When cultivators wanted to move quickly, they could do so more than Anton had imagined. Anton knew he wasn’t anywhere near the speed of Elder Daniela, and he didn’t have the smoothness of Elder Vincent, but he dashed through the forest without feeling as if he were going too fast to pick his footing. Though he was sure they used some unnecessary amounts of energy to move, energy propelled him and the rest forward in addition to the power of their legs. Three of them had completed the tempering of their muscles, and while Catarina was only halfway through that process she wasn’t any slower than Timothy, who had less energy to call upon having not finished the tempering of his meridians.

It wasn’t long before they were close to their intended target. Other disciples of the Order of Ninety-Nine stars were fighting a mass of swarming snakes, three of them fighting hard to protect two injured members. It seemed they had made the right choice to come assist them. The snakes were of all different sizes, though none of them small, as well as having a variety of colors varying through brown, red, yellow, black… some striped and some spotted. These were the so-called rainbow serpents, and each different combination had a different sort of venom. Determining which was the worst was nearly impossible, but it was simply best to avoid all of them.

Anton would have liked to open up with a volley of arrows towards some of the closest serpents to the other group, but while he was confident in his ability to only hit the targets he was aiming at, he didn’t want to startle anyone and distract them or cause them to think he was attacking them. He took shots at some of the smaller snakes, ones the size of grown adults if he were to compare to the few venomous snakes around Dungannon.

Enough serpents were slithering towards the group that the three defending couldn’t prevent some from slipping past, which the two injured members had to defeat on their own. The entire group was low on energy, but they took heart at the arrival of support.

Timothy waded into the sea of snakes, his shield of little use against snakes biting at his legs… but he had armored greaves and energy to protect him. He stomped on snakes with his boots and slashed with his sword to slice several at a time. His shield did see some use as some of the snakes launched themselves at him, springing through the air.

Catarina moved around the outside of the pack where numbers were thinner, slicing into any snakes she could reach and drawing attention away from the center. Anton wasn’t sure if there was some more profound meaning to the way she weaved back and forth, but he’d seen how her rearrangement of their battle site with the wolves had caused them to stumble when they should not have. There was some sort of energy flow on a level he couldn’t really discern.

Hoyt had the hardest time with all of the small snakes, so instead of trying to slice through them one at a time when they chomped at him or even in bundles, he jumped forward deeper towards the larger ones. Anton saw him chop through a snake as big around as his forearm with a sickening slicing sound. He knew from attempting to kill some of them that their scales weren’t so easy to penetrate. On that note, now that the other disciples wouldn’t be completely surprised by his arrows he fired an arrow right into the middle, past Hoyt’s shoulder and right in front of the nose of one of the other disciples, before it caught a springing red-brown snake in the eye as it attacked the rear of one of the injured disciples.

With the rainbow serpents being set upon from the outside, the sea of snakes started dwindling in number. There was a particularly large one that sprang towards Hoyt, and he chopped it out of the air with his axe. Surprisingly it resisted the blade and the energy augmenting it, at least enough not to be cleaved in two. However, when it struck again Catarina had arrived to stab her sword into its open mouth, slicing it from the inside.

Despite moving forward at a reasonable pace Anton was still ten meters or so away from the rest when the tide of serpents began dissipating. He never intended to leave all of the danger to them, but there was no point in risking himself when he was most effective at a distance. The ability to attack unrestrained helped more than distracting a few snakes would have, anyway. Anton continued to pick off escaping snakes, to prevent them from having enough numbers to trouble others.

Eventually, everything settled down. “Thank you for the help,” the other disciples inclined their heads. “I don’t know if we would have made it without you.”

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Just because the battle was over, however, didn’t mean their troubles ended. All of the members of the other group had been bitten at least once- those they were sheltering had suffered several bites early in the battle. Hoyt had taken some bites as well, and though the actual wounds were almost entirely mitigated by his defensive energy, the serpents merely had to piece the skin to inject venom.

There were no universal antivenoms, even in the hands of the Order of the Ninety-Nine Stars, but there were medicines that could support a cultivator in removing the poison themselves. The process of removing poison involved circulating energy throughout the meridians around the body. Refinements to marrow which produced blood could fortify a cultivator, and the organs in the torso could help remove poison. Supporting that with active energy and entrapping the venom and carrying it out of the body could speed up the process.

Anton himself needed to recover his energy, and he sat down in a meditative position, breathing in the air full of natural energy and letting it flow into him from both the inside and outside, through his lungs and in through his skin. As he was halfway through one circulation of energy to relieve some of the fatigue throughout his body, his eyes shot open, his hand grasping in front of him. His fingers curled around a snake- a small one, no bigger around than a finger and less than a meter in length. However, Anton held onto it with all of his might. He was concerned but not entirely surprised that it didn’t get crushed in his grip immediately. He focused more energy into his hand… to overcome the energy of the smaller snake. The snake thrashed about, swinging its tail into him, the tip of it carrying bursts of energy as well. Fortunately, though it was a magical beast capable of cultivating it appeared to be a young one. It had hidden among the masses of other snakes, waiting in ambush for people to relax. But with another powerful squeeze from his tempered muscles, the snake’s neck snapped and it went limp. Anton looked down at his arms which would now have bruises from the tail. A gentle reminder not to let his guard down. He felt around the area for more energy, or snakes hidden among the bodies. Fortunately, that seemed to be the only one. Anton stowed the body in the magic bag that had been provided. Regardless of what they did with the rest, it would be hard to argue that their group shouldn’t have that.

When Anton and the rest had recovered, they all gathered together. “Will you be alright?” Anton asked. The faces of the injured cultivators were a bit less pale at least.

They nodded. “We will not be able to stay any longer but if we head out of the area directly we should not run into any more trouble.

“Then we shall leave you to it,” Anton nodded.

“Wait,” their leader said. “You should take the bodies. We wouldn’t have survived without you.”

Anton understood how important contribution points could be, and though he had to look out for his own group, these others similarly needed the points. “An even split would not be unfair. We could not take everything from fellow disciples.” The group had already decided that would be their preferred policy whether they received aid from others or helped them- though they wouldn’t demand anything.

An exactly even split wouldn’t be possible, with all different sized and quality of snakes… but they did the best they could. Neither side was much concerned with exactness in any case. After gathering everything and watching the other group depart towards the outer forest, Anton turned to the other three with him. “I do not think we would be advised to go deeper. If we were the ones to be initially set upon by that group, I am unsure if we would have fared better.”

“Agreed,” Hoyt said. “Though I don’t entirely agree with the assessment, further in would be too much risk.”

“I hate snakes,” Timothy said. “Though uh, I don’t suppose that matters. I agree with staying at this depth. I can handle myself against something like this, but much more…”

“I like snakes,” Catarina said. “When they don’t try to kill me.” She looked wistfully off in the distance. “I want to study the barrier.”

The Order controlled a large area, and though they didn’t encapsulate the whole forest in the barrier, it protected the side of the forest from beasts heading towards populated areas. Anton wasn’t sure exactly how it worked, but it at least lessened the amount it happened.

“Couldn’t you have studied the barrier outside of a monster infested forest?” Timothy asked.

Catarina shook her head. “It should be different deeper into the forest. Can’t have monsters wandering out of the forest to nearby areas.”

“Fine with me,” Hoyt said. “It’s either that direction or the other, right?”

“Very well,” Anton said. “We’ll head in that direction, towards the edge of the Order’s controlled area.”