The elf was a little girl, about the same size as the Inishie flame-user whom they had fought twice. However, their appearances were quite different otherwise, with the main disparity being that their current interloper had white hair and dark skin, in contrast to the white-skinned, red-haired Inishie.

Her clothes were also very different, being a brownish red long-sleeved jacket with a black undershirt, a pendant holding a white stone, long black pants, brown boots and a dark-gray helmet. All of it looked quite sturdy, obviously meant to be traveling clothes, and yet one could see signs of wear and tear on some parts, showing that they had gone through quite a lot.

The girl also had a large backpack that seemed to be fairly heavy, but she was carrying it with no issue at all, which wasn’t much of a surprise since that girl obviously had some sort of abilities considering she had just broken open a large hole in the wall.

Elise immediately used her ability, getting ‘Elvish Earthshaper. Among the many elvish civilizations, there are some who prefer to live underground rather than on the surface. For those civilizations, the elves who develop a particular talent for earth magic are indispensable. The utility of such magic for construction goes without saying, but those who master it aren’t slouches in combat either.’

‘So that’s how she made that hole in the wall. It probably can be used to help move fast as well, considering the speed she was going.’ The girl thought.

As soon as the elf girl entered the cave, she took some quick glances around, seeing both the gem manifestation as well as the trio of Elise, Nalia and Nina.

She brought her right hand up to the pendant for a moment before shouting at them:

“Hey! Do you know what the hell is that thing?” She asked. She wasn’t shouting, but the sound carried quite well around that cave.

‘When she first caught sight of us, it felt like she was even warier than when she saw the Manifestation.’ Elise noted to the other two.

‘Really? I didn’t realize it.’ Nalia replied.

‘It was pretty subtle. There’s definitely some kind of story there.’ Elise said inwardly before replying to the girl “That thing is a Noktos Gem. You know we’re below the Liminari mountains, right? Long story short, that gem is the reason why the mountains have been overrun by monsters.”

“I never heard of Noktos Gems, but I feel some really nasty corruption from it, so I can believe that. So you’re here to destroy it?”

They could afford to chat casually because the gem manifestation was incapable of moving away from its position, given that it had been built around the similarly immobile Noktos Gem.

“Yes we are. But that has to be done is a specific way, otherwise the remnants will make several more of them.” Elise explained.

“I get it. You seem to be well-prepared for this.” The elf girl said “I can stay out of the way and let you do it… Or I could stay at the edges and give some support, what do you think?”

Elise smiled mysteriously “I’m fine with you giving support. I’m sure your earth magic will be useful against an enemy made of earth.”

“How did you… Wait, what am I saying, you saw how I got here so of course you know what my magic is.” The girl smiled wryly before letting out a pulse of magic and making the earth beneath her feet rise up “My name is Yura, by the way.”

“My name is Elise.” She replied to the girl, and her partners also identified themselves.

Yura nodded then began to move the earth she had taken control of, using it to carry herself at a fairly fast rate and getting a bit closer to the gem manifestation before starting to move back and forth around it. She was also moving her feet along with the earth like she was skating around, but Elise thought that was just a flourish.

‘My sense of smell is not as good as some of the other beastkin, but I should be able to identify whether she smells the same as the Inishie.’ Nina said through the bond.

‘It’s possible that the smell they had was only limited to members of one branch, so we can’t dismiss the possibility of her being one even if she doesn’t have it.’ Elise replied ‘However, it doesn’t look like she has any negative intentions towards us, so let’s consider her to be an ally for now.’

‘Yeah, I don’t think she recognized us, so there would be no reason for her to attack us even if she were a member.’ Nalia said.

‘Indeed.’ Elise spoke mentally before saying “Then let’s go.” out loud.

The three took their usual formation, Nina in front, Elise at the rear and Nalia flying above and in between, closer to the contractor than to the rabbit girl. Elise also received the usual wind movement boost, given that the terrain was very harsh, but they didn’t move all that fast.

Because of that they had the opportunity to look over at Yura as they got closer, eventually getting to the point where they could see that her eyes were a very light orange. True to what she had said, the elf girl didn’t take the initiative to attack, instead hanging at the edges and readying herself to give support as needed.

The first one to make a move was, as expected, Nina. Once she got to the point where moving any further would put her directly into the enemy’s range, the rabbit girl executed her instant movement and arrived beside one of the enemy’s front legs and delivered a powerful punch that carved out a good chunk of the stone it was made of.

‘Oof, this thing is really tough. I thought that would have been enough to take out the entire leg.’ She complained.

