The Mage flung his two water blades at Allen while the Warrior shouted, “Who are you!” and took a stance. Water magic wasn’t the fastest, but it wasn’t the slowest either. Allen could have sacrificed some of his speed to dodge those blades, but he didn’t have to. Both spells crashed into small, dinner-plate sized barriers and ricocheted upwards.

Allen ducked under the flaming sword and jumped straight at the water Mage just as he was preparing another spell. The warrior tried to turn around, but Ty and Camila were already charging straight for him. He was forced to fall back to his teammate while avoiding all sorts of barriers and chains of miasma coming at him.

Allen fake-lunged to the side before using Slip Step to dash straight for the Mage’s left leg. A water spear missed him by a wide margin just as he cut a deep gash into his enemy’s abdomen. The Mage hissed in pain and stumbled back. A wave of water rushed out at Allen and the man covered himself in spikes of swirling water.

“He’s turtling,” Allen thought, clicking his tongue. He pinged with Expanded Awareness and heard the sounds of others getting out of the speeders and magicarriages. They still had almost twenty more vehicles to go through. “We don’t have time to dick around.” Allen quickly sifted through his inventory for some bombs while another barrier broke the wave that was rushing at him.

“What do you want!?” the Warrior shouted, his face turning red. He tried again to get to his teammate, but Nora and a layered barrier got in the way.

Nobody had time to answer before an explosion went off right in front of the water Mage. Allen quickly followed up with a poisoned throwing needle, lasering the Mage right in the chest where his defenses had been broken. He let out a gurgling scream before Allen came at him with his daggers. Two slices and a stab to the jugular finished the Mage.

Ty slammed into the warrior sending him to the ground were Camila’s mini-fridge sized hammer descended on him. Yet, even with Christopher’s magical shackles tying the man’s limbs together, he was still able to catch the hammer before it crushed his skull in.

The Warrior shouted and threw the weapon off of him. A skill caused him to burst into flames just as two throwing needles flew into his back, embedding themselves deeply between his ribs and delivering their deadly, heart-stopping poison. The Warrior screamed breathlessly as his flames cut out. Christopher’s shackles pulled his legs out from under him, and Allen landed on top of him an instant later with a flurry of Heavy Jabs.

“Nora, flank from the outside, I’ll take the inside,” Allen said as he jumped off the dead Warrior. He quickly looked over himself to confirm that he was fine, then he turned his attention to the Smith who was cowering up against the side of the speeder carriage. “Stay inside your speeder and you’ll be safe. Don’t try to run.” The Smith just nodded and crawled back into the vehicle on shaky limbs.

Allen turned and jumped over the hood of the nearby speeder and sunk into a low sprint. Fire exploded from the sky again and Allen ducked. The next speeder in the line flung open in front of him and a level two-twenty Mage stepped out. Whether it was all the magical interference from the high-level fighters or simple incompetence, that Mage could barely react before Allen thrusted his knife into the enemy’s lower back with all his skills. Allen’s blade met considerable resistance, breaking through various enchantments and barriers, but then it only dug into flesh by a centimeter or two. Assassinate and Chaotic Destruction still took effect and caused havoc to the Mage’s insides, yet it wasn’t enough to kill him.

Allen’s entire forearm was still shredded and swollen, but threads of glowing light quickly stitched that up before the Mage could turn on him.

With an angry shout, the Mage summoned a blinding flash of light. Instead of backing up, Allen lunged blindly at his enemy and stabbed again with his dagger. Killer Instinct helped a little in finding his target, but not by much. When he did, he quickly managed to find the Mage’s neck, which he wrapped both hands around and squeezed with all his strength. He was below his enemy’s level, but the enemy was a Mage, and poisoned too. It only took a few bashes for the light to go out, then Allen slit the Mage’s throat and got back to his feet as the burns below his armor healed from Meredith’s spell formula.

Barely a second passed before Killer Instinct set of an alarm in Allen’s head. Instead of jumping away from the danger, Allen reacted immediately by using Slip Step to lunge as fast as he could to his five-o-clock, staying low to the ground. He used Expanded Awareness too, on instinct, but it was unnecessary since he could clearly see the level one-ninety Rogue rushing at him with a serrated garrote.

The Rogue’s eyes widened from Allen’s sudden and unpredictable movement. Allen swiped with a sword from his inventory and the enemy dodged away with a curse, stumbling slightly with the speed he was moving at. Allen threw a needle at nearly point blank range, getting the enemy Rogue in the neck before he could even swap out his weapon for something appropriate.

“He’s a goner already, he was a quiet one though.”

Allen punched the Rogues’ face in with Heavy Jab, ripping his needle free in the same motion. By then, almost every combatant from the Lanthinus convoy was outside, trying to figure out their situation. There were a lot of them, easily outnumbering Allen’s group ten to one. He checked on Nora and the others, finding them doing alright, if not a little overwhelmed. There were Mages firing magic from a distance, and it was all Christopher could do to just disrupt things and funnel the enemies to Ty and Camila. Amelia was doing her part restoring everyone’s stamina, but Nora was down to using hit-and-run tactics as the lowest leveled fighter around.

