They proceeded quietly through the night, paying attention to their surrounds so that they wouldn't be ambushed or discovered.

They could see the wall in the distance by now, the orcs were watching with attention to their surroundings. After getting closer, the teams separated. Bryan's team went through the right side, Adam's team through the middle and the other team through the left. They approached the city in a triangular formation so that if one of the teams was caught, the others could help them or escape.

They watched the patterns in which the scouts and the guards on the walls looked around the city and progressed smoothly.

The process was not complicated nor difficult, all of them were seasoned adventurers and knew how to proceed, no nervousness came to them.

The process of approaching the wall was smooth, there were almost no impediments once they knew how to go through the guards.

The earth mage quickly used his powers to create a hideout underground and the three teams hid in there.

"Everything went alright. Now, the next phase. My friend, could you begin?" Said Adam while gesturing to the mage.

The man nodded and began to create a tunnel so that the missions could continue.

Unfortunately, after a few meters, they encountered a rock wall. The mage tried to mend it, but it was to no avail. Some other people tried to destroy it as well, but the wall was unfazed. They gave up trying to destroy it and began to dig down instead. After digging for 50 meters, they finally found a weaker rock and destroyed it to open away.

They struggled for a bit and finally found a way inside the wall through it. The mage began to dig to the direction of the middle of the city, where the space fluctuations could be felt.

Bryan felt relieved that their plan worked so well, the process was risky, but they have done what they proposed.

The mage made a huge effort and carved the earth to reach the center of the city.

The closer they got to the surface of the center of the city, they realized that the ground was becoming harder and harder. The mage could barely penetrate it anymore. After seeing that it was pointless to go to the center of the city, they settled for a more distant place that they could penetrate.

The mage somehow sensed the ground and evaded the sewers as well. After 6 hours of waiting, they were finally beneath the surface.

Using his ability to sense the ground above them the mage choose a secluded alley where they could leave and alert no one.

The sun was already up in the sky, and there was plenty of movement above ground, everyone could feel it. They waited for the day to pass and the night to come again so that they could surface and began their operations.

Everyone was calmly seated and waiting underground, while there was a tension in the air, it was obvious that the confidence was high as well. They believed that the mission would surely succeed.

Bryan was a bit skeptical about the situation, deep down, he didn't believe that the situation would be solved so easily. It was an Epic ranked mission after all. The most he could do for now was to protect his teammates.

After resting long enough, night arrived. He instructed Jess, Samuel and the mage to pay attention to any movements that happened around them so that they could protect themselves or flee.

Adam got up and said. "We are going to the surface in a moment. I will scan the city with my ability to confirm the enemy's position so that we can react accordingly."

Everyone got up and looked at the ceiling of the cave. The earth mage gestured and the cover undid itself. The sky full of strange constellations could be seen. They slowly left the cave and went toward the center of the city.

Going to the center was rather easy. The walls were big enough so that you could use them as a point of reference to locate yourself.

Bryan memorized the way to the cave, in case anything happened he could quickly retreat. Bryan scanned his surrounds in search of any life signs, and he could only see some of them inside the houses. nothing looked abnormal to him.

Getting closer to the center of the city, he could feel the suction force of the portal becoming stronger. It was fortunate that only mana seemed to be sucked by it.

Bryan began to have goosebumps. His whole body was trembling and his gut was telling him to retreat. Nothing could contend with the creature that was ahead, protecting the portal.

He quickly approached Adam and said. "I feel that the creature protecting the portal is leagues above what we can handle. We should retreat and thing of another way to do this.'’

"Unfortunately, we are already too close to it boy, it's too late to retreat now."

Hearing the answer coming from Adam, he shook his head and backed away. Getting closer to the tem he said. "Folks, I feel that if we proceed, we will die in here. I think we should back down."

Both Samuel and Jess agreed with me, but the mage was a bit skeptical.

"Are you sure of what you are saying? We could be giving up our only opportunity to complete the mission."

"Truthfully speaking, no. I am not sure. But I feel that death is the only thing that we are going to find in there. And more, don't you think it's too strange that there are almost no guards around here? the walls and the city surrounds are full of them, while the interior is unprotected, this is smelling fishy for me."

After hearing what Bryan said, the mage had a surprised face. He realized that what Bryan was speaking was the truth. Nothing impedes them from getting to here, things looked almost too easy.

"Ok, I am going with you." The mage decided to follow them back.

Bryan walked to Adam and said. "My team is going to leave. Things are too easy, there must be a trap waiting for us."

