Yura’s sudden declaration was of course a huge shock to the trio, but Elise recovered quickly and asked:

“How can you tell?”

“My pendant has an enchantment on it that can detect them.” She reached for it with her hand but stopped midway, thinking of something “So you know about them?”

“Yeah. We had run-ins with them before.” Elise replied, inwardly thinking to herself ‘Ah, so that’s why she reached for her pendant when she met us. She was checking whether we were Inishie’.

“I see, but why have they…” The elf girl stopped and turned towards professor Whitmoore “Did you do it?” She demanded, barely containing her rage.

The woman shook her head in a panic “No! I have no idea what the Inishie even are!”

Yura clenched her fist, clearly debating with herself whether to believe her or not, but then Elise came to the professor’s rescue:

“I think she’s telling the truth.” She said.

Yura turned to her “Why do you think that?” She questioned.

“We got separated when the guardians attacked, so she could have easily sent a message at that point and allowed them to set up an ambush inside the temple, which would have been more reliable.” The contractor explained her reasoning.

“I see… That makes sense.” She turned to Whitmoore “I’ll believe you.” She said, sounding strangely relieved.

“I do think there’s foul play involved here, because it’s far too convenient for them to strike right when you’re here, a place where simply tunneling away to safety isn’t an option because of the composition of the earth.” Elise said “But we can think about that later, the most important thing to do right now is figuring out how to escape this situation. Do you have any idea of their numbers, strength or anything else?”

Yura shook her head “No. The pendant simply tells me that there are Inishie nearby. They should be right outside.”

“Okay, then we’ll have to gather information ourselves.” She turned to Nalia and called her name, the fairy needing no further instruction to begin casting scouting spells.

Then she turned to the professor “You should stay here and hide until everything is over. If we don’t come back to get you, then we had to run away and you’ll have to get back to the city on foot.” Her gaze hardened “We’ll try to go back there or at least send a message once it is all over.” She deliberately did not mention the possibility that they might not get the chance.

The woman nodded and said “Please, try your best to stay safe.”

“Of course.” Elise said and then turned to look at the others. Nalia was still casting her spells, Nina was repeatedly clenching and unclenching her fists, steeling herself for a fight and Yura was looking right at her, seemingly struggling with something.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” She eventually asked “This is my problem, so you have no obligation to help.”

“I’m sure. This might be a trap for you, but whoever gave them the information must have seen us together. We’re definitely in the Inishie’s hit list after killing one of their branch managers, so they’re not gonna let us go that easily.” Elise explained.

“You killed a branch manager?!” Yura exclaimed in shock “Did it-” She cut herself off and shook her head “No, I can ask about that later. I understand your point about them coming after you, but I still think it might be easier for you three to escape without me. Are you really sure?” She asked in an almost pleading tone.

“That might be true, but I don’t want to leave you behind.” Elise replied like it was a matter of course “You two don’t have any objections either, right?” She asked her partners.

“If that’s what you want, I have no objections.” Nalia momentarily paused her spellcasting to reply.

“Abandoning you would feel bad.” Was Nina’s candid answer.

“And there you have it.” Elise said.

“That… Er… I mean, thank you…” Yura seemed like she didn’t know what to say.

The group briefly fell into silence after that, but Nalia soon piped up saying that her scouting was done.

“There’s three people outside.” She began to report “Two of them are human and appear to be physical combat experts, while the third is an elf who specializes in magic. It’s hard to say for sure, but I don’t think they’re strong enough to overwhelm us.”

“Interesting. Maybe they are here to hold us down until reinforcements arrive.” Elise said “I think going out and trying to break through is the best option, given what we know.”

No one objected to that, so the group headed towards the exit, Nina taking the lead while Elise brought up the rear. The rabbit girl emerged from the same hatch they had used to go in and immediately raised her guard, looking at the enemies. They did not immediately attack, so the others followed behind Nina and got outside as well, allowing Elise to get a good view of the opposition.

The two humans were a man and a woman who were standing about ten steps away from Nina. The man was wearing sparse clothing, similar to the elf Naran, and he was muscular but his size was fairly normal for a human. The woman, on the other hand, was wearing a full set of armor which was made of leather with metal plates attached to several parts like the chest, arms and legs, along with a helmet that concealed her hair but not her face.

