Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 192. Desperate Crisis.

“Holy.” Casimir frowned involuntarily. The attack by those two was impressive, but Yimar Maar escaping unscratched from it was all the more worrying. “It’s surely better now that I won’t need Anna and others to keep saving my ass, but somehow, I doubt we will be able to take him down within a short period of time at this rate,” he judged quickly. He could see how even Yin, who had been able to cut down one elite after another while coming over here with Laien, was forced to keep dodging out of the way and retreating from the onslaught of Yimar Maar’s blows. As for Laien’s icy mist, while he could sense that Yimar Maar was steadily depleting his Qi to defend from it, the process wasn’t nearly fast enough for them to rely on it for victory.

“I could join in too.” Casimir hesitated. He knew that Laien’s abilities wouldn’t hurt Yin, but if he attacked Yimar Maar in melee, not only would he have to resist the icy mist on his own, but he would be getting in Laien’s way, too. So, no matter how he looked at it, it wouldn’t be a good idea for him or anyone else to join this battle between the three. “What are the options then? Either I tell them to go kill more enemies while I hold down Yimar Maar as before or I trust them to kill Yimar Maar within two minutes. The latter option is far better for their Shadow Trials, but what should I do?” he asked himself. Having Laien and Yin roam around would undoubtedly save many lives of both his and Anna’s subordinates, but it would be against their purpose of starting this battle in the first place. It was an unpleasant choice to make, but having Laien and Yin keep at it would be for the best.

“I leave him to you two!” Having made his choice, he shouted to Laien and Yin while already joining the ongoing battle between Yimar Maar’s army and their north-Euleanian forces.

He used his full strength and just like in the previous battles, he made thorough use of his physical prowess coming from his earth element and his offensive prowess coming from his wind element. Within three leaps and five blows, he felled two martial masters of the fourth rank and one martial master of the fifth rank with whom Anna had been fighting. Still, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep up such a high-level performance for long since he had to expend a fair amount of Qi to quickly kill those elites, especially the likes of this martial master of the fifth rank. The limit of him going all-out like this would be, as far as he could tell, roughly two and a half minutes.

“Give it your best,” he thought and spared one last glance towards Laien, Yin, and Yimar Maar. “Because I’ll do the same in your place. Don’t you worry about us, just make sure you kill Yimar Maar and end these damnable Shadow Trials!” he urged his heart, hoping against his own logic and common sense that his wish would somehow reach the two boys. Still, he wasted no time to see if the two would react to his earnest wish in any way and threw himself back into the battle.

Coincidentally or not, Laien similarly spared a quick glance in Casimir’s direction just as the man left the two of them to fend for themselves. “So he’s leaving him to us, huh,” the thought crossed Laien’s mind. For less than a second, the expression on his face changed from a half-serious half-excited one to a grateful one before quickly returning to its original state. “You’ve got him figured out yet?” he inquired in his thoughts, knowing that Yin was starting to feel more comfortable. He had been standing back and acting as passive support at Yin’s request, but his hands were itching to join the battle at full force. With the two of them besieging Yimar Maar with all the skills and abilities available to them, the man wasn’t going to be having time as easy as up until now.

“A little longer,” Yin replied naturally. In normal circumstances, it would have been suicidal to take one’s attention off an enemy as dangerous as Yimar Maar to have a conversation, but neither he nor Laien had to worry about it. They had been able to communicate smoothly during intense battles with their Spiritual Bond alone, so there was no way that they wouldn’t be able to do the same thing now that this Spiritual Bond evolved into Spiritual Link. “You can join in once I start attacking myself,” he added, then sidestepped Yimar Maar’s downward slash after throwing it slightly off course with one of his swords. He had mostly understood that Yimar Maar’s style was quite uninhibited and ‘wild’ as the man had displayed various types of attacks against him, from the pure strength-oriented ones, through the speed-oriented ones, ending at even technique-oriented exchanges.

