Despite the passage to the Spirit Realm having been opened, nothing visibly changed at first. The boundary had been broken in an imperfect way, so the initial result of the ritual was dozens of gashes in space, but all of them were too small to be seen with the naked eye so it looked like nothing happened.

The magic had been designed to account for that, though. The ritual entered its second phase, with the magic spinning into an invisible whirlwind that began to widen and fuse those gashes in space, slowly creating a visible opening. Said opening appeared close to the ritual stake the barrier woman had planted, and she moved to stand in front of it.

Elise was only half-paying attention on that, though. Her main focus was actually on the other enemies who had teleported in, since she had only recognized two of them. Besides those two, there were two humans, one elf, one wolf beastkin and 21 moving metal statues made in the likeness of monsters, the smallest one being a dog-sized cricket creature while the largest was a dire mammoth.

Those statues were being controlled by one of the humans, a young woman wearing a slightly formal ensemble of long-sleeved gray shirt plus black pants and shoes. The fact that she was controlling them was made obvious by the shining golden threads of light that emerged from her back and connected to each of the statues.

The other human was a man dressed similarly, but he looked to be in his thirties instead. He also didn’t have any obvious signs of whatever his combat skills were (though Elise didn’t doubt that he had them), but from his position in the center of the group and the way the others occasionally glanced at him Elise deduced that he was their leader.

‘Probably the branch manager, then.’ She thought.

For the remaining two, Elise was able to use her ability to obtain some information, though it was mostly superfluous considering their appearances made their skillsets fairly obvious. The first one was the male wolfkin, who looked similar to the other beastkin of that species that they had seen so far, except he was particularly large and strong-looking. What Elise’s ability said about him was:

‘Wolf Lord. Among wolfkin tribes the strongest members are often put into positions of authority, meaning that their overall leaders are usually the absolute strongest individuals in the tribe, and their combat prowess is correspondingly high.’

‘And this one should be the leader of the Oka tribe. The original traitors. And he is still working with them despite the burning of the forest.’ She thought.

Finally there was the elf, who fit into the same category of ‘large, muscular man’, but he was even bigger, to the point where he towered over everyone else in the area. He wore simple clothing and held a spear that was so large and broad it seemed more like a sharpened club. His description was:

‘Elven Giant. It happens very rarely across dozens of generations and thousands of elf societies, but sometimes an elf will be born that despite starting out the same as any other elf baby, will eventually grow larger than almost any normal elf while also lacking the usual physical issues that would come from such abnormal size. The origin of this phenomenon is unknown, given that it has nothing to do with an individual’s genes, but regardless those elves are also blessed with physical strength and resilience commensurate to their size.’

‘Hmm, sister Miona never mentioned anything like that. Considering how my ability works, it’s quite possible this is the result of some sort of magic or technique instead of being a natural phenomenon. Regardless, this guy looks to be a tough opponent.’ Elise concluded.

That was all of them. And while Elise was thinking about that, the ritual had reached the point where the opening to the spirit realm was as large as a window. Their enemies couldn’t go in yet, however, because the instability was too bad due to the ritual method used, the area of the passage looking like some kind of whirlwind. They would need to wait until the opening reached its maximum size for it to become stable enough that using it wouldn’t be more likely to just kill them.

So she decided to make use of that time by giving an order to Nalia.

‘Attack all of them. Test their defenses.’

The fairy complied without missing a beat. The wall of fire in front of them would hinder most attacks, so she began casting a new major spell. That seemed to act as a trigger for their allies, so the wolves split apart and moved to the sides in order to try and circumvent the wall of fire, Charlotte also joining in their efforts.

But their enemies had other tricks. The steel beasts (as Elise began calling them in her head) also spread around and clashed against the wolfkin, and while it looked like none of the latter got injured in that first clash, their enemies were also completely untouched. The reason wasn’t because they were just that tough, but because any hits to them were stopped by shimmering barriers that manifested right before impact. Very familiar barriers.

‘I see. So our barrier woman is cooperating with the manipulator on those guys.’ Elise noted.

