Seconds later, all of us were running upstairs back to the main part of the castle. We left the poor guard behind almost immediately, Odar quickly and sternly told him to get himself treated. On our way upstairs we met up with a whole group of guards that were sent to protect the king.

Whenever I wanted or not, I found myself in the first line of defense of the king, along with Odar and For, the latter looking as lost and as uncomfortable in this situation as me. Well, at least she was more attentive this time though - the whole event snapped her out of the strange lethargy she was in.

Odar, on the other hand, started questioning people who arrived to get a better grasp on the situation, but they knew even less than the first guy.

The moment we left the underground and finally stepped out into some main corridor, we realized that the situation was worse than we expected. Even there we could hear the sound of fighting and every once in a while see a bright flash of a spell somewhere around the corner or outside the window. Silhouettes of people were moving frantically all over the place, while most of them were wearing some green robes, I noticed a fair amount of blue streaks as well.

Seeing the blue flashes, Axelrod instantly started walking towards it, pushing the whole platoon of guards in front of him and not caring about Odar asking him to get to safety. Without much of a choice, we followed suit, emerging from the corner to a strange scene.

We entered a long, open hallway, with no doors on either side, just a bunch of windows. It was circular, and reminded me somewhat of a very large, hollow tree trunk. Now though, it was completely busted open, like the remains of a firecracker, torn asunder with some kind of blast.

In the middle of all that, there were two people. And to my surprise, I knew both of them: Felix, lying on the ground, hiding behind his book and a large bald man in blue robes, Harsh himself.

His hands were slightly steaming, and the floor around them was covered in a thin layer of ice that reached the cracked walls and the ceiling.

-What is the meaning of this?! - loudly asked Axelrod, stomping heavily on the ice, breaking it under his foot.

Harsh at first snapped right towards him, raising his hand to cast some kind of spell, but when he realized who was in front of him he withdrew immediately and bowed instead.

-Your Majesty, it’s not safe here! - he said, still looking at the ground. - A large number of enemies just ran away from here. I am sure their reinforcements will come shortly!

Everyone in the battalion stiffened. Some grasped their weapons, some just clenched their fists holding magic gems even harder, and started scouring the surroundings. We could still hear some fighting noises, but nothing in close proximity.

-Explain.

He raised his head and noticed the whole group approach. He gave me a curious look, but apparently didn’t recognize me, since I heard no insults.

-Sir. I see you are protected, but please get into the hiding. We cannot underestimate our enemies.

-That is for me to decide - said Axelrod, now visibly angry. - Do I need to repeat myself?

-No, sir.

-Report. Now.

-Sir. It looked like they appeared from under ground and were for some reason targeting this place in particular. About ten of them jumped through the windows. I was on my way downstairs along with… him, Your Majesty, when it happened.

-And that is…?

-That is not important right now - interrupted Odar - Who are the enemies? Insight?

He suddenly shuddered.

-I… I don’t know who exactly they were… or what rather. But they were definitely not people.

A sudden rumbling started somewhere outside the walls of the castle.

-Monsters? Here? In the capital?

-What kind?

The rumbling was getting worryingly louder.

-I don’t know, it’s the first time I’ve seen something like this. And from what I heard in the panic outside, the ones outside the walls are some different kind. But they are for sure intelligent, at least somewhat. I…

The last part of his sentence was drowned in the rumbling that was now so loud that we barely could stand it without covering our ears. The vibrations in the ground also got a lot stronger, to the point where the cracked wood around started crumbling and falling down on us, almost like it was some kind of earthquake.

Then, it stopped suddenly and everything went eerily quiet, just for the earth to shake once more and reveal the source of the noise. Or rather, the many, many sources.

The floor started breaking and from below the ground, a large mass of very familiar creatures emerged, surrounding us all.

The overgrown, mutated mana leeches.

Not losing any time, they all jumped towards Harsh.Too bad for them, he was not alone.

Every single one of the guards surrounding Axelrod sprung to action, casting some kind of spell. It was actually quite an interesting sight. The ones that before were standing at the ready with their weapons drawn, started channeling some strange spell through their blades. Whenever it was a dagger, sword, halberd or whatnot, it instantly got covered with something akin to a thorny bush, extending the blade an additional couple of centimeters and swung at the approaching enemy. Others, armed with just crystals, used a slightly different spell - instead of extending their weapons, they straight up created them from scratch. It was definitely something else - and a first time for me - seeing a bunch of different weapons sprout from their hands was definitely not something I expected to witness that day.

I thought their attack was an effective one at first. The blades easily pierced the leeches, leaving them squirming in pieces on the ground, screeching unpleasantly. Too bad it didn’t help much - while it definitely immobilized the monsters for a while, they soon started slithering back towards us, their wounds closing, essentially proving the soldier's efforts fruitless. Harsh tried helping, conjuring a large ice spear of his own and tossing it at the remains of leeches, but even though it managed to freeze some of them, it was not enough - More of them were appearing and jumping towards us.

