Garan drank another bottle of mana potion as he conjured razor-sharp blades of ice around him.
Silas, with a charismatic smirk, manifested dancing flames that flickered with the intensity of his prowess.
Garan propelled a barrage of icy shards towards Silas. The redhead however weaved between projecties, electric sparks dancing along his skin. He then sent an electric shock directed to Garan, but it was once again attracted by the metal rod in the ground.
It wasn't that Silas had never fought against metal users before. It was just that they never used it so skillfully to affect his attacks at all.
One of the reasons for this is that metal users could only manifest pure iron, which had too many impurities to be effective conductors. Garan's was a combination of steel and some aluminum, which was a great conductor of electricity.
Taking advantage of the enemy's pause, Garan lowered the temperature around him, and the ground slowly turned to ice in an attempt to destabilize the enemy.
Silas immediately conjured flames that melted the ice, sizzling steam bathing the two dashing men.
Garan donned an icy armor and lunged at Silas—at an impressive speed—but Silas wreathed in electric flames countered with a surge of raw power.
The collision sent shockwaves in all directions, distracting the other fights as well.
For a while, a symphony of ice and metal meeting fire and electricity abounded. It created wave after wave of impact and the fights around paused for a bit to watch them.
Foo and the others stared in disbelief. While they knew the captain wasn't giving it his all, it was still very rare to see him get so into a fight.
Soon, Garan ran out of mana and he started to depend on his techniques and physiques to fight him. To his team's surprise, Silas also dispersed his elements, joining him in a hand-on-hand fight.
Silas' red eyes sharpened at his techniques, unseen and unheard of even by someone of his background. He avoided most of them, but he couldn't help but feel impressed at the intricacies of it all.
He took down Garan many times by virtue of raw strength, but the ebony-haired man stood up every single time. Silas also noticed the man's hit rates were increasing, and he could feel a few bruises had formed on his body.
During this time, the other fights had also resumed, courtesy of some Terran soldiers who wanted to take advantage of the enemy distraction to hit a few more shots.
Suddenly, Garan attacked at a weird angle and Silas wanted to mock him only to realize it hit Sin behind him, who was about to attack another one of his teammates.
This was interesting because Sin had his technique activated, and yet the attack stuck. One must know that Sin had fought an orc before, and this guy did just about the same amount of damage. Even if the orc was lower in level, who didn't know they had much stronger physiques than humans and were comparable to beasts?
As he continued to fight Garan, Sin couldn't help but observe them more, albeit only half of them remained standing. He saw them protecting each other when they were in danger themselves.
Another quarter of an hour later, only Garan (and the woman, who was well protected by quite a few men) was standing upright, and his people were all injured in various degrees.
Silas smiled and his arms raised and Garan shivered a bit at the aura that surrounded him. "I learned a lot from you today. So let me show you one of my family's secret skills."
It was very quick and Garan had no time to dodge.
Bang!
The next thing he knew he was already thrown against the tree, unable to get up for a short time. His body was still shivering, as if instinctively afraid, and it felt incredibly bad.
No matter how difficult the opponent, he had never been a coward. But now his legs refused to cooperate and he couldn't even stand up.
He tried to get up while his eyes stayed on the enemy that stood still a few meters in front of him. But then the man turned towards the others.
Garan frowned and wanted to follow, thinking he was going to attack one of his teammates. However, he was still shaking—weak—and he couldn't even lift his feet to stand.
"Damnit!" He yelled, punching the ground.
To his surprise though, Silas went and held Foo's arm, who was just about to critically injure Chris—his favorite target.
"That's enough," Silas said, and he looked at his teammates who were all very injured. Foo and Sin were understandably very angry, as they themselves could barely stand.
Normally, he'd be angry at how his team was injured, but he was mysteriously calmed down after a good fight.
He hadn't felt satisfied in a long time…
Anyway, despite the sorry state of this team, Silas was still very impressed by what they accomplished.
"Let's go." he said, and the others followed him, walking over the 'bodies' lying on the ground. As he walked away, a woman appeared in his way. Her hands were held together above her chest as if in prayer and she was looking at Silas with eyes filled with gratitude.
"T-Thank you…" She said, making the others—especially Valeria—sneer. Silas ignored her and continued on his way, which happened to be near where Garan was kneeling.
"As agreed, you can keep the flower." He said. He then threw a potion into the air that dispersed magically to the air around them.
"You have successfully… entertained us." He said, completely turning back. "May we meet again."
…
The air was stagnant for a long time afterward. No one spoke as they absorbed the fact that they really stood no chance.
Although they managed to hurt the enemies through various counter-attacks, they were all worse than half-dead when the enemy left. The small field was covered with a mixture of their blood.
They stayed there for hours after the fight, trying to recover their strength and spirit, using their remaining strength to barely deal with the monster attracted by the blood.
However, the monsters weren't many and they only arrived hours after the enemies left.
It was easy to conclude that the potion that had been dispersed was a beast-repelling potion.
How nice of him. (Partial sarcasm)
Anyway, some time later, Garan recovered enough to stand. He looked at his companions. Then his eyes shifted to the mauled corpse of Johnny, who they weren't able to protect against the mob.
After finally gaining some power the past few weeks, it was the first time they lost someone.
And most of them nearly died.
It seemed they had been complacent. It was truly a wake-up call—a bloody one.