It made sense, though the girl also knew that there had to be downsides to that sort of cooperation, since having the magic of two different people acting on the same objects would inevitably result in conflict between them. Unless they were somehow able to perfectly synchronize their magic, which she really doubted because if that was the case then why wouldn’t they work together all the time?

Meanwhile, Nalia’s spell formed. She was grabbing earth and stones from all over the area and fusing them together into a spherical mass of ever-increasing density, which hovered in front of her. Then the spell reached its critical point where making it any more dense would make Nalia unable to control her attack precisely.

“Everyone get back! I’m attacking!” She shouted to the wolves after a quick voice amplification spell.

Their allied wolfkin were already familiar with her power, so none of them hesitated to back away from the steel monsters and give her a clear shot. The fairy nodded and completed her attack by cracking the sphere into pieces via magical flows inserted beforehand and then shot the dozens of shards of super-dense rock with a calculated burst of magical impact.

They went precisely where she wanted, aiming at every one of the enemies including the steel beasts. Each of them was sharp, fast and heavy enough to go through trees like they were mist, but none of them ended up having any effect at all.

The barriers protecting the steel beasts were enough to nullify the impact, while the barrier user herself seemed to treat the rock shards like light rain. The manipulator had one of her beasts, a worm-like thing, wrap around her for protection. The giant elf put an arm in front of his face to protect his eyes but was otherwise unaffected. Not even his clothes showed a single scratch, meaning that he definitely had some sort of external aura protection, rather than just being super tough.

The wolf lord blocked with both arms and resisted the attacks just as well, though his own clothes got some small tears in them. The last two acted in similar ways, with the fire speaker dropping her fire wall to focus her power into an astonishingly hot shield of fire that turned the stones into dust (along with an arrow shot by Hiroka) while the leader put one hand in front and created a barrier of blue light that easily blocked them.

‘Not a spell. Seems like some sort of energy manifestation and shaping. It’s not much but still better than what we knew before.’ Elise noted, considering the attack as a success.

Fire girl put up her flame wall again as soon as it was over, while Elise suddenly remembered there was a reliable source of information she hadn’t considered. So the girl quickly walked over to Amara and asked:

“We know the barrier and fire women. Do you have any information about the others?”

The owl woman replied without taking her eyes off the situation “The wolf is Risaro. Chief of the Oka tribe of wolves. Very strong and fast with powerful regeneration as well. The strings woman is an Inishie that appeared in the forest before, her abilities are obvious but she’s usually able to control her puppets better than this, so the barrier magic must be interfering with it.”

‘That makes sense.’ Elise thought inwardly.

“No idea about the remaining two, since this is the first time they appear here. The human seems to be their boss, but…” Amara continued.

“The giant elf should be an elite specifically brought in for this operation, then.” Elise said.

Whatever Amara may have wanted to reply to that was unknown, as the conversation was interrupted by the sight of the opening reaching the size of a door and stopping there for a moment before the chaotic whirlwind of space within it started quickly calming down.

And as if that was a sign, Iornos attacked.

He had stealthily left the area and flown around to come towards their enemies from the back, and seeing the brief moment where their enemies attention was focused on the gate, he launched himself in an explosive acceleration that was far beyond what Nalia could do using her wind wing magic. It almost felt like teleportation as he appeared, thrusting a sharp dagger in front to stab the back of the enemy leader.

The timing of his attack had been phenomenal, and his target had also been properly considered, since he knew that defeating the boss would raise their chances of winning enormously, and he had seen the enemy creating a shield to protect himself, meaning he shouldn’t be excessively resilient and neither should he have automatic protections, so a surprise attack could work.

Yet sometimes, even the most well-thought out plans failed.

The leader twisted around in an instant, manifesting his energy in the shape of a greatsword-sized claw and swinging it at the same time, intercepting Iornos’ attack right before it could make contact with his back and hitting the birdman with such force he was launched away and smacked into a tree, creating a large dent and bouncing off with enough force to disappear in the foliage beyond.