That’s when Odar and For stepped in.

Odar acted first, summoning the tangle of vines from around him, aiming them right at the monsters and pinning them down.

-Please go ahead.

They must have done this before, because without a delay she started tossing fireballs towards the biggest tangles of vines, setting them on fire along with the monsters trapped within.

That definitely worked better than the ice or physical attacks - the noise leeches made this time were a lot louder and a lot more unpleasant. Maybe even too well. The fire started spreading and we were surrounded by the very flammable wood after all.

Luckily, Harsh was quick enough and started tossing his ice lances towards the edges of the room to try and control the spread to not completely destroy the rest of this corridor.

Just as I thought that the situation was under control, the rumbling came back anew. This time I was pretty sure that whatever the source was, it was right under our feet.

Sure enough, even more of them started coming out of the windows and some even looked like straight up came from the other end of the corridor. This time, there were too many of them for Odar to contain and some managed to break through the defenses and jump towards the Axelrod himself.

For a split second I considered helping out, but before I managed to even raise my hand I noticed that the king was not defenseless. Like the guards, he summoned a weapon for himself, although his was an unusual one.

While it was still made using their green, nature magic, that was the only similarity. It was a large halberd, or at least something akin to one. Instead of a blade, he had a large leaf in the shape of half a heart and a size of maybe two human heads, and the handle was a bit longer than he was tall.

What was most unusual though was that he was not holding it - the weapon itself had sprouted from his right hand, the fingers turned into a mass of green, well almost roots, that converged and were woven together like a rope, forming the shaft.

With quickness and precision, he stabbed the first leech that dared to even get remotely close, piercing it through and raising above his head like a trophy, just to be pierced again from within. His leaf-blade split into a bunch of spiked blades, or maybe rather sprouted a couple new ones and sliced the monster into a bunch of smaller pieces.

Seeing as the monster ceased moving, he waved his weapon effortlessly, tossing the remains into the fire.

Even witnessing that did not stop the assault. Quite the contrary, when the king pierced the monster the second time, even though it did not even squeak, other ones that appeared behind it suddenly sped up and started approaching him even quicker, as if they wanted to take revenge on the one who killed their comrade. Few of them even jumped towards me, but just got stopped by some guards on the way.

I couldn’t help but feel sort of useless in that fight. Not like I was complaining, I was, after all, pulled into this by the sheer coincidence. Again.

In this pandemonium of spells, blades and monsters though, I noticed something strange. Everyone was busy fighting or hiding behind someone, even including some people who looked like servants that followed behind us when we left the dungeon. Every single person was under attack in some shape or form. Everyone besides one singular person.

A kid, clutching his book, sitting next to a half broken wall, shaking in panic.

At first, I thought that the monsters just missed him, but that didn’t seem right. Right next to him was Harsh, still tossing his ice lances every once in a while when there was no leech right up in his face. Like to emphasize this weird sight, another monster crawled from outside right through the opening above him, not even paying attention to the kid.

Was he using some kind of magic to hide himself from them? No, that’s impossible, I could see him clearly as day, and even then, didn’t those leeches get attracted to mana sources? Using any kind of spell would straight up reveal his position to them, so that would be pointless. That’s when I remembered - didn’t his father say something about him being pretty bad at magic? Could it be that it wasn’t the case and he straight up had no mana to work with?

Nah, that would be ridiculous. That would’ve meant that he was quite literally dead - all living beings have mana, and even some non-living matter as well.

How else could I explain this phenomenon though? Was he somehow on the same side as them? How the hell would he manage that?

In the midst of all the chaos and yet another rumbling noise under our feet, I tried focusing up, trying to extend my senses. At first I thought that it’s going to be hard under those circumstances, but nope. I guess having a large piece of your body turned into a basically mana capacitor has its upsides.

My senses extended fast and even wider than usual. Normally, I would’ve just managed to sense the magic in a target I focused on and maybe got slight hints of some other sources nearby, but this time, I could feel the whole corridor, and even a bit outside of it. I felt the soldiers with their conjured weapons, instantly recognizing it as a nature magic, or rather green magic as they called it here, Harsh with his ice lances, Odar with the massive tangle in the middle of the room, For and her fireballs. I even was able to sense the monsters to some degree. That made me realize that we were in deeper trouble than I thought.

First off, there were a lot more of them, and quite a numerous bunch was now traveling under our feet with something larger, approaching us rapidly.

The other concerning fact was that they were very similar to those I first met at that lab-tree. I did think that was the possibility when I first saw them, but I did not want to immediately assume the worst. True, I did not exterminate the whole lake, but why were they here in the first place? That also explained why people were starting to have problems defending - everyone had to cooperate and combine spells from all three currently present types of magic to put those things down.