“We’ll get overwhelmed like this…” he thought, eyeing a Ranger pull back on his bow about thirty meters away. There wasn’t much he could do but sacrifice the experience. “Phantom,” Allen whispered, “kill all the Rangers and Rogues on our side of the convoy.”

A happy hiss came to Allen’s left ear, then in the next instant, the level two-ten Ranger’s head toppled off as a barely visible white blur flew past him. His charged arrow lanced through one of the enemy Warriors, causing him to scream before he was smashed by Camila. More screams of terror and pain came from close by as the Lanthinus fighters started to lose it.

Allen and the others continued through the convoy, always at full HP thanks to Meredith and full SP thanks to Amelia who could spend all her mana on buffs. Those buffs apparently counted as healing if they were the vitality enhancing type. The only problem was mana, but by then Allen had about a dozen mana potions that he had looted from people.

Whenever Allen or the others got stuck on a particular enemy that couldn’t be taken out with Chaotic Destruction, he simply had Phantom eat their eyes out. That way they were crippled without doing too much damage and taking all the experience.

It was Allen’s idea.

Their group was about two-thirds of the way to the front of the convoy about five minutes later. That was when a broken and charred wyvern fell from the sky, smashing one of the speeders underneath it. A terrible, monstrous roar broke through the sounds of battle. It wasn’t the wyverns or any of Jack’s summons, and it wasn’t from anything Iana could create.

Allen snapped a low-leveled, blinded Warrior’s neck and looked up. It was snowing upside down, massive flakes and balls of hail swirling around under an enormous vortex of dark storm clouds and thick smoke. Iana was encased in the chest of a six-winged angel of ice, twice the size of the Faceless Ones. The angle was like sculpture, its face calm and unmoving while its robes of frost billowed outward. Hundreds of owl-like frost elementals circled her, barely visible behind the haze of snow, storm clouds, and lightning.

On the opposite side of the sky, Clara was at the center of a mass of burning smoke and ash. Her armor was glowing red while scarlet burned on her gauntleted fists. She had the wings of a dragonfly on her back, made of the same glowing red energy that seemed to pour out of her like a fountain.

They were both still in the air, while a huge amount of mana coalesced in the burning sphere of fire hovering between them. It continued to shrink until it became white hot, then it exploded in a shower of flame. Allen covered his eyes and ducked behind Ty. A golden dome flickered into existence over the entire convoy to shield them instead, courtesy of Meredith.

When the light faded, a creature was revealed where the ball of fire had been. It flapped two leathery wings and roared an ear-piercing roar. Scales covered its body, from its horned serpentine face to its spiked tail and the claws at the end of all eight of the legs along its short spiney body. It’s four eyes rolled in their sockets before narrowing on Iana’s angle.

“A basilisk?” Allen asked out loud. “…no, something’s not right about it.” It took him a moment longer to notice the body shape was wrong. Basilisks had bodies like short eels with two or more sets of front and back legs. This… monstrosity had mangled features and a man shaped body. Its tail was also too short, and it still had teeth instead of fangs.

Shoam appeared next to Allen and burnt two incoming Warriors down to their skeletons with violet scourge fire in the blink of an eye. The elf was a little disheveled and his armor was beaten up, but he was completely uninjured. “That crazy noble just used a draconic transmog on himself,” Shoam said, shaking his head. “He said something about somebody betraying him, then something about some inheritance that was rightfully his. Standard stuff, I think he’s our guy.”

“Jiira damnit, rich nobles and their blood magic.” Allen cursed as he sniped one of the last remaining Mages with a throwing needle. “Well hopefully Meredith can put him together once he’s knocked out. Did his level go up? Where’s Jack?”

“No, but the transmog made him Reaper class,” the elf replied. “As for Jack, he’s—"

Someone slammed into the wall of ice overhead, sending chunks flying.

“Shadowgale Cleaver!” Jack flew at the glacier with one of his most powerful attack formulas. A disc of rapidly spinning solid shadows formed around his entire body. Then, before his enemy could react, the shadows whipped around into a massive blade that cut downward, bisecting the man down his center before he could free himself from the ice. The Mage let out a blood curdling scream before some magic pulsed from him, pulling his two halves back together with tendrils of blood. Lightning promptly shot out of him, forcing Jack to dodge as the Mage shot himself back into the air.

“He and Meredith are fighting that one,” Shoam said. “The other two nobles didn’t seem to be fighters. They’ve already been immobilized. I’ve told the mercenaries to go look for slaves once they’ve finished. There are still three more enemies around my level, I’ll save them for you and your group, once you’re done here.

“Alright, thanks,” Allen replied, nodding as the elf disappeared again.

The five or so remaining low-level enemies were quickly being picked off by the others with Phantom’s help. Allen still wanted more experience, so he re-equipped his daggers, covered them in miasma, and sprinted back into the fight.