“You bitch!” the female mage in a blue robe came back and shot a bolt lightning from her wand at Caroline. Caroline did not get a chance to block or even conjure an energy shield around her body. Her Xuanli activated instinctively and coat her body with a thin layer of protective membrane, which absorbed a small portion of the power, but she was still knocked back into the air and hit her back on the trunk of a tree.

“Fuck YOU!” when the female mage tried to score another attack, Jason backed off from his own battle and shot a flying silver energy scimitar at her. When the silver energy scimitar got deflected by the lightning bolt shot from the female mage’s hands, Jason slammed his pen-spear on the ground and a wave of stone, dirt and hidden silver spikes blew towards her.

The female mage tried to back off, but the wave still exploded right in front of her right when she took her fist step back. Dozens of spikes made of metal and earth energy burst out like pellets from a shotgun. The protective spell she cast on herself blocked most of them, but her hands and waist were still scratched and cut.

Caroline’s body was twitching and shaking, but she pushed through it and sat up the the ground, with her arms and hands still paralyzed, she recited the words of the Flame of Vitality spell and let the spell take effect on herself.

“Olivia, lie down!” the eyes of the woman in a black leather armor flashed, and she crossed her swords in front of her and yelled.

“Bang bang!” two gunshots exploded from behind a tree behind Garret Peyton, Caroline and Jason. It was Aimee opening fire on the female mage in a blue robe. The female mage lowered her body to the ground and put up an energy shield in front of her. The bullets ended up bouncing off the edge of the energy shield and flew off.

“Woosh” a fireball came from Caroline’s left hand and shot right at the head of the woman in black leather armor, but the woman’s armor lit up in dim red light, and she moved away in an instant. The next moment, she lunged at Caroline with the longer sword pointing forward and the shorter sword positioned at her waist.

But halfway, she abruptly stopped and flung herself backwards by stomping her feet on the ground in front of her. A stone wall shot up from the ground right before her, and had she not backed off, she would have crashed into it.

“You’ve got some skills since the last time I saw you.” Jason pointed his pen-spear at the woman in black leather armor and said: “You owe me a camera.”

“So have you.” the woman crossed her swords again, and took a peek at Caroline, who stood up from the ground and walked right past the stone wall with her battle axe and shield in her hands: “And I owe you nothing.”

“Well, we trained for ours, but it looks like you borrowed yours.” Caroline twirled her battle axe and said.

“You know ’em?” Olivia, the mage in a blue robe came forward and caught the conversation among the three.

“No.” Emilia Corin’s swords lit up in blood red light, and she launched herself right at Caroline.

On Garret Peyton’s side, he traded blows with the tattooed man several times. To his surprise and struggle, when the tattoos on the man’s arms, chest and shoulders lit up, they became hardened and fortified by the same kind of pale energy that his opponent attacked with, like some sort of strange armor. He gained his training from some of the best knight trainers in his circle, and he had trained with Josephine Wong for quite some time. But he was still not able to find a way to beat or even suppress this pale energy, much less the one using it.

“Ha!” the tattooed man unleashed a powerful blow with his two hands shaped as claws, the pale energy from his palms exploded upon contact with Garret Peyton’s scepter. The clash made a sound of two pieces of hard metal clashing together, and Garret Peyton felt like he was hit by a huge truck, and he had to take a dozen steps back just to resolve the impact.

The tattooed man leapt forward at Garret Peyton again, with pale energy forming into two construct maces with crooked spikes. Garret Peyton took a deep breath, and coated his scepter with his golden energy and charged right at his opponent.

Aimee and Thomas became a small tactical team, and they were taking advantage of the enchanted guns they brought from the purple flying SUV to fight back two opponents that were not in sync but individually had way more powers than them. They ran, hid and shot among the trees and along the difficult terrain, their opponents were one fighter wielding a giant curved sword and one archer wielding a short but surprisingly powerful wooden bow.

Thomas opened fire again while Aimee was reloading, the flurry of bullets were knocked away into the air and the dirt by the fighter’s giant sword, and when the enemy archer drew his bow, Aimee opened fire on him. The archer had to release the bow but not with the best and most steady aim, the arrow pierced through the air without making almost any sound and with solidified green energy on its head. It ended up hitting a tree on the side, and the blades from the arrowhead cut through the entire chunk and brought it down on the ground.

“Blast them! Blast them!” the fighter raised his sword and concentrated his light brown energy on his giant sword, but the flurry of bullets from Thomas forced him to abort his attack: “Dammit Damien! I’ll guard your sorry ass! Just blast them with your fancy raining shot!”

“On it!” the archer jumped behind the fighter, and took out three full sized arrows with extra heavy heads from a very small pouch on his waist and docked them on his bow. The fighter, however, conjured up a full body energy shield made of earth magic energy right in front of him, and the bullets from Aimee and Thomas’ guns could not leave any marks on it.

“Struggle some more you little maggot!” the man with wolf-like fur on his forearms and sharp long fingernails laughed with a foul breath at Jason, who, though landed several strikes yet still could not do any lasting damage: “Our reinforcements are coming! And when they’re here, you’re gonna wish you’re dead!”

“Fuck off!” Jason cursed and swung his pen-spear upwards, the energy blade extended from the tip of his spear sliced his opponent’s face open from the middle, but the two halves still converged and became one single whole face.

All five of them were getting more and more anxious by the second, for all of them heard about their opponents’ reinforcements, and their extraction team were nowhere to be seen or heard.