Jalren had witnessed how they wiped out almost all of his men in the blink of an eye. The attack they had used against them was very silent and deadly; only a few were able to dodge it. But unfortunately, most were not so lucky. On the ground lay many of their men dead from the previous attack; the accuracy of that attack was abysmal. Those strange vines pierced the vital points of the adventurers and mercenaries; because of this, most of them died instantly, and those who managed to move in time received fatal wounds that were slowly killing them. There were those who lost their arms and others who lost their legs. The vines, which had emerged from the ground after stabbing and piercing them mercilessly, shrank and returned to the ground in an instant. Those who survived and saw this kept looking down at the ground; they were afraid that they would emerge again and catch them off guard.
"24 dead and 18 incapacitated in one attack. There are 32 pieces left that are still useful," Jalren said as he watched the survivors form teams to attack the girl who had caused all this destruction. They had formed 8 groups of 4 people; he didn't feel the need to order them to do such a thing. A small chuckle formed on his lips as he watched them act in this manner.
Aris intervened; he had not been hurt by that attack either. From the moment he had teleported to this place, he had kept his guard up. He approached Jalren and said:
"We are at a disadvantage; we have already lost many capable men, and that girl has not even broken a sweat. Without a doubt, that individual had something to do with this. The barrier surrounding us was created by him, as it does not radiate a single bit of mana. And that girl, is not an illusion; after all, I am able to sense her mana, it is the mana characteristic of an elf," Aris said. He had been inspecting the girl; at first he had thought that it was that individual who had taken the girl's form through an illusion, but he dismissed that idea when he felt the girl's mana. It was the mana of a full-fledged elf.
"Shut up, it's obvious that this isn't an illusion. Look, that thing isn't even afraid of being surrounded by so many enemies. It has a lot of confidence in its words and its power," Jalren was excited; he was sizing up that little girl.
Aris didn't like the situation at all; he knew better than anyone what Jalren's personality was like. He loved one-on-one; he wasn't the type to attack in groups to hunt down a single person. Aris knew better than anyone the reason why he had been appointed the leader of this operation: it was all due to the power he possessed. Basically, he was almost impossible to kill; in order to kill him, several conditions had to be met, and the first of them was that he had to run out of mana, which had never happened, since he usually didn't use mana to fight. He dealt with his enemies only in hand-to-hand combat, since the toughness of his body was not to be underestimated. Usually, weapons bounced off his body whenever they tried to cut him; basically, it was a waste of time to attack him physically. The power he was granted was gigantic; with it, he had risen to the top.
Jalren ordered Mostrug, Igroxith, and Brozgathan not to intervene in the fight that was going on; after all, they were his greatest assets. Aris, on the other hand, had no intentions of attacking carelessly. Now that he had lost his power to that individual, he couldn't go about it carelessly; he was waiting and analyzing his opponent. He was looking for a gap through which he could take the girl by surprise; he was no idiot and he knew that the girl had a very broad vision. After all, he was watching them fight. He saw how the eight groups of four people surrounded the girl and attacked her with everything they had. The warriors went to the front and attacked with their swords and spears, while the mages and healers did their work from behind. But there was a problem: the healers were out of work to do in an instant, as the girl swung the axe in her hand and cut through the warriors' shields and split the adventurers and mercenaries in half, killing them in an instant. The healers couldn't heal if you were already dead, and besides, healing a person who had been split in half required weeks of hard work, and even then they couldn't guarantee the person's life. The mages threw fireballs, but these hit the barriers created by the girl. Seeing that the firepower wasn't up to par, the mages chose to increase their mana consumption so that the fireballs would be more effective and thus break the girl's barriers, but they were still unable to break them. The oxygen in the area was rapidly decreasing every time they threw those powerful fireballs. One of the groups even cast earth-type spells trying to catch the girl off guard, but, as if by magic, the girl moved in an instant, dodging the spikes that came out of the ground. She seemed to be able to sense the movement of mana. There was one mage who was the closest to harming the girl; he used a secret spell that only he knew and that was inherited by his family: it was a wind blade that camouflaged itself very well with the mana of the atmosphere. He managed to make a small cut on the girl's cheek; it seemed that his attack had been effective and that he managed to catch her off guard. But that didn't mean that it was very good news for him, since the girl, upon being hurt, had stopped attacking with the axe she had in her right hand and, instead, had changed her fighting style.
'Increasing the speed of energy transformation.'
'The combat style will be changed; the vessel's own powers will not be displayed until it is time to face the key figures.'
'It's going to be a wizard's fight from now on, as key figures try to determine what kind of capabilities we possess.'
'From now on, magic spells will be used to eliminate invaders.'