‘Is his perception good enough that he managed to notice Iornos before it was too late? Or are his reactions just that fast?’ Elise began to analyze. The fact that their ally could very well be dead did nothing beyond making the calmness of her mind grow even colder and sharper ‘His claw seemed sharp, but it batted Iornos away rather than cutting through him. Was he unable to finish the claw properly in time? Or did Iornos do some wind manipulation at the very end to avoid being cut clean through?’

A corner of Elise’s mind felt glad at the possibility that the birdkin had managed to avoid death, but most of it was still deep in calculations and theories, seeking victory as her first priority.

Still, the failure of Iornos’ surprise attack meant that there wasn’t any way they could prevent the Inishie from entering the Spirit Realm. The passage finally stabilized and the group rushed towards it (save the barrier woman, who was already right beside it) as the flame user let her fire wall disappear but began to launch a barrage of fireballs to prevent the alliance group from approaching, moving forward at the same time.

None of them were slow (the manipulator had to be carried by her worm to keep up with the others, though) and the fastest member in Elise’s side was out of commission, so they were unable to prevent the invader group from reaching the passage. The wolf rushed through it first, followed by the enemy leader and then the fire speaker elf.

The other three remained outside, with the manipulator moving to stand a few steps away to the right of the portal, the giant elf moving to take point and the barrier woman casting a spell that made the barrier around herself turn fully visible and extend to completely cover the portal.

The enemy’s idea was clear. They had left this trio behind to keep anyone from coming after them, and said trio had a combination of strength, toughness and numbers that made them difficult to beat at all, let alone quickly.

That was clearly shown by the fact that their wolfkin allies (and Charlotte) were still embroiled in battle against the steel beasts, at a complete standstill. Two of them decided to break off and attack the giant instead, one of them being their leader Fevora. They came at him from two different directions at awkward angles and attacked in staggered timing, perfectly showing off the strength of the wolves cooperative hunting skills.

And the enemy made an eloquent reply by showing strength befitting of an elite. Fevora’s strike was the first to arrive, the wolf-man rushing from slightly behind and to the right of the opponent, forcing him to twist around and swing the spear in his right hand to defend, with the wolf managing to dive under the swing at the last moment.

That opened a gap for the other wolf to come from the left side, stabbing with his lance. The elf responded by hitting the lance’s side with a devastating backhand that ripped the weapon from the wolf’s hands and knocked it away, also causing the wielder to briefly stumble. That was still within expectations, though, and the real main strike came almost immediately afterwards, with Fevora suddenly speeding up and slashing with his claw gauntlets, aiming directly at a major artery in the elf’s leg, a killing blow.

It didn’t reach. The elf crouched faster than one would believe given his size while letting go of his spear and punched with his right hand. The elf’s larger reach meant that his strike would hit before the claws did, so Fevora aborted the attack and dodged to the side but didn’t quite manage to fully avoid it, taking a glancing hit that turned his dodge into a painful tumble to the ground.

He was left vulnerable to a follow up attack, so his fellow wolf rushed forward in a desperate bare-handed attack to distract the enemy, which the elf countered with a dreadfully quick elbow strike, the wolf just barely managing to bring his arms in front for protection and screaming as they broke with a sickening noise. The wounded wolf fell to the ground but kept his wits enough to roll away out of strike range.

His efforts bought Fevora enough time to shake away his dizziness and jump to his feet, running around the elf to reach his companion and helping him to his feet as the enemy calmly picked the spear back up.

Seeing all of that, Elise analyzed:

‘He’s about as strong as Nina is right now, if not even stronger. He’s definitely more skilled and experienced in combat. And his defenses should also be at a high level.’ Despite the overall situation, the girl found herself smiling inwardly ‘I could not not have asked for a better opponent to help her grow.’

‘Nina, that guy is yours.’ She spoke to her partner.

‘Alright.’ Came the reply. The rabbit girl was eager to test herself against a truly strong foe.

Still, Elise hadn’t lost sight of the bigger picture. The real issue that they needed to solve wasn’t actually the elf, but the barrier woman. As such, Elise made a bold decision.

‘Nalia. You need to go find something.’ She told the fairy.

