“Fire!!”

Another round of arrows flew in through the door aimed at Din. Din knelt to the ground and raised his shield. This time, he was able to block them without getting hit.

He had one hand on the ground as he caught his breath.

Right now, both Din and the scientist had the eyes of a Spirit even though neither one of them had them before.

The scientist adjusted his glasses and then faced his guards, “Listen here, soldiers. Leave this boy to me. With all the experiments we’ve gone through, I wish to be able to test the result. For the other two over there, I do not care so much.”

A long vine steadily grew out of the scientist’s hand until it was long enough to be used as a whip. Aside from the end of the vine near his hand, the vine was filled with thorns.

With a loud crack, he flicked his whip towards Din, who was able to block the attack with his shield. But as Din was already on his knees, he wasn’t given the chance to stand back up.

“Now, show me your powers, demon! I want to test my powers against a real demon!” the scientist screamed out.

Even with the constant attack of the whips, Din slowly stood up, blocking each and every attack.

Then suddenly, the scientist changed the direction of his attack and managed to hit Din’s arm from the side. The whip had curved around the shield towards Din’s arm.

Even though Din had armor on his armor, the whip managed to rip through it and a scratch was visible where the tear was.

The scientist changed his aim after every hit, some hit Din’s arms while others hit his feet. Din let out a cry after each hit, but still stood his ground with the shield in front of him.

I was beginning to wonder why he wasn’t shifting the position of his shield to match the attack, but then I saw that the moment he moved his shield, the scientist would immediately attack the new opening by pulling his whip back.

There was grace in the way the scientist moved to control his weapons. First with the flail and now with the whip, he would spin his body to add momentum to the attack, making a hit even more powerful.

The only thing Din had going for him was how weak the whip was compared to the flail in terms of pure damage. His shield was already broken at this point, but still managed to take hits from the whip.

“You managed to catch me off guard before, but this time, I’m prepared to any kind of trickery. I’ll—”

As the scientist was mocking Din, an object suddenly flew past Din and towards the scientist. The scientist noticed this object and moved his whip to intercept it, but to his demise, the object was a spinning blade and it cut straight through the vine whip.

He shielded himself with his hands. The blade struck him right on his right forearm.

“Ahhh—! Ahh!”

With just that one cut, the scientist dropped to the floor and screamed for his life. Din wanted to move forward, but some of the guards had already entered the room and were rushing towards the scientist.

“Ah! Y-you—!”

He looked around for the source of the throwing blade. It was Tal. Rather than using his throwing daggers, Tal had thrown his normal daggers with a spin to cut through the vine if the vine ever got in its way.

Tal still held one normal dagger on his right hand and a throwing dagger on his left. It seemed like he had planned on throwing more, but there were guards with shield in front of the scientist now and he had no choice but to save his daggers.

The guards helped the scientist on his feet and then moved him closer towards the other scientists in the far corner of the room.

The scientist was breathing hard, his eyes had returned to normal. So there were others like Din as well.

He was applying pressure towards the cut. He had already pulled the dagger out of his forearm and was instructing a guard to cover it with a piece of cloth.

“Tal, what do we do?” Cyen whispered. She was kneeling on the ground besides Tal, only the black metallic rod in her hand.

There was no answer from Tal. He was looking around frantically for any way they could make it out of this situation alive.

In this room, there were bookshelves on most corners, weird contraptions I had never seen before, and pipes running through the room. Lewis was still where he had been hit and there seemed to be no way out aside from the door in the front, where many other guards were waiting.

If Lewis was still alive, him and Din might’ve been able to make their way through the guards near the door. Din was too tired to be able to be in the frontline all alone.

Tal was still looking around for a way out when all of our attention was drawn towards the door.

There were sounds of screaming and swords clashing. The guards that were in the doorway were scrambling past each other to get in the room.

Just what was out there?

My thoughts were answered almost immediately when I heard familiar voices.

“We’re almost through! There’s only a few guards left! Push forward!”

It was Eliana’s voice!

I could see the rush of hope appear on Tal’s and Cyen’s faces as they recognized the voice. Meanwhile Din’s gaze remained towards the enemy.

The room now contained about ten guards standing between the scientists and Din.

The guards knew it was over, some of them even dropped their weapons by the time our allies came in through the door.

Alby was the first ally to enter into the room. After examining the situation, he immediately rushed next to Din and faced the guards.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Din didn’t reply. His focus was still towards the scientist.

Then I noticed, rather than looking afraid, the scientist was giving instructions to the guards around him. I moved closer to listen to his orders.

“Get me close to that demon boy. If all goes well, we can make it out of here alive and with all of our research.”

I checked his hands. His forearm had already been wrapped around with a cloth and in his hand was an unusual looking dagger. It had a golden handle and a glass sphere at the very end of the handle.

“Let’s see what your power is.”

He slowly raised his dagger.