One thing they all wondered whilst following the vamox back to his home was why the natives were even attacking this place all of a sudden. Years of leaving it uninhabited, and now they mount a rather high-value attack on the island, which they knew had two masters on it.

Frankly, it should be impossible for any island in the calm belt to keep an equal rank warrior or wizard on account of lacking resources. Almost all of them left as soon as possible without much trouble from the Stormwall, with many Mithril ranks also leaving. But some of the latter did stick around because of the treatment and power they enjoyed here, not to mention the relative safety as few stronger than themselves stayed about.

Which left just one obvious reason in the minds of the party. The natives here suddenly wanted them for whatever reason, but they didn’t know why.

Obviously, no one could know about Raccelline’s identity besides the master tier vamox… Which might mean it was their identity as a whole instead of her. Of course, nothing stopped it from being his fault as the leader of the island realised a dragon was part of the group and now wanted to capture Icy.

No matter what, the lesser poison pill in the form of joining the fight was preferable. The master tier would further ensure their safety after this battle, and they could quietly leave the calm belt without facing god-knows-what from the natives.

But there was no more time to focus on that stuff.

The vamox charged in first to draw the opposing master tier away, and the two were forced out of the strange bowl. If they stayed here, the casualties from careless interactions could kill either side’s subordinates.

And so, it became frighteningly clear that the fight of 47 vs 40 tipped the scales horribly. Maybe if there were 45 opponents, there’d be a trace of fear on their side… But the spells cast on the beasts at least raised their speed and awareness by 20%, and with relatively high levels, just those with a focus on speed became too fast to properly deal with.

Icy cycled between three offensive Intermediate true spells in this battle, these were Black Wind Blade, Glowing Lava Spear, and Lightning Arrow, in ascending order of power.

All three did exactly as their names suggested, and the first two, in fact, were just upgrades to spells he already knew. The ‘Black Wind’ being a mixture of dark and wind magic, and, when used as a blade, contains the cutting power of a gold tier’s claws but with an added effect. It seeped into a wound and left a small infection that caused endless pain until removed. Hellish to deal with in battle. Glowing Lava Spear was just a superheated Lava Spear… No surprise there.

And Lightning Arrow summoned a single arrow of compressed, yellow lightning. While not very penetrative, it had a similar homing effect as an arc of lightning and left the target spasming for quite a while on top of burning a sizable hole through their skin and muscle.

The Magic Primary title also added some extra damage to each attack too.

Mala’s max MP actually did exceed his by a fair degree, allowing her to cast twice as many spells as him before running out. And she generally just used area of effect spells which hit as many foes as possible.

And the rest just cut through their opponents with ease. Darak received protection from literally everyone on their side, including the beasts, as he healed without bias. It kept their group of seven well protected overall, but less could be said for the majority of beasts which fought up close and personal. This included Rebecca, Korridan, and Raccelline to some degree, but the former two could evade and block well enough to stay safe… And Raccelline just didn’t really take any damage anyway?

They were too late to stop a few beasts from swiping at her, but even with ability-enhanced claws slashing at her revealed skin, at most, the attacks left a white scratch mark on her or a few reddened lines which healed up instantly.

Never before had she been hit before like this, but naturally, her ridiculous defences left them amazed. This wasn’t some blunt object hitting her, but a fully empowered claw slashing across her arm!

The losses and damages racked up soon though.

Some beasts on their side simply took the combined attack of several opponents at once, dying before Darak could heal them. This happened a lot more often as the intelligent opponents realised that a healer gave their side an absolute advantage in attrition. Strike hard and fast became their goal, and like that, five beasts fell in exchange for fifteen of theirs.

Mala tried to block a sudden set of homing blue flares which erupted from a beast but was too unprepared. The direct hit was somewhat mitigated by a barrier placed earlier on, but a good half of her body went up in flames and charred black from the burn marks.

A potion stopped the bleeding and dealt with some more serious internal burns. But she had to endure the pain and continue casting, Darak eventually healed her, but the sensation of such burn scars remained after.

Icy took… quite a few blows. But with the soul armament protecting him, he, fortunately, avoided death. A single direct hit instantly shattered all the scales around his back legs and blew one off. Fortunately, his spirit allowed movement even without the limb, whereupon Darak healed him. In another case, he barely avoided a slim monkey’s fist by knocking himself backwards with the spirit. Even with heightened reactions, his speed fell short of the more well-rounded beasts from the opposition.

His Mind palace was also used to block most of the psychic innate abilities of quite a few beasts fighting them. With the weakening effect added in, he withstood more than a few hits, and they killed those far more dangerous foes early on.

But as the opposing side fell one after another, from 40 to 25, and then just 7… It was clear that their side, with 34 alive, would crush them. And so, they ran off. Abandoning their position immediately.

It finally ended the battle with everyone still extremely alert, and as they calmed, many collapsed from overexertion or low MP.

No one chased. Instead, the injured group quickly received some further emergency healing from Darak before moving back to the caves. Losing 13 beasts to kill 33 was extremely effective compared to the losses seen in normal bestial conflicts.

They were victorious, but damn, their opponents hit hard.

On the way back, everyone heard the clashes between both lords from all over the island. But from the fact that just some trees collapsed…

Neither of the two lords fought seriously. At their level, a few innate abilities could leave giant craters all over, or cut down hundreds of trees in a single swipe. Just as they reached one of the many caves on the southern side, the vomax also returned with some missing clumps of fur and mild claw marks all over. While bleeding slowly, not a single wound actually impaired its movement or senses.

