Boom!
Ryujin's aura flourished, rippling out in waves that blasted heaps of snow into the air.
[Shadow Steps]
Then like a silent ghostly specter in the most eerie of winter nights, he vanished from the their sights.
Aric's pupils constricted into pinholes, while his comrades felt their hearts tighten a little.
Though they had seen Ryujin use this movement technique to evade there barrage of attacks earlier, back then, they could still leadt still sense his presence even then.
But now, not only was his presence totally gone, even his pervading aura was jamming their senses.
"Get in formation, guys!" Aric bellowed, snapping his comrades out of their reverie.
They couldn't believe they would actually be using their battle formation against a little kid, nonetheless, they swiftly obeyed their leader's command, instantly moving into formation.
It was a diamond formation with Aric at its center, Lugard in front, Eron and Torin, on either sides, and finally, Kael at the rear.
Aric then raised his palms to the skies, before forcefully pressing them back to the ground.
"Rippling Drafts!" He bellowed.
Boom!
A massive force descended from the skies, smashing into the area and creating a heavy gust of wind that threw off anything in its path.
Huge heaps snow, mixed wooden splinters and rock pebbles shot out in all directions.
Pita! Pita! Pata!
Ryujin's invisible barrier of mental energy took the brunt of all the attacks, but in doing so, revealed his position to the enemies like a spotlight in a dark opera.
Aric's comrades didn't even wait to hear his next command before bombarding Ryujin with their elemental arts.
Dozens of fireballs, water pillars, and rock boulders blotted the entire air beneath the forest tree canopies, leaving no gaps to even see the sky.
They charged up in the blink of an eye, condensing even further, before raining down on their exposed target.
Ryujin watched as everything rained towards him, aiming to pulverize him and blast his bits into ashes.
However, he kept his calm and wrapped himself in a sphere of rippling mental energy.
Then he furtherly amped his body with a torrential surge of Vital Qi, before funnelling the resulting boost into his Chaotic Steps.
Tap! Boom!
Tip-Tap! Boom!
Tap! Boom!
An explosion rocked every area Ryujin previous stood, barely missing him by an afterimage every single time, as he made his evasive retreat.
Then just as the barrage ended, he burst out of the commotion, skidding across the snow as his mentavision began to update the new layout of the devastated terrain.
Shockingly however, Ryujin found just moments later, that he had been goaded into a trap.
'Crap! So this was their plan all along!'
He thought to himself, looking up to realize that he had been surrounded.
'They anticipated my escape and repositioned themselves accordingly unh?
Well, they won't be mercenaries if they can't even do this much.'
"Lugard... It's clobbering time!"
Aric's order snapped Ryujin out of his thought. It seems the leaders was hellbent on affording him no time to restrategize.
Lugard sprung into action immediately, unwilling to give Ryujin a moment of respite.
'I don't know how Aric knew you'd survive that assault, but that feat of yours has given us the liberty to go all out!'
Lugard thought to himself as he heavily stomped the ground and leapt high into the air.
"Elemental Art; Metal Style - Iron Body!" He bellowed mid-flight.
"What?!" Ryujin froze for a moment, watching in shock as Lugard's entire body took a silvery metal sheen.
"Smith God's Fist!"
Bang!
Lugard smashed straight into him with an overwhelming power, causing an explosion that catapulted Ryujin straight into a tree trunk.
Crash!
"Fuck that hurt!" Ryujin bellowed, as he spat out a mouthful of blood.
'Damn it, if my mental energy had not mitigated the force behind that attack at the last moment, I would have probably been pulverized into a meat paste! Tch!'
His fury bubbled forth, as he latched his gaze on each member of the five.
'However, now, I have a complete brief of all your individual prowess.'
---
= Aric -> Neo Tendon Condensing Stage - Wind Affinity - [Rippling Drafts...]
= Lugard -> Arc Bone Forging Stage - Metal Affinity - [Metal Body], [Smith God's Fists]
= Eron -> Apex Bone Forging Stage - Flame Affinity - [Fireball]
= Kael -> Prime Bone Forging Stage - Earth Affinity - [Boulder]
= Torin -> Demi Bone Forging Stage - Water Affinity - [Geyser]
---
Elemental Arts
= Rippling Drafts-> A tyrannical wind current that can push back the strong and shred the weak.
= Metal Body -> An elemental technique that coverts the iron in its user's blood into liquid steel and diffuse it onto their skin to form a heavy impenetrable coating.
"My turn!" Ryujin said before vanishing using two techniques at once.
[Cloak] [Shadow Steps]
His figure slowly drifted across a fat tree trunk, allowing his cloak ability and camouflage overcoat to utterly veil him from his enemies' senses.
Aric's group couldn't help but tense up a little, they frantically looked around but could neither find Ryujin nor sense his presence.
However, just when it seemed like he had vanished off the face of the world, the air above them suddenly shifted.
It shifted only a bit faster than the whipping wind, but it was enough to alert Aric, prompting him to look up and see Ryujin descending.
"Watch out!" Aric alerted with a shout.
However, all the others could see was a snow white blur landing right into their midst, and then darting straight for Lugard.
They rushed after Ryujin, converging towards him with a horde of different techniques.
Lugard reacted a little quicker, instinctively activating his metal body as he turned and braced for impact.
However, just as they were about to clatter Ryujin into a meat paste, a soft whisper suddenly floated into their ears.
"Yeet!"
Was all they heard, as they saw Ryujin suddenly stomp the ground, and abruptly redirect his momentum towards his intended target.
They were all already mid-stride or flight, and as a result, couldn't tell who exactly he was aiming for and react accordingly.
