The sounds of clashes between weapon and tough hide filled the whole battlefield. A group of humans and a group of monsters desperately fought each other for survival. Hacked, smashed and bisected bodies of goblins littered the floor and many of them were perforated with arrows or crossbow bolts. There were also a few corpses that lay about, though the number was only a handful. Blood of both monsters and humans alike spread across the battlefield. Qi armor of different colors and thickness surrounded almost every human and pulsed whenever a monster managed to land a blow.

A middle-aged man oversaw the battle with caution in his eyes. He initially wanted groups of two advanced cultivators to tie up the harpies while he went about assisting in dealing with them one by one, but his plans were dashed. Scouts reported that the harpies had taming collars around their necks which brought the unpleasant information of a hidden expert possibly lying in wait. Furthermore, there was a fifth harpy that was missing from the monster army. It had been together with the monster army until the time when the civilians were ready to depart from Aermagh. It was then that it separated and hid in the cover of the nearby forest.

This unknown factor placed a great pressure on the middle-aged man and to win this battle, nothing should be overlooked. The rest of the strategy had been going well, however. Many of the initial wave of goblins were killed from afar and many more injured before the two armies clashed. The ogres and orcs were unfortunately not affected by the ranged weapons. Their thick hides easily repelling the force behind the arrows. When the two armies clashed, the goblins were easily taken out of the battle by the guild and there were no deaths. However, several inexperienced guild members were scratched and bitten, incurring several minor injuries that would affect their fighting capability a little.

When the orcs and ogres reached the frontline, some of them took out a few unfortunate weaker guild members, who were either killed immediately or blown back. Those that were blown back were more fortunate but had sustained severe injuries. Guild members who were prepped and ready for the fight but had not entered combat immediately took the places of the fallen ones. Parties with fallen members were also pulled back so as not to interfere in the coordination of the replacement guild members.

Among the weaker guild members, there were a particular duo that were outstanding. This party of two were paired with a party that only had females. Naturally, this was Eron and Isolda acting in concert with Dashurie’s party.

Eron had taken on the front line with his overbearing fighting style. He kept a score of orcs and an ogre in check even though they were much larger and stronger than him. He skillfully parried each blow and his actions almost effortlessly flowed from defense to offense and back to defense again. This scary combination ignited admiration among the guild members who were fighting nearby and those in the back. The number of monsters he was preventing from breaking through was easily equivalent to someone of a high level in the intermediate cultivation tier. The image of him utilizing a martial skill that blasted any that tried to break past him back seamlessly with a strong defense reminded the onlookers of a stronghold. A stronghold that rebuffed all enemy attacks and weathered many a storm.

In the backline, Isolda stood with one of Dashurie’s girlfriends. Both were using long range martial skills to support the frontline. Isolda commanded fire while Dashurie’s girlfriend was using ice to tie up the enemies. However, Isolda’s flames were different from the normal scarlet ones. There were white streaks that ran through and flickered with the flames.

Before the battle started, Isolda had been extremely pressured by Braiten’s separation and the oncoming monster invasion. Seeing the monsters approach as she was placed among the first squad to absorb the initial clash, something broke in her and she remembered Braiten mentioning how fire and ice were two sides of the same coin. Both commanded heat, but is the result of raising it and the other of cooling. They naturally suppressed each other, but could be used in unison for devastating attacks along with equally devastating effects. The memories flooded her mind and a burst of inspiration arose in her heart. Isolda summoned flames from her qi using and she felt that it was incomplete. Flowing qi along the complementary pathways with the ice martial skill that she learnt from Dashurie’s girlfriend, the flames grew hotter as several pockets of air amongst the flames grew colder and colder. Eventually, white streaks of ice forming and melting into clouds of water appeared within the flames.

Isolda found out that heat from the cold pockets of air was transferring over to the flames, making them ever stronger. With this strange flame, she dominated control over the enemies she directed her wrath at. The monsters that touched the flame were burned initially, before ice started forming outside and freezing the area that had been hit. With the inside burning and the outside frozen, many monsters were screaming in pain and struggling to no avail. This mystical sight caused many onlookers to remember legends of a grand white flame that was of absolute heat and coldness. All of them decided to dub Isolda and this mystical martial skill as “Frostflame Prison”.

Dashurie and her other girlfriend were in the frontline, but behind Eron. Whenever they got the chance to, they would dash out and kill monsters with one strike before dashing back behind Eron. They also made sure that Eron did not handle more than he could chew and teamed up to quickly eliminate any extra monsters that Eron was unable to lock down.

Just as the battle had gone on for ten minutes, a bright flash originated from the forest. A glowing, green formation with an arrow in the middle appeared in the sky and a huge figure the size of a harpy flew in the arrow’s direction. Shortly after, the harpies that were fighting the advanced cultivation tier guild members broke off from the battle and swiftly flew towards their comrade. On top of the leading harpy, there was a man clad in light, scaled armor. He wore a helmet adorned with two horns on his head and held a long staff in both hands.

The guild branch leader looked in the direction of the arrow and immediately paled. The direction led right towards the escaping civilians!

***

The detection rune that could only be seen by Braiten lit up and broke up into six pieces. Each of them flew around Braiten in a circle once and then stopped in the direction of Aermagh. Braiten became extremely alarmed at that point and saw five figures in the distance rapidly becoming bigger as they came closer.

A strong sense of danger washed over Braiten and he quickly gathered up mana from the earth. Manipulating it to form several runes in front of him, Braiten stomped his foot loudly onto the earth to draw attention in his direction. As he did so, a thick and large wall of earth materialized in front of him from the ground. Braiten prepared his strongest defensive enchants and was about to imbue the earth wall with it when he felt a disturbance in the mana on the other side of the wall.

Braiten immediately imbued the enchant on himself as the wall broke apart and a harpy swiped him to the side. Braiten had defenses that were much stronger than an ordinary advanced cultivator, he could block the strike outright. However, in order to hide his prowess, he let himself relax. Feeling the flow of the forces, he moved like water and firmly redirected the harpy’s swipe with a circular motion.

The man riding the harpy was shocked by the turn of events. Clearly, Braiten was releasing an aura that indicated that he was only in the early levels of the advanced cultivation tier. The fact that he could easily parry this tamed harpy’s attack was testament to extremely high martial prowess.

The shock only lasted for a brief moment, however. The man quickly released his full power, suppressing Braiten and forcing him to kneel on the spot. Braiten was effectively pinned down just from the aura of the man.

The guild members surrounding the civilians finally regained their wits only after Braiten had been immobilized. Their reactions were too late as four harpies landed around the group of civilians, sealing off any room for escape. They were completely surrounded.

===

Author’s notes:

A fresh new start with a fresh chapter and a short one for easier reading. This event will continue over one more chapter. I didn’t want to leave this chapter as a cliffhanger, but what can I do. I wanted to continue the chapter titles as “a something something”, but I couldn’t think of a good title. This fiction has a slower beginning, but quicker pace in setting the foundation of the character, so I hope you guys would bear with me. (And no, it’s not bare with me. “Bare with me” means to get naked with me, so no to that.)