I, Julian and Sophia were currently running toward's Eve's location. I was leading all of us since I had her location on my phone.
"How much farther?", Julian asked.
"Half a kilometre more.", I replied without looking at him. There were much more things to do in front than look back at him.
We were constantly getting swarmed by the undead. I was killing undead left and right, Sophia took care of the long-range once and Julian slashed the close-combat ones.
--- a few minutes later ---
"Slow down!", I said, indicating that we were close to Eve's location and could run into the Undead sorcerer at any time.
Everyone followed and slowed down.
We took cover behind a well-placed rock and tried scouting ahead with an energy magic spell 'Farsight' that I had recently learned.
'!!!', I was shocked to see what was happening in the distance.
Chunks of red and blue crystals were clashing against each other and smashing each other, throwing around tons of red and blue particles in the demolition.
There were sharp red and blue crystals piercing through the air and going at each other. Walls of red crystal block the blue crystals with both of them shattering in a million pieces.
"That... looks like Eve's magic...", I said out loud.
"Shit...", Julian cursed.
"We have to go now!", Sophia exclaimed and I concurred.
"Julian, you take the centre, Sophia, you take the back and defend us against any long-range attacks with your wind magic. I'll take the right flank and get Eve out of there.", I told them my attack strategy.
"Let's go with that then.", Julian concurred, while Sophia reluctantly agreed after seeing Julian trusting my strategy quite quickly. Of course, he accepted it. He has a decade's worth of experience planning attacks and strategising to take down stronger opponents. I wouldn't like to burst my own bubble, but I'd like to think that my strategy wasn't a bad one.
Julian ran out of the cover, charging his aura and preparing to slash.
After that, I sprinted to get out of sight from the undead sorcerer's attack direction and took the right flank.
Sophia followed Julian, as expected and decided to back him up.
'Fucking bitch... We didn't agree to that... Well, I have energy magic, so I don't have to rely on your bitch-ass to defend against magic attacks.', I thought bitterly.
Julian made contact with the undead sorcerer and started fighting it. I could hear some intense action from my left. I could also feel an immensely cold wind breezing through the grounds and reaching me.
'Ice Magic!', I realised.
'Shit... this is worse than I thought...', I told myself. I should have expected that the blue crystals I was seeing were ice. This just made things even more difficult.
Ice magic was a type of magic that used mana that had the property of a 'kinetic energy absorber', kind of like a heat sink, but a super-powered one. The effect of this is coldness. A whole lot of coldness. With appropriate spells, you could solidify the water vapour in the atmosphere and create structures or even weapons with the ice. Some very high-level ice spells can even create something called 'Ice VII', a type of ice that is extremely cold and hard. It's a type of ice that can only be created in labs and is naturally present inside the cores of moons such as Ganymede.
Anyways, just being in the vicinity of an ice mage, the temperature drops significantly and it gets very tough to stay warm.
An energy magic spell 'Insulating array' can help with this problem. It does what its name suggests. It doesn't let the kinetic energy of air and liquid molecules inside the barrier get affected by the outside (at least it tries to). Although, if cold water is passed through the barrier, it wouldn't be able to warm it up. It simply makes it so that it traps the heat inside the barrier and prevents the cold from getting inside.
An upgraded version of this spell, 'Illusory Barrier' is a spell that can actually affect the temperature of things, even nullify 'combustible' mana created by fire spells.
But anyways, I'm getting out of topic here. The priority now is to save Eve.
As I got closer to the battlefield where Eve was single-handedly fighting the undead sorcerer, I witnessed the wreckage that was created in the battle. Bodies of students, undead monsters and chunks of ice covered the decimated landscape.
There was a clear trail of red crystals that emitted some heat which was melting the ice slowly but surely.
I followed the trail and finally ran into Eve.
She was in shambles. The strong and smart girl I knew had absolute pure terror in her widely opened eyes.
"EVE!", I shouted, which made her jolt towards me in shock.
"...Samuel...", she softly spoke up.
"No... I'm... I'm so sorry Samuel... you have to run away! That thing is way too strong!!!", Eve burst out into tears and tried getting up from the ground.
She was shivering and had wounds all over her body.
"Don't worry, I brought backup.", I said as I came closer to her and turned around, signalling her to get on my back.
"Are... you sure?", Eve spoke sceptically.
"Get on. You're seriously injured.", I said in a commanding tone.
"...Okay...", she complied and got on my back.
I could feel her body trembling from the cold, fear and pain.
'I don't wanna waste mana but... There's no other option...', I concluded before casting the Insulating array and Dark Lift onto my person. Because Eve was so close to me, she also got the effects of the spell.
I sprinted with Eve on my back towards a dilapidated building that was nearby. It looked secure enough.
After putting her down, I heard the noise of the undead outside.
"Stay still and quiet, okay? I'll be back...", I told her to which she obediently agreed. She was in no shape to even walk, much less, fight.
'I needed more mana anyways... this is good...', I smirked a little before leaving Eve in the building and going outside to destroy the Undead, take their mana and join Julian and Sophia in the fight. They are probably struggling against the undead sorcerer without any protection from cold... Well, Julian's probably fine, but the same can't be said for the sheltered Sophia.
I sprinted towards the place from where I could hear the battle and cold winds blowing.
Within 30 seconds, I was there and witnessed a scene that could only be described as 'Eldrich'.
'I'm still not used to seeing these kinds of magical things in this world... It still feels so surreal...', I smirked bitterly before getting called out by Sophia.
"HEY SAMUEL! YOU'RE FINALLY BACK! IS EVE ALRIGHT?!", she shouted while casting a spell to deflect an ice magic attack launched by the undead sorcerer.
"She's fine! Let me help you guys! Insulating array!", I said and chanted at the same time, covering Sophia in the spell.
She didn't show any gratitude but it was impossible to hide the comfortable expression she was making after the spell took effect.
"Samuel! Look out!", Julian yelled out.
"Force Smash.", I raised my left hand towards the direction of the ice lance that flew towards me, shattering it into a million pieces before it could hit me. Only its cold particles hit my face and body.
Julian and Sophia couldn't afford to see my amazing spell though, as they were defending against the undead sorcerer.
Speaking of the undead sorcerer, I finally got a good look at its face. Or lack thereof I guess. It was a skeleton. What did you expect? Something better than a skeleton? Didn't think so.
Julian couldn't get close enough to the skeleton to hit it with a meaningful attack and Sophia was too focused on defence to do anything.
'This won't be easy... But... It should still be doable...', I reassured myself and got ready for combat.