Right afterwards, Nina was made aware that being tough wasn’t the only thing that leg had going for it, as the rabbit girl was kicked with such force she ended up embedded into one of the walls.

‘Ouch.’ She spoke through the link, her tone indicating that she wasn’t that injured ‘This feels familiar somehow. Except this time Nalia didn’t help me soften the impact.’

‘You’ve gotten strong enough not to need that. Now stop playing around and get back to the fight.’ Nalia replied to her in a scolding tone.

Elise inwardly noted that Nina really acted differently if she wasn’t personally invested in a fight and then passed on her first instruction in the battle ‘You’re gonna need some big firepower to deal with that level of defense. Go fire and earth.’

Nalia nodded. She had already done the basic preparations for her Dual Wings spell, so it took barely any time at all to input the right variables into the spell formula to decide the elements and finish casting it.

“Dual Wings Magic: Fire and Earth.” She declared as a fire wing popped up on her right while the earth one appeared on her left.

Then the fairy quickly cast a stone cannonball spell, but the result was different than in her last fight as a power flowed from the fire wing and added itself to the projectile, causing it to emit a faint red aura. And the magic was fired, the projectile hitting another one of the legs and bursting into a powerful explosion.

Using the power of her wings magic to enhance other spells was another recent development in Nalia’s magic. And the result of that particular spell was a hole larger than what Nina had made but not as deep. Also, by that time the damage the rabbitkin had caused was already mostly repaired due to the gem using its control over earth to patch things up.

‘So no way we can just hang back and bombard this thing from a distance.’ Nalia thought idly ‘Without getting in close I won’t be able to deal enough damage to outpace that recovery.’

‘It was probably impossible either way. I think the Noktos gem would have probably done something like bringing the cave down on us if we tried something like that.’ Elise gave her own two cents.

While they were talking Nina had pulled herself out of the wall before starting to make her way back to the fight. Yura, their current ally, had actually started moving towards the rabbit girl when she was hit, but went back to her previous pattern after seeing she was okay.

Those initial moves were only meant for getting a small measure of the opponent’s capabilities, but now it was time to begin the real fight. Nalia waited until Nina got close and took off on a high speed flight, timing things out to approach the enemy in coordination with the other girl.

As for Elise, she had stopped just a bit outside the enemy’s assumed range and readied herself to give commands as needed.

The rabbit moved to the left, closer to the enemy’s mouth while the fairy went right, in the direction of the tail. Nalia rose a bit in the air and struck with her fire wing right at the point where one of the scorpion’s legs connected with the body, rising the flame’s temperature and trying to pierce through and sever the leg by using that wing like a blowtorch.

The enemy wouldn’t just let her do what she wanted, though. It stabbed with its stinger right towards the fairy, but Nalia was prepared. She rose her earth wing in defense while also shooting a series of stone projectiles at the tail. That slowed the attack down enough for her wing to block it, but it still jolted her enough to necessitate using defensive magic to avoid getting internal injuries.

Still, Nalia did block the attack, and she kept on trying to melt the leg off while also channeling magic through her earth wing.

‘Tch, the control this thing has over the earth is really strong. My own earth magic can’t interfere with it even a little bit.’ Nalia said.

The scorpion tried to pull its tail back to attack again, but Nalia quickly changed tack and had her earth wing snake around the dangerous appendage and bind it in place. She knew it would be impossible to hold for long, but she just wanted to get a little bit of extra time for her fire wing to do its work.

While that was happening, Nina had begun her own offensive, delivering a series of quick blows to one of the legs before dashing away to avoid retaliation and repeating the process on another leg. She got to do that three times before the enemy finally changed its strategy and stretched its front appendages unnaturally to try and get the rabbit girl with the pincers.

Nalia ducked to avoid the right one and then dashed to the side of the left one before stopping to deliver a destructive kick onto the overstretched limb that pincer was attached to, almost severing it from the body. But before she could finish the job, the right pincer she had avoided stretched even further and wrapped around to come after her from behind.

Nina elected to hit the pincer right at the point where it attached to its “limb”, delivering a rising kick that forced it upwards. That delayed the girl long enough for the enemy to begin quickly retracting its left pincer, both moving the wounded area away from the rabbit and bringing the pincer to bear on her again.

Nina prepared to meet the attack, but Yura chose to interfere at that moment, rushing in on top of her earth “platform” before leaping backwards and making it rise like a wave as it moved further forward, enveloping the enemy’s pincers and binding them in place.