Nalia was stunned to hear that, but Elise explained what she wanted and Nalia had to admit that her logic made sense. Plus, since the Inishie had committed the terrible crime of setting large portions of the forest on fire, the rest of the traitor forces wouldn’t remain on their side, so the group was no longer surrounded by enemies.

‘Okay.’ She replied.

Elise nodded and said “Give me control of the armor.” speaking out loud for the benefit of their allies nearby.

Nalia understood what she meant without any additional instructions. The fairy quickly manipulated her magic to access the spells she had on Nina’s black armor. She pulled on the thread and manifested a line of magical energy that appeared only briefly before she connected it with her contractor.

They were still trying to hide Nina’s existence, so having the armor continue fighting as normal while the fairy was gone would require an explanation. Elise couldn’t do magic, but she could use her own energy to power Nalia’s spells. She only needed to keep up the sound blocking and illusion spells, so it wasn’t much of a drain, and anyone around who was sensitive to magic would be able to tell Elise was now connected to the armor, just not what exact spells she was manipulating.

Following that the fairy flew off. The allies nearby didn’t ask what she was doing, since it was clear that the mercenary duo had their own plans and they had shown themselves to be quite competent. Elise also told Nina to go forth and took a look around to see what the allies not currently locked in combat were doing.

Himoko and Nerisha were facing each other with their hands clasped together and eyes closed as they muttered incantations, obviously preparing some sort of big magic, Takato was constantly checking and rechecking his bag of poisons and Amara seemed to be just standing there, but she gave off a feeling of pure, focused will that made Elise think of her older sisters.

‘Looks like I can rely on her to do some of the work.’ The girl decided.

Also, Hiroka had disappeared at some point, but Elise had seen arrows flying off from nearby trees once or twice, so she concluded that the fox woman was playing to her stealth specialty and waiting for the right moment to strike.

“Anything I can help with?” She asked Amara while still keeping her focus on Nina.

“I’m planning on taking out the weakest link, but I need to get close enough.” Was the reply.

“I’ll help out a bit, then.” Elise said, before instructing Nina to try and bring the fight away from the manipulator (who was the obvious weakest link).

The rabbit girl was already locked in combat, so her only answer was a quick ‘Okay.’

She had opened hostilities by running straight at the elf and throwing a punch. The enemy countered by smashing down with his spear, which clashed with the fist. He seemed to have misjudged the strength of Nina’s blow, though, as his spear was deflected and he froze for a moment in surprise, which she took advantage of by taking a step forward and throwing another punch, this time with her left hand.

The elf quickly rallied, though. He took a step back, buying himself a bit of time as Nina had to move further to reach him as well as putting his left arm in front of his body, allowing him to use his left hand to bat her approaching fist aside. Yet Nina wouldn’t be deterred so easily, firmly planting her feet on the ground and forcing the punch back on course, turning her straight into a hook. He blocked that with his arm and counter-attacked by bringing his spear back and slamming down towards the armor.

Nina refused to back down. She forced herself forward instead, trying to avoid the spear’s range by going too close and also trying to set herself up for an effective attack. The elf denied her the chance by punching with his left hand, which pushed Nina away to the side even though she blocked it. Going to the side meant she wasn’t on the path of the slam, but the enemy forcefully stopped his downward strike and followed up with a sweep in her direction.

Nina blocked with both arms and grabbed onto the spear for just long enough to force it into stabbing the ground, giving herself time to close the gap again, but the elf let go of his spear and the two exchanged remarkably similar blows, blocking with their left and striking with their right. Nina came off the worst in that exchange, only partially blocking the hit and having to dodge a follow-up knee strike. She made the most of it by retreating away from the steel monster manipulator, succeeding in luring the opponent away like she’d been asked to.

Of course, that meant she had to deal with the elf pressing his advantage, completely foregoing his spear to come at her with a succession of punches and kicks that were fierce enough that it was easy for her to continue pulling her opponent away by retreating, since she didn’t have to pretend to be feeling pressured.

That couldn’t go on for too long, though, so she took advantage of his attempt at a side kick by circling around him 90 degrees before counter-attacking with a fearless rush, taking a hit to the side from a knee strike but forcing herself forward anyway and punching his stomach, managing to score her first real blow.