A few steps behind the two was the elf, who stood out due to his skin tone being entirely black, rather than the more brown tone of Yura. He was wearing a gray tunic which had a few bags tied around it, and Elise immediately triggered her ability upon seeing him.

‘Elvish Spellcrafter. Among the many elves that follow the path of magic, a few of them decide to specialize in the path of substance, utilizing natural materials as fuel for their spells. And while such a need can undoubtedly be a weakness, the trade off is the ability to use more varied and powerful spells than they should be able to.’

‘Hmm… A versatile mage supporting two close range fighters, huh… That still doesn’t seem right. Why would they think that a trio like that could take us on?’ Elise asked herself, but before she could think any further about it, one of the enemies finally made a move: It was the woman, who took out a baton-shaped thing from behind her back.

The group tensed up in response, but before they could do anything she pointed the baton at them, which shone with a red light. And something seemed to stick to them, leaving behind streaks of red all over their bodies.

“What the hell is this?” Nina complained as she tried and failed to use her aura to get rid of it.

“Some sort of… Magical substance…” Nalia wasn’t having any more luck doing it with her magic.

“I see, this is some sort of tracker...” Elise realized “It doesn’t do anything, but it will be impossible for us to hide because they must have some way of detecting it.”

‘And they’re not following up.’ Elise thought, seeing that the enemies seemed content to just stand there ‘So they really must be here just to do that and delay us, but that still doesn’t seem… Wait, I know! They don’t realize we’ve gotten stronger since the events in the forest. That’s why they think those three would be able to delay us, at least. In that case…’

“We can’t let those three keep us here for any longer. Nalia, kill the woman. Nina, you get the man. Yura should go after the elf.” She declared coldly.

“It will be done.” Nalia replied.

“Sure.” Was Nina’s response.

“Okay.” Yura said with a little less confidence than the other two.

She hadn’t spoken loudly, so it didn’t seem like the enemies heard anything, but they certainly reacted when the trio of fighters began rushing towards them.

Nalia quickly cast two speed increasing spells on herself, determined to finish things quickly like her contractor wanted, and was the first of the three to reach her opponent. The woman took a step back before launching a punch at the fairy, trying to take advantage of the fact that she hadn’t had time to cast an offensive spell given her rush.

She struck quickly and decisively with her right hand, hoping to force Nalia to use a spell to defend, thus wasting her magic and giving the woman an opportunity to follow-up with a left hand hook when she was defenseless. However, her lack of knowledge of Nalia’s current skills proved quite literally fatal in that case, for she obviously didn’t know that the fairy had trained her aura defenses to a very high level since then. Nalia took the punch to her body without even flinching or slowing down her spellcasting.

“No-” The woman began to scream upon realizing her mistake, but there was nothing she could do.

Nalia hit her in the face with a brutal fireball spell, instantly killing her with the massive brain trauma caused by the shockwave.

Nina reached her own opponent only a little bit later than the fairy, but she’d have a much rougher time of it in trying to match the speed at which the other had finished the fight. Different from Nalia, the enemy already knew that the rabbit girl was much tougher than she looked given that Naran had survived their fight, so she couldn’t surprise him with that.

But Nina got a burst of motivation from Elise speaking in her head ‘You could easily beat him by doing repeated attacks from unexpected angles using your instant movement… But that would take a while, and it’s not what you want, is it? So you should just smash him down.’

The rabbit girl replied to that by covering the last bit of distance with a leap, aiming straight at the enemy’s chest. Such an obvious straight line attack wouldn’t go unpunished, so the enemy launched a knee right into her side, holding nothing back.

“Kh!” Nina had planned to block with the minimum of power needed, leaving the rest for her counter-attack, but she misjudged slightly, resulting in the hit (which was strong enough to completely stop the rabbit’s forward momentum) causing enough damage to break her concentration.

But then Elise’s voice sounded in her head ‘Push through it!’, and Nina roared, ignoring the pain and putting all her strength into her attack, smashing through the enemy’s hastily raised block and striking him straight in the chest with a ferocious elbow blow that broke his ribs into pieces and knocked the man down, along with stopping his heart.

Nina didn’t have the time to feel proud about that, though. She fell down on all fours and vomited, incapable of holding down after taking a blow like that and then forcing out such a strong attack, and blood came out alongside it, proof of the damage the previous blow had caused her.

