Camille was the first to sense the enemy closing in from behind.
Her eyes narrowed suddenly, glowing with a vibrant green light. With a swift motion, she pulled out a green longbow in her left hand and conjured an arrow with her right. She turned and fired, sending an arrow, glowing with emerald light, whistling through the air.
"Boom—"
The arrow exploded in midair, releasing a shower of spores.
The Terror Demon army, unbothered, charged directly into the spores.
As the spores made contact with flesh, they transformed into countless fine threads resembling dodder vines, wrapping around every Terror Demon that entered the area, binding them into "cocoon-like" forms.
With their wings no longer functioning, the Terror Demons plummeted to the ground with heavy thuds.
The ground was littered with more Creation Grass Seeds. Upon contact with the seeds, the Terror Demons' bellies rapidly swelled, and within moments, something inside them seemed to struggle desperately to escape.
The Hunter's trap combo flowed smoothly, and the double-control effect was clear. The Terror Demon vanguard didn't immediately rush toward the group.
However, even though Camille fired arrows like rain, she could only slow down a limited number of the Terror Demons.
There were simply too many of them. The shadowy swarm, like a locust plague, quickly depleted the spores in the air and surged toward the group.
"We're out of time! Assassin, protect yourself, and everyone else, get behind me!" Baldwin roared, tossing Frank onto Doreen's back. He then drew his massive shield, turned around, and slammed the tip of the shield into the rubble in front of him. His eyes widened as he bellowed, "Order Endures!"
The shield, already glowing faintly, erupted in blinding light. The holy radiance cascaded upward like a waterfall, arcing perfectly in the sky before cascading back down, quickly extending to both sides of the group.
The light formed an enormous wall, encircling Sincere and the others, protecting them securely inside.
"Yaa—Saa—"
"Bang—Bang—Bang—Bang—"
The Terror Demon army, darkening the sky, charged down and crashed into the glowing wall formed by the shield. The impacts sent loud, thunderous reverberations through the air, but the light barrier held firm, undisturbed, with everyone inside as steady as a mountain.
Baldwin's expression remained grim, his arm strained as he pressed down on the shield, not daring to move. "The number of Terror Demons is overwhelming. The Holy Light Wall can only hold for 5 minutes. With the cooperation of both priests, we can extend it to 15 minutes at most. Think of something, or forget about 24 hours—after 15 minutes, we'll all be done for!"
It was clear that Baldwin was anxious, but it didn't matter now; there were simply too many enemies.
Doreen was restoring Frank's mana on the side. Her healing spells were effective, and Frank had already shaken off his lethargy.
"Birth Priest's healing power is strong. As long as you control the 'newborns' on you, we should be able to hold on a bit longer," Frank said.
Though Frank was encouraging his teammates, he felt a chill in his heart.
He hadn't expected the pace of the enemies in this trial to be so fast. The enemy's movements were so fierce. Even the 2000-point trials he'd matched up with before hadn't been this intense.
In this trial, he was the highest-ranked at just 1900 points.
The lowest-ranked players had scores under 1400. How could he possibly have attracted such a large-scale Terror Demon army?
If someone didn't know better, they'd think this was a 2100-point match.
Everyone's faces were serious. With the protection of the Holy Light Wall, Camille didn't continue shooting, instead focusing on charging up and recovering.
Doreen, with a slightly pale face and a hint of concern in her eyes, furrowed her brow. Another healing spell landed on Camille.
Camille, slightly surprised, nodded in acknowledgment to Doreen. Feeling the strong restorative energy coursing through her, she conjured several more spore arrows.
Meanwhile, the other priest, Sincere, simply sat, looking around aimlessly like a bystander.
To be honest, Sincere was also feeling a bit of a headache. He'd seen situations like this before, but he'd never been in one with such low-ranked teammates.
He was deep in thought, trying to figure out how to use the cards they had to escape this predicament.
In high-ranking matches, all the players were strong, and when a crisis arose, the creative solutions they came up with were endless. They always found ways to escape.
Besides their combat experience, the key was their confidence and ability!
This was also why the ladder score in the Path to Ascension was so important.
At the end of each month, Path to Ascension would hold a special settlement, with different rewards for players in different ranks.
These rewards ranged from supplies to equipment, from talents to skills—everything one could imagine.
And the higher the rank, the greater the chances of receiving high-quality rewards.
Since there was almost no difference in basic skills among players of the same class, the only thing that distinguished different players was the talents, skills, and equipment they selected when building their combat power.
Baldwin's sword and shield combo, balanced in both offense and defense, provided a special boost to light-based defensive skills, which was an A-rank reward from the Path to Ascension.
As Baldwin, holding his shield, saw that the Terror Demons had nearly blocked all directions of the light barrier, covering the entire shielded area in darkness, his face grew increasingly anxious.
The others were also frowning, silently tightening their nerves, preparing for the worst.
At this moment, they had fallen into a desperate situation.
And the trial had only just begun less than an hour ago.
"Are we... going to die?" Doreen asked, her small hands clenched so tightly that they turned white.
No one responded. Even Baldwin was fully focused on maintaining the Holy Light Wall, trying to buy the team a little more time to think of a way out.
But those few minutes felt like their final moments of survival.
The atmosphere was at an all-time low.
Everyone was thinking hard, but still, no one could come up with a way to escape. The shielded area fell into silence.
But just then, Sincere suddenly spoke up, "Is Harriet still alive?"
Harriet was hidden by the shadow cloak, so he didn't need the shield to protect him. However, the shadow cloak wasn't an unlimited defense. As soon as he moved even slightly, he would be expelled from the shadow plane and reveal himself.
But, a skilled assassin could maintain this for quite a while, at least longer than 5 minutes.
Harriet remained silent, not because he didn't want to speak, but because he was too afraid to.
At that moment, he was crouching beneath a broken wall outside the Holy Light Wall, a wall filled with bloodthirsty Terror Demons, at least seventeen or eighteen of them.
"He should still be alive..."
Sincere wasn't really concerned about Harriet, he was thinking through strategies.
He knew that the DEATH assassin's exclusive skill was "Death's Funeral." If Harriet was still alive, they might still have a chance to escape.
Just like how "Holy Light Wall" was an exclusive skill for Order Knight, "Death's Funeral" was an exclusive skill granted to assassins who followed the God of DEATH.
The skill's effect was to summon a massive death scythe within a "Death Domain" and strike all targets in the area with an unavoidable fatal blow.
However, the creation of the "Death Domain" was highly demanding. It required a large amount of recently deceased souls within a confined space, which made it a rare skill for DEATH assassins to use.
Once they activated it, they couldn't withdraw immediately like other assassins; they needed to stay hidden in the shadows, continually making kills until they could land the final blow.
This sustained, close-range killing style was very risky for assassins.
But at the same time, it had a high reward.
Because "Death's Funeral" was guaranteed to hit.
This was why DEATH assassins were known as "Death Weavers"—a title that lived up to its name.
However, facing such a terrifying number of Terror Demons, Harriet never had a chance to use "Death's Funeral."
As soon as he showed himself, the first to die wouldn't be the Terror Demons—it would definitely be him.
That's why Harriet remained hidden in the shadows, not daring to move at all.
But just because he didn't dare, it didn't mean Sincere didn't.