“Battle formations!” shouted Clement, with a long sword in his right hand and a shield on his left.

“Kalinda, light our arrows!” shouted Bernice.

Kalinda used her Ether to manifest two balls of fire on the tips of Eunice and Bernice’s arrows. The twins focused on manifesting a compressed ball of hydrogen behind the flames.

It was a difficult move as any contact between the flames and the hydrogen gas would cause an explosion.

Aadam, who specialises in Ether illusions began conjuring swords spinning in the air. With a gesture, he directed the spinning swords toward the Shadow.

Startled by the airborne projectiles, the beast jumped backwards to dodge the imaginary blades.

Eunice and Bernice took this chance to leap into the air using the propulsion of compressed air beneath their feet.

“Explosive arrow!” Shouted Eunice and Bernice in unison.

They launched two flaming arrows at the Shadow. The arrows hit the creature and instantly exploded. The balls of concentrated hydrogen were designed to reacted with the flame tipped arrows to detonate on impact.

The twins barely made it back behind the barrier before the force of the blast sent a massive shockwave of debris, flames and smoke towards the barrier maintained by David.

David could feel the impact on his Ether barrier, but it was small compared to the Shadow’s attack.

While the rest waited for the smoke to clear, Orion was already channelling his lightning skill. It would take a while to charge, and his classmates were preparing a window of opportunity for him.

A bolt of lightning manifested in his hands as he nocked the sizzling bolt on his crossbow. The bolt grew brighter and more unstable the longer he pulled it.

“David, shield window!” shouted Orion.

David waved his hands and an opening in the barrier formed in its lattice structure.

The lightning bolt crackled in the air as it reached maximum charge. Orion’s crossbow started quivering with the tension. With a pull on the trigger, the lightning bolt launched with a brilliant flash.

He hit the Shadow squarely with a boom as though a lightning bolt had struck it from the heavens. It screamed as the lightning burnt its way through its scaly defences.

Before it could get back on its feet, Clement had already made his way to the creature’s back. Using his famed sword Arondight, he slashed the joints of the Shadow’s legs to hamper its movement.

The wounds caused by the sword were known to bleed freely and could not be stopped.

The Shadow noticed Clement the moment his sword struck. It turned to swing a huge claw at the swordsman. He raised his shield and managed to block the attack, receiving a dent in his shield.

The impact left his arm numb.

Realising that all the creature’s aggression is now focused on him, Clement backed away cautiously from the Shadow.

Arrows began to pierce into the back of the creature’s head, and it screamed as it turned back to glare at Eunice and Bernice.

The twins continued shooting at it through the shield’s window. It was a small gap that attacks could go through but too small for a Shadow’s claws to penetrate.

They continued to pelt it using wind reinforced arrows from inside the safety of the barrier.

Clement continued the assault with more slashes while the Shadow was distracted. This angered the beast but it could not focus on attacking him while a barrage of arrows continued to pierce its hide from behind.

This was the class’s basic battle strategy against Shadows. In their combat plans, David should be beside Clement, helping to shield him from the Shadow’s attacks.

Nevertheless, he was holding his own having endured months of training back at the academy.

The tide of the battle was in their favour, but Orion felt uneasy. His calculated that another Shadow would be appearing soon, and he had asked Kalinda to prepare something to hold it back while they tried to destroy the Shadow before them.

“It’s here! The second one pursuing us!” shouted Kalinda. Her voiced quivered as she alerted the rest.

The other Shadow on their tail had caught up with them. Their heads turned towards the second threat, already snarling angrily and charging at them.

Kalinda, a fire specialist, had been charging her skill for this moment. Swirling on her hand was an intense ball of plasma, compressed and ready to explode.

“Fiamma!” shouted Kalinda. She had been overdriving her Ether Amp all this while, hoping to create the strongest fire attack in her life.

A giant ball of flame shot out from her hand towards the newly arrived beast and exploded in its face.

The class could feel the heat wash over their faces as the plasma engulfed the beast in a tornado of flames. The flames rose to over three storeys high.

It was a direct hit and a powerful one. The class whooped and cheered at the apparent quick win over the dreadful beast.

“Wooooooo!” exclaimed Kalinda as she jumped in joy. This was the largest fireball she had managed since ever.

Orion alone maintained a stoic expression as his instinct told him this was not the end of the Shadow. Reacting quickly, he raced towards the rear of the group.

His hunch proved true and their elation was short lived when the flames subsided. The Shadow did not show any visible wounds and continued to charge towards them with the same ferocity.

It was as though the gigantic fireball was merely a gust of hot summer’s wind to it.

The Shadow faced down the class with nothing standing between them, its eyes fixed on Kalinda.

Before Eunice and Bernice could react, it charged headfirst into Kalinda.

The class gasped in shock as the beast smashed its horns into Kalinda, who was too shocked to get out of the way.

In an instant. Kalinda was thrown into the air before their eyes. Her Ether Amp bracelet flew from her arm, shattering into pieces on the ground.

She hit the floor with a heavy thud and stayed motionless, just meters away from the others.