The rabbit then coughed once before wiping her mouth with her arm and pulling herself back to her feet. She had no complaints. That was the path she had chosen.

Finally, we turn our attention to Yura. She had been moving slower than the other two, plus her opponent was further away, so she still hadn’t reached the enemy by the time Nalia and Nina were finishing off their own opponents. The elf spellcrafter had pulled out a bunch of small stone shards from his bags and used them to begin shooting a series of spells at the smaller elf, some of them being fireballs while others were magical spheres that exploded into wind blasts on contact.

Yura had formed an earth barrier in front of herself that managed to protect her from harm, but the impact of the enemy’s spells slowed down her advance to a crawl, until the enemy mage saw his two companions falling to Nalia and Nina, stopping his casting for a few moments from the shock.

“No! That can’t-” He stopped himself in the middle to resume his attack upon Yura, the closer range working to his advantage to the point where her advance came to a complete standstill.

However, the enemy then had to quickly reach into a different back to grab an ingredient for a barrier spell, as Nalia began shooting him with a sequence of stone bullets. He cast such protection spells again and again to keep himself safe from her shots, but that meant the pressure on Yura instantly dropped, so she charged at him once more.

The enemy quickly reached into a different bag while still maintaining his barrier spells, changing his previous offensive magic into a series of heavy explosive blasts, the first of which blew through Yura’s earth shield and forced her to throw herself to the ground in order to avoid having a hole blown into her chest, but the elf girl quickly rallied, grabbing onto the ground and snarling as she pushed more and more power into it.

Her power gathered the earth and forcefully compressed it into heavy minerals, which she molded first into a barrier that held firmly against the enemy’s blasts, and then into a quickly growing pillar, which she pushed against to drop it onto the enemy. The spellcrafter had to redirect his blasts upwards to shove the falling pillar to the side, avoiding being crushed, but Yura rushed towards him at her fastest speed while he was distracted, forming a quick layer of earth in front of herself and ramming the enemy before he managed to switch targets back to her.

He was brutally shoved to the ground, all his spells interrupted, but that wouldn’t be enough to put him down for good, so Yura didn’t stop after hitting the enemy, instead rushing close to his head, raising her right foot and covering it in a thick and heavy layer of earth.

Then she stomped on his head, popping it like a grape. That didn’t even cause her to blink, for it was far from the first time she had done such a thing.

+0+

The group wasn’t in a situation where they could waste time, since there would definitely be a bigger enemy force coming soon, so they decided not to leave through the same path they had entered from, instead climbing up one of the sharp inclines on the sides.

Nalia had cast a few spells to check whether she could do anything about the tracker marks, but that was beyond her capabilities, though she did learn that they would vanish on their own after about ten hours or so.

It wasn’t likely that the enemies would take that long to reach them, so the group began to move around, both to try and get some extra time and to look for a good place to meet the enemies on their own terms. The current area was a large grassy plain with very little cover, so it was obviously not a good option.

Elise had even thought about simply moving back into the temple and using it as the battlefield, but considering that their previous enemies hadn’t actually gone inside the place, seemingly content to leave their targets there while they waited for reinforcements, she thought that the Inishie probably had some means to deal with fighting them inside the temple, so that would be a dangerous option.

Elise had seen a map of the area before, so she directed the group to move northwest, in the direction of a river called Omothas. But before they were even halfway through to their destination, the enemies appeared.

It was a large transport helicopter, which was black colored with silver accents. The helicopter flew faster than their transport via Yura’s earth platform, even with Nalia casting her own spells to make it faster. The fairy immediately began shooting magic at the vehicle, trying to bring it down from the air, but the large doors on the side of the helicopter slid open and someone jumped out of it.

It was an elf, who immediately cast magic on herself to begin flying on a wind current before sending out wind slashes to intercept Nalia’s long range attacks. That elf was wearing loose fitting robes that should have been flapping madly in the wind as she moved, but her control was such that it looked more like she was being hit by a gentle breeze. As such, Elise wasn’t surprised by what her ability told her once activated:

‘Elvish Windmaster. Among the many elementalist mages, elves are often the best specialists, and those that merit the title of master are obviously the cream of the crop even among them. Offense, defense, mobility… One could say that they have no weakness in any aspect.’

