The elf ignored the battle that was going on just a dozen meters away and silently observed me. He looked into my eyes, lightly nodded as if understanding something and extended his hand.

“Could you please cut it off, dude?” - he asked.

I almost asked if he wanted me to cut off his hand, but then he pulled away up the gradually widening sleeve of his padded shirt, revealing the heavy-looking manacle.

Just to be sure, I checked it out. The manacle was black in colour, with numerous blue specks revealed by the light reflected from the polished surface. It seemed to be made of some metal, quite thick and was encircled by the several bands of extremely fine engravings. Oddly, I could find no locks or hinges.

“What is that?” - asked Aitan who together with Pine, FIr and Birch had been providing some cover fire and keeping Bull’s Blood away from us.

“Essense dampener. Surprisingly good one too.” - dryly commented the elf.

“Fascinating thing. Where would you suggest me to make the cut?” - I did not want to deal with backlash or explosions at that particular moment.

Instead of answering, the elf tapped at the corner of the manacle. I shrugged and morphed my poleaxe into a shape resembling a narrow bowie knife. Then, by keeping the blade parallel to the elf’s hand, I pushed it against the manacle.

The material was strong, but it was being slowly pushed through under the pressure between my hands and the almost atom-thin edge of my blade. The blade slowly moved like dull butter knife through solid butter - slowly but surely.

When cutting the manacle, occasionally soft sizzling sounds came out from it. It took a moment to pinpoint their origin as the engraving bands that were being interrupted and the elf kept flinching each time this happened. I also observed a hair-thin layer of water between his skin and the metal. It shimmered but retained its shape similar to how Eala had manipulated the water. In ten or so seconds, I finally severed the last millimetre that had held the manacle together and it dropped on the floor with a dull clatter.

As soon as the manacle came off, the elf recoiled away from me. While rubbing his hand he looked at me again.

He explained apologetically: “Sorry for that unsightly reaction, dude. SImply the feeling you give off...is intense.”

I raised an eyebrow: “Not eyes?” - Eala had been affected by my eyes during our first meeting.

He shook his head slowly: “If I were thousand summers younger, then perhaps. But dude, I have seen enough in my lifetime to not care about that anymore.”

I lightly coughed: “Where did you pick up the use of ‘dude’ anyway?”

The elf looked awkward for a moment, but still replied while lightly waving his hands in the air as if caressing something invisible: “Sixties, I think. I ended up in United States at that time.”

While he talked, his body was rapidly being covered by the translucent, glinting layer. After a few seconds, it formed an elegant-looking armor made of numerous tiny, tear-shaped scales. I recognized this feeling, it was the same as Eala’s water manipulation, but on a much higher level.

But what happened next, surprised me - small ripples visible on the surface stopped, and I felt the temperature suddenly dropping. He was actually capable of manipulating the aggregate state of water, something Eala had been incapable of.

The elf moved his hand to check his mobility and looked towards the cages: “We need to save the others. You will need me to separate their manacles from their skin if you want them to live.”. Oh wonderful, now there was some sort of kill switch too.

---

When Elm opened the cage again, the elf took the initiative to look in. He held his hand protected by the thick ice vambrace in front of him, mindful about possible frenzied attacks.

Instead, he almost got his balls busted by a kick from below. However, with elven elegance he easily sidestepped the attack. Then, after a few words of barely recognizable Scots, he guided out a short fellow. Afterwards, he quickly switched between the languages, from English and Hindi to some I had never heard about, shortly explaining that they were being rescued, but that it was going to take some time to remove the bracelets.

I rubbed my hands as I felt another sliver of energy coming from the battlefield next to us.

“We better hurry, I’m still getting the cold creeps!” - Aitan looked anxious as occasional ricochets and large-scale attacks barely missed us.

Maple already had a bleeding cut on his arm, where the carbon-fiber reinforced plastic protector had been torn apart by some glancing hit.

That did not stop him from shouting a reply: “If you can teleport us out, Capt, we are ready to go anytime!”

The elf talked with the shorty for a bit, then turned towards us.

“I introduce you to my friend in calamity. He goes by the name of Fergus. If you could please…” - the last part was addressed to me.

The short man was bald, and had no beard, otherwise I would have thought he was a dwarf from the stories.

He simply stretched out his hand, offering a handshake: “Fergus, gremlin. Ya stong ‘un, I see. Cut of’ that peece of shaite, righte?”

I accepted his handshake, and could feel immense strength hidden in his quite ordinary-looking hands. However, barely detectable shaking of his hands betrayed his nervousness when he looked at me.

The elf grabbed the gremlin’s hand slightly above the manacle and after a layer of water had spread out under the metal, nodded for me to begin. It took another ten or so seconds, with the gremlin silently cussing each time the manacle sizzled.

---

During the time we were busy unshackling the gremlin, the battle became more heated. The auction visitors managed to organize a counterattack by forming a line of physical defence against the warriors while multiple long-range attackers hurled all sort of nasty stuff towards the backlines. And again, I felt no other energy from the attacks except for the different temperatures in case of elemental attacks or sensing the objects when somebody used telekinesis. I could not perceive any magic at all.

Because of the losses from both sides, the area of the battle had been compressed. Our small isolated group on the stage was slowly being surrounded by Bull’s Blood while the rest of auction participants were several dozens of meters away from us, in a separate encirclement of their own.

To make matters worse, the blood that was rapidly gathering into regular-shaped patterns on the floor, had at some point of time begun glowing. And from that I could sense the thick energy well enough. It felt like a huge fire, or a sun on a clear day that could be pinpointed even with eyes closed.