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Speaking of magic types, there actually were four of them, not counting me. The monsters were absolutely reeking off the life magic, sometimes even overwhelming the other magic residue. That was especially noticeable in the king's attacks - every time he managed to “pop” one of the monsters, its death was accompanied with a large burst of residue that felt like life magic.

But that was not the thing that caught my attention at that moment.

It was the kid himself. At first I thought that the impossible happened and I stumbled upon a manaless being, but nope. It wasn’t like he was lacking mana, it was not just him. The whole area around him, maybe a meter or two in diameter, was completely devoid of mana. And I am not talking as it just was weaker or something, no. It was like a physical barrier that pushed every single particle of it away from him. It was even more noticeable after Harsh tossed yet another ice spear somewhere towards yet another leech - I definitely could feel the large cloud of mana materializing at his hands and spreading throughout him and area next to him like a large puff of smoke, just to straight up stop and avoid the spot where Felix was sitting.

I wanted to inspect that weird anomaly at once, but I got rudely reminded that we were indeed in the middle of a fight.

Again, some leeches managed to break through the defensive line of guards, but this time, after they bypassed them, they did not attack the king - instead they felt me, prodding around and sprung towards me, successfully knocking me off balance and breaking my concentration.

Few of guards instantly leaped forward, trying to stab the monster.

-Stand back - I said from the ground, and before any of them was able to get closer I blasted the annoying creature with a fireball.

While the ones that For was tossing around were pretty small, maybe to not set Odar’s vines completely on fire, I did not care enough about that, nor I was close enough to burn them anyway. The one I conjured was the size of the creature itself, so no wonder it got surprised by the sudden heat and retaliation from a seemingly passive target.

The monster itself was not the only one startled by that. The whole guard force flinched as well, even Odar, who knew who I was. The king on the other hand, just raised his eyebrow and nodded with appreciation, so I had that one going for me at least. I proceeded to burn another two of the monsters that approached before the situation went back to being mostly a stalemate.

Standing up and tossing a few fireballs towards where For was aiming before, I tried getting closer to Odar. I wanted to tell him about the weird sensation I got from the kid in the middle of all this mess, but before I even opened my mouth, we heard another rumbling noise, the loudest one yet. This time it was also accompanied by the shaking of the ground.

That caught off guard a couple of guards, along with Harsh, who straight up fell down on the ground, losing balance.

-What in the…

The floor in front of us started cracking and bulging, making the noise even worse. What was more concerning though, was the scream. Or maybe screech. Somewhat guttural, distorted by the corridor we found ourselves in, drowning all the noise from the battlefield. The monsters themselves noticed that as well and slowly started backing off towards the quickly forming crack in the ground, and, as if in reply to the sound, started jumping into it, quickly disappearing from sight.

At first, everyone froze, confused by these strange events. The overwhelming silence that fell after the screech got slowly replaced by yells of the guards, all saying something along “get back where you came from”, “good riddance” and so on. They slowly shook off the initial confusion and started chasing the remaining creatures down to the hole.

I also relaxed for a second, thinking that the situation got handled, but froze right after, remembering suddenly when I last met those creatures.

-Get back! - I yelled towards the charging soldiers. - Odar, stop them!

-What’s gotten into you? - he was clearly annoyed and confused. - We won, stop that…

The end of the sentence got drowned in the loud roar and the shaking of the ground, or rather full on earthquake. Before any of us could react, the ground split even more, and from the depths emerged the very familiar looking, glowing monstrous mana leech, bigger than the corridor itself. It filled up the whole passageway and then destroyed the roof just to stretch its “neck”. Even then, its tail was nowhere to be seen, extending somewhere deep within the underground.

Like the one I’ve seen at the lab in a three near the city, this one had a bunch of pulsating patches on its skin, covering it whole. This time though, it was pulsing with blue, red and green light. Strangely, the green and red were considerably brighter and the pulses were lasting a lot longer than the quick and dim flashes of blue.

While enormous in size, it did not lack speed. Before anyone could react, every single guard that was close enough to the hole in the ground, disappeared, straight up squashed by the giant body of the monster, with a very unpleasant sound.

The three of us stepped back, trying to get some distance from the monster. Harsh even grabbed the kid and shoved him towards the king, behind us. Felix, shaken, slid on the ice and fell down, stopping just short of the king and his weapon embedded in some monster’s corpse.

That one quick movement saved us all from a certain death.

Suddenly, the monster’s skin stopped pulsing with light, and instead turned into a static red glow, just to suddenly be released with a sudden breath of roaring fire targeting everything in front of it. While most of us, not including guards that is, were pretty far away, the flame was so wide and long reaching, that it would’ve hit us anyway.