That clearly had an effect, but it was far from disabling the elf, who slammed her with a hammer blow from the side that Nina felt even through her block, while her return blow was pushed aside and she only barely managed to duck under an elbow blow to the head that would have at least given her a concussion, if not worse.

She took the chance to punch his leg, then blocked a kick with both hands and used its force to get herself back upright and threw herself at the opponent, hitting him with another punch but getting herself hit in response.

At that point, Elise noticed that her allies were starting to act.

The first one was Takato, who threw a poison jar of some sort (using magic to make it fly further) at an empty space in front of the manipulator, which exploded into a cloud of noxious smoke that didn’t go anywhere near her, but blocked her sight enough for a follow-up arrow by Hiroka to startle and disorient their enemy.

Then the bear duo finished their spell, singing a strange magic word that sounded something like “aeoufo”, and their magic condensed into an aura around them that took on the shape of a huge (albeit still only slightly bigger than the giant elf) spectral white bear, though only the bear’s face and front paws were more than vague outlines.

The two ran straight towards the manipulator woman, Amara right behind them, ramming through the first few steel beasts who put themselves in their path. But it wouldn’t be that easy, as some of the beasts which were double-teaming the wolfkin split off, leaving one behind to hold their previous opponents back while they threw themselves bodily at the spectral bear, which wouldn’t be too much by itself, but the barrier woman began triggering the offensive characteristics of the barriers as they struck, resulting in the caster duo faltering and struggling to hold their spell together in the face of multiple powerful impacts.

Eventually, it got to be too much, and the two used the last of their strength to launch a powerful downwards strike that scattered the nearby beasts, before the bearkin fell to the ground and let their spectral apparition fade away, spent.

And at that moment, Amara launched herself into a low, fast flight, taking advantage of the gap Himoko and Nerisha had created to get closer. Takato also repeated his previous move, but this time Amara used her own magic to redirect the two consecutive poison jars straight at the enemy, forcing her to use the last two beasts on the way to bat them away, giving Amara the chance to get past.

Or that was what should have happened, but then the manipulator manifested a new line of light that connected to the ground, or rather to something below the ground. And two huge antlion claws emerged right on top of the owl woman.

“Argh!” A scream rang out and blood sprayed.

But it wasn’t Amara’s voice or Amara’s blood.

At the last moment, Charlotte had jumped in and used her own arms to block the steel antlion monster’s attack.

“Do it!” She shouted strongly, despite having been injured so heavily that losing her limbs was a very real possibility.

So Amara flew a bit further on and the manipulator prepared the worm steel beast to meet her. But that didn’t matter for the owl woman had already reached close enough. With a wave of her hand, she launched a wind blade faster than the eye could see.

And a second later, the enemy’s head fell to the ground.

Amara wasn’t the fastest person in the forest, but she was definitely the one with the fastest attacks. Seeing that, Elise nodded inwardly and thought to herself that she hadn’t misjudged her allies. She noticed that the steel beasts stopped moving and that Takato was running towards Charlotte and then turned most of her attention to her partner’s fight.

It wasn’t going well. The only reason why Nina was still in the running was her defensive abilities. Her previous special training had been focused more on resistance to heat, but the same principles could also be applied to just general defense, and made it so her resilience was enough to keep on trading blows with the opponent.

The problem was that she was unable to deal too much damage to her opponent as well. Trading blows meant she was using energy on defense at the same time as she attacked, meaning her blows simply did not have the power needed to get through the elf’s own defenses.

Their fight had already been at a standstill for a bit when the inevitable happened: After one more violent exchange of blows, Nina’s armor broke apart and revealed the rabbit girl inside.

‘No, nonononono!’ She began panicking and was barely able to jump back in order to dodge the enemy when he attacked after hesitating for a bit in surprise.

‘Focus!’ Elise’s voice resounded in her mind.

‘But I-’

‘Your tribe knew this was a possibility when they let you come with me.’ Elise said ‘There was no way to keep them hidden forever, and they knew it. If you want to carve open a path forward for your family, you need to fight now!’