‘I wonder if she knows that other elf that was a wind rider…’ One small part of Elise’s mind idly thought while the rest of her furiously tried to calculate the best course of action.

Nalia continued firing at the enemies, trying her best to delay them for as long as possible as Yura focused on driving the earth platform at the best possible speed, going around small obstacles like bushes and ponds. But the windmaster’s defense was solid, and the helicopter was slowly gaining ground.

‘I only got a glimpse of the inside of the helicopter when the door opened, but from what I saw, I would guess that there are around a dozen enemies. That elf must be the only one with such high mobility, or she wouldn’t be defending the copter by herself.’ Elise’s pondering continued.

Nina clenched her fist, frustrated at not being able to help the current situation, but prepared to give it her all when the time came.

‘I don’t think all their fighters would be at that same level, since it would be overkill for dealing with us, maybe only one or two others. But the rest must be decently strong warriors who are used to working together, so I don’t think we’d be able to whittle them down with hit and run tactics, much less in a straight up fight.’

Once the helicopter got close enough, the elf began doing attacks of her own instead of passively defending, forcing Nalia to dedicate part of her attention to blocking.

‘I can’t see a way to win with conventional methods. I can ‘t see a way to avoid them long enough for the markers to expire. Even buying a decent amount of time seems almost impossible…’ Elise began trembling without realizing it. That was without a doubt the most dangerous situation she’d ever been.

Yet, her expression morphed into a grin. She had grown up hearing the stories of her older sisters, many of whom had experienced numerous of such deadly crises, but always managed to survive. Elise knew, in her heart, that if she was able to pass through this trial, she would be one step closer to them.

‘But buying time is not impossible. And if I can do that, I should be able to give us a path to victory.’ Elise eventually concluded. She quickly put her thoughts to action, telling Yura to change her route slightly, going north instead of northwest.

That meant they weren’t taking the most direct route to the river, but were still moving closer to it.

Elise then looked closely at the approaching helicopter, trying to figure out how long they had before the enemies went fully on the offensive, while also keeping track of how close they were to their destination. A minute passed with the situation remaining the same, then she decided that it was enough.

“Yura, stop after another half a minute.” She said.

“Really?” The elf asked, before shaking her head. It was obvious that simply continuing their current course of action wouldn’t work.

“Yeah, and also… I want to make a temporary contract with you.” Elise said.

“What?” Yura was completely caught off guard by these words.

“The only plan I can think to save all of us requires placing the three of you inside my mindscape.” The contractor explained “The terms of the contract will not require following my orders and will allow you to break it whenever you want, but I just need you to accept it.”

“Okay.” Yura replied after a short pause “I’ll do it.”

“Then our contract is bound.” Elise replied.

The golden line of the contract appeared between the two, only this one seemed darker and less solid, showing the temporary and ad hoc nature of this particular connection.

Seconds later, Yura stopped the platform as instructed, taking only a second to go from full speed to completely stationary. The helicopter overtook them almost immediately, but the windmaster stopped herself on a dime and remained more or less above the group, keeping watch while the helicopter slowed to a stop and flew down for a landing.

‘That worked out.’ Elise thought to herself in relief. The enemy transport’s position was one of the most critical elements to her plan.

One of her sisters, Zelana, had some insights on the matter of being pursued due to the sheer amount of times that happened to her. One of those insights was that when pursued by multiple people, it was worth it to try to exploit the differences in mobility between them.

Most of the enemies depended on that transport helicopter to keep up with the windmaster, so that made it an obvious target. But a frontal attack would be tough to manage, so Elise had come up with a sneaky plan.

The helicopter landed and the people inside it came out. That were thirteen of them, seven of which being elves. Elise quickly used her ability on each of them as she considered the next step.

Changing their route midway through meant that when the helicopter stopped and moved down for a landing, it wouldn’t be directly in the path to the river. That was the idea, at least. In practice, it would depend on whether the pilot decided to make a turn instead of simply slowing to a stop. Because it wasn’t guaranteed, the plan didn’t actually rely on that aspect, but getting it right certainly made it more convenient.

The enemies began to walk in their direction and the group tensed up, but all of them remained still, waiting for Elise’s orders. The girl spoke into Nalia’s mind, asking for a wind movement boost spell, but one that was different from usual by also including a way to move faster on water.

