Captain Dave: “If something perilous or unpredictable occurs, stop your thinking and transfer all your powers to me, Eliza, Mecker, Sandra, Yasmine, Patrick and San Rong. We’ll handle it from there.”

-

And that is exactly what these guys and girls did! They weren’t about to contend against that! Nobody wanted to compete with their captain’s suggestion at this point in time!

Many of the three thousand seven hundred members laughed cockily at the falling mountain of soil. Although they knew their was no chance they could take it head on, as it would completely obliterate them, their Captain and the other six who each represented the 6 coalitions would have NO problems stopping it! So long as they strategically gather their powers together and properly offer support, just as planned. Those who grew fearful were reassured by their cocky team members and, along with them, split into 5 groups of five hundred and forty coalition mercenaries each.

-

Coalition member # 67: “Hahah! W-Well now, ain’t THAT a big ball o’ dirt!”

Coalition member #68: “Quiet, gnome. It’s barely one - sixth the size of this forest. There’s nothing to fear from such a barbaric and unrestrained attack. All we have to do is trust Captain.”

Coalition member #69: “You make it sound a lot simpler than it actually is! If not for the fact tat Captain claims he can handle one thousand of us supporting him on his own, then what on earth could we do to even resist getting squashed?! That dirt ball is like a meteor to us! A giant meteor that doesn’t care if the forest is destroyed!”

Coalition member #70: “No. A meteor would come crashing at us from very high speeds, it would be unrelenting as its fiery coating, due to breaking through our planet’s atmosphere, absolutely turns everything here into ash. In fact, even if we somehow escaped getting crushed by its descent; we’d most certainly die due to the big space rock’s shock wave. There isn’t a sound opportunity to survive with such a powerful thing headed our way. This is so much better by comparison. Trading this giant ball of slow – falling dirt for a meteor would be disastrous for our team.”

Coalition member #71: “You talk like this isn’t already a disaster in its own right. Haah. We’re going to get caught now aren’t we?”

Coalition member #72: “This isn’t a problem everyone. Captain Dave is strong. Trust me. The man already has Grade B super strength – imagine adding strength enhancement to him from one thousand Team 6 physical buffers. How scary would a punch from such a person be?”

Coalition member #73: “I guess we’re about to find out. 1000 of you guys cover the captain! the rest of us follow the directions we were given prior to entering the forest! This ball of dirt is NOTHING FOR US!!”

-

Without another word of dissenting doubt, the team split into their assigned posts. Eliza, Sandra and Patrick began receiving magical capacity buffs from five hundred and forty coalition members each. Eliza prepared a devastatingly bright five spell chant, while Sandra and Patrick combined their efforts together to concentrate on calling forth a massive gravity beast from another dimension to destroy that sphere. Such a thing costs all of their mana to perform. While they were doing this, Mecker, Yasmine and San Rong gained physical buffs. Each of them clicked a hidden button on their bracelets, known by it’s crude moniker as ‘Flight-bringing Bracelet’, causing them to levitate in mid air! For 10 minutes only, before the bracelet shatters from overuse, they can fly at high altitudes and approach the falling dirt sphere(or at least they assume it’s a sphere, since they can’t see the flattened upper section) without worry! Each one of the three shoot their bodies upwards – fully attempting to crash at an edge in a triangle formation. Finally, Captain Dave received a weird double boost. He specifically wanted five hundred to focus their spells on boosting his physical strength, and the other five hundred to boost his mana pool. Why? Wouldn’t it be wiser to charge all one thousand spells up as one or the other, and then channel that collective energy into one, single, massive attack?

…

Well, sure, maybe. The important thing however, is what Captain Dave did next.

He channeled every ounce of his mana into casting physical buff after physical buff!

One one hand, it was fully possible to increase one’s own mana pool through magic, instead of another persons, but all these spell effects were only temporary buffs. To decrease you mana pool, only to increase it was stupid. By receiving the increased magic pool, and by default a larger magic container, he managed to successfully cast more physical buffs on himself than his teammates ever could! In truth, the 500 he chose for magic buffs were all fairly rough at casting the physical buff, and might waste unnecessary mana or not properly even cast the spell. Furthermore, these spells required a constant chanting for over thirteen seconds before activation! That means a a moderate chance of failure could arise due to screw ups, and now was NOT the time for screw ups. He knew he couldn’t blame them, since not everyone can perfectly cast EVERY spell out there, and both spells focused on completely different transmutational skills – with one focusing on the human body while the other completely targets the ethereal mana contained all around the target, and that is connected to the target’s soul. This was simply the best way to maximize the powers of everyone in his team.

*BOOM!*

*SHUDDER*

*CRRRAACKK!*

His stomp crushed the ground below, forming a crater. Pressure rolled off from his tense muscles, as veins protruded with such a thickness that they each appeared to threaten breaking Dave’s skin.

His knees bent low, while his arms swung back. And, while resembling the take-offs of Yasmine, Mecker and San Rong, he flew!

Yes. Captain Dave shot straight up into the darkened sky, just like the other three before him. The only difference is, his ascent was way too fast! Within a time span of two seconds, he was already caught up with the rest that started flying 10 seconds before him! That was of course, due to him needing to cast a bunch of buffs on himself. What was strangest of all, was how they all needed to utilize a levitation bracelet, or by its moniker, the flight-bringing bracelet, in order to reach the descending doom – bringer of a dirt mountain…

But he merely had to jump! Below them, the two powerful spells were coming to completion. Everyone could see a swirling and highly unstable gate beginning to take form – stabilizing with each second of chanting by its two casters. A deep, malicious roar sounded its way through the dimensional hole. With that roar, came the completion of Eliza’s grand fire spell, ‘Overpowered Overburn’. A small flicker appeared above her, reshaping the surrounding air with its heat. That flicker burned brighter, larger and deadlier until it loomed overhead like an ocean of flame. At last, the fire curled in on itself and transformed into an equally large sphere! It’s a good thing Mr. Abrams coated the forest’s trees around these two giant elemental monoliths or else mother nature herself would probably kill him for this!

But right before anyone in the mercenary coalition’s side had the opportunity to try and reach that dirt half-sphere… they each froze. The pressure being exerted by Mecker, Yasmine and San Rong vanished. Their bracelets shattered and scattered in the autumn - night breeze and even their Captain, Dave, lost his momentum just as he could touch the bottom – surface of his target. They all fell without a miracle or hidden trump card keeping them afloat. And as they fell, the triad of magicians Eliza Sandra and Patrick noticed all of their magic undergo strange changes.

First: Eliza’s Fire spell disappeared as it was flying higher behind the Captain and company. It wasn’t that she was trying to kill them, but her idea was to burn away the rest of their target after her three physically empowered team members burrowed straight through and broke it into smaller chunks. Too bad the attack would have immediately burned them now that they were crashing back down. Second, it reappeared in beneath the gate that, although slowly, was just about to finish stabilizing!

*BOOM!*

The gate destabilized and exploded along with the flame attack. Normally, such a gate requiring two people’s efforts would never lose out to a single user’s attack when all three had roughly similar mana pools, with Eliza having slightly more herself…but her attack struck before it could finish stabilizing! This, in turn, caused the two to receive a magical backlash and their gate to destabilize. It eventually imploded, cutting complete connection with the gravity beast who was preparing to charge its way through.

The final five seconds Team 6 spent, exhausted and out of breath, was fearfully watching on as their two teammates and captain fell on top of them. Following close by as if in deathly pursuit, was the same spherical, doom-bringing mountain which darkened the starry, moonlit sky.

And then the mountain crashed – shaking the entire North - Western forest once more.

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