Objectively speaking, he would say that Yimar Maar was at the master-level in many kinds of sword arts, which when used in unison gave the impression that he was close to the grandmaster level. However, despite the sharpness and variety of Yimar Maar’s attacks, the man’s sword art was rather lacking in Yin’s eyes. Before he had started developing his Thundercloud Sword Art, he might have been overwhelmed by this kind of a hard-to-deal-with barrage of attacks of many different kinds and types, but now, all he had to do was take his time to familiarize himself with them all. Instead of being on the edge, he was able to both steadily gain advantage and hone his own Sword Art at the same time, so he was quite satisfied. In fact, the more he fought Yimar Maar, the more he realized how important it was for a practitioner to be skilled in his Weapon or Combat Art of choice.

“That being said.” Yin chuckled inwardly. He could see the anger and frustration burning wildly in Yimar Maar’s eyes and he could tell that a part of it came from the man’s inability to wound him. “He’s powerful. I would have never been able to take him on alone,” he mused with a slight smile. Him being able to outdo Yimar Maar in terms of pure speed and Sword Arts was important, but Laien’s icy mist keeping Yimar Maar’s flames at bay was just as crucial. Had it not been for this constant suppression, his body would have been full of burns from the residual heat alone. With how powerful Yimar Maar’s Qi was, the man simply wouldn’t need to land a blow on him to harm him.

“He’s also too fast,” Yin half-complained while ducking to avoid a follow-up slash of Yimar Maar’s, which was sent his way from low angle pretty much instantly after the high attack from before. “He’s too fast and too experienced. Maybe if I was a bit stronger and if I at least reached mastery in my Thundercloud Sword Art, I would have dared to attack him while opening up my own defense and relying on my speed and instincts to dodge, but I can’t do it now,” he mused discontentedly. Regrettably, no matter how exquisite one’s sword art was, it couldn’t make up for a huge difference in strength. If anything, compared to his Sword Art, it was Laien’s defensive Spear Art that was far better suited to fighting opponents who were superior in almost every other aspect.

However, it wasn’t like he was out of options either. His Thundercloud Sword Art wasn’t so shallow that he would become powerless the moment he couldn’t find a way to overwhelm his opponent. He was perfectly capable of switching to a method of attack that sought to force the enemy to reveal an opening, but the problem was that he lacked experience in this aspect of his Sword Art. Having created it just a few hours ago, he was yet to hone all of its aspects and it was because of this fact that he didn’t consider himself a ‘sword master’. Sure, he had created for himself a Sword Art vastly superior to anything he had heard of or seen during his life and once he mastered it, he would be beyond the level of the continent’s grandmasters. The thing was, he was yet to do that, so even though he was able to gain a small advantage against Yimar Maar, it wasn’t nearly enough.

“Enough complaining,” Yin thought with a laugh and changed his movements. Instead from retreating and moving around in circles like he had been doing up until this point, he started positioning himself for a counterattack after each dodge. At first, the difference was so subtle that even Yimar Maar, who was entangled in a fight with him, didn’t notice anything. However, after a dozen more exchanges, the sensation of pressing danger became rather clear to the man.

He was pressuring Yin just like before, but not only did he continue to fail to get any real advantage over him, he was suddenly overcome with a feeling that his defenses were crumbling step by step. If he were to allow it to go on in this manner for too long, then sooner or later this green-haired monster would be able to safely retaliate and injure him. Infuriated by the realization, he started attacking with even more ferocity, but despite his efforts, the sensation akin to one of a hidden beast waiting to leap on top of his back continued to get stronger with every passing moment.

Finally, after one of his missed slashes, the green-haired kid sent his own blade forward and before he could dodge out of the way or force the kid to stop by threatening a counterattack, the quick swing cut a shallow wound across the left side of his stomach. He attempted to pay the kid back with a slash of his own, but the boy maneuvered his way around him and get out of the blade’s way at the last possible instant. Admittedly, he managed to slightly burn the kid’s left shoulder since the attack had been so close to landing, but an achievement like that made him angrier rather than happier.

