Still keeping hold on the spell, we started moving forward. The monster was not attacking yet, concocting something inside itself, observing our every move with its eyeless head. As we moved, I reduced the spell to a rather thin veil, thin enough for us to see the creature while still keeping up the spell to quickly expand it in case of attack. In this form, it was a lot easier to maintain and move at least.

The king himself was still pointing its weapon towards the monster, slowly walking along with my spell, never breaking eye contact with the creature.

And behind us both, there was the kid, the last person left standing. Everyone else we left behind, hoping that monster is going to focus on one of us.

We did not have to walk long. Maybe ten steps, about half the distance to the creature, and it finally started again. First, we heard a guttural growl, accompanied with a flash of light from its maw - this time, it was green.

-It’s about to summon the vines again! Move!

A millisecond later, the wave of green was barreling towards us, like before, striking my fire barrier. Similarly, at first it was not very strong, and I did not even have to increase my flames. Somehow, the attack was not as strong as before, and was getting even weaker. For a second I thought that this might not be that bad.

How wrong I was.

As the wave of green was breaking on the flames and as we took yet another few steps closer, I swear, I heard something like a very low laugh from the creature. Just to be blasted by a wave of wind and frost.

Did that creature just bait us into getting closer? Was it really that intelligent? I hardly wanted to believe it, but how else could I explain that?

In any case, it was not the place to try and understand it - I had to act fast. I did expect for the fire wall to break, but not that soon, so it caught me a little bit off guard. I managed to shield myself with my crystal arm, taking the brunt of the wind and ice onto it, somewhat negating the impact. The king was still standing tall, shielded by me only partially now, but wasn’t getting pushed back all that much, being larger than me.

That made me think that this plan might actually work for a change.

Not hesitating even a second, with my regular arm, I grabbed Felix from next to the king, surprising both of them, and pulled him in front of us, using him as a shield.

If someone else was to see that, they definitely would not get a good impression about me. And probably would try to stop me.

Just as the king did right then.

-What the hell are you doing?!

He stepped forward to grab the kid, but suddenly realized what was happening.

The massive wave of frost magic was now being harmlessly dispelled as soon as it got even remotely close to Felix in front of us.

I was absolutely correct.

Somehow, he had the power to negate magic.

Quickly straightening up and firmly holding the kid in front of me, I started running forward, gesturing towards Axelrod to come with us. He nodded and focused again on the monster in front.

On the other hand, Felix was in complete shock. I cannot blame him for that. While it was a bit rude to say the least, I didn’t care about his feelings right then. To be honest, his shock was for the best - at least he did not struggle, making using him as a living shield a pretty easy task.

The monster noticed our sudden movement as well. For a second, it looked confused, but it did not drop the spell, instead focused the blast even more.

I suddenly felt the kid start to struggle in my grasp. He finally realized what was going on and definitely was not happy about it. Even then, the magic still was not able to reach us. I somehow managed to hold him in place. As we were about to reach the creature within striking distance, Felix, in the struggle, finally dropped the tome he was so attached to and I suddenly felt that something was wrong.

The wind reached us immediately, while not at full force, I could feel the freezing cold pinch my skin, as well as some ice particles start forming on my coat.

The kid and king were not that lucky.

Felix, as soon as the tome dropped on the floor, fell backwards, escaping from my grasp. As he got further from me, I noticed the wind hit him more and more, pushing him away like he was just a piece of paper, to the point where he had time not falling ass first on the ground. Only thanks to the king catching him he managed to stay up.

Axelrod himself also had some problems. While he had his feet planted firmly in the ground in anticipation, the sudden blast of cold wind broke his concentration, and the weapon he was readying to attack the monster got dispelled, leaving him unarmed.

Feeling that I was about to fall over as well, followed by most likely being converted to a giant snow cone, I dived down, towards the book.

The cold wind instantly vanished, and finally confirmed my suspicion.

The book, that I thought was just a mundane piece of paper, was somehow warding me from that creature’s magic.

There was no time to think about that though. I gazed backwards, towards the struggling Axelord, and without much of a thought, tossed the book along the ground towards them, yelling through the wind.

-Hold this and go!

As soon as the book left my grasp, the wind hit me with its full force. I tried to somehow cover myself with my crystal arm, and even though it was helping me a little bit, the biting frost was still there and very dangerous. I could feel half of my face burn from the frostbite and the small icicles that were mixed in with the blast were poking me through the clothes, making the cold even harder to withstand.

The king was not wasting time though. As soon as the book reached his foot and the wind stopped around them, he pushed Felix on the ground, preventing him from reaching the tome and took it for himself. I heard him cast some kind of spell, or at least I thought so, because the wind was deafening. As he started running towards the creature, his arms suddenly started changing shape.

While I’ve seen him summon his blade before, this was something on a completely different scale. This time, I swear, I actually saw his arms distort and, well, almost liquify, turning to some kind of goo. Now, when I think of it, it was similar to the substance I remember seeing in the lab-tree back when I first encountered a creature similar to this. But then, I thought that was just an aftereffect of a botched experiment, those people were already dead after all.

Not here though. Both of his arms suddenly slacked and started moving, twisting like a knot of a candle, to the point where it looked like he, instead of arms, had two long, I guess pieces of a rope, attached to his shoulders.

Just as I thought it wouldn't get weirder, the “arms” pulsed and started swelling, almost tripling in size. At the end, where you expected to see fingers, he grew large leaves, each the size of an adult’s hand. I am pretty sure that it was not just for show - they were oddly similar to those that were used as a blade in a weapon he created before. An additional pair grew on his shoulders as well, even larger though, and it looked as though those were a lot thinner. Instead of them being stiff, they fluttered in the remains of the wind that managed to break through the anti-magic bubble. Almost like wings…

That was actually a good comparison, because when he started moving forward, the “wings” started moving along with his arms, flapping almost.

