Experimentation and battle - 1

Ezyze, blue and brown woke up earlier than usual, when the massive red sun did not cast its light on the plains yet. The three moons, blue, yellow and white were illuminating some of the plains.

They all started to experiment with their skills. Ezyze became quickly immersed and started to cast spatial rays. By concentrating a bit, he could have spatial Mana take shape as a sort of missile - or a short spear - and with his mind, throws them in a straight line. The impact was not an explosion as he expected and was more akin to a spear planting itself in the target. While the sound was muffled at first, the residual energy seemed to keep dealing damages. With practice, he realized that he could slightly alter the trajectory of his spatial rays and have them slightly curving. His accuracy however dropped tremendously. Moreover, by either shortening or increasing the amount of Mana that he put in the spell, the size of the rays fluctuated. The bigger they were, the harder it was for him to control them. It took on average 1 to 2 seconds to cast a ray, while focusing more Mana for more than five seconds increased the control difficulty. He could accurately reach targets at around 15 meters, while his spells dissipated by reaching 100 meters.

Blink was a fantastic spell. By picturing himself to be in a specific place and in a specific position, he could teleport himself there. There was no delay between casting the spell and being teleported. He could reach a place approximately 30 meters from where he was, and he couldn't perform repeated uses, needing at least 3 minutes before being able to cast Blink again.

Despite his huge Mana pool, his spells needed loads of Mana, denting his reserves. His gravity gathering was a great skill to replenish his reserves. He felt similar to a huge Astral body attracting meteors and other destroyed satellites; the Mana was just flooding in.

Impressive display that you showed here lord, your firepower does not match with your level at all! Blue becomes a sharp sword and brown is weirdly punching and kicking stones.

That may have something to do with her new Passive skills. Anyway, what do we do today? That's simple, we all go in the forest and see what it can offers us as you finally join us!

---

Ezyze, Cleopatra, Eve, 22 goblins and 16 Aries members went in the forest. Enormous pine trees hid trees that became increasingly taller, with various shapes colors and energy. Some were purple, blue and fiery red. Despite its magical feel, the forest was dark very few rays of light pierces through the dense vegetation. While the forest was eerily quiet, a cohort of 41 beings warily advanced in the forest. In the middle, Ezyze was surrounded by blockades of goblin hoplites. He while Eve and Cleopatra were buzzing around, close to the group, a tensed atmosphere could be felt. On the other hand, the 16 Aries members, which included Baal and Arthur, were surrounding the group, being the first challenge of any to be opponent. While not tense, an aura of seriousness escaped those warriors. The clang of their heavy, dark blue armors could be heard in the whole forest. Seeing a horned rabbit, Arthur decided to let it through and have the goblins react.

Swish - the rabbit sped through the woods, zigzaging between trees before suddenly zooming on a tree and launching itself on the group, mid air, screaming a very high pitched sound. 3 goblins readied their stances and one struck it down clearly between the eyes. Ezyze did not have any time to react.

Suddenly, 10 to 15 rabbits appeared and confused the hoplites.

Ezyze launched 3 spatial rays but none of them touched any rabbit. The rabbits were moving around, making erratic movements and not following logical paths. Brown and blue separated themselves from the hoplites and faced the mind numbing rabbit group. While brown took a martial stance and readied herself, blue quickly accelerated, cut the route of a rabbit and slashed at its neck. He didn't manage to sevear its head from its body.

4 rabbits attacked him, and while he parried one horn with his left hand, he started to dance around, dodging some attacks by a narrow margin and partying the others. He did not succeed in picking up on the offense at all.

Brown waited for agitated rabbits to attack her and, when one almost stabbed her right ribs, she cleanly struck it with a right hook.

She followed by stomping its head, wrecked it's neck and was ready for another onslaught.

She was quickly faced with 4 other rabbits and couldn't do much besides occasionally sticking one and disrupting their cooperation.

Spare into 5 groups of 4. 2 groups will assist blue and brown, while 2 other will circle around, cutting them off. The last group and I will advance in the middle and apply more direct pressure. Go!

Eve was being an inspiration for Ezyze. She flew around the 5 groups and attacked in tandem with goblin warriors, making them unable to dodge both physical and magical attacks. She threw bullet like flames from her mouth. Sometimes, their furr caught on fire.

Ever since entering this strange forest, Ezyze disabled his gravity manipulation and solely focused on making it out alive. Now that rabbits came to kill them and avenge their fallen brethren, he felt completely useless and failed at damaging them.