He was about to draw upon more of his Qi, but at this very time, he sensed the other Devil finally moving closer towards him. “Fine! Show me what you’ve got!” he thought in his anger. He twisted his body and jumped sideways, distancing himself from the green-haired kid for a moment and slashing with full strength at the black-haired one, who had tried to attack him from behind. Yet, to his utter shock, his blow wasn’t dodged and it wasn’t even blocked either. No, he felt as if all the strength behind his slash was suddenly robbed away from his control and thrown away from the black-haired Devil-child. If fighting against Yin had been infuriating him beyond belief, then this exchange of blows with Laien instantly chilled all this anger and exchanged it for cold sweat.

Against Yin, he had still felt that he would be able to win with his mixed sword arts as long as he put some more Qi to use. To begin with, had he not been restricted by this annoying icy mist of the Ice Devil’s, he would have had a clear advantage. However, against Laien, he came to feel as if his sword arts had no hope of matching up from the very first exchange of blows. Unlike Abdain, whose sword arts were simplistic and thus effective, he had learned and mastered dozens of different styles, so he could instantly tell how big of a gap there was between his sword arts and the Ice Devil’s spear arts.

“A grandmaster… no, even more than that!”

While Yimar Maar was startled, Yin ruthlessly exploited the brief opening and attacked his back. Simultaneously, Laien allowed his smooth swirl of the spear, with which he had defended himself, to make a full circle as he threw a swipe at Yimar Maar’s neck. Yin was aiming at Yimar Maar’s lower back, while he was targeting the man’s neck. Moreover, their two attacks were timed perfectly and were they to land, they would do so at the same time. The two of them were honestly looking forward to seeing just how Yimar Maar was going to escape from this self-induced peril.

“Arrogant!”

The two of them expected to claim an advantage, but Yimar Maar’s berating tone brought them back to reality. They saw the layer of flames around Yimar Maar suddenly increase in intensity so much that the two surges of ice mist were barely able to contest with it, but the two of them were truly brought down a notch only with Yimar Maar’s next action.

Within the little time Yimar Maar had to react, he stepped sideways and made it so that Laien was to his left and Yin to his right. He used the sword in his right hand to meet Yin’s blade, having judged that it was the more threatening of the two attacks. At the same time, he limited the scope of his movements and tensed most of the muscles in his body and raised his left forearm behind his neck.

What followed was a brief clash of Yimar Maar’s and Yin’s swords and on Yimar Maar’s part, a small intentional movement sideways. As a result, the spearhead which was supposed to cut into his flesh didn’t land properly and the shaft of Laien’s spear landed on his left forearm, then was stopped alongside a loud, thud-like sound accompanied by the cracking of the solid rock below his feet.

Yimar Maar snarled in contempt and pushed the spear away with enough strength to cause Laien to stagger in his attempt to regain balance. Right afterwards, he swiped out with his sword horizontally and released a wide wave of flames towards Yin, which easily shattered the weakened icy mist around him. This martial technique forced Yin to use his lightning steps to dodge and move to the same side as Laien, what caused a smirk to appear on Yimar Maar’s face. Like he said, too arrogant!

He turned around towards Laien, his eyes squinting slightly at the sight of the water surrounding the boy’s spear. Yet, he still snorted and instead of attacking directly, he thrust out with his sword while aiming at Laien’s abdomen. He was good three meters away from Laien, so obviously his sword wasn’t going to connect, but his trust released an incredibly fast spear-like surge of flames. The simple martial technique forced its way right beside the water covering Laien’s spear and lost only a portion of its strength while doing so, to then land directly on Laien’s lower stomach.

For half a second, a self-pleased smile appeared on Yimar Maar’s face as he thought that he burned through Laien’s body with his martial technique and crippled his martial cultivation. However, his smile dimmed the moment he saw Laien’s hair turn silvery-white and his skin turn jade-like. His attack wasn’t misguided fundamentally, but he seemed to have forgotten why Laien’s nickname came to be ‘Ice Devil’. Or, rather, he had never bothered to learn what abilities either Laien or Yin had. So, he could only grimace in his frustration when what was supposed to be a near-fatal wound ended up being a mild burn, which then turned into undamaged skin in virtually no time at all.

