Arcane Escape Arts: Dig!

Aaron pulled Bymor with him into the ground to escape the encirclement. They shot faster than a bullet straight down. The stupid attackers had locked space to prevent them from escaping, but they were all flying and had done to prevent Aaron's current move.

Two Champions were Earth Elementalists though. Soon, Aaron felt their energy surrounding him as their skills to hinder him. However, Aaron was a Champion like them now, and his power, paired with his experience, let him easily protect himself.

"Where are we going?!" Bymor yelled.

"Away!" Aaron replied. "We can't win against these odds!"

His experience also told him there were some battles that he shouldn't fight. He would be glad to kill whoever attacked him, but twenty Champions were too dangerous.

The Champion level unlocked many things, including the ability to join together in living formations. People using formation tokens became nodes in formations that made some of them stronger by directing their power where it was needed the most. It wasn't useful against a larger group of enemies that could attack from all sides, but Aaron and Bymor were alone.

He didn't know whether the attackers had such tokens, though the empire's technological level made him think they might not. Yet, he wasn't about to find out while he was in the center of all their attacks. Moreover, even if they came one by one, he didn't have enough energy to win.

At the Three Star level, he had attacked hundreds and survived, but his opponents had also been weak. As a cultivator stepped further in the path of immortality, their attacks became more complex and harder to block or dodged. Aaron would be forced to deal with most of them, and that created a higher energy expenditure.

He believed himself capable of defeating maybe a dozen Champions one after the other before he ran out of energy. A group battle, even without a living formation, was more random. He might manage to kill the twenty of them by fighting creatively or they might fight even more creatively and kill him before he could deal with them. The one thing his experience had taught him above all others was to take no chances unless he had to. That's how he had defeated the odds time and time again, and he would rather not become a stepping stone himself for some enemy in their path to glory.

The two Earth Elementalists efforts were pathetic. The Master Fire Elementalist also attacked, but her flames did poorly against the sheer volume of earth between her and Aaron. Not long after, they escaped the area of effect of the item she used that locked spacetime.

"Do you have any way of finding where the crusade is?" Aaron asked.

"Yes!"

"Then lead the way!"

Bymor opened a new portal and they disappeared.

They had left Illyria with one Master, thirty Champions, five hundred Five Stars, a thousand Four Stars, two hundred Three Stars, and about eighteen thousand Two Star troops.

Now, they had two Champions, fifty Five Stars, five hundred Four Stars, and the weaker troops were mostly untouched. They were confused and afraid. The news that the emperor had declared war on the Goddess of Light and even killed the Apostle of Light was too shocking.

Jil was having a hard time keeping them together. She was the highest-ranking official, and people had looked to her when the Champion left in charge by the Arcane Master had been killed by poison. Many others had been poisoned since then, but she couldn't check the entire crusade for it. She could only save those who came to her within thirty seconds from the first symptom, vomit. Most took longer than that to even stop vomiting.

People were whispering about the failure of the crusade and of how they wanted to leave. That would be suicide. They were still inside Illyria, but the capital was being besieged, while the betrayers could be hidden close to the crusade. Where would they go now that the Great General had also seized their flying ships? Who would protect them after they lost the protection of numbers?

They had set up camp instead of going anywhere. Moving was too dangerous. That said, food was running low; they had less than a week of it remaining. If the herald didn't return on time, his crusade would indeed fail.

There was a sudden uproar outside, which quickly spread to the whole encampment. Jil thought the worst, for they had made the same sound when the Great General appeared with twenty Champions. They had believed them to be reinforcements. Instead, they found about the emperor's betrayal.

She left her tent, and what she found wasn't bad news, but good ones.

The Herald of Light had returned.

"Heed me well!" the flying Aaron said with a magically enhanced voice that was heard in the entire camp. "Enemies are coming! Form circles! The strongest on the outside, the weaker on the inside! You!" He pointed at a Three Star man whom he felt carrying five substances that together would become poison — and there were twenty poisoned people in the crusade. "You are a poisoner and a murderer. I declare you guilty." The man's head flew.

The people were understandably confused by what he had said and done. That wouldn't do.

"Move! Now! Thenor's Great General is coming back for us, and unless you heed my orders, you're all going to die here!"

That got their attention. It was a mess, but in less than twenty minutes, he had the Two Stars at the middle, surrounded by Three Stars, Four Stars, and then Five Stars. The two remaining Champions flew to meet him.

"You're becoming batteries," he told them. "I'll teach you how to link to me in a formation and you just need to survive so I can use your energies." Half his mind took out metal plates and started inscribing on them. Meanwhile, he turned to the weaker troops. "Start spreading out! As much as you can, but not enough to become vulnerable because of the distance to the nearest person! You're all to protect yourselves as best as you can! Jil, spread the Five Star cultivators evenly among the others!"

The crusade was two thousand strong and could kill all incoming Champions in a head-on clash for sure. They might even force the Master to leave in a battle of attrition. However, that would mean too many casualties, and Aaron needed them to fight against the siege. He wouldn't use them unless it was needed, in the hopes the Great General would do as she had said and not become a murder by attacking them just because they were nearby.