Where was the book though? Well, that’s even weirder - he still had it with him for sure, because the magical fury barreling towards him was still being dispelled a good meter in front of him, keeping the bubble shaped field of safety. At first I couldn’t find the artifact at all, but at second glance I finally was able to spot a familiar corner of leather bound tome - right below the “shoulder pad”. The book itself was somehow wedged between the two shoulders, overgrown, or rather transformed into that weird spindly root, right in the middle of his chest. I was lucky to even spot it at all, the tangle that formed between two shoulderpads covered it almost completely.

That made me scratch my head. If that book was keeping the magic of this creature at bay, how in the hell was he able to even keep the shape of that spell at all? Shouldn't it be destroyed, or at least weakened, like the blizzard or anything else for that matter?

To complicate this even more, I was almost sure that I had before at least once cast a spell in the vicinity of the kid and did not feel it getting weakened at all. How the hell was that supposed to work? Maybe it was not like the book was nullifying magic but rather protecting its owner from harm? Nah, that did not make sense as well - I did inspect it already and it had absolutely no spell nor inscription that was not gibberish. I did not feel any magic from it either…

My thoughts were interrupted by a yell combined with yet another scream from the creature. During the time I was pondering about how the hell that book works while being turned into an icicle, Axelrod was not playing around. He charged towards the creature, and with both of his arms extended, grabbed it, like he was trying to choke it. Not like the monster had a neck, but still. As soon as he grasped it, the leaves that he transformed his fingers into dug deep into the creature’s body, making it scream even louder, and finally interrupting the spell.

The thing started thrashing around and for a second I got worried that it’s going to drop whatever remained from the corridor on our heads, but Axelrod reacted almost immediately.

He dug his fingers even deeper into the creature and started pinning it to the ground, making it destroy the floor instead of the ceiling. Walls didn’t get spared either, while already in poor shape, now you could barely tell that they even were there, destroyed by the wild flailing of the creature who finally pulled out its tail from the chasm in the middle of the corridor and was swinging it randomly everywhere.

Seeing how that was not working, it started again channeling some kind of magic, this time it was hard to tell what exactly it was planning, because the colors were wildly changing, even more than before. It was quite obvious that it was in panic mode.

Axelrod didn’t care much about that though. He calmly was digging deeper into the monster's flesh - I now could see the “fingers” poke out from other sides of its body, pierced all the way through. I think he felt that as well, because he stopped pushing, and instead the growth that replaced his arms started getting thicker.

I started feeling sorry for the poor creature - I could only imagine what kind of pain it would be to have your wounds literally get opened more and more by, let’s face it, another monster. The screams did not make the situation better - you could clearly hear the pain it was in, to the point where it sounded almost human. It was chilling.

The noise was cut short though - after a few seconds it looked like Axelrod had enough and extended all of his blades, or leaf-fingers, at once, chopping the creature into slices, and just to be sure, swiped at the remains few times, creating a pile of mincemeat, that is if that creature even was made out of meat, and spilling the water-like ichor everywhere, including on himself and the book. Both me and Felix were far from the monster, yet it reached us as well. It was quite cold, not like blood from a living being. Probably thanks to the frost magic the monster was using last.

Honestly I sort of expected for it to start moving and attack us again, but most likely that was just my stupid head thinking of the worst case scenario. Just to make sure, I raised myself from the ground and wanted to burn them to ash.

It was unnecessary though. Just as I was to summon my orb, the “meat” on the ground suddenly flickered once and started disappearing right in front of my eyes. Or rather started turning to greenish-gray ash, just to be scattered with the slightest nudge.

-And that’s the end of that - announced Axelrod, still with his monstrous hands in the air.

-That is some interesting magic you use…

He did not reply, instead started turning his arms back to normal. It took him a good couple of seconds.

Meanwhile, I remembered that we actually were not alone. Quickly grabbing the book that fell next to the king when he returned to normal, I gazed around, looking for the owner.

The kid was still laying down on his belly, hard to tell if he was scared or just because he was completely drained like the rest of the group.

Speaking of the group, the remainders of the guard force were still in very much disarray, along with Odar and Harsh. While those two looked a bit better than the rest and were also right now almost standing up, they looked absolutely done.

Odar pulled out a mana fruit from somewhere and was now giving one to Harsh, who took it without even a second of hesitation.

Seeing as they are mostly fine, I turned to the kid.

He did not react when I approached him. Neither when I spoke his name. Only when I waved his book in front of him, he finally realized that I was next to him and immediately tried snatching it from my hands. I, of course, did not let that happen.

-Easy there… - I said, raising the book above my head, so he wouldn’t be able to reach it. - I think you have something to explain first.

He did not reply, instead he rolled into a ball and sat down, looking crushed and traumatized. Well, it partially might have been my fault, I did sort of use him as a living shield after all.

Meanwhile, the king grabbed Odar and For along with Harsh and led them towards the two of us. After eating the mana fruit they looked considerably better, yet still definitely tired.

-So. Does anyone have an idea what exactly was that? - started king, looking at everyone else.

-I’d recommend not discussing this in the open - I said gazing around the gathering crowd of guards and the rest of unfortunate people caught in the event.

-So you know something - stated the obvious Harsh, looking at me with very unfriendly eyes. - Odar, I do not know what you were thinking when bringing this man here, but…

-As I said - I interrupted the surely oncoming flood of insults - not here.

-I must agree with our… guest, today has been hectic and spreading more panic will just be problematic. Please escort them to the dungeon - Axelrod raised his voice, so the guards could hear him. - ALL of them. We are going to have a bit of a chat soon.

-All? - raised his brow Odar, but no one replied.