As if by an unspoken agreement, both sides glared at each other for almost a second. Yimar Maar wasn’t sure what way he should take to effectively dispose of those two dangerous Devils since one was too fast and the other one had a ridiculous defense. Similarly, Laien and Yin, who ended up standing side by side, had trouble coming up with an effective plan to kill Yimar Maar. The two of them were somewhat unwilling to admit it, but they had gotten overconfident after killing powerful enemies by the hundreds in situations that were advantageous to them. While their sets of abilities indeed placed them far above experts up until a certain threshold of strength, taking on an extremely experienced supreme martial master of the fifth rank was in a different realm of difficulty.

If they still had all of their energy and if this battle was the last one they had to fight, if they had an unlimited amount of time to win it, Laien and Yin would have felt confident in tiring Yimar Maar out. After all, if their enemy couldn’t find a way to kill them or at least pressure them heavily, the advantage brought by their Phantasmal Essences was just too overwhelming. However, they were in no spot to enjoy those luxuries. Be it them or Yimar Maar, their two parties realized the same thing at roughly the same time. If they wanted to kill the other within the next minute and a half, maybe a little longer, then they would have to straight-out risk their lives to do so.

Needless to be said, Yimar Maar instantly abandoned such an idea. He wasn’t pressed for time since his elites were bound to overwhelm those northerners in due time. That First Prince of the Bolan Kingdom appeared to be going all-out to delay this process, but it wasn’t going to be enough. Just like he had judged a second ago, he had to last less than two minutes against those two Devils. By then, Casimir would have no choice but to conserve his strength and retreat. Thus, he smiled and opted to defend and focus on preserving his own life. Once the enemy ranks in this area crumbled, he would have some of his elites block Laien and Yin while he himself would rush to capture Arslan. With that in mind, for the time being he would play along with those two Devils and occupy their attention.

What neither he nor Laien and Yin expected, however, was that all of the sudden a ruckus on the right-wing part of the battlefield would attract their attention.

“!”

“!!!”

While Yimar Maar was thrilled by what he was seeing, Laien and Yin felt their hearts skip a beat out of nervousness. None of them had any idea how it happened, but Abdain had gotten past Julien and was charging towards Arslan like a huge bull! Julien was very apparently doing his best to disengage from the assault of Abdain’s elites, but he could only cut those men down one after another as they were willingly throwing their lives away just to prevent him from getting away. If using Lightning Steps could have helped, Julien would have done so, but if he did all that awaited him was death!

He was a martial master of the sixth rank, but he wasn’t like Yin. His Lightning steps still had the critical weakness of stalling his movements for a split-second after completing, so with so many men encircling him, he was powerless to attempt a chase. His only choice was to reduce the number of enemies by at least half and move only then, but by that time it would be far too late!

The only saving grace was that since it took all two hundred of Abdain’s strongest remaining ruby-golden-robed elites to suppress Julien, Reian and Julien’s elites were free to act. They had long since slaughtered the thousand mortal realm riders from earlier and they were giving everything they had to stop Abdain, but the man was too powerful. Out of all of them, only Reian could give Abdain anything more than a shallow skin-depth wound and Abdain was on guard against his attacks. At this rate, forget about the two minutes time-limit of the left-wing battlefield, this entire battle would end in the next twenty to thirty seconds, depending on how far Abdain pushed himself to go forward!

“We have to go!” the same thought crossed Laien’s and Yin’s minds. They weren’t confident about killing Yimar Maar on their own in the first place, so now that they would have to do it within fifteen seconds at most, they no longer saw it as a viable option. If they allowed Abdain to capture Arslan, they would have no choice but to… no, they didn’t even want to imagine which choices and which possible terrible situations would await them. Their friends and allies were taking a great risk to make this battle happen, so at the very least, they had to prevent the worst from happening!

