The battle continued, soon Sam got bored of this.

These shadow guys are good, but they are too reliant on their shadow abilities and didn't focus on anything else. Their dagger skills are mediocre at best, their awareness is nowhere near elite. If not for the ambush, Arkiv could have already maintained distance.

He is not particularly good at close combat but he is still gaining upper hand as time passed and eventually he is going to win.

These guys are in fact worse than grace. At least she could land a decent hit or two on him. But there is nothing these guys could do unless Sam becomes lazy and closes his eyes and senses off completely, he wouldn't be able to do any critical damage.

He couldn't take it anymore and decided to finish the whole thing off.

Sam increased the fusion level and disappeared like dark smoke when the shadow feathered missed him, he was dazed for a second on how fast Sam has become, and that one moment of daze was enough, Sam reappeared on his back and broke the two wings directly.

Everyone could hear the crack at the joint of the wings.

The feathered fell down as he is relying too much on his wings, so after Sam broke it, they are down.

The remaining feathered lost his composure for a moment because of this and Arkiv managed to increase the distance, he aimed the bow and launched arrow after arrow.

Soon the shadow feathered was pinned to the ground. His wings are riddled and couldn't be used anymore.

Sam and Arkiv both exchanged a look and they understood that both of them are disappointed.

"It seems like Silva city is still better than you guys. At least, they have proper planning and Grace put up a fight. You guys are too weak."

Arkiv said as he crouched and started tapping the face of the feathered. When he looked at the annoyed and outraged expression of him, he was satisfied and said with a smile.

"I want to ask since you know grace, does that mean you guys are of the same status?"

The expression of the feathered changed a bit.

"It seems like it is true, then you will make perfect hostages. I would like to see what the person in charge would think. To save their sons and give up the fragment or would they leave you for the sake of the goddess' orders?" Arkiv continued

"How dare you?" The feathered spoke.

*PAK*

A good slap landed straight on his face.

"I didn't let you talk my boy. Your job is just to stay put." Arkiv slapped and said this with a sweet and harmless smile.

Sam threw handcuffs that negate the spiritual energy usage and Arkiv proceeded to tie that guy up, meanwhile, Sam did the same with the second guy.

*Boom* *Boom*

While they are doing this, several explosive sounds could be heard from a direction. They looked at each other as they are a bit familiar with these explosive sounds.

These are sounds of grenades. They could easily guess who produced those sounds.

It has to be Arman.

Both of them shook their heads in disappointment. This means they have to take another one of those annoying journeys wasting their time.

But that could change if they could save some time from that. Sam really wished that someone would be holding a weapon fragment with them and bring it back to the temple after they went back to the temple so that they could snatch it.

Anyway, first they have to get to Arman and make sure that everything is okay.

Sam threw the two guys into the chessboard and both of them ran towards the directions of the explosion.

After five minutes, they could still hear the explosions and soon they saw the blue lightning crackling all over the place.

Arman seemed to have finally started fighting.

When they reached the place, they saw him being surrounded by ten or so feathered who are trying to fight him from the sky, but Arman is like an agile but powerful monkey who is jumping around the trees and made the lightning strike one after another.

The feathered are the ones having a hard time.

He even took out the lightning blade saber and cleaved through the bunch. He seemed to be pretty pissed and soon they understood why, there is a burnt and ravaged patch of forest nearby which is still burning, and some of the trees charred in the middle of it, there are more than a dozen feathered lying dead.

It seems like he is totally frustrated by their constant pestering.

Even without them interfering the fight was over.

Arman finally relaxed a bit, but he still has the saber in his hands as he leaned against a tree and sat down panting.

Sam and Arkiv came out and started walking towards him.

"When did you guys come?" He asked without much surprise as if it is natural for them to be here.

"Well a few days actually, we came from the rear route so we have to take a detour around the city. So, how long since you escape, from the looks of it, the damage on the temple and the city are still fresh."

Arkiv asked in return.

"Yesterday. I actually worked together with the other guy."

"Who is it? Is it Akhil?" If it is that guy, it would be annoying. He is a piece of work in the forest."

"No, it is the guy from the thunderbolt sect. Donner."

"Okay, you guys worked together and escaped, so where is he now?"

"I don't know, we escaped in different routes out of the city and got chased by a large group of feathered, even though they had wings like birds, they are as annoying as flies, I couldn't take it anymore and deal with them."

While Arkiv and Arman are having a conversation, Sam is currently busy checking the surroundings. He is taking the corpses for the necromancy and such.

"So, how are you guys here this fast?"

"Well, we fell into the same city and I am the only one who got caught. This guy was still okay and managed to escape. So, it was easy. You know how resourceful he is, so I didn't even bother to escape and even managed to get some decent training." Arkiv explained.

"At least, it is nothing like the training I did. There are two pesky little shits in that city. They always leave us in a handicap to beat us up. I would really like to meet them once again."

"Are those two shadows?"

"How do you know?"

"Hehe."

While they are talking and cleaning up the mess, some other feathered who also saw the large commotion from afar are making their way here.

Sam took notice of them through the telescope and they made their escape.

They took a long detour and moved towards the front of the city.

There is not much they can do from the rear end or the side.

After they escaped, that night they had a proper meal and started discussing their future plan.

"So, what are we going to do next?" Arman asked Sam.

"Of course, we have to get the weapon fragment and leave this place. We didn't know how long it would take for you guys to make your way to the temple, since we finished it fast, we decided to check another city and get another fragment.

It is risky to not hold the fragment until the last minute.

If we only need one before the Palace we can manage, but if it's two, then it would be troublesome, that is why we came here.

Anyway, we will deal with this city just like we did with Silva city. But before that, we need to know about the details regarding the higher-ups.

The king and the priestess? How are they?"

"It is actually a queen and the priest here."

"Queen? So, are the two shadows her sons or just students and subordinates?"

"Of course they are sons. Those two fuckers are so important to her."

"Then it might get easy. We will start our plan from dawn tomorrow."

The next day they started working. The three of them scouted the area around the city. The size of the city and the layout are similar to that of Silva city.

The only difference is the distribution of trees in the forest.

Here the forest is not as dense as the forest around Silva city. But it is still alright.

Sam has a new plan for this.

For the next week, the three of them escaped the pursuit of the feathered and set up the traps so that they could finish this faster.

After it was done, Sam let the zoi termites out and made them clear a patch of the forest right in front of the entrance of the city, and in that patch, he crucified some of the feathered bodies. He stuck two recording crystals on their chests. One for each and waited for the other party to make the move.