Right at the moment where they thought they were almost successful with their hunt, the warriors were shocked to see the sudden death of their comrades.
Their leader, who was the most experienced amongst them, hurriedly searched for the reason for their sudden death, so their lives wouldn't end the same way.
Part of him was also beginning to believe that it would be best to retreat since they didn't know much about the mana beast in their presence, but retreating was harder than one would think, especially in such an open space.
He first discerned what the beast used to block, then tried to identify the area where the magic users had died. He couldn't discern that far with the night light, and his senses weren't that good yet, all he knew was it had something to do with threads.
Immediately, he instructed, "It is using a weird thread, it should be one of its abilities! Beware! Pay attention to what I do and follow me!"
The men didn't doubt their leader and followed as they were instructed.
The two who wore light armor stayed behind and the head along with his partner stayed in front.
Seeing the actions they made, Finn sighed. "Fighting humans is way harder than fighting monsters. They are just cunning, they already saw through the webs!"
While making his way out of the forest, Finn had fought with many monsters using web manipulation and figured out some things about it.
Because he lacked the natural way of producing webs unlike spiders, Finn's ability needed to first generate webs, speed up the generation process and then control it. To achieve a suitable result, Finn needed to expend more mana, and that wasn't worth the strength.
His core was large now, but he had two different energies within it, and his mana wasn't at the stage where he could abuse it.
He decided to only use webs as an element of surprise, to extend his senses, or other required stuff like forming a net to block or cocooning the young girl.
Now, he could only rely on his other abilities.
Using the webs that were in the surroundings, Finn tried tangling them, but as expected they broke free.
Their armor and weapons are better than average and it could handle something like this.
That wasn't Finn's aim though, it was to give him a bit of time… Time to change to his human slime-like body with a height of around 1.9 meters.
As Finn morphed, he activated the ring within him, bringing his gauntlets out of it and wearing it while he transmuted.
The warriors saw this, and without any words said, they knew not to wait for this to change to be completed.
They darted towards Finn, the two warriors bringing down heavy attacks on him, while the damage dealers were ready for an opening but they only met a rock wall.
"Impossible… no casting and incantation, yet it achieved this effect!"
After creating an earth wall to block, he created more water balls, changed their qualities and created ice spears and launched it at the light armor individuals behind the tank warriors.
They raised their weapons to block, but Finn used one of the still dangling threads to pull their legs, disrupting their balance. The ice spears pierced their arms and legs. They suffered heavy injuries.
The tank warriors ignored their comrades, only pressing Finn further.
As multiple attacks rained on him, Finn blocked with webs and roughly formed earth walls, at this rate, he was filling their intensity.
They weren't fast, but these two had good coordination causing Finn to have some minor injuries.
When they felt like he was being pushed to a corner, they channeled more mana into their swords, adding more weight to their attacks.
The partner of the head made a huge swing, bringing his sword down from above his head, forcing Finn to use his gauntlets to block head on.
The head used the opportunity to attempt a full on attack as they were running low on mana.
His sword glowed with a mild light as he charged and filled his longsword with his mana, letting the longsword look like a greatsword.
Before the sword was brought down, Finn used a web to pull himself back.
While he did, he threw claw slashes to meet with the longsword of the head warrior causing a slight explosion that kicked up dust and released a firework of mana.
This moment of imbalance was when Finn could abuse mana.
The web in the surroundings and the one cocooning the girl came to life. They slowly wove together, increasing the thickness of webs.
The men hadn't expected this sort of control over this web. It looked absolute to them.
Net that were connected to the ground tied around all 4 of them, restricting their movements.
They saw the weird mana beast with a weird human shaped body approach them.
'How much mana did it have? How many abilities did it have? It even seems to be intelligent. What sort of beast is this?!' Their thoughts were all over the place. In their eyes, they assumed this beast could cast real magic of greater power which was why they hurried to end it.
They've been here multiple times, they've been slowly exploring these regions and this was the first time they've encountered something like this.
They were adventurers who didn't have much strength hired for a mission that wasn't supposed to attract any ounce of attention. They weren't even supposed to fight much, they were only meant to observe the children, and document any information they got.
But Finn was surprised to see how much mana he needed to completely keep them at bay.
As he tightened the web around them, they only struggled more making his control over the webs hard and consuming more mana.
To improve his concentration, Finn stretched his palm, and squeezed.
The warriors slowly felt the life leave them.
"No! No! Don't let this creature out of here! It will only become stronger… deadlier!"
They cried inwardly as though they were crying out to somebody, but they met their unfortunate end.
Finn calmly looked at their dead body. He wanted to loot them!
Just then, he felt a gaze on him.
Towards the edge of the grass field, the young girl had woken up and was looking at Finn.
"No, no, no! She'll have the wrong impression of me." Seeing her look at him, Finn changed to his jellyfish form without thinking much.
Seeing the green eyes that fell on him, Finn waved at her using his tentacles.
The young girl began to cry.