Focusing once again, all of his contration was on a horned rabbit that was moving around blue.

He saw its alternating left and right sharp turns, grasped its speed and acceleration. He conjured a spatial ray and waited for the perfect moment, just after launching itself in the air, to jump against a tree, the rabbit was struck on its left side by a pink shaped spatial ray. Soundless, it punctured its side and pinned the rabbit on the ground.

Just like that, with a pink bolt in its innards, the rabbit was dead.

Ezyze repeated these actions, sometimes missing the target, and the group quickly disposed of their enemy.

After a short break and handling dead rabbits, they resumed their advance. 2 other groups of simar size were disposed of with increasing efficiency while some hoplites reached level 13.

When they starting hearing the noise of tarasiers, everyone became tenser. The Aries warriors rejoined with the group while every goblins wrrenin formation. The bees were right next to Ezyze, hopefully away from harm.

Reaching what appeared to be their inhabitats, they were faced with a constant barrage of hardened projectiles of all sorts. Fruits, rocks and wood bombarded the troupe.

Ezyze repeatedly casted spatial rays in the trees, but the tarasiers were not easily stuck; only a few of the 30+ monkeys dropped dead. It was hard for Eve to accurately strike them, however she used her brain and managed to strike them with her flame blast, while disrupting their flight thanks to air blast.

She must have trained with blue and Baal.

Slowly, very slowly, tarasiers started to drop dead. Eve and Baal were seriously exhausted and mentally taxed. Ezyze still had some Mana left and grew more accurate. His spatial rays did struck tarasiers repeatedly. Almost 20 of then were low dead on the ground.

The problem was that even though they joined the fight later on, Aries warriors had to intervene and are now tiring. The goblins, mêlee fighters are for most properly exhausted, some shield dented and other broken.

Worse, the number of tarasiers kept increasingand they are now green, blue and black furred tarasiers.

They fell into a trap.

-

Mixed with blood, and earth, the soil was a reddish mud where tarasiers cadavers and guts created a foul odor.

Most factions members were dispirited. With broken shields, gaping wounds and Stamina reaching bottom levels, few were only active onong the goblins. Blue and brown were the only ones actively killing tarasiers while the others focused solely on defense and staying alive. Still, many of them seemed to have given up.

The Aries members were fervently killing, dodging and fighting. Even they started to accumulate wounds. Ezyze made every shot count and made sure to kill tarasiers with every spatial rays. He even had to use blink in trees, as well as gravity manipulation in order to make these monkeys fall from the trees. Everyone was in state of deep concentration and became more than ever focused on fighting. With low Stamina, they didn't have much to spare and their every movements grew more precise.

When the forest became pitch black, with the last rays of sunlight being cast, the whole atmosphere changed.

After hearing wolves howling at the moons, tarasiers climbed back to the trees and solely threw hardened projectiles in order to harass the faction.

Baal and Eve casted fire magic and lighted on fire few tree branches in order to maintain some level of visibility. Only the areas going up to 10 meters around them was visible. Projectiles could be dodged only at the last second, the ever yapping of monkeys and growls of beasts made them feel alone. Alone, surrounded by enemies, with themselves and only themselves to survive.

Suddenly, after branches shuffled, a shadow appeared, following by a few more.

Black venomous deers rated themselves against Aries warriors, ranging from level 35 to 50. Even with their armors on, the antlers were coated with a purplish substance that seeped into the gaps. Quickly, several Aries had difficulty breathing, some of them even taking a knee on the ground.

Arthur, at higher level and more powerful was the only one who wasn't too influenced by these grim prospects. He shot beams of light to monkeys in the trees, kept moving while reaping lives, and did not present any injury. Only his mustache, previously gray, was soaked with blood.

Seeing his new family on the brink, he slaughtered few deers, creating some breathing room.

Listen to me everyone! We are the proud Aries household. We are the faction of Ezyze, the Aries. You weak goblins, don't you strive for greatness? Don't you want to stop being persecuted and threaten as disposables? We face extinction today. We face death. But listen to me, only in the darkest hour, when we fight or we die, our true character is revealed. So will you be fighters, warriors rising in triumph, or are you the ones that will be forgotten, dead in a forest? Let's fight!

Everyone was on the verge. Still, they shouted with all their might and started fighting in ernest. Eventually, all attacking deers were defeated.