"Time for some action, guys!" Ryan signaled the team as Riley crawled into the back of the rover from her seat. He then lifted his foot and stuck a cane-like monster bone onto the gas pedal before hopping to the back. 

Forming a circle around Liss by holding hands up to each other's sleeves, they tapped into their souls and concentrated their energy into a sphere that enclosed the entire team. 

They rolled off the rover just before the sphere lost its form and scattered them all like pesticide grains in different directions.

Sir Nick didn't let go of his moribund daughter as he held onto her the whole time when they both were thrown away from the others.

He landed with his back against a thick spiked crystal pillar holding Liss in his arms. 

More than two spikes pierced his rather fat than a built-up body, one in the shoulder, one in his right chest, and one just below his heart. They protruded from under his flannel jacket, stapling it with holes.

Soon as the rest of the team members pulled themselves together, and they did unnaturally quickly, Riley and Zoe kept gaping at the rover they abandoned as it streaked straight into a big spider-web type structure. 

Bulky thick shimmering fiber bundles built that web so stretchy and flexible that it negated the impression of the crash in no time. They were both eagerly and avidly waiting to lay their eyes on a grand explosion, but it never came to pass to their utter disappointment.

During that time, Ryan was busy as he raised his hand and extended it as if he was holding onto a doorknob until all of a sudden an opalescent knob had actually formed in his palm. 

When he turned the knob clockwise, a barricade made out of thick energy particles appeared on the only staircase located in the south-west corner, barricading the path both to and fro the upstairs.

Sir Nick was still breathing when Zoe and the others found him pinned on the pillar a few minutes later which meant the spike just grazed his heart not too deep. But the blood gushing out of his mouth onto his worn-out jacket screamed otherwise.

That place was crawling with six-legged wolf-panther hybrid beasts that were confined outside the protection shield Ryan was holding up. 

He was gathering all his soul energy into his palm and transforming it through the ground into that barrier while Zoe through her palms was pushing hers into the pillar, directed toward Sir Nick. 

Soon as it reached his perforated body, his wounds healed instantly and woke him up from his heavy trance.

He moaned as he lifted his body up out of the spikes before falling onto the ground underneath. For a moment there, the depth in the pain of his groans overpowered the howling of the mutated creatures outside the barrier.

"About time you woke up, old man. Care to crank up?" Riley threw her taunts at Sir Nick. "The barrier can fall any second now."

"Forgive me for burdening you, Madam. Please sit back and relax." apologized Sir Nick, bowing in front of Riley.

Curling his fingers into a fist, he folded his left arm backward and rested it on his hip. That hand of his radiated a pale but pure light that could ease any heavy heart in no time. 

That glow crawled up his arm and headed toward his heart when he raised his other arm and extended it as if he was reaching for something. 

It then climbed onto that other arm and made its way up into the palm of his hand where it got intensified before cooling down into the shape of a chain-sickle.

The sickle was decorated with a design of queued perforations along its well-honed edge and was mounted on a bluish-crystal shaft. 

The shaft's end was connected to a heavy stainless steel chain. The chain was long. Maybe ten meters or even more. 

A gear-shaped iron weight with razor-sharp teeth along its outer circumference was welded to the other end of the chain.

He held the sickle shaft in his left hand and the chain nearer to the weight in his right while he asked Riley and Zoe to get on the ground.

"Ryan, can you open only the front side of the barrier without bringing it all down."

"I can try. But I'm running on my reserved power. So, whatever you do, do it real quick." Ryan said as he strained his whole body to burn up his last reserves and succeeded in lowering the front part of the shield.

The hungry wolves waiting outside it darted toward the opening, all at once, and charged ferociously at Sir Nick who was standing guard in front of his team. 

They were half his height, double his size, cement colored stripes on their charcoal dark skin. A single horn twisted in many circles and pointed forward outgrew from their forehead.

He swung the sickle by the chain in a vertical circle toward the first one heading towards him and that stroke sliced its face into two perfect halves dangling from its neck. 

Its corpse slid over near to his feet due to the momentum of its stampede.

For his second and immediate attack, he got down on one bent knee before swinging his sickle clockwise with his left hand, and his toothed weight anticlockwise with the other, both in horizontal circles simultaneously over his head. 

It was one among his many combo attacks that could hack any living thing in flesh and blood within its radius.

The blade slashed clean through each and every wolf in the first wave and they were all cut in two, one with the upper torso and the other with the lower. 

The sharp teeth fused around the weight did nothing less. As he continued to keep them twirling, he landed a third blow over the next wave of the wolves with his second swing and it was his combo two attack.

Then he kept slicing and dicing through the next wave and the one after that without changing his about-to-propose stance. 

That lasted till he reached combo ten where he dealt the only wolf left after the astounding slaughter with his final blow when it tried to bolt out of there alive.

... to be continued.