The wizard who had used his secret spell soon opened his eyes in surprise. The girl, whom he had tried to slice with his wind cutting spell, soon dropped her weapon and seemed to have been left unprotected. But the reality was very different. Out of nowhere, the little girl extended her left hand, pointing it at him. It should be noted that he was behind his equipment, since, being a wizard, he had to be protected. What the girl did left him speechless; he could see how a magic circle began to appear in front of his hand. It was the same magic circle that he had used a few moments ago to attack her. It should be noted that this spell was composed of multiple processes and learning it had taken him many years of study; that was why he was surprised, since he had only used it once, but that girl seemed to have copied it perfectly, and more than copying it, her spell seemed to be more powerful than his. The wizard immediately raised his hands and began to charge his own spell to counteract the girl's; He had to charge a spell powerful enough to counter hers. He poured all his mana into that spell. The wizard shouted:
"Get out of the way! I'm going to finish her."
Once he said that, the group of people protecting him immediately moved out of the way, and once they did that, he was able to release his spell at full power. And the girl also released her own spell, but unfortunately for the mage, he didn't count on the difference being so abysmal. Only 28 wind slashes came out of the mage's spell that camouflaged perfectly in the atmosphere; they could easily be invisible slashes, difficult to detect; but 108 slashes came out of the girl's spell that not only sliced the mage into tiny pieces, but the mage's companions also fell victim to that spell. Severed heads and loose limbs could be seen all over the place; pools of blood abounded in the area. That attack by the girl had claimed four lives. The other groups of adventurers and mercenaries couldn't do anything; after all, they couldn't revive the dead. The tension was palpable in the place, and fear could be felt. Those who had managed to survive until now were already beginning to lose hope; panicked voices began to be heard:
"You've got to be fucking joking! She can cast spells too! How the hell are we supposed to get close to her?"
"Damn it! That's why his reward was so high."
"Look at that thing; it's killing us one by one and we've barely given it a small cut on its cheek."
"Rather than casting spells, it seems like he's learning them the instant we cast them. Damn it!"
"Damn it! I shouldn't have taken this damn job; I would have been happy to just hunt some beasts in the forest."
As they said these things, shortly after the girl, as if by magic, began to heal the small wound she had on her cheek. Seeing this, everyone was in shock, and the discomfort was palpable in the place:
"What the fuck? Who used a healing spell?"
Everyone turned to look at a certain healing mage; he was healing himself with a healing spell instead of using his innate ability.
"What's more, she also learned how to heal herself. It's your damn fault, you wretch! What the hell is wrong with you? Aren't you hearing that that damn brat can learn our spells in no time?" said an adventurer who was holding a long sword in his left hand. The healing mage answered the adventurer who was scolding him:
"Fuck you; I just used a basic healing spell; that shouldn't heal wounds like that. Go and blame that damn monster over there; I don't know how he did it, but it seems to have improved the spell."
As the survivors argued amongst themselves, the little girl had begun to charge up not just one, but 10 spells of the same type as the one she had used before. Upon noticing this, the survivors immediately knew that they had to put up a barrier to defend themselves; immediately and without hesitation, they all positioned themselves around the mages. They had already seen the range that the spells that this girl used had; just one was already an area attack, and in this case there were 10. They had to defend themselves with barriers; if by pure chance, the mages' barriers did not hold, that would be the end of them all. Every mage still standing put up the best barrier they could; they lost all their remaining mana on the barrier, and the result was not long in coming. More than a thousand slashes shot out from the spells; each slash was almost undetectable due to its peculiarity of camouflaging itself with the atmosphere. But that was not the only terrifying thing about this spell; The truly terrifying thing was how she broke through the barriers like it was nothing and killed the people who were lying inside them. In the area you could only hear the sounds of the jet of blood coming out of people's necks and heads rolling like balls all over the place; and among so much carnage and blood you could see a figure that was extremely clean; her body had not touched a single drop of blood from her enemies, and her dress even less, it was just as white as at the beginning. After a few seconds you could appreciate the massacre that had happened. The girl could see that four people had survived her spell; they were nothing more and nothing less than four mercenaries, but they were not going to last long with the wounds they had. Their hoods were no longer suitable to hide their identity, and their masks were broken; their identities were those of three adult men and one woman. They had survived by pure luck; each of them had significant cuts all over their bodies; it was only a matter of time before they bled to death. The girl raised her hand again to finish them off, but when she was about to activate her spell, one of the men protecting the woman spoke:
"Mercy for my lady, please."
That was what came out of the man; it was more than clear that he was asking for mercy, but not for himself, but for his mistress; he was referring to the woman they surrounded and protected. The girl, seeing that they were asking for mercy, asked with her hand still raised and her spell half-formed:
"Why would I let those who rose up against me live? I had given them a chance to survive if they killed their comrades, but they didn't, and it's hard for me to take it back now. There's only one path left now."
Once she finished speaking, the spell she had on hold was completed, and when she was about to cast it, the woman who seemed to be in her 20s of age spoke:
"I will pay for my life and the lives of my comrades."
As he said that, he took out a certain object from his dimensional ring; it seemed to catch the girl's attention, causing her to undo the spell she was about to cast.