“Numbers?” Taking the lead, it spoke in Beasten to its subordinates and led them towards the ravine once more.

“Seven offensive beasts, three defensive, and three more agility-focused. Of the seven, we lost Shoh as well… We killed thirty-three with the humans’ help.” A very simple report, and clearly one which pleased the lord. However, the death of the one named ‘Shoh’ clearly had an impact, Icy did not know which beast that could’ve been.

A child of this lord? Or perhaps a mate? Perhaps, although given the vamox’s caution, it was hard to believe they’d let their child fight, that is if he cared about any progeny.

As a master tier in excellent condition, he probably had decades of life left. Perhaps even a century or two. But it depended on the species in the end, some birthed hundreds of children and could afford to let them grow and die on their own. Other species nurtured and cared for each child which was rarely born.

And yet, dragons did both. All for this so-called ‘Will of a True Dragon’, which at this point he was questioning once more. He found the awakenings of his soul, and the seemingly endless source of power, it offered a far more real thing to believe in.

Once at the ravine, both groups separated. But before going, Icy asked, “The debt has been repaid. We will leave before those humans see us… They would cause some trouble.”

His statement was promptly ignored with the vamox and his remaining subordinates descending even further into the cave at the back of the ravine, as nothing further happened, he presumed it was fine now. One tiny mistake dragged them into this whole mess, almost killing them, and now they were six hours behind on their raft building.

Everyone ran back to the southern coast and immediately returned to their previous plans. The logs had been more than half-processed now. They just needed to be tied together, and then it could be stored in a sufficiently large dimensional storage for them to use.

By now, the reason a raft was needed might not seem clear as Icy knew Assisted Flight and had enough souls for everyone’s casts, not to mention that a raft of logs would never remain intact through the Stormwall. They never needed the raft for that, it existed solely for them to rest on and recover mana between bouts of flight and running across the ocean.

While they could run on the calm belt’s gentle waves, a real ocean tossed and turned too violently for such things. So the plan very simply focused on running where possible but using flight where necessary.

Simpler and easier than staying here for several more months for Icy and Mala to both utilise flight spells permanently.

Only Raccelline slept that night, with Mala and Icy helping with the creation of rope from various plant fibres and vines. It fell to Jaren and Korridan to tie everything together, a process which took far less time. All throughout the night, Mala and Icy both watched the battles up north, and worked to remove their traces from the beach.

The cottage and earthen foundation vanished, and elemental cleansing spells slowly helped normalise the surroundings until their traces vanished. Minute amounts of fire elements, soul power, and even divine power were left here from the months of training. Little could be done about the flakes of skin their bodies gave off, as they were still made of flesh and blood. Such biological things remained.

Sometime around 3 AM, the beasts finally retreated from the barrier, an uncountable number of them piled up against the wall of hazy blue light, and massive balls of yellow flame fired from within towards them. These did not set the trees alight but directly incinerated anything caught in their blast.

While destroying quite a portion of the jungle, as it avoided a true fire, the damage was minimal at most. Such basic trees regrow in mere weeks.

At 5 AM, the raft was nearly completed. Just some additional ropes were required to ensure the whole thing stayed stable. Icy used his breath as glue between the logs, further reinforcing the structure. But they couldn’t actually complete the build now, because Mala and Icy very clearly saw a small group of three Gold ranks beginning a tour around the shore.

At such speeds, it would barely take ten minutes for both groups to collide, and while they had an absolute advantage… All it took was a single alert for everything to be ruined.

They took a few moments to discuss what they’d do, and in the end, decided on incapacitating but not killing the opponents.

With Korridan, Rebecca, and Jaren providing pressure, Icy and Mala struck them over and over again with psychic spells until all three fell unconscious. One of the three was an archer and almost released some sort of signal arrow, but realising that soon enough, Icy took the fastest option of ramming the archer. At the same time, a cast of Psychic Warbow shot him, knocking him out instantly.

Fortunate that these humans all trained their minds to a degree, but no one was willing to wait. A new group would investigate soon enough.

Mala and Icy could only watch as those walking around the shore increased. A few only scouted the area around their camp, but more and more came south, and as time passed, it was clear that those up north had grown concerned…

5:30 AM, they finished the raft with ten incapacitated humans nearby. If it had taken any longer, or a large scouting party began moving towards them at any point, the group were ready to run to a far-off island further south and finish it there. But they managed to finish it now.

Too exhausted and tense to say a word, everyone ran off the island’s shore once more and continued until it disappeared from view over the horizon.

Icy removed the simple raft from the ring on a chain around his neck, and they all breathed heavily for a while. As they were leaving, the two spellcasters noted how two groups of thirty prepared on either side of the camp to circle the coast and meet at the southern shore. It didn’t stop something from running into or away from the island, but for trapping and cornering, it still worked pretty well.

In retrospect, it was a stupid decision to stay and finish the raft on island 357. And because of their battles, some elemental residue definitely remained, but it was far too late to care about that. Was it the right choice to not outright kill those native warriors?

Tough to say. Icy wouldn’t have rejected the corpses, that was certain, but with a brand new continent on the horizon, it could wait for now.

Out in the calm belt, floating freely, they slept for several hours on the raft.

Maybe they should have investigated the place more and visited more islands, but realistically, that was only going to end poorly. They got off lucky, all things considered, and now they’d be able to have a long, relaxing stay in a fancier elven city.

Just a hop, skip, and several thousand miles away…