Thanks to the two of them making their minds up without any hesitation, they were able to disappear in a flash of lightning before Yimar Maar could engage them again. This brought an annoyed frown to Yimar Maar’s face, but the man smiled soon afterwards and dashed towards Arslan on his own. “Follow me! Charge!” he yelled, using as much of his Qi to enhance his voice as he could. In consequence, his yell was heard throughout the majority of the Qi-filled left-wing battlefield and his subordinates, who until now had been focusing on killing off Casimir and Anna’s men, changed their tactics. They still used the weaker allies of theirs as shields, naturally, but hundreds of them shuffled themselves ahead and left the battle behind to the remainder of their companions.

This maneuver proved to be costly in terms of manpower, but with the living meat shields and considering that Casimir and Anna’s Royal Guards were under heavy pressure even before that, the core of their army suffered merely a few dozen casualties. That being said, over half of those deaths were attributed to Casimir and Anna, who had realized what was going on and started moving back on their own while slaughtering all the careless nearby ruby-golden-robed elites at the same time.

Just like that, with one unclear event happening at the right wing, the entire course of the battle was once again turned upside down.

“Damn it all!” Laien grit his teeth when he and Yin noticed that Yimar Maar and good three hundreds of his elites had broken past Casimir and Anna’s Royal Guards. If the two of them cooperated with Reian, they would be able to stop Abdain until Julien could come and save the day. However, if they merely focused on Abdain, then there was no way that the thirty or so members of the Black Sword Unit and the two White Guards in form of Sirius and Kasha would be able to stop Yimar Maar and the rest of them. They had experienced how strong Yimar Maar was first-hand and they knew that apart from Julien, Reian, and Casimir, no one else in their group would be able to face Yimar Maar one on one for more than a few seconds. At this rate, even with Casimir and Anna leaving their men to fend for themselves and chasing after Yimar Maar to slow his advance, Yimar Maar would be able to break through their defenses and capture Arslan!

“There’s only one way,” Laien and Yin realized pretty much simultaneously. If they wanted to have a chance to turn the scales of battle back in their favor, they would have to join the third line of defense. They were moving in front of Yimar Maar and those three hundred elites, so at least that was fortunate. Abdain was being slowed down by the efforts of Reian and Julien’s men, too, so they still had a little maneuvering room there. What they had to do was to stall Yimar Maar for about ten to fifteen seconds at the third line of defense and kill enough of his elites to allow Casimir and Anna some room to maneuver. Once Casimir took over the job of stopping Yimar Maar, they would have to switch to the right side and help in restraining Abdain for roughly twenty seconds, maybe longer.

And ironically speaking, those short-sounding spans of time seemed either way too short or way too long to the two of them. Just restraining Yimar Maar would take both of them fighting with their full strength, but they also had to kill the greater portion of Yimar Maar’s three hundred elites! Within a mere ten to fifteen seconds! It would have been easy if they had more time or an unlimited amount of Qi and spiritual energy, but they didn’t! To top it off, they still had to have enough strength to then face Abdain, so it wasn’t like they could deplete themselves to nothing and expect a good outcome.

“No choice but to do it.” The two of them stopped a few dozen meters before the ranks of the Black Sword Unit… and before the ranks of their old guards. Yimar Maar and the man’s elites were right on their heels, so their two sides were going to clash in but a second. Yet, the two of them felt as if the words they wanted to force out of their throats were thick as glue. There was only one ‘right’ course of action here, but the two of them were finding it very hard to request it of those people.

“Leave him to us!”

Yet, the surviving vice-captain of the Black Sword made the call on his own, causing Laien’s and Yin’s throats to clench painfully. The ‘him’ the vice-captain was speaking about was obviously referring to Yimar Maar, so how could the two of them not understand it? Be it the vice-captain or his remaining men, they had willingly signed their own death warrants in exchange for opening the path to victory.