Julian didn't care about her speech and slashed his flame-clad dagger at her. His attack drew a trail of blood, making her panic.
"I blocked all your senses! How can you still attack me?!" he heard a panicked voice from all around him. She took a step back, but he moved in her direction. Some men blocked his path, but Julian blasted them with flames and focused on the woman. Julian's vision fluctuated, and in front of him appeared ten copies of the same woman. He knew it was an illusion as he didn't sense anything from the figures with Ki. Julian ignored the figures and tried to expand his range of sensing, but the woman was good at hiding her mana signatures.
She was very fast and was running around the whole cave, making her position confusing. From the initial confrontation, he figured that she blocked all the person's senses and used her voice all around him to confuse them and attack them with physical attacks while showing illusions. Julian's Ki detected an attack, which he blocked as a shield emerged in front of him. Based on the direction of the attack, he fired a spell but didn't manage to hit anyone. If he were alone, he would have incinerated the entire cave, but there were his allies along with the villagers he had to protect.
Julian's Ki could easily sense her attacks if she was nearby. The only downside to his Ki was that he lacked range. Julian didn't learn mana zone, so he couldn't sense her location far away from him. He didn't want to waste more time as he didn't know whether Magna or Vanessa would be able to react to her attacks. His vision and hearing were blocked, so he couldn't confirm their situation.
"How frustrating," he muttered.
--
"This chick is hot... why don't we have some fun after we are done? Boss should allow it, right?" - Mage 1
"Shut up and focus here first." - Mage 2
Vanessa found herself surrounded by seven people. She looked ahead and found two men approach Julian, but Julian overpowered them.
"Looks like I have to work hard... can't make him do all the work, can I?" Vanessa hardened her strings and jumped in the air, covering a mage who was near her from head to toe.
Magna created a bat with fire and began shooting fireballs at the enemies, but one of them had water magic, so his attack was neutralized. One of them had ground magic, which created spikes directly beneath Magna to impale him, but Magna kicked the ground with reinforcement mana while thin strings of mana formed around his hands, holding the mage who came from behind him.
Magna had the least amount of mana out of all the Black Bulls, so he continually tried creating spells that could cost less mana. The strings of mana were him trying to copy Vanessa's magic. Strings took very little mana but the effect ranged from holding enemies, grabbing things, or melting the skin of the enemy with the condition that they did not surpass basic reinforcement magic. With Julian joining his squad, he found someone else with fire magic and good mana control that helped him a lot.
Magna focused on the mages, increasing the temperature of the strings and melting the skin of the mage. The mage screamed in pain but was hit on the head with a mana-clad punch by Magna, making him faint. Sensing danger, Magna dodged a rock spike that emerged from the ground, followed by bullets of water.
Magna looked all around and found Vanessa was fighting someone with speed-type magic who could cut down her strings. Due to the large number of opponents, she was having a hard time dodging.
"This is bad. If I increase the range or intensity of the attacks, the villagers would be harmed," he thought.
With no other choice, he shouted, "Vanessa, help me move the villagers to a corner first."
Both of them jumped towards the villagers and enveloped as many as possible. String magic was Vanessa's natural magic, so she could cover almost all the villagers. As they started moving, the enemy mages didn't stay idle and started showering them with spells. Magna dropped the villagers and created an explosion near them, creating smoke and blocking their view. After they successfully moved the villagers to a corner, strings emerged from the ground, creating a dome around them. This was the least protection Vanessa could give them.
But all of a sudden, Magna's vision and sense of touch went blank. Vanessa saw the attacker and dodged while moving Magna away. A woman who was running through the walls jumped towards Vanessa with a knife, but strings blocked her path. Vanessa realized that she could not get hit by her attack, as Magna stopped moving after coming under her spell. Vanessa captured another mage, making him take the hit of the woman.
Due to his experience in battle, Magna knew either he was in an illusion or someone blocked his vision. "Vanessa, if you can hear me, attach your strings around me. Someone blocked my senses, you are my only option." Magna created a bat of flames and waited. As expected, he felt strings attaching to his body and making him swing his bat forward. Strings emerged from Vanessa's feet, attaching to the walls and allowing her to maneuver and dodge attacks freely while helping Magna.
As soon as he felt the bat hit something, he increased the input of flames, causing an explosion from the bat for extra damage.
"AaHH, damn you, bastard!" a mage cried out as Magna swung his bat harder, smashing the mage to the ground. The water mage attacked again, but Vanessa was successfully able to move the mage. Although Magna didn't master Ki, he could somewhat sense the direction of the spell, so he started spamming fireballs at the water mage, eventually exploding him. But there was a problem: Magna was running out of mana to spare. He had to keep some reserved mana in case things went downhill. Vanessa, who focused on Magna, got careless for a second and got hit from behind, crying out in pain.
---
Julian thought of every possible way to resolve this situation. In a moment of desperation, his grimoire shined, and words began to appear on its pages, providing him with a spell whose description didn't fail to surprise him:
"Flame Creation Magic: Arrow of Destiny"
(An arrow that will hit the target anywhere around 1 km who has been marked with a mana signature.)
"That's broken!" he exclaimed.
He quickly summoned ten arrows. They shined with a blood-red light, much different from the reddish-yellow arrows he normally used. He thought of the woman and sent the arrow in a random direction. The cave lost its light for a moment, and the only thing visible was his arrows that zoomed through and pierced the abdomen of the woman, earning a painful grunt and making her drop to the floor. Red flames from the pierced arrows directly burned away a large chunk of her mana.
His vision returned the moment she dropped to the floor. He surveyed the surroundings and found half of the men defeated, but Magna and Vanessa were in a pinch. Flames burst out from his feet, taking him closer to them nearly instantly.
"Flame Creation Magic: Phoenix Missile," he shouted. Small explosives in the shape of birds blasted the mages.
Some mages tried to defend, but they found that red flames covered their bodies, draining away their mana and burning their skin. As soon as all the mages were marked by his mana, he fired his new spell again.
"Flame Creation Magic: Arrow of Destiny." Blood-red arrows formed around Julian, piercing every mage in the abdomen and various parts of the body. One by one, all the mages dropped to the floor, solving the case for now.