A sense of foreboding spread through Avan as he still fended off a sword strike from his opponent as if in slow motion, but watched the clash of these forces with widened eyes. He knew that he had to do something right now. But what?

He had to get the other three out of here, because it was becoming increasingly clear what would happen here sooner or later. But how?

A jump to the side just saved Avan from a sword stroke that would have sliced deep into his left arm - and in return he was grazed by the mage with a fist-sized fireball on the other shoulder that had actually been meant for Dani.

It hissed as the already battered robe was hit at the spot and the skin underneath painfully blistered thanks to the heat, but was otherwise fortunately unharmed. "Damn..." Avan muttered through clenched teeth, now also more than happy that his pain tolerance had been further reduced by his skill. On Earth itself, Avan had no recollection of ever having been really badly burned, so even this brief contact with a fireball was enough for him for the time being, and he didn't want to imagine what such a severe burn without pain relief must feel like.

The swordsman himself was also surprised by the fireball that passed right by his face when he had wanted to chase after Avan. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Avan rolled forward over his healthy shoulder and struck the lion man in his crotch with full force.

Judging by the scream and the pressure, Avan had definitely hit something serious and the other fighting men also flinched at the brief glance they threw across.

Seizing the opportunity once again, Avan focused on the node where his Celestial mana had disappeared and noticed that the miasma had diminished marginally and lost some of its edge. The cloud of blood-red and midnight-black mana had regained some ground, but at that moment was again overcome by corruption.

He knew, especially from the magical vibrations that were being emitted more and more strongly by the impact, that disaster was not far away.

A magical explosion suddenly shook the fighters out of nowhere, and it was only when the golden-silver light subsided that Avan was seen standing in the middle, looking apologetically at his teammates. With a single strike, he had expelled half his available mana and launched a wave of force with himself as the center to at least briefly interrupt the fighting.

He took advantage of the confusion and the time it took for the opponents to get up to let his gaze wander from Jen, to Patris, and then to Dani. "I just can't think of anything better..." Was all they heard as they were abruptly seized by a massive invisible force and hurled in the direction they had come from before.

"Sorry guys..." Avan muttered to himself, his concentration on the gravity-defying property in his domain that just enveloped the three flying people, making it easy to propel them out of the surrounding danger zone.

A few seconds later and his teammates were almost a full kilometer away, so fast and so much mana had been used by Avan to hurl them away. Beads of sweat danced on his forehead as he cushioned their impact, and only then turned his attention back to his opponents, who were now stomping toward him again, eager to attack.

Now, finally, even without spectators, the entire mana in a radius of almost 10 meters around Avan ignited in a golden-silver glow and condensed more and more. He had to act quickly to somehow get out of the whole thing in one piece. What the others didn't know - his celestial mana made his own survival the most likely, which is why he had to get the three of them out of here first. Through his experience and contact with the corruption in Haipu, he knew that celestial mana worked against the miasma and could be successful with enough pressure.

Before the accumulated celestial mana in dense mist form could also be sucked in again by the forming maelstrom and battle of the other mana signatures, he killed the four attackers with a short mental gesture and beads of sweat flowing down his body.

Everywhere the heads of the beastmen fell to the ground, just a small silver dissolving thread as proof of what had just happened to them.

Already, the corruption and the fight on the hill above was tearing at Avan's accumulated mana. But instead of fighting it, Avan concentrated even more and more mana, sending it all up in wave after wave straight to the miasma sphere.

He built everything on somehow overwhelming the embattled mana signatures, and most importantly, cleansing the corruption with a single blow of his accumulated celestial mana. At first it seemed as if the two attacked mana signatures were now also fighting Avan's mana, but suddenly they flowed around the golden silver mana and attacked only the miasma again, as if there was an intelligent consciousness of its own behind it and understood what was happening.

Avan's mana broke in great waves on the corruption and especially on the writhing orb, instantly snatching it from the lion man's hand, only to land on the ground with an eerie screech.

Avan had to cover his ears as the banshee-like screech whizzed overhead. The lion man himself had been hit at close range and his face was bleeding from every orifice as he himself crashed to the ground, seemingly unconscious.

While the screeching only grew stronger with each wave of Celestial Mana that hit the sphere, Avan also took a staggering step backwards from the force and pressure that was in the air and trying to force him to his knees.

The blood red and midnight black mana immediately seized the opportunity to reclaim the already corrupted piece of itself and immediately attacked the miasma sphere with concentrated power.

And suddenly an implosion tore the hill apart. Avan was just able to gather several layers of celestial mana around him to form a cocoon, while in the fraction of a second he could see a hateful grimace in a purple haze inside the implosion that was rapidly being torn apart by bloody lines and black claws in a screech.

Then he crashed with full force into the earth realm, tearing all crystal formations and mana crystals with him, until he came to a stop with hundreds of broken bones in a deep trench and covered with crystal residues.

The last thing he could see shimmering out of the corner of his eye and buried under thousands of crystals of all colors and sizes - blood-red and midnight-black strands racing directly at him and sinking into his chest with a pain that was not of this world.