Nina gave her a quick “Thanks!” before once more attacking the extended pincer connection, delivering a series of brutal strikes that managed to completely sever the left pincer away from the body.

On the other side Nalia had been close to melting the leg she was attacking off the enemy’s body when it raised another one of its legs and bent it unnaturally to send it stabbing in Nalia’s direction. The fairy cast a spell to manifest a large water jet and used it to slow down the leg, but she just didn’t have enough spare power for it and was forced to back away without finishing her job, which also meant she had to release the enemy’s tail.

Nalia wasn’t going to let herself be put on the defensive, though. She put a bunch of extra power into her earth wing and used it to grab onto the enemy’s leg that had tried to stab her, forcing it up to block the way when the enemy’s tail struck once more.

The manifestation managed to abort the attack before piercing through its own leg and tried to counter by having that leg stretch even further while bending back to aim at the fairy once more, but she had gained enough time to cast a fireball spell and enhance it even further with the power of her fire wing.

Nalia threw the fireball and then forced herself down by swinging herself with her earth wing, using the enemy’s trapped leg as the pivot, easily avoiding the stab. Her fire spell struck true, unleashing an explosion of heat and finally finishing severing the leg she had been attacking previously.

The manifestation rose its tail slightly before striking once again, forcing Nalia to dodge as she realized that was an even heavier attack than the tail blow she had barely blocked before, and while she was doing that the scorpion began to retract the leg that had been trying to stab her while lifting another one to bring it to bear against the fairy.

Yura then rushed in with her earth movement and spread her magic to take control of the ground nearby, shaping it into spikes that rose into the air violently and stabbed into the leg that was being prepared, causing it to change targets to her. Nalia lifted her earth wing to block as the enemy tried a tail sweep and then shot a fireball at the same area that Yura had attacked even as the tail impact jolted her.

The fireball damaged that leg further, but Yura opted against keeping up the offensive against it in favor of moving back toward Nina, who was fighting against the enemy’s remaining pincer along with another leg. And it seemed like the words “remaining pincer” would soon be rendered inaccurate, given that the enemy was in the process of reforming the one that had been broken off.

The same was true for the leg Nalia had removed, but that wasn’t a bad thing. In fact, it was just as planned.

Elise’s plan A for that fight was having them break off the enemy’s limbs in order to make it waste energy in making them again. If they did that enough times, she was sure the Noktos Gem would be weakened to the point where they could finish it off. Because of that, Nalia kept her focus on the already wounded leg and prepared herself to deal with the enemy attacks at the same time.

Nina was moving hither and thither, delivering occasional blows as she did her best not to get cornered, which was harder than it seemed because she had to deal with the terrible terrain that the other two combatants could mostly ignore. Yura rushed in to support her, but another of the enemy’s legs rose up before stabbing at her.

The elf responded to that by gathering a bunch of rock around her right hand into the shape of a fist and using it to deliver a powerful blow at the attacking appendage without even slowing down. The impact was massive, deflecting the leg a good bit away, but Yura briefly had her earth platform extend upwards and envelop her legs so she wasn’t thrown off and managed to stay on her course.

‘Pretty good stability.’ Elise thought while observing the fight ‘Her magical skills are very well practiced, but she seems to be inexperienced in team fights. Nina is still doing well in dealing with those things, so it would have been better for Yura to help Nalia break off that leg before going to assist.’

Regardless, what was done was done. The elf girl gathered even more earth on her arm and turned her stone fist into a spike that was almost three meters tall and stabbed it into the extended pincer connection, leaving behind a large hole and preventing said piercing from moving for a bit.

Nina wouldn’t waste such a chance. Dodging one more stab from the leg, she dashed close to Yura, leapt and turned to deliver a calamitous flying kick to the damaged portion, utterly obliterating that part and causing the manifestation to lose another pincer just when it was about to remake the first one.

And that seemed to cause an effect on the entire thing, as the limbs which were attacking Nalia stopped moving for a few moments, which was more than enough for her to dive in and swing her fire wing to take out the damaged leg.

‘Hmm… The effects are showing up earlier than I expected. This Noktos Gem isn’t that old in the grand scheme of things so it wouldn’t be very powerful, but that still seems a bit fast.’ Elise considered ‘Hmmm… Could it be that Yura’s earth magic is interfering with the energy channeling of the manifestation? That sounds plausible, but we should still be careful of possible surprises.’

She quickly informed her partners of her thoughts and kept on watching over the battle. Yura went back to support Nalia and the two of them worked together to tear off the tail, the elf doing some damage and holding it in place with stone spikes while the fairy held off two of the enemy’s legs (it having decided to begin attacking with one additional limb, which was what made Yura decide to move back to Nalia) and bombarded the tail with a series of explosive fireball spells.