Nina grit her teeth and refused to look at their allies as she focused back on the giant elf and headed forward again. But before the battle could restart, he surprised her by actually speaking.

“Are you really willing to keep fighting even after losing your armor?” His tone wasn’t mocking, but genuinely curious.

“That armor was meant to hide my identity, not to protect me.” Nina replied as explanation.

“Hmm, interesting.” He said, and a moment later continued “My name is Naran.”

It seemed like he had acknowledged her as a worthy opponent, and Nina had little reason to not extend the same courtesy.

“I’m Nina.” She responded the unspoken question.

Another moment passed and then the two restarted their combat.

Meanwhile, their allies seemed to have decided to leave any questions for later, so they focused on trying to remove the barrier woman from the field. However, she was a tough nut to crack, and no longer having to provide power to the steel beast’s barriers meant she had energy to spare.

Trying to push her away didn’t work because she was using her barriers to anchor herself to the ground, and those barriers went pretty deep, so they also couldn’t simply move away the ground she was standing on. Several of the wolfkin had also gotten injured from attacking her recklessly and underestimating the strength of her barrier’s repulsion. Finally, Takato had given some poison bottles and instructions for others to use (as he was busy performing first aid on Charlotte), but the woman could use her barrier to block any attempt at poisoning.

Deciding that her skills wouldn’t be of any use in that situation, Amara then walked up to Elise.

“That girl… She’s a member of the Reite tribe, isn’t she?” She asked.

Elise did not bother denying it “Yes. And I had already suspected it might be case, but their existence really wasn’t fully secret, was there?”

“Only a few people knew about it, but yes.” Amara spoke with wariness in her voice “Considering what they went through, hiding the tribe’s existence was the least we could do.”

Elise nodded sadly. Nina had told her the story of how her tribe had been pushed to the breaking point by other tribes raiding them for food during a nasty famine, and how their disappearance had been an act of desperation.

“You have a plan for getting through that woman, don’t you?” She changed the subject “That’s why you sent Nalia somewhere.”

“Yes, but first we need to take down that guy so there’s no hindrances left for when we follow the enemies.” Elise replied. She looked back at Nina’s fight and frowned.

It looked like she needed to do some special guidance once again.

The reason for Elise’s frown was the fact that the fight between Nina and the elf hadn’t changed from its state of standstill. And the girl knew exactly why that was the case.

‘Nina, you’re no longer wearing that armor, so why are you still so stiff?’ She asked her partner.

‘What do you mean?’ Nina had gotten sufficiently used to the current state of the fight to be able to talk while fighting.

‘There are better ways for you to fight this guy than simply trading blows back and forth.’

‘But… I want to beat him with my strength…’

‘Pure power is not the only aspect of physical strength.’ Elise lectured her ‘Speed, agility, flexibility… Those are all part of strength, and you can’t neglect any of them if you wish to be the strongest.’

‘But…’ Nina was aware of how petulant she sounded, but a small part of her deep down still didn’t want to give up.

‘Do you want to keep following a vague ideal… Or do you want to win?’ Elise asked.

Those words hit Nina hard, so much so that she had to jump backwards to disengage from the fight in order to properly consider them. The rabbit girl looked deep within herself for an answer, and eventually a simple idea gave it to her.

‘Winning is the most important thing. Everything has to start from there… And the image of strength Elise spoke of isn’t exactly what I dreamed at first, but it doesn’t sound bad either.’

All of that happened fast enough that Naran was still in the middle of his advance to get in range once again, so Nina had time to adjust her focus once again and set her face into an expression of will before launching herself forward to meet him.

And her movements had changed. From her leap she transitioned directly into a slide that passed by his right side, almost touching his leg but moving too fast for him to react with a kick. He began to turn towards her, trying to protect his back, but the rabbit had already moved into a half roll that left Nina with her belly to the ground instead of her back, allowing her to use both hands and feet to move forward explosively, ending up almost but not quite right behind Naran.

The movement had also brought her back to her feet, so the rabbit girl let loose a powerful elbow strike that caused the opponent to grunt in pain. But he forced himself to follow through with his movement, managing to turn around enough to attack Nina with a retaliatory elbow strike.

