"You took longer than usual this time, was there a problem?"
"Nahh...I just took two skills instead of one."
"You can do that?"
"Yep."
Evan replied as he pulled up the description of one of the skills and made it visible for Eliza to see.
"How does this work?"
He was about to explain, when he sensed multiple incoming presences, a distorted smile appearing on his face as he replied.
"You're about to find out."
Turning around, he placed his hands on the two wolf corpses and tossed them into his inventory, just in time to look up and see a group of rift mages floating toward the party's direction.
"KUEE!!"
"KEE!"
"KUUUU!!"
While screaming incomprehensible things, the rift mages waved their staves in the air, activating a plethora of elemental magic as bolts of flames, ice, water and lightning came flying toward the trio.
"All hands on deck this time."
Evan spoke as he pulled out his sword and charged towards the incoming magic, with Eliza and Pride trailing behind him.
"Support Magic: Greater Resistance."
Eliza called out as she channelled magic power towards the floating radiant codex, with four rings of light-coloured red, blue, light blue and yellow appearing around the trio's right wrists simultaneously.
Pride, on the other hand, infused her weapon in demonic energy, generating a small black whirlwind around the blade as she shot out with boosted speed.
The high demon easily dodged the incoming bolts of magic, slicing through the ones she could not avoid as she closed the distance between the two groups.
As if on cue, all the rift mages manifested shields of elemental energy around them, with each one releasing an elemental aura into the surroundings.
The conflicting auras somehow didn't cancel each other out, with their effects stacking on top of each other as the rift mages waved their staves and activated their signature summoning magic.
However, there was no way that Evan would let all of them summon other monsters, as he knew that the sheer amount of monsters to be summoned would be too much for the ground to deal with in the space that they were in.
'Kayla, Kuro.'
The two spirits responded to his call, with Kayla returning to her human form and spreading her arms out, a bolt of golden lightning shooting out from each finger in the direction of the summoning circles that appeared mid-air.
Kuro melded into his shadow and moved on the ground, appearing beside a summoning magic circle and slicing it with his claws, before delving back into his shadow and moving on to another.
For the magic circles that had already activated, he coated his paw in a dark light and sliced the unfortunate monster that came out first with a three-pronged claw attack, splitting its body and the magic circle behind it into three pieces.
Unwilling to be outdone by her fellow spirits, Amy floated up in the air and spread her arms out wide.
Her red eyes flashed as she activated her unique skill and clenched her right fist tightly.
Instantly, all the fire-type rift mages lost control of both their magic, their elemental shields and their elemental auras as their spells redirected towards their fellow rift mages and their shields disabled themselves.
Without their handy shields to protect them, the rift mages were now sitting ducks for Pride's black wind slashes to tear through their bodies and turn them into chunks of meat.
As for the ice-type rift mages, they were in for a hell of a surprise when the magic spells of the fire types suddenly changed directions and slammed into their shields, small explosions ringing out as their shields were shattered instantly.
Eliza took advantage of this and jumped into the fray, swinging her magic-infused staff with fervour and slamming into the bodies of the injured rift mages.
'Child of Life.'
She called out internally as she selected 'Anti Regeneration' as the aspect she wished to manipulate.
Each time she hit any rift mage with her staff, no matter how weak the hit was, the rift mage reexperienced all their recent injuries, and if there weren't any, then any wounds they received after were magnified.
She switched her aspect to 'Health Reduction', forcefully reducing the health of the rift mages and impairing their ability to battle.
If one were to appraise any of the affected rift mages, they would see that their health stats had dropped by a whole rank!
If stats were quantified in numbers, then it was equivalent to them permanently losing 250 out of 1000 points of health.
The moment Evan saw the familiar green glow engulfing Eliza's staff, he guessed she had activated her unique skill and began trailing behind her, swinging his aura-infused sword at any rift mage her staff touched.
His energy manipulation circuit spun wildly as each attack he dished out was infused with enough energy to instantly end the life of his targets.
All his stat boosts, skill and weapon effects combined together, resulting in his attacks possessing over 200% of his base attack power, with every ten strikes of his sword releasing a powerful shockwave into the surroundings.
Coupled with Eliza's buffs, each of his attacks was dealing terrifying damage to the monsters.
The poor rift mages didn't even stand a chance against the combined might of the group, with even the reinforcements who were drawn to the noise of the battle and their summoned monsters perishing within minutes.
The trio cooperated well with their spirits, with Amy and Kayla taking care of the elemental shields and summoning magic circles/summoned creatures respectively.
Kuro moved around on the ground to make the job easier, spreading out his shadow to restrain the feet of the monsters and seal their movements long enough for either Amy's flame spears or Kayla's lightning bolts to reach them and end their lives.
Eliza on the other hand, switched out the buffs on Evan and Pride appropriately, occasionally creating a barrier or two to block the attacks coming from their blind spots while her staff did not forget to impale a few unfortunate rift mages.
Pride swung her demonic energy-infused sword, displaying the 10% boost to her already monstrous attack power as each of her quick and precise strikes resulted in a monster or two losing their heads.
Occasionally, she created whirlwinds to swirl the flames generated by Amy while taking advantage of the Kuro's shadow binds and releasing demonic energy slashes that turned the monsters into chunks of meat.
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