For now, he only needed the two Champions. He finished inscribing the formation on the three plates the size of an infant's fist and gave two of them to the man and woman. "You must kindle the formation yourselves." He had made the tokens kindlable by their energies, Wood Elemental and Psychic. "Now listen well as I explain it to you." He used the next half hour to teach them the basics of the formation, and they succeeded in kindling it. Barely.

The moment they did, the tokens on their hands linked to their dantians and Aaron's token. He felt their energy at reach from his fingertips. He only had to will it, and the energy could come to him almost instantly, and be usable by him.

At last, he left them hidden with the masses and flew Bymor to a distant yet still visible place.

"We'll use hit-and-run tactics — or as close to that as possible. Keep on the move, attacking when you have an opportunity. But we must stay within five miles of the crusade, or I'll lose access to the Champions' energies. Try to save as much energy as possible while not making it obvious. When I tell you, kill as many Champions as you can and leave the rest to me."

He was surprised when the Great General took hours to appear, but everything was explained when she arrived not with twenty Champions, but forty. Her twenty crimson warriors landed at once while the newcomers kept flying.

The newcomers were all formerly from his crusade, betrayers of the worst kind willing to even turn on their former leader. Aaron quickly remade his plans to account for them too. It would make his victory tighter, but he was confident of himself.

"Do you remember them, herald?" She asked as they surrounded him and Bymor.

"I do," Aaron replied, looking at them. "The penalty for desertion is death. I declare you all guilty. The punishment is to be delivered at once."

He had expected the enemies to surround him again and had allowed it on purpose. Champion Arcane Energy, Champion Wood Elemental Energy, and Champion Psychic Energy left Aaron in a hurricane of skills, attacking those around him.

The crimson warriors used defensive skills immediately. The betrayers took a little longer, but not long enough for Aaron's attacks to kill them. The Great General just ignored it, as her armor would be enough to protect her, and send an enormous fireball at them, this one made of black flames. Bymor counter-attacked the fireball with a huge spatial blade of his own.

Aaron's hurricane wasn't random though. He quickly analyzed the defensive skills used by the enemy and redirected all his attacks toward the weakest ones.

His Arcane attacks were the first to hit the shields of exactly seven Champions. Two held without even trembling, while the other five were weakened, one of which, from the weakest Champion, outright gave out.

Then he focused on those five, sending raw Wood Elemental Energy attacks at them. He couldn't use plants against them midair, but he only wanted the attacks to weaken the shields further. One of them almost broke.

So Aaron pushed the Psychic attacks at the man without a shield and at the weakened shield. They pierced and hit true. Their minds resisted, but a clash of minds was a clash of willpower, and his was much greater than theirs.

They were enslaved at once.

"Pretend you resisted and send only weak attacks my way. Let me know whenever you think you can get away with killing two people," he sent mentally and yelled as if in false pain before flying away.

The two puppets also yelled, but bellowed in fury next and sent flashy but weak attacks at him. Meanwhile, Bymor had protected himself from the Great General's black fireball and flew after Aaron.

Skills rained on them. Aaron allowed most of them to hit his body. He was a Champion Qi Manipulator and Five Star Vitamancer, he could take a beating, and it was wise to not waste his other energies to defend. Bymor, however, was forced to use his Space Energy to defend himself.

Before they could run too far, they found themselves locked by a spatial globe that surrounded the entire region, kept there by another magical item. Aaron guessed that was the primary reason for the Master's delay in appearing, not the extra people. They were just a bonus. Bymor and Aaron were forced to change course.

Skills of all kinds hit Aaron. Those that would do too much damage to him he dodged or deflected with as little Arcane Energy or Qi as he could. The weaker skills pierced, crushed, burned, frozen, and even beheaded him. He always made sure not to let his two vital spots get destroyed at the same time or his dantian get damaged.

He had complained about wasting his cheat healing, but there was no denying that fighting with a perfect mortal body was advantageous.

Bymor and Aaron attacked whenever they saw openings, to no avail.

The Master Fire Elementalist was surprisingly the most useless of them all. Her attacks were weak for a Master, and she focused on area skills. That might be useful in a war — and she was a general — but not in a fight like this. After fleeing from the skilled Timelady for days, Aaron felt almost offended for having to flee from such a weak Master for even a minute.

The crimson warriors were good though. They were powerful for Champions, their armor protected them well, and their words were foci that increased the power of their skills. However, they weren't using any formations to strengthen themselves. At first, Aaron thought they might be keeping it to use in an emergency, or even that they hadn't them. However, he eventually sensed a weakening of the Wood Elemental Energy coming to him and focused his active perception — that now extended up to five miles — on his two Champions.

They were dying. For reasons unknown, whenever energy left their dantians and came to him, their lifeforce decreased. He would check on it later, but it became clear that he was killing them. However, he couldn't let go of their power just yet. He decreased the usage of their energies and waited for the perfect opportunity.

Fortunately, pursuit battles were chaotic and made the pursuers angry and unaware of their surroundings. His two puppets soon said they felt confident about killing two enemies each.

"Now!" he sent to them at the same time he yelled to Bymor.