It did not hit. Nina jumped up into a backwards somersault with no horizontal movement that placed her head above the height of the elf’s elbow. But that wasn’t purely a dodge move. At the peak of her jump, while completely upside down, Nina extended her arms and grabbed onto Naran’s arm right above the elbow, using it as leverage to turn her midair flip into a downwards bicycle kick aimed at his head.

Naran raised his left arm and blocked the hit, then swung his right arm in a hammer blow aimed upwards at her body. This time Nina responded by using his blocking arm as leverage instead, pushing herself upwards and out of reach with just the strength of one leg.

But then the elf did something she didn’t expect, pulling his left arm back down while twisting it to escape her “grasp” and leaving her falling in an awkward position without any way of doing more than twisting herself to face him. Naran did not miss his chance, attacking with a straight right aimed at Nina’s face… And as soon as she committed to blocking in front of her head, he changed it into a body blow that hit right below her chest.

He was still more experienced in hand-to-hand combat, and worse yet, instead of a regular blow he performed some sort of technique that turned his energy into explosive force.

Nina spat out blood and felt her sight waver, but focused and managed to turn herself enough to land upright, sliding backwards from the force but forcing herself to stay on her feet. Looking at the enemy, she could tell he was quite surprised she was still standing, but Nina definitely could not afford to take another blow like that.

‘Faster… Fiercer… Deadlier…’ She thought to herself like it was some kind of chant and advanced towards the enemy again.

She came from the front, holding her arms in an x in front. Naran punched her with a left and the girl reached for his fist with both hands and grabbed it from above with astonishing precision, though the transferred force was still enough to break one of her fingers. Nina used that position to force herself above his attack, climbing onto his forearm and moving upwards.

The elf brought his right arm in a swing to try and get her off, but she was too fast and reached high enough to throw a punch at his head, forcing him to tilt his head away to buy himself precious moments to turn his swing into a desperate block that only half-worked, mitigating the impact to the head but not eliminating it.

That did not stop the follow-up he had already begun, bringing his left arm up to try and grab Nina, but the rabbit continued her attack by unleashing a quick low kick with her left leg that hit the left side of Naran’s chest and was still powerful enough to drive the air from that lung and cause his movements to freeze briefly, which was too long in such a situation.

The rabbit girl grabbed his right arm (which was still up in blocking position) and used both feet to push herself up, using said arm as the pivot to swing her body around and strike his head with a powerful knee.

Naran let out an undecipherable noise from his mouth. The hand that had blocked Nina’s earlier punch was still up, but her knee more or less drove that hand straight into the side of his head and still struck with full force. He began to fall sideways, the rabbit still holding onto his arm and looking at his eyes.

Which was why she saw the moment they regained their focus, Naran reaching with his left hand to grab her as they fell. Which was why she let go with her right hand and pulled with her left to launch an uppercut through his weakened block, hitting him straight in the chin.

The hit stunned the elf once more and he hit the ground as Nina landed safely, but then he shook it off and tried for a grab once again. Yet it was useless, because she was already bringing her foot down in an ax kick that hit in the middle of his chest.

“Kah-!”

That was the only sound Naran could make as the tremendous impact broke the ground under him, creating a crater. Finally that was too much, and the giant elf lost consciousness.

Nina breathed hard for a moment, then looked at her hands before clenching them into fists and letting out a roar of victory. It was a moment she would remember forever.

Yet the moment was broken right after, as Naran’s body briefly glowed blue before vanishing right in front of her eyes.

“Wha-?” Needless to say, the rabbit girl was surprised.

“Must be some sort of escape amulet which activated automatically when he was defeated.” Elise spoke while walking towards her partner “I imagine all of them have something like that but it didn’t work for the manipulator because she died instantly.”

Nina sighed “Okay.” Then shook her head and looked at the portal, which was still being blocked by the barrier woman “There’s still work to do.”

Elise reached her side and smiled “Yes, but you finished just in time.”

Nina looked at her questioningly.

“I just got a message. Nalia is almost here.”