The fairy was already prepared for that request, given that Elise had been steering them towards a river, so she quickly cast it. The contractor nodded and focused on the approaching enemies, waiting for the perfect moment.

‘Just come a little bit closer… A little bit further away from the helicopter…’ Elise thought to herself. But she knew that they couldn’t wait for too much longer, as the enemies would soon reach attacking range.

Two of them stopped in place all of a sudden, and Elise realized that time was up.

“Go!” She shouted, and the group dashed forward.

‘Nalia, Yura, delay and hinder as much as you can. Nina, destroy their transport.’ Elise gave her orders.

The enemies in front readied themselves to attack while the windmaster elf dove down to pincer them, but Nalia cast the spell she had been preparing ever since they stopped, creating a huge net of flames that she threw at the flying elf, forcing her to abandon her attack midway.

As that was happening, Yura stopped in place and put both hands on the ground, unleashing her magical power to fill the area with spikes that tried to ram into the enemies, which Nina easily dodged around as she moved closer, since she was going the same direction.

Their efforts combined stopped the enemies cold, and then Nalia cast another spell:

“Concealing Mist!” She shouted.

And the magic she unleashed was a more powerful version of the mist she had used in the fight against Loran, which instantly filled the area and completely blocked the enemies’ vision.

Nina had been waiting for that. She stopped in place for a moment before doing an instant movement on a diagonal, passing beside the enemies in front before doing another one to reach the helicopter. She was surprised to see that there was no one inside it, but that didn’t slow her down. The rabbit girl focused her strength into a powerful punch to the vehicle’s front, destroying half of it and producing a horrific noise of twisted metal.

Then she moved to the back part and unleashed a similarly powerful kick, making sure that it would be completely unusable.

Meanwhile, Elise had taken advantage of the mist cover and changed her route, going in a straight line towards the river instead of moving in the enemies’ direction. She ran as fast as Nalia’s spell allowed her to, while focusing most of her attention on her partners’ senses (besides Yura’s, since their connection wasn’t strong enough to allow for sense sharing).

Nina rushed behind the enemies to try and take advantage of their hindered sight, but a strange blue slime substance exploded from the mouth of one of them (a human woman, so Elise didn’t know what her skills actually were) and expanded into a large barrier that resisted Nina’s blows.

Then the windmaster got rid of the flame net and unleashed a wide range wind blast to push the mist away. However, Nalia had put enough magic into it that the woman’s wind couldn’t fully clear it away, but just move it. And it was moved in the direction Elise had been running towards, so she still remained under its cover despite the spell.

Still, the enemy elf had succeeded in allowing her allies to see, so Nina was suddenly forced to evade with instant movement due to a chaotic mix of attacks heading in her direction. But the enemies couldn’t fully focus on her, as Yura was still acting like a spike factory and Nalia had begun shooting magic their way as well, even as she fought against the windmaster.

The battle situation went into complete chaos very fast. Yura changed her magic into making waves of earth and trying to bury the enemies, but was forced to defend herself from the flying elf’s wide range attacks that Nalia couldn’t quite fully counter. Nina was dashing in and out of the enemy mass, unable to stand still for long enough to use any big attacks and having her smaller ones blocked, but succeeding at being a major hindrance.

Elise kept on running while keeping track of the situation (as much as she could given the chaos), she paid careful attention to Yura since she couldn’t stay appraised of her condition as easily as she could for her permanent partners, so she noticed when the elf’s earth manipulation began to slow down.

‘She’s getting tired.’ Elise realized. It wasn’t a surprise, given how hard she was pushing herself to maintain those large scale attacks.

‘I can’t let her get completely exhausted.’ Elise decided, thinking of what they still had to do. She quickly sent a message to Nalia and Nina, telling them to try and hold on just a bit longer, then told Yura ‘That’s enough. I’m pulling you out.’ and focused hard.

It took almost three seconds, but eventually she felt the elf’s presence come into her mindscape ‘Sorry that it’s just a black void.’ She said to her ‘I didn’t have time to make you a proper room.’

‘It’s fine.’ Yura replied ‘But are the others gonna be okay? Will the plan work?’

‘Everything is fine so far.’ Elise said ‘There’s just one more thing that needs to go right and we’ll have a chance.’

‘Okay.’