---

With increasing anxiety, I could also observe how the warriors of Bull’s Blood, that had previously been blown off their feet by my sweeping strikes or the cloaked man’s shockwaves, began to stand up again. The deep dents in their armors recovered with audible snaps and they picked up their weapons that had been securely chained to their armor belts.

The freed gremlin moved his hands, and roughly rubbed his knuckles.

“Keep’em off us, righte? Or sum’uns ar gonna miss a limb ar too.” - he made a deep nod which was almost a short bow to me.

Then he motioned to the elf that he was ready. In front of the cage, he padded Elm’s elbow and called him a “fain lad”, before telling him to pull the door open. Once the door was opened, he began to explain something to the ones remaining inside.

Meanwhile the elf looked at the two dead bodies lying next to the cage.

“Poor du...men.” - he said: “They were brave.”

“Men?!” - blurted out Fir who was in a kneeling shooting position nearby. He was surprised enough to actually turn away from the battle in front of him. His visored gaze stopped at the clearly feminine facial features and the full bosom of the first sacrifice.

The elf nodded: “He was from an isolated tribe of sea-folk in Atlantic. The women are much larger and stronger than men there, so men take care of the children and even have tits to do the feeding.”. Finished with the explanation, he went back to the gremlin who had brought out another person from the cage.

---

The assault of the Bull’s Blood armored troops continued, and they steadily became stronger. I also had confirmed my suspicions that in addition to improving dexterity and speed, they also became heavier. The hits that used to be enough to send them flying full twenty meters away were now only enough to push them off their feet.

I used my observation abilities to check the surroundings - yes, that was clearly the doing of the Bull’s Blood support units from the backlines. A while ago, they used to simply stretch out one of their hands to boost the warriors, but now they kept chanting something and holding small golden balls in their other hands.

Even with each warrior’s support being divided between three, four or even five mages, their skin had become much paler than before, clearly such magic was extremely taxing. It made sense, as according to my estimations, they had somehow increased the mass of their warriors by at least ten times. If the energy and mass conservation law was still applicable, then the energy involved must have been monstrous.

In return, there was now a real horde of human tanks, each weighing well over a ton. The increasing rate of incoming energy and echoing screams, the auction audience was getting massacred at increasing pace. Our group had not yet suffered any casualties only because Bull’s Blood had decided to press the attack from the direction of the entrance and focused on taking care of the general audience first.

---

It was becoming more difficult for me to deal with them, as using any more of my strength could damage the supporting structures of this underground room. Not to mention the allied forces that could be easily hurt by sonic booms next to them if I ever went full-out. So I had to utilise my pure fighting skills and techniques that I was now finding to be somewhat lacking.

My lack of practical experience in armed combat was painfully obvious when compared to the true skills of the seasoned warriors who now stood against me. At least I could use my improved mental faculties to rapidly learn from mistakes, directly integrating the skills into the reflexes.

I delivered a sharp blow with the beak part of the poleaxe against the side of the opposing warrior’s left elbow joint, forcing the tip deep into the metal. The warrior did not show any reaction, but lost his grip of the spear as his guiding hand became powerless. I made a quick counterattack that was again greatly absorbed by the now-familiar flash on top of the softly glowing armor. However, with an ear-hurting bang, the figure slid across the floor. In his wake, it left another deep furrow in the stone tiles.

However, my blow did not simply provide us some breathing space. In the darkness at the backlines, one of the supporters coughed out some blood and several golden balls in his hands broke into pieces. He urgently stopped to fish out more golden balls from a pouch on his waist and only then resumed his task.

---

I spared a bit of my attention to check what the elf and gremlin were doing. The gremlin was actually using his bare hands to slowly mold the metal of the manacle, while the elf used the water to keep it isolated from the person wearing it. Surprisingly, they were joined by the cloaked man from the Akadem, who was using one of his sharp pen nib- like objects to accurately sever the engravings. That seemed to reduce the amount of sizzling and made the operation go faster.

In the time it took for me to blow away the armored warrior, they had freed two people from their manacles. One was a fairly large, obese woman with surprisingly pleasant voice. Another was a direct opposite, a painfully thin, scrawny man with thick bangs covering his face and deep, rumbling voice. Oh, and those two were apparently a couple.

“Down to thee, and they’re coming!” - informed Pine as his shot into the helmet forced one of the approaching warriors to stop. Even with the huge mass of the warriors, armor-piercing bullets delivered enough punch to disorient them when hit into face.

“Five here” - said Birch, and added: “I’m so not going into melee with them, that’s fucking suicide. What ugly twat said that close quarters badge is enough to deal with this shit?”

“Reloading fresh, but that’s the last.” - was the stoic answer from Fir.

Another manacle fell on the floor with a dull clank. At the same time, I managed to deform the hip protector of one of the approaching enemies. That made him to crash into another one, resulting in a tangled mess on the ground.

I used my best speed in an attempt to make use of the moment and deliver a crippling blow, but even that small movement was enough to cause a nearby pillar to shake and several pieces of ancient stone to shake loose from somewhere above.

Because I could barely use a fifth of my power, that was getting really bothersome. Bull’s Blood had apparently prepared truly meticulously, and their warriors had their mass and strength boosts set just right within the limits of what the surrounding structures could bear.

Two armored figures rushed at SAS team. Pine quickly shot his remaining shots, but only managed to stall one. Another warrior moved sideways, causing several shots from Birch to miss, while the remaining ones were blocked by his shield. But that short moment was enough for the first warrior to regain his footing and cover the remaining distance before Fir could finish reloading.

Aitan rushed forward in an attempt to get a guaranteed shot that would get Fir enough time. But he was not going to make it fast enough. I could not help either, because I was blocking four warriors alone. I could only use my perception to observe when the armored figure pushed off the ground, crushing the rock underfoot as it jabbed its spear towards Fir’s chest.