against each other, he was again surprised when she managed to match him even when he started putting more of his strength into it.
Only when he put nearly his entire effort into pushing her back did she start to bulge, though by then she had enough time to think of a plan. Pulling her sword away, she used the long range of Darganth's spear to her advantage by stepping closer to him.
Forced to step to the side to avoid the strike that followed, Darganth circled around the woman. Thrusting out his free arm toward the mage as he passed the leader, he blasted the former back with a wave of gravity before spinning around to again face the latter.
Still finding himself on the defensive, he had to immediately lift his spear to deflect the sword heading for him with its reinforced shaft.
Immediately continuing her attack, his opponent seamlessly ended the failed attack and tried again. Stopping her sword's momentum, she thrust upward at Darganth's ribs with it.
Missing as he stepped back, the woman directly let the swing circled back around toward him. First slashing downward, she transitioned from one strike to the next and continuously pushed him back. For that, she always closed back in when Darganth stepped back, remaining past the optimal range for him to attack with his spear.
Forced back by this flurry of attacks, Darganth took a few seconds to find an opening. Or at least to find an opening he could exploit without also using magic, though that condition didn't detract from his high evaluation of his opponent's skill.
Finally getting the chance to turn the situation around when he managed to deflect one of the woman's strikes with force toward the ground, he used the slowdown of it grazing the soil and changed his aura to the light element.
Stepping out of the range of the swing that followed, he brought enough distance between them to utilize his favored style.
Going onto the offensive the moment the blade passed by in front of him, his first strike glanced off his opponent's armor. But before she could recover, a second and then a third swing came flying at her.
Barely bringing up her sword in time for these, the woman was knocked off balance with each impact. This in turn left her open for the next strike, allowing Darganth to rapidly build momentum.
Raining slash after slash down on her, Darganth chained his attacks with twists and turns in the motions, making it almost impossible to read from where the next strike would come.
Forcing his opponent back further with each attack, he kept advancing toward her. Weaving around the occasional counterattacks, his spear spun around in his hands as he maneuvered it to exploit every gap in the woman's defenses.
Keeping up the pressure on her, he only briefly interrupted his offensive when at one point the man tried to intervene. Spinning around toward him, Darganth slammed his spear into the ground. With this, he let earth aura flow through his weapon, causing a wave of eruptions to spread out in a cone.
Not waiting to see the man being forced back by this, Darganth immediately continued his turn. Dragging the tip of the spear through the ground all the way until he again faced the woman, he swung it upward and sent a stone the size of a human's head her way.
Following immediately after the projectile, he then continued his series of attacks with a lunging thrust. And though his strike was blocked when his opponent manifested a localized aura armor, he seamlessly returned to the previous rhythm of overwhelming offensive strikes.
During this, Darganth also kept an eye on the other two enemies. But even as he pushed their leader to the brink of defeat after another one or two dozen seconds of fighting, they still didn't try to intervene again.
Despite this, Darganth abruptly interrupted his onslaught just a few strikes before the decisive blow. Ignoring the confused leader, he looked up as Venrie's voice echoed across the battlefield.
"So that is where you're hiding."
Along with those words, Venrie lifted the staff that was her emperor artifact and pointed it in the nearly exact opposite direction Darganth had been moving in. As she did, about twenty of the leaves swirling around it started to glow before shooting off into the direction she was pointing.
Under Venrie's control, they then spread out into an even distribution as they shot toward a seemingly inconspicuous patch of forest.
Impacting there with a force that should be impossible for such small objects, they tore down hundreds of trees before lodging themselves into the ground between and around the over fifty human mythic ranks that were revealed in the wake of this.
What happened next was largely obscured from Darganth's view, with him only catching sight of a bright green glow that reached high enough to be visible over the trees that surrounded it. With it, massive amounts of mana flooded the area around the impact, making it impossible for him to perceive what was happening there with his mana sight.
As such, he instead turned his attention back on his opponents. However, instead of continuing the fight, he rested his spear on his shoulder without care.
"You're lucky, more important matters just revealed themselves." Darganth said.
Leaving his opponent stunned with his words, he turned to walk away. After a few steps, he paused for just a moment, followed by him slashing his spear through seemingly empty air as he walked onwarda second later.
At first this only further confused the woman he had been fighting. Though when it was shortly followed by two soft thumps behind her, her eyes widened in fear.
Not even needing to glance backward to confirm her suspicions as her mana sense confirmed her fear when it only picked up two weak, rapidly fading life forces there, she immediately reignited her aura.
"You?!"
Hearing her furious outcry, Darganth turned his head toward her before answering, "I said you are lucky, singular. Those two looked downlooked down on me at the start of the fight and I don't leave such things without consequences.
You on the other hand impressed me enough with your skill that I'll overlook you being equally guilty of invading Venrie's territory as they were. And though you'll still have to worry about the elves, like this you at least have a chance to escape so don't squander it." Darganth said.
Conflicted between her camaraderie with her colleagues and taking Darganth's offer, the woman hesitated as he walked away.
"One last thing, if you kill even a single elf while escaping my offer will be void and I will hunt you down. And believe me, if I want to, I can find you." Underscoring his threat with a surge of his dragon's fear, Darganth vanished from where he stood afterward as he teleported toward where Venrie was fighting by then.
As he left, the woman sighed in relief at the convenient excuse to not pursue him further. Speaking a silent prayer for her two colleagues despite barely knowing them personally, she disappeared into the forest a moment later.