Chapter 231: The new Recruits find their Roles

Joshua made sure to position his group to where he was at the front and ready to charge forward towards the approaching threat. After having fought the coyotes multiple times in the past there were a few things he knew he shouldn't allow them to be able to do. The first was to avoid letting them surround the group. They were agile beast that thrived in chaos and if they were allowed to dictate the flow of the fight by surrounding the group and attacking from all directions then things would get far more dangerous than they had to. The other thing he was weary of was the ability the coyotes had to create dust clouds around themselves. Fighting inside of that would only open it up to where some of the expedition group could be picked off and forced to fight on their own instead of in a well-orchestrated group.

Letting the Coyotes take control of the fight could lead to either of these outcomes and that wasn't something that Joshua wanted to deal with. That's why the moment the coyotes started to get close to the group he charged forward and blitzed directly towards the leading coyote of the group. He wasn't going to let it give out orders to the others and planned on taking it down quickly before things could change to its will any way. The coyotes seemed taken by surprise as Joshua dashed by the smaller ones and attacked their leader taking it out of the picture before things could even get started. While he knocked the leader back and out of the way with a sword smash the rest of his group wasn't idle.

They followed up on Joshua's actions deciding to attack first as the tanks pushed forward as spells soared over their heads from the back line. The coyotes were taken by surprise as they tried to avoid some of the spells, but since they were all still so close together they ended up knocking into each other and still getting hit by the spells. Even though they weren't big or as powerful as the bobcats they were still strong enough to endure the attacks. The tanks got in close and started holding them in position so that the rest of the close combat fighters could go on the attack without any problems. Of course Amy was one of the main ones to dash in and start letting loose, she still had the urge to try to catch up to Joshua in level.

Vince's group were all covered by his illusions as they dashed towards a pair of coyotes that tried to run around the front line and caught them in an illusion trap as Vince kept them in place fighting their own shadows while Ariel, Mulan, and the others used his illusions to get an advantage as they started tearing them apart. Each of the Carsen brothers took a coyote on their own and kept them locked down for the group to deal with while Henry was busy boosting the reflexes and defenses of all of the tanks so that they could hold their own while everyone else took down their enemies.

Now that the fighting had broken out in full Lily decided to get involved as well. She jumped off of Momo while summoning out Cinder from her soul realm in her ice form. Momo was left to defend the back line against any coyotes that might get lucky and break through the groups defenses while she and Cinder went on the attack. Cinder came out in her ice form and everyone realized right away that she had grown in size since the last expedition. Lily had made it deep into the tournament and had gained five levels for participating which also was granted to her beast companions. With this in mind Cinder was now level eighty-nine which would make her an alpha in the prairie. It would be a while before Lily or any of her beast companions gained a level, but they were already more than strong enough to take on any beast they had seen so far in the prairie in a one on one.

When Cinder came into the fight the coyotes all shifted their attention to her outside of the one that Joshua was currently facing. Many of the coyotes looked like they wanted to flee from the much larger predator that was strong enough to change the environment around them, but they weren't given the chance. The tanks had them all in place while Cinder started freezing the surroundings as ice pillars shot up out of the ground. She leaped from pillar to pillar creating webs that surrounded the coyotes forcing them to continue to fight, but the fight ended rather quickly as one of them that was snatched up by Cinder who reached down with her legs to pierce it through its back before dragging it away from the rest of its group. The remaining nine coyotes tried to help their partner out, but a blast of lightning from Robing kept them in place.

Thomas saw how easily Lily was able to thrive in the battlefield with her beast companions and decided it was time for him to help out as well. He had tails create a massive ball of flames that he fired off at the same time as when Laura and Julia were using their spells. The combined force of the threes attacks killed off two of the remaining coyotes and burned another one that was nearby. The fight was clearly starting to come to a close with most of the coyotes on their last legs and Cinder picking off another one that she dragged away to kill off on her own. At the moment Thomas hadn't brought Imperia into the fight so the intelligent little bat could get a look at how the fighting would go.

While all this was going on Joshua was having a one on one clash with the leader of the coyotes that was struggling to even land a single hit on Joshua. Although Joshua kept his focus on the leader of the coyotes he still used his aura sense to feel how the others were doing just in case he actually was needed to help out. He doubted that would be the case since they had handled bigger groups of coyotes in the past when they hadn't had several members gain strength from the tournament in some fashion. Now the group was making quick work of the regular coyotes and it was clear that they wouldn't be challenged by such a pack of animals that didn't have any true special abilities.

Even though the fight was going so well Joshua made sure not to let it go to his head. He knew that there were far more powerful beast that lived in the prairie that could easily give them a bunch of trouble even if there were less of them than the current amount of coyotes that they were dealing with. Getting overconfident was the end of the line for a lot of explorers and he wasn't going to let that happen to them.

The large coyote leader was getting extremely angered with how Joshua was just knocking aside its attacks. In the past Joshua couldn't do something like this unless he was empowered by aura, but with the huge level advantage he had he was able to go toe to toe with the giant beast in strength without even using his aura. He was testing himself to get a good baseline for how he'd stack up against some of the other beast he had already fought against in the prairie. From what he could tell he could fend off anything weaker than a bobcat without using his aura, but once he had to fight snakes or vultures then using his aura was going to be a necessity once again.

While Joshua was blocking one of the claws of the coyote it suddenly went for an all attack where it tried to bite down on Joshua while he was busy holding its hand at bay. For a moment Joshua was thinking of knocking the claw aside and going ahead and beheading the beast right there, but then he suddenly found a shield around his entire body that stopped the large teeth of the giant coyote. The shield seemed like it was going to start cracking but then it started glowing brightly growing stronger as it completely prevented the incoming attack.

Joshua smiled knowing that this was a combination of Celia's new skills. He was pleasantly surprised to see that the barrier alone would have been enough to hold off the coyote's strongest attack for a few seconds which was more than long enough for Joshua to either get out of the way or counter attack, but with the reinforcement skill added in the barrier didn't show a single sign of giving way. Instead of dragging things out any longer Joshua coated his body along with his blade in aura before slashing directly in front of him with ample force. The swing created a thin wave aura that increased the distance of Joshua attack as his blade cut through, hide, muscle, and bone alike.

The teeth of the large coyote loosed up just as blood started pouring out everywhere as its large head was split in half. Joshua backed away and looked towards the others to see if they had finished up on their end. He could see that Celia was currently holding a coyote at bay on her own as Adrian slit its throat ending its life. There were only two other coyotes left, but another blast from Tails flames took one of them out while the other had its brain rattled and destroyed by a devastating blow from Amy. Joshua smiled as he looked at the end of the fight seeing just how much stronger they were, going into this expedition. Last time around a dozen coyotes would have been something they'd try to avoid, but now several members of the group were more than strong enough to take on a beast or two on their own.