Of course, back at the battlefield, the sudden lack of one of their fighters meant that the situation quickly worsened for Elise’s other partners. They pushed themselves hard, trying to fulfill their contractor’s order, but soon Nina got cornered by a combination of attacks and got hit by an explosive magic sphere that caused significant damage, forcing Elise to pull her out in order to avoid taking even heavier injuries.

Then Nalia was by herself, and she pushed herself even closer to the limit, unleashing powerful spells everywhere now that she didn’t have to worry about allies, but that only bought an extra five seconds before her mounting exhaustion convinced Elise to pull her out.

The plan had reached its most dangerous phase. The trio of fighters had bought time for Elise to run as far as she could, but the tracker on her meant that there was no way to hide. Everything would depend on how fast the windmaster elf could move, which was something that the girl could not be sure of.

Elise was still a good bit away from the river, enough that it would take another minute to get there despite her movement boost. Her decisions about slightly changing the route as well as when to stop, together with the diversion that the other three gave their all to achieve had allowed the girl to get to that position, where only the flying elf could possibly reach her before Elise was able to dive into the river.

Based on her deductions about the enemy’s possible max speed… It would be close. The timing was tight.

Elise kept running, and at the same time began to share her sight with the girls inside her mindscape. The vision Yura had was notably blurrier than the others, but it was still better than simply waiting around in the dark.

Forty-five seconds left. Elise still hadn’t heard the noise of the approaching enemy, which was a very distinct noise of unnaturally rushing wind. That noise had been covered up by the flying helicopter at first, but after the landing Elise had managed to hear it clearly through the senses of her partners. That meant she had no need to look back to try and confirm whether the enemy was approaching.

Thirty seconds left. The noise finally arrived, starting out quiet but quickly getting louder as the enemy approached. Elise frowned in disappointment, she had judged their speed wrong. That was too soon. But she didn’t despair and simply kept running, as the plan wasn’t a failure yet. She had prepared some insurance just in case.

Fifteen seconds left. The elf reached attack range and launched a wind slash at Elise, but the movement boost spell she had was wind-based, and so the enemy’s wind magic caused a disturbance on it. Elise’s last insurance was one final modification to that spell, which allowed her to clearly perceive that small disturbance, so she dodged to the right at the last moment and avoided the attack, then to the left to avoid the follow-up.

Ten seconds left. The enemy saw that her attacks weren’t working and became hurried due to how close her target was to an escape. Thinking fast, she accelerated once again, diving closer to Elise in order to attack at point blank range. The contractor heard the noise of rushing wind become even louder, completely covering up the sound of the river just ahead.

‘Now!’ She shouted inside her mind, and Nalia jumped out from the mindscape, appearing just behind Elise.

The enemy was about to cast a spell when the fairy appeared, and immediately understood the situation. It was a surprise counter-attack. Yet, she didn’t change her following action, deciding to just sweep away the two of them at the same time. She gathered up her magic power and rushed through the casting.

However, Nalia was still faster. A huge amount of power exploded from the fairy with the violence of a volcanic eruption, and she channeled it into a complex magic formula even faster than the enemy was able to finish her comparatively simpler spell. At that moment, the windmaster elf felt like her soul had frozen from sheer fear, but she was unable to do anything else.

“Annihilation Flame!” Nalia shouted, her power and will once again manifesting into overwhelming destructive power.

The flame annihilated the still forming spell of the enemy, and then incinerated the entire upper half of her body, killing her instantly. Pursuits were a matter of life and death, not just for the pursued, but also the pursuers. That was another insight Elise learned from her older sister, and not understanding said fact was the enemy’s downfall.

“AH-” Nalia’s scream was cut off by Elise bringing her back into the mindscape room.

Her screaming could not be helped. In order to achieve her previous feat, the fairy had needed to go far beyond her limits to pull out enough power from her soul to use that spell in an instant, rather than charging it for a few seconds like before. The result was extreme physical damage, so much that it felt like her entire body was breaking apart. It was far and away the worst pain she had ever experienced.

Even after going into the mindscape, Nalia still felt some phantom pain. But she thought it was worth it, as the plan had succeeded. They still weren’t out of the woods yet, but they had earned some precious time.

Elise jumped into the river, the current and wind boost spell working together to move her quite fast.

She was heading to the place that would be the final battlefield against those enemies.