Meanwhile, Nina had pressed her advantage, managing to break one of the manifestation’s legs before it managed to bring another one of them to bear. After that initial awkward phase, the fighters had gotten used to the enemy’s capabilities and gotten the advantage, which only widened as the effects of forcing it to remake limbs slowly became more pronounced.

Finally, the Noktos Gem became desperate. It put forth all of its energy, “activating” all of its limbs along with quickly regrowing the ones missing and pushed its earth manipulation to the limit, stretching and warping said limbs as well as the body itself into what could only be described as a landslide crossed with a tornado. That sort of relentless attack obviously took far too much energy to keep up for long, so it wasn’t something the Noktos Gem would do lightly.

It wasn’t exactly a smart being. It acted more based on instinct than anything else (it would also gain more intelligence with time, but that was a relatively young one), so by the time it realized that things were going incredibly badly and began to act desperately it was already too late.

Had the manifestation done that from the start, it would have almost certainly forced its opponents to retreat if not badly injured them, but having already spent so much energy in the fight before meant that desperate attack was far less overwhelming than it should have been. The three combatants came close together and put their skills together to resist it: Yura by making a large barrier of earth to block the majority of the danger, Nalia by throwing powerful spells one after another to cause damage and reduce the intensity of the attack and Nina by dashing left, right and up, delivering quick strikes to destroy everything that managed to make its way through.

Inevitably, the attack faltered as the energy of the Noktos Gem dropped to critical levels, and then it was time.

“Nina, break open a way to the core!” Elise ordered out loud for the benefit of Yura, trusting that she would know to give support to that endeavor “Nalia, prepare the special weapon!”

Both of them nodded. The fairy let her Dual Wings fade away as there wasn’t any more need for them and began to construct another spell, one which would require a very large amount of energy. At the same time, Nina jumped over Yura’s earth barrier and rushed straight at the enemy, easily breaking through whatever defense it managed to muster.

She then jumped onto the enemy’s body and began to repeatedly stomp the area above the center of mass of the manifestation, the place where the Noktos Gem was hidden. The opponent’s resistance became crazed at that, to the point where Nina was barely able to fend off the attacks with her arms, let alone continuing her offense.

Yet even that final struggle was pointless, as Yura jumped into action and followed the rabbit on top of the manifestation before using her own magic to defend Nina, who was then able to return to her previous attacks, soon managing to break through the layers of dense rock and expose the gem.

And by that point Nalia was already nearby, having taking advantage of the enemy’s distraction to casually fly to the center of the action, her spell ready to cast.

“Cold Star.” The fairy declared.

The magic took form, becoming a radiant snowflake as big as a truck wheel that dropped on top of the Noktos Gem. And as soon as contact was made a strange frosty sound resounded throughout the entire cave as even the small fraction of cold that leaked away from the spell was enough to create a layer of clear ice on top of the target because it froze the air.

The effect on the gem itself was just as expected. All of the enemy’s attacks ceased instantly as the unbelievable cold froze even the energy in place. Nalia looked over it for two seconds before nodding at Nina.

“It’s done.” She also let Yura know.

That was the way to prevent the Noktos Gem from spreading. One had to freeze it completely, and that had to be done extremely quickly to prevent any gaps from forming that would allow the thing’s energy to flow, thus preventing any shards from inheriting the gem’s properties.

And knowing that, the rabbit nodded back at Nalia, leapt down into the hole and unleashed a powerful stomp that completely destroyed the Noktos Gem. Soon after that, the manifestation itself began collapsing.

The group moved back close to Elise.

“Thanks for the help.” She spoke to Yura “That made everything a lot easier.”

‘That also means the fight didn’t serve as very good training, though. But you win some, you lose some.’ She added into the network.

“No need to thank me, I also would not want to just let something like that be.” The elf replied and then her expression became slightly awkward “Err… Actually… There’s something I wanted to ask...”

“Ask away.” Elise replied.

“Well… You said you were here to destroy that thing. But now that it is gone, do you have any other plans?”

“I have some ideas, but nothing concrete yet. Why?”

“Well… You’re pretty strong, so if it’s possible, I’d like to make a request.” Yura spoke firmly “Could you come with me to the city of Danmin and help me with something? I promise I’ll find a way to pay you back for it!” She finished in an almost pleading tone and bowed down deeply to Elise.

And at that moment the Contractor knew that their next adventure was about to start.