When the two elder creatures came out of the cave, they didn’t look all too good. Blood was constantly flowing out of their eyes and smoke rose from their skin.

Even so, Villin and Ruby didn’t dare to underestimate them. Both of them could clearly see the corpses laying on the ground, most of which had their necks ripped out of their bodies.

“KILL!” the male elder didn’t hesitate, as soon as he smelled the duo he rushed forward, right toward their location, with the insane speed he was moving at he would reach them in barely two seconds.

Villin and Ruby both aimed their wands toward the creature, they had to do as much damage as possible before the creature’s partner made a move as well.

Half a second before the creature would hit them two streaks came toward it.

Villin, since he spent a lot of effort maintaining his mental shield, only sent out a magic arrow. It hit the creature in the chest but didn’t even manage to pierce through its skin.

Ruby’s spell, on the other hand, was more effective.

Her spell actually sent out two streaks, one white and one black. The black line headed for the sky above the creature while the white line hit it straight on. Before it had time to realize it had been hit by a spell the creature flew straight up into the air.

The spell actually did nothing but change the direction of the creature’s momentum, since it was so fast it flew into the air, getting at least ten meters above the ground. For a human falling from such a height had the potential of being lethal.

Yet this wasn’t the reason Ruby used the spell, she simply used it to give herself time to cast a more destructive spell when it landed, as for Villin, he now had time to make a move as well.

Taking a pretty big gamble, Villin ceased repairing his mental shield and focused on casting one of his new spells.

The wails of the male creature who was now just beginning its fall were destructive but he could hold on for a bit longer. Just before the creature fell onto the ground, the rocks shifted, turned fluid looking more like sand than anything else.

When the creature fell atop of it, two things happened. Firstly the fall was dampened somewhat, doing less damage than it might’ve otherwise. This might be seen as a bad thing but in Villin’s opinion, the second effect more than made up for it.

The speed the creature fell at caused him to immediately fall deep into the quicksand, before it was even capable of doing something it was already inside of the quicksand up to its waist.

At the very same time, a red line came out of Ruby’s wand. It was aimed at the creature’s mouth yet just as it was about to hit the creature that was still unaware opened its mouth to yell out in anger since it was now in the middle of a bunch of quicksand.

And so the red streak went straight into the creature’s mouth, just as it was about to yell out, the streak hit the larynx. Even though the creature’s anatomy was quite different compared to humans at this point, its larynx was still in the back of its throat and with its hunched figure and lack of a neck, it was right in the way of Ruby’s attack.

She was as surprised as anyone when the creature suddenly went silent and spit out a handful of blood, its voice box completely demolished by her laceration spell.

Villin, who was expecting another mental attack to hit him at this point, quickly adapted to the situation and cast a second spell. Vines sprouted out of the ground nearby the quicksand and began pulling the creature down further.

Even though the creature was capable of destroying vines with relative ease, quicksand was different, his intelligence wasn’t as high as a human’s and he kept moving around, expecting to get out using sheer force, causing him to go deeper and deeper into the ground, all the way until only its ugly face was visible.

It was only at this point Villin’s spell ‘Syrtim Celer’ wore off and the ground turned into stone once more. Despite its crazy amounts of strength, the creature had no way of leaving such a sturdy prison in such a short period of time.

The smile that had crept on Villin’s face suddenly froze as he looked around. Where was the second creature?

Villin already found it weird it didn’t attack together with its companion and now it was nowhere to be seen.

Ruby looked similarly stressed as they moved to stand back-to-back. Three seconds later Ruby spoke “Wait, where are those monsters’ corpses?”

Villin looked confused for a moment before looking around. There were still corpses around them but only six, the two that looked the most similar to the creatures that had captured him had disappeared.

He breathed in sharply as he recalled the words the female creature had said right after they had ‘absorbed’ Leonardo or whatever that was.

“This is bad!”

As soon as he said so, Villin rushed back toward the entrance of the cave system, he wasn’t an idiot and knew these creatures tried to evolve in some way, their words after taking care of Leonardo made it clear they were about to succeed. Villin was sure they only managed to take care of the male creature using its overconfidence and their own luck, if they evolved further, who knew what would happen.

Yet he hadn’t even reached the entrance to the cave when he heard a terrible roar causing not only him, but even Ruby who was protected by her bloodline to fall to the ground.

The scream no longer sounded as it did before, now it sounded surprisingly normal, like it came from a bear, just louder, and extremely destructive.

The roar lasted for five full seconds in which time Villin felt paralyzed. Yet even when it stopped he had difficulty moving his own body. Sweat kept oozing out of his pores and he had no control over his arms or legs.

Ruby was only doing slightly better, she managed to aim her wand toward the cave entrance after using all the strength she had left in her body.

All Villin could do was extend his magic power over to his puppet and move his head just enough to see what was coming out of the cave entrance.