A barrage of ice shards quickly followed after the first one was demolished by Leon's hardened skin. The ice shards were all fast, thick, and very sharp, but that didn't stop Leon from demolishing most of them upon contact.
Using his speed to guide him Leon was able to keep up with the speed of the incoming ice shards. It wasn't that Leon had speed thinking or anything but something close to that.
When a person with the speed ability runs, their brain has to also function at that same speed in order to make sure the person stays on track and doesn't hit a random wall or trip and fall while running fast.
Leon is basically using that skill where his brain is processing things extremely fast but he is staying in one place and not actually moving his legs much. He is instead using that speed in his arms so that he can block every single incoming projectile and smash it into a million pieces upon impact.
Using this method, Leon was able to block every single ice shard without taking a single hit, and while all the Frost Cobras were fixated on eliminating him, Erin was making her way back down, aimed straight at the group of Frost Cobras with her hot red blade in hand.
While the Frost Cobras were preparing more ice shards to launch another stronger wave of ice spikes at Leon, Erin dropped in on them from above and before they could even react, Erin slashed all of their necks with one long clean horizontal slice.
Due to the fact that the combat knife itself was also high-tier and super hot, it was able to easily able to penetrate through the tough scales of the Frost Cobras and deal some serious damage to them.
Additionally, since the blade was very hot, it was able to trigger their weakness of fire, and even though it was a simple slash that made them bleed a little bit of blue blood, the Frost Cobras couldn't bear the heat and began burning up on the ground before their very eyes.
The effect of the hot blade touching their body was even more dramatic than the Flame Dogleos as they only lost their color and died, but the Frost Snakes actually began to burn up and disintegrate into ashes right in front of their very eyes leaving nothing behind other than the shiny white crystal.
The Frost Cobras weren't known to travel in large groups and this was the reason why only a few of them were attacking the Erin and Leon at any given time. Since this was supposed to be the 4th wave of the horde night, the military had to release much more than just a couple of Frost Cobras as that would make things quite easy.
This was one of the reasons why the main commander wasn't worried about the cadets clearing the 4th wave as compared to the previous wave, the beasts weren't well coordinated and also had a massive weakness.
It was pretty easy to fight against a beast that had one of the five elements as its base ability as it meant that they would also have a massive weakness that could be easily exploited. The weakness itself isn't too bad for some of the elemental abilities but for water and fire abilities, the weakness was quite massive and exploitable.
This was the same case for the second wave where the Flame Dogleos were very strong beasts and definitely not weak in any sense of the word, but when faced with Erin's ice gun skill, it was quite easy to kill them in a single shot.
The Puffclaw didn't have a weakness like that and on top of that, all the individual Puffclaws were very well coordinated and hard to beat when they fight in a group and even difficult to beat when they activated their inherited skill that not only amplifies their mass, strength, and power, but their very skills and abilities as well, making them quite difficult to deal with.
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Seeing that their sound attack wasn't having an effect on Leon and Erin anymore, the Frost Cobras that were hiding within the forest finally decided to stop trying and fight head-on with Leon and Erin so that they could kill them and feast.
The hardened stone ear plugs weren't perfect, and Leon's ears were still hurting a bit but it was manageable. However, this meant that they wouldn't be able to hear a thing while they fight.
The Frost Cobras didn't even have to use their ability to suppress their prey's hearing ability as they had suppressed it themselves, but this time, Leon and Erin were both aware of this temporary disability and could now fight accordingly as to before when Erin had no clue about the snake that about bit her.
The Frost Cobras deafening skill only works for surprise attacks as it really isn't a strong skill that can hinder a person so much that they can't fight. People can still fight fine without their hearing as the worst that could happen would be that they wouldn't be able to sense an attack coming from their blind spot.
However, if two people were to fight back to back, that liability also fades away as the other person basically protects you in your blind spots.
All of the Frost Cobras quickly came out of hiding from within the forest and soon Leon and Erin could see a lot of pairs of shining yellow eyes in the darkness.
Using almost all of the little fire aura that Leon had regenerated at that point, Leon lit up the ground once more but this time made sure that the flames would be far away from the Frost Cobras so that they wouldn't have any incentive to try and take it out.
Leon already knew his fire wasn't strong enough to block them as the soundwaves carried enough wind pressure to take them out so instead he was basically using them only as a source of light that would increase their odds of fighting as it was necessary for them to at least see while fighting because they already couldn't hear and if you remove seeing from the equation, you would be left with fighters who really couldn't fight to save their life.
Once the area was dimly lit, Leon and Erin could see all the Frost Cobras that they had to fight in order to complete this wave.
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The Frost Cobras didn't wait for a singular moment as they quickly rushed in toward their prey. They were already starved by the military as is and now that they had the freedom to roam around and feast on some cadets, they wouldn't want to waste such a great opportunity.
Some Frost Cobras remained back and used the same ice spikes skill as before while the rest rushed to bite and take down their prey. The Frost Cobras, unfortunately, didn't have the ability to produce venom as this was the trade-off they made with nature as an evolutionary species in order to have the sound ability, so their bites weren't deadly but it was still foolish to undermine their strength as they were still High tier beasts possessing great strength.
Leon took the responsibility of becoming Erin's shield as he made it his sole duty to protect her from any incoming projectiles while she took care of the ones that were coming in close to have a physical fight.
The Frost Cobras were quite agile but they were no match for Leon's speed as he was easily able to run past them without getting attacked by any of the incoming Frost Cobras.
While Leon defended Erin against the ice spikes from a distance, Erin started slaughtering the Frost Snakes with the red hot blade one by one. It was going fine at first with her racking up a couple of kills but the momentum quickly shifted as the blade cooled down.
It didn't occur to them before but since they were using a hot blade on a beast that was cold as ice, not only was the blade's heat going into their bodies and killing them, but their coldness was also entering the blade.
So as time went on and the more Frost Cobras that Erin killed, the blade began to cool down making it harder for her to slice through their tough scales and also inflicting lesser damage which became apparent after Erin stabbed the 12th Frost Cobra only for it to wriggle in pain for a little bit but not die as it was able to overcome the heat of the blade.
It also didn't help that the blade affinity itself was also ice so it resisted the head itself and wanted to cool down making it accept the coldness provided by the body of the Frost Cobras at a faster rate.
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Erin looked down at the cooled-off blade in horror as the Frost Cobra that she just stabbed lunged back at her with a wide mouth ready to devour her whole.
It was at this moment that Erin froze up as she had completely relied on the hot blade up to this point and didn't know what to do now.
Just as the Frost Cobra was about bite Erin for the second time, Leon stepped in for the second time by kicking the snake and saving her life once again.
Without saying a word, Leon picked up Erin off the ground and using his super speed left all the Frost Cobras around her in the dust.
Leon resumed his old running pattern which kept all the Frost Cobras fixated on them so that none of them would try and move toward the shelter but this time Erin was riding on her back.
She was quite amazed and confused at the same time as she had never experienced this kind of speed before. While she was admiring the speed at which they were moving, Leon was hard at work converting more of his energy into a fire aura to heat not only the combat blade that he picked up alongside Erin but also his Darkwing shiv that Mako had gifted him.
"It's not over yet! Keep fighting! I will reheat the blade as many times as we need in order to kill all of them so don't you worry about that!" Leon exclaimed while carrying Erin on his back.
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