Sylas’ gaze flashed. This team was too cohesive. Not only were they too good at working together, but their knowledge of this world far surpassed his own. He could already see that Aerwyna had come to understand several of his weaknesses in a single false exchange.
He had seen others negate his telekinesis before, so he knew that it was possible. Licius had done it, for example. But this was an even higher form of exactly that.
Even if everyone didn’t have telekinesis, everyone had Will. Within certain parameters, and given the right circumstances, so long as they could set their own battlefield, their Will could circumvent and supersede his own.
The three shieldmen were combining their Wills and Aether to counter Sylas’ telekinesis, and as though that wasn’t bad enough, they had the ability to work off one another’s Skills, actually using what was originally a defensive Skill, and turning it into an offensive one.
Sylas dashed to the side, a green glow enveloping his body. His 296 Speed felt almost like double that with his weight halved.
BOOM!
His gaze flashed as he dodged another, then another.
‘The boulders are too heavy for me to use with my telekinesis…’
He just tried to move one, but they must have been at least 400 to 500 pounds each. And if he picked them up with his hands, the Scorned Wraps would destroy them.
He was forced to retreat again and again, his forward momentum having been entirely crushed.
The two archers appeared on the top of the wall next, their gazes cold as they charged up an attack each. Now that the task of pinning Sylas down was being handled by the two staff wielders, there was no longer a need for them to do it. Instead…
They could focus on sniping.
SHUUUUU! SHUUUUU!
The twin arrows shot through the skies with more speed than ever before. Spiraling winds surrounded them, and their momentum seemed to grow as they sailed through the wind, making them look far more like lances than arrows by the time they reached Sylas.
Sylas’ gaze flashed, his fists trembling as he pressed his back foot down into the ground. His tail pressed even harder for extra stability before he suddenly exploded forth with two fists.
BANG! BANG!
The lance-arrows shattered under the impact, but Sylas could already sense two more were incoming. At the same time, the last two staff wielders, the very same two that had originally cast the blizzard that obscured his vision earlier, were very clearly gathering up a large amount of Aether.
If they weren’t casting another, far more substantial area of effect Skill, Sylas simply wouldn’t believe it.
This wasn’t good. He was pushed back even further now and Aerwyna’s team had completely taken control of the situation. Although he had grasped the advantage in individual power, they countered him perfectly and used their teamwork to overwhelm him. Aerwyna still hadn’t made a single personal move, and he didn’t believe for a moment that she was a glass vase only capable of commanding.
With his current Will, getting a feel for the strength of people was even easier than before. He knew that she was strong, stronger than even Vayu. But in this situation… she simply didn’t need to take action. Doing so would only slow down her command and potentially give Sylas a hole to exploit.
Compared to the impatience of Vayu, she was on a completely different level.
At that moment, the ground began to split and blue Runes raced across the icy earth like cancerous veins.
The first two staff wielders had finally finished casting their area of effect Skill and the temperature plummeted once again.
CRACK.
Sylas’ gaze shot down and his pupils constricted.
He jumped to the side just out of the way of a jagged growth of sharp ice tree branches, only to have to jump again the moment he landed.
Suddenly, it felt like the entire world was against him.
The ground exploded with the growth of vicious ice trees with barbs that would fillet his skin to minced meat.
SHUUUU! SHUUUU!
Two more arrows cut to the skies, both aiming not for Sylas, but rather the locations he could dodge to in order to avoid the next barb-laden trees.
And as though all of that wasn’t bad enough…
Sylas looked up, his ice-cold eyes flickering at the incredulity of it all.
The two staff wielders that stood on the wall had stopped attacking him with boulders because he had retreated too far, but that didn’t mean they had stopped completely.
They held their staffs up high, their Aether surging as bits and pieces of the ice wall rose high into the skies, forming an enormous meteor of ice.
From one meter in diameter to two… and then from three to five… then from five to ten.
If dropped from that high… Sylas couldn’t help but wonder if it could flatten a city.
‘A city, no… but a small village like Casstle Main?’
It seemed to finally set in the kind of monsters he was dealing with. This was the strongest attack he had ever laid eyes one, and he had never seen such seamless teamwork in his life, and he realized that if he kept trying to outsmart them with on-the-fly plans, he would end up deader than dead, and he might not even be conscious of how it happened.
Sylas was forced to cast
His fingers gripped at the air, forming a green hand that extended from his palm and caught the frozen arrow out of the air the instant his defensive Skill stopped it.
With a grunt, he torqued his hips and threw it back at the wall with all the strength he could muster.
‘Something is wrong,’ Aerwyna felt her heart skip a beat for an inexplicable reason.
Her mind thought through several possibilities, but what she didn’t expect was that Sylas would suddenly just turn and run.
BOOM!
At that moment, the arrow collided with the ice wall.