Ryujin's sudden actions had been too abrupt and irregular for their minds to comprehend, preventing them from predicting what exactly his plan of action was.
Even they, weren't confident of pulling off a similar feat.
After all, in order to brake abruptly and switch directions like that, one would need to possess three nigh-impossible abilities.
Firstly, an obscene control of their entire body.
Secondly, a physical body with the endurance to withstand such movements and the forces at play (impact force and momentum).
Then finally, a mind so shrewd, cunning and calculating to think of such tactics in the first place.
Thus, the reality that, this said feat was being pulled off by a brat several decades younger than them, was enough to bamboozle them for a brief instant.
However, it was that instant that Ryujin was banking on, and before they could reel out of it, he had already slipped past them and arrived before his target.
"Thinking of my mother and sister in such manner warrants a near-death beating; but the nerve to actually say it out calls for a non-negotiable death sentence!"
Ryujin's calmly stated, as his metavision locked onto his target; Keal.
The latter was portrayed with so many openings that Ryujin couldn't help but heave an helpless sigh, even as he helped himself to the most perfect opening.
"Healing Art; Finger Style - Death Accupoint!" He muttered.
Instantly, a surge of mental energy shrouded Ryujin's index and middle fingers, elongating them into two little drills which he plunged straight into Kael's face.
Puchi!
The fingers drilled into Kael's eyes, dug through his brain, and then pierced out the back of his skull, shooting out a gross mixture or blood ad bran matter.
Everything happened so fast that, Kael was already dead by the time Lugard suffered the onslaught of his comrades' combined attacks.
"Nooo!!!"
"Kael!"
"Brother!"
They all screamed, watching in horror as their comrade fell to his knees and then slump to the ground lifelessly.
Their bodies grew cold even as Kael's warm blood trickled out of both ends in his skull, melting the snow and dyeing it red.
"One Down, Four To Go!" Ryujin muttered as he flicked Kael's blood off his fingers.
Then before the rest could even register his words, he turned to his next target and spoke.
"You're next!"
Realizing he was the one Ryujin was speaking to, Lugard's dam of rage finally broke and flooded his senses, causing to recklessly lunge at Ryujin.
"No wait!" Aric shouted, trying to stop his comrade from his reckless, but alas, it was too late, and the latter was already out of reach.
"Die brat!" Lugard bellowed as he transformed his entire arm into hardened steel.
[Metal Art; Fist Style - Smith God's Fist!]
Seeing this, Ryujin didn't panic. Instead, he simply shifted his feet forward to widen his base, lowered his weight onto his gravity core to firm up his stance, before greeting Lugard's fist with a palm
Lugard sneered at Ryujin's actions, his face contorting into a ridiculing smirk, as they both collided.
Bang!
Ryujin felt his muscles spasm, bones quake, and tendons flatten.
The force behind Lugard's raging punch was so much that he had to shed some of it through his legs.
Bam!
A spider web of cracks spread out in every direction as Ryujin regained his balance, before swiftly taming the cushioning the remaining force impacting his arm.
[Palm Art; Willow Leaf Style - Absorb]
Lugard, suddenly felt all the power, momentum and force behind his attack weaken significantly. It was as though he had punched a very huge fluffy pillow.
Ryujin's face contorted in struggle, as he bellowed mentally.
'Reflect!'
His flattened tendons suddenly sprang outward with twice the force they had just endured.
'Overlap!'
He overlapped the power traveling back towards his hand, with his own full might.
Then upon entering his palms, Ryujin gathered his palm into a fist, before plunging it straight into Lugard's guts.
[Mixed Art; Fist Style - Overlapping Shock!]
Bang!
Lugard's steeled abs eerily caved in, as every ounce of breath was knocked out of his lungs.
Keugh!
He slumped to the ground, metal body and all, coughing intensely as he struggled to gasp some much needed air.
His innards trembled and quake, threatening to render apart and shred to pieces.
Lugard swiftly forgot about breathing as he began to contain the damage, struggling to abate the tyrannic power rampaging through his body.
However, his efforts only served to induce more pressure on his already pressurized nerves and vessels.
The organs finally couldn't endure any longer, and began to ruptured and burst one after the other.
Then to his comrades' appall, Lugard fell to the ground lifelessly, bleeding out through his four orifices.
"Two Down, Three To Go!" Ryujin once again muttered.
He looked so calm and innocent that even if one overlooked his size, no one would still have ever believed that he was the one who just killed two grown men.
A shredding gust of wind suddenly appeared behind him, but his metavision had long alerted him to it, and thus, with a single step, he vanished from his spot, leaving Aric grabbing at his shadow.
"I'll kill you!"
Aric furiously roared into the sky, checking on Lugard and confirming that the latter wasn't breathing; in fact, there were no other signs indicating otherwise.
Erin and Torin trembled in fear, involuntarily retreating several steps, and forgetting their need to stay within Aric's reach.
Ryujin spotted their negligence, and with a massive surge of his mental sense, he latched onto the arrows he had paused to collect whilst fleeing previously.
[Weapon Art; Archery Style - Arrow Barrage!]
He launched the arrows towards the trio like heat seeking missiles.
A dozen arrows took to the sky, streaking through the air as they homed in on their respective targets.
Aric responded instantly, waving his arm, as a fierce gust of wind whipped towards the arrows, shredding them into bits.
Eron reacted a second later, conjuring a huge ball of flames that shot towards the arrows, exploding them on impact and kindling them into ashes.
Torin however, was Ryujin's intended target.He had noticed that the latter's water pillar took a second longer to create.
Puchi!
The unfortunate Torin was mercilessly pincushioned, and turned into a bleeding humanoid cactus.