A cold look appeared in Adam's face. "We need everyone in here to succeed. No one can go back now!"

"Thank you for everything, but we are not your pawns." Bryan left the place and gestured to the others to follow him.

They left through the shadows and went toward the cave to leave the city. The way back was smooth and nothing stopped them.

"BOOOOOOM"

Suddenly a huge explosion happened. The ground trembled and they could see the flames in the distance.

"Shit!! Things went south." Said, Samuel.

They gave a brief introduction of their powers, and no one said anything about explosions. There were only two options for this to be happening. One, they lied and someone had an explosion type power, or second, they were discovered and ambushed.

Battler sounds continued to happen in the distance while they retreated. The flames danced in the sky and numerous magical lights could be seen in the distance.

Bryan and his team fastened their pace and arrived in the cave quickly. They went through the tunnels as if there was no tomorrow and left the city.

***

After getting out of the city, they could see that there was no battle movements inside of it. The scouts and guards were still doing their duty and guarding the city walls.

It seemed that this was not the first attempt to invade the city in this way.

"Let's go back to the hideout if anyone survived that, they will surely be going there." Bryan said.

They avoided the guards and left the place. After another long walk, they arrived there. The mage had left the place intact and hidden by the rock. They moved the rock and entered the hole.

After getting in there, Bryan looked around and saw that every one's face was hopeless. The failure in accomplishing the city was obvious. The orcs were too well organized and had a bigger army. He hadn't even fought with one of them to see how powerful they were.

Bryan seated on the ground and began to meditate to calm down his nerves. The other followed his examples and did the same thing.

After 2 hours of meditating, he felt that his mind was cleared and his body less stressed. He went to a corner of the place and began to practice his spear moves while thinking.

Moving the energy around his body now felt natural and easy. In the beginning, he struggled to properly augment his body with it. Now, it felt like breathing. The only difficulty that he still had was to control the energy outside his body to augment and serve as a power source to his lightning, but he was already making a huge improvement on this as well.

Training further, he entered a frenzy and began to combine his lightning with his clouds. They combined almost perfectly, the synergy between these two skills was huge.

Everyone else stopped cultivating and paid attention to Bryan. They saw that his skills were going through an evolution on this moment, not a quantitative evolution, but qualitative. His skills were augmenting each other and making the power even stronger.

Bryan stopped attacking with his spear and seated on the ground while controlling the clouds and lightning around him. His Cloud walker skill began to further condense around him, looking like an armor, and not some mists floating around him. The armor was covered in cloud and lightning. It looked imposing, almost as if the world should bow down in front of this power.

Bryan was flabbergasted by this transformation. The two skills had combined in a way that he never imagined could be possible.

Since he began his training with instructors on the mindscapes, they constantly told him about the importance of having a deep understanding of the concepts that surrounded his elements. He had meditated for a long time to better combine his lightning and cloud skills.

The pressure from the moment and the will to calm his mind, made him gather all the enlightenment that he had until now and combine them into one. He now truly understood how they were connected in nature. He embraced these enlightenments around him and made them into a protections that would constantly surround and protect him, and the result was this armor.

The armor had a grayish and dull color to it. looking closely, it could be seen that the armor was not entirely physical, as it was slowly moving and reforming around him. there was an azure glow going from the insides of the armor, almost as if the lightning was waiting in there to strike anyone that dares to come closer to the bearer of this armor.

He looked at his status page and saw the new skill.

Name:

Bryan Fulgur

Race:

Human

Strength:

127 → 172

Agility:

167 → 217

Intelligence:

105 → 119

Wisdom:

101 → 115

Endurance:

133 → 183

Vitality:

121 → 171

Skills

Name

Level/Tier

Spear mastery

99/Master

Lightning body

94/Expert

Cloud walker

58/Expert

Storm armor

01/Expert

Perks

Name

Description

Bright mind

You have the ability to recall and process information quickly. The informations that you see may be remembered easily.

Points

1.634

City Points

0

He had gained a total of 45 points in strength, 50 in agility, 14 in both intelligence and wisdom and finally 50 in both endurance and vitality.

The attributes have come from his lightning body and cloud walker skills. Both of them gave him a huge burst in strength. although he didn't gain any attributes from the Storm armor skill, only the protection that it would give him would have to suffice.

What shocked him the most was that the Storm armor skill was already an Expert tiered skill, giving him a huge advantage in terms of skill levels. Now, he wouldn't have to grind the skill like crazy.

Bryan felt that the armor was not only limited to protecting him… but for now, it would fill its role.

"Amazing!" He said while a smile appeared on his face.