Ambush

Ignoring the arrow on her shoulder, Yara ducked and caught an arrow coming towards Lorn's head in her palm.

Lorn felt her using Taunt, and finally, the shock wore off. Gritting through the pain, Lorn activated Draconic Vitality.

A surge of energy flowed through his body, giving him vigor and tenacity. Lorn pulled the arrow out of his neck and started using Rejuvenation. To make it as quick as possible, Lorn used 70% of his spirit without hesitation. Pain seared his mind, but that helped him keep him stay conscious.

Lorn looked at where the arrows were flying from.

Little humanoid creatures with red skin and deer-like horns had surrounded them and were shooting arrows at them. Just before the arrows hit, Yara's shield came flying from behind them to protect the two.

At that point, his throat finished healing as well. Bits of rusty arrowhead were pushed out of his wound, making him weak in his knees, but the worst was over.

"IMPS!" he shouted, despite his burning throat.

Lorn turned to the enemies and started shooting Spirit at them. He did not dare skimp out on power and speed, putting his all into his Spirit Bursts. He was now running dangerously low on spirit and many of his skills were missing due to the imps' special trait… but one by one, the imps fell.

But to Lorn's despair, many others revealed themselves from among the trees. These ones were armed with small daggers and spears, some wearing makeshift armor, all rushing at Lorn and Yara like hungry packrats.

Their dash suddenly stopped, and they rushed at somewhere else. Lorn felt Adrian's powerful Spirit washing through the area, taunting all enemies.

"How many are there?!"

"I- I don't know! I'll check!"

"YOU SHOULD'VE BEEN CHECKING AN HOUR AGO?!"

Adrian was shouting as he held a dozen imps at bay. Danton and Sybil were frantically killing the imps one by one beside him. They weren't creatures famous for not being detected by trackers.

Yes. Danton was supposed to be checking their surroundings periodically, but somehow, they were being ambushed by who knows how many imps suddenly.

But it wasn't time to throw blames.

Yara was pulling out the arrow out of her shoulder and healing it. The toughness stat allowed her to heal faster and ignore pain. He kept the imps at bay with her Shield Telekinesis, but her spirit should be running very low.

"Let's regroup!" Lorn said to Yara. "Be prepared to trip or stumble!"

She nodded, and the two ran to the rest. On the twenty step dash, Lorn almost fell on the ground three times and Yara stumbled twice. They could only keep themselves from falling, because they were constantly expecting himself to fuck up somehow.

The imps' traits forced enemies to make little mistakes like these while fighting against them. These mishaps became extremely common when the imps' numbers increased. Individually, they were weak lesser monsters with less than half of an F-rank's stats, but even then, it was always dangerous to face them. Especially in chaotic situations like this.

"There's at least fifty near us!" Danton said. "They're trying to surround us!"

"Form a diamond!" Adrian shouted, noticing Lorn and Yara.

Adrian and Yara got on the two sides of the group, while the other three clumped together in the middle. Slowly, the imps revealed themselves from among the woods. They knew they had the advantage of numbers. Now, they just needed to rush at the five all at once.

Maybe the group could survive the ordeal. After all, they were all much stronger than the imps. But Lorn didn't want to go through a chaotic fight like that. One wrong move could send everything toppling down, and against imps, that one mistake was all but guaranteed.

"Leave Sybil and me together," Lorn whispered. "I'll use my fog to recharge my spirit. Danton should lead you two to a relatively safe area outside my skill's effect. Kill the imps that walk out. Us two will be safer inside."

"Alright," Adrian grunted.

"Sy, gimme 30% of your spirit."

Lorn felt his almost emptied spirit filling up to 80% once more. Immediately, he used 60% to create as large a fog as possible. A twenty-meter radius fog engulfed the area, barely managing to reach the imps.

'Ding!'

A notification sounded in his head, and the fog became a meter or so wider. The skill should've leveled up.

"Go!" he urged.

Adrian and Yara followed behind Danton and headed out of the fog. On their way, they killed a group of imps. Sybil killed the ones who noticed what was happening.

After the others walked out of the mist, Lorn used Spirit Absorbing Fog. In only a few seconds, his spirit fully charged up. Since there were so many enemies around him, he practically had infinite spirit in the fog.

"Can you shoot at them all at the same time?" Lorn asked.

"Duck down," Sybil said.

Sybil held a handful of pebbles in her hand and blasted them at all directions. Most of them missed, and the ones that did hit didn't do much damage, but they did wound them and some ended up lodged in their eyes.

Lorn took this chance to Induce anger on all the imps he could reach. They started growling animalistically before charging towards where the pebbles came from.

The two were already gone from where they were standing, of course. The ran through the fog, shooting indiscriminately at the imps following them around. It was chaos for the imps who couldn't see anything three steps before them. They could only run at where they thought the shots were coming from, and since they were all filled with rage, they didn't stop to think deeply of a better solution.

And the ones who did think to go outside the fog, Adrian's group was ready for them with an ambush. Danton had a skill that allowed him to sense every living being with a soul nearby. They could avoid the most of the enemies, and slay the stragglers.

Lorn and Sybil's job was to simply create as much chaos in the fog as possible. Keep taunting the imps, while picking off their numbers. They stumbled and missed a lot, but since they were aware of such possibilities, they could keep fighting without issue.

If one of them actually fell, the other always made sure to help them get up and finally, after twenty minutes, their task got much easier.

Because of how suddenly they were attacked, Lorn was startled a bit, but as the fight went on, he realized that the situation wasn't as dire as it appeared to be. The imps mostly died in a couple of hits from Lorn and one hit from Sybil. Sure, two out of three shots missed, but that was expected. Lorn and Sybil didn't allow these facts to discourage them. They both knew that fights against imps went something like this.

The other three, too, were successfully shaving off their numbers from the outside.

'Ding!'

'Ding!'

'Ding!'

With all the notifications popping in his head, Lorn also felt that this was a good way to farm skill mastery and spirit capacity.

And after another ten minutes, the battle was over.