That is if not for Harsh and his quick thinking. While he didn’t exactly give me a great first impression, he was talented, I can give him that.

He was the one who first felt the heat emanating from the creature, even before it unleashed its attack towards us, and managed to finish casting a spell right as it reached us.

He erected a large ice wall right in front of him, effectively splitting the corridor in two. In the process though, he had to get through the large mess left behind Odar’s vines burning from mine and For’s fireballs, which sadly made the wall in its base thinner than it was supposed to be.

The spell managed to block the brunt of the heat, but the ice wall almost immediately melted, falling right towards us, showering us with water and melting ice, mixed with hot air. Air that smelled horrible, might I add. Human bodies do not smell very pleasant when burned after all, no matter the amount of fancy wood you mix them with.

Speaking of, the whole corridor behind the wall got absolutely charred and most of it was still on fire, including the remains of the windows. The pieces of membrane that were still in its place were now slowly burning away.

-I stand corrected… - mumbled Odar, slightly stunned and red from all the heat.

He quickly gazed around to see how much damage we took, and well, it did not look promising. Only those who were behind the ice wall survived, and even then some were not unscathed. Harsh took the brunt of the blow, as he was the one closest to the wall. His clothes were burned and you could hardly recognize the blue robe underneath the soot. For’s hair was positively smoking, while the rest of us, along with the king looked mostly intact, as well as the kid.

Another strange thing, he was the second closest to the blast, yet he was completely fine, even his book was in one piece, with no visible signs of fire.

The creature was not done however. Almost immediately after the first attack, it started changing colors, going back to the flickering again, just to start glowing green.

Knowing what’s coming, I yelled towards For..

-It’s going to use nature magic this time! For, we are up!

I rushed past her, grabbing her and dragging to where the ice wall was.

-B.,.but… whaaaa…!

I guess she was more or less responsive now. I guess I have to thank adrenaline for that.

-Follow my lead! Just watch and repeat after me!

It looked like she still had some doubts, but I didn’t have patience nor time to try and explain.

The beast opened its maw, and from within, a green light emerged - like someone just turned a large halogen towards us.

The light did not reach us however, it instead started twisting and about hundred of small vines and branches emerged - like a suddenly growing tree, just to start tangling with each other and forming a large net.

It sort of reminded me of the spell Odar used, but this one was a lot larger and had about ten times more thorns and spikes. Like a wave of water, it started barreling towards us, but I was ready.

-Nysu fi geksu!

Mimicking Harsh, I wanted to create a wall of fire tall enough for vines to not be able to cross. While the spell was easy, spreading the flames equally around that much of space was not.

I managed to cover the whole corridor, from wall to wall, with a flame that reached almost to the broken ceiling, which surprised even me. I was pretty sure that it would’ve been too much, even for me, but no.

Everyone, including For, jumped back a step, startled by a sudden rush of heat.

-And you want me to mimic THAT? - she yelled out, absolutely stunned.

Before I was able to answer, the attack finally hit.

The good thing was, the smell of burned wood managed to cover the earlier stink of charred flesh. The bad thing was, the attack was not just one wave.

Like a sea hitting up the rock face during the storm, the attack was intensifying and then declining periodically, but still streaming constantly. Five, ten, twenty seconds, it was still going.

I want to say that I was able to just push it back, no sweat, but after about fifteen seconds, I was starting to have some problems - some of the vines were able to bypass the wall of fire, although they still were still weak enough for the rest of the group to clear up, even with basic weapons.

-When the next one hits, cover us with the same spell!

-I can’t manage that wide of an area, are you mad?!

-Then get the others closer!

-You heard the guy! - suddenly yelled from behind me Odar. - Come here!

I sort of forgot he was still here.

I was glad though. The remainder of the guards reacted instantly, forming a small circle surrounding us. Even the king didn’t have to say the word, just was looking at me with curiosity.

Just as one of the guards grabbed the last remaining person, Felix, still sitting next to the wall and dragged him to us along with him to the back, the next wave hit.

It was the strongest one yet. I could feel that I would not be able to burn through it fast enough, so I concentrated on the spell and started reforming its shape. I wanted to make it a lot smaller and shorter, but a lot thicker.

What I managed to form was maybe a two meter thick wedge that covered just about all of us from the front, leaving about one person’s worth of leeway.

For, seeing the spell change, understood what I had in mind. Mimicking me, she formed a similar wedge, while a lot smaller, it rivaled mine in girth, and put it above our heads.

Just in time. The monster noticed the weakness in my spell and was directing his attack more upwards, trying to catch us by surprise from above.

Our combined defense worked out pretty damn well. While I managed to deflect the frontal attack, For took care of protecting every other direction whenever some pieces of the spell managed to sneak through. Even when the monster suddenly shifted the angle from which it barraged us, she responded quickly, moving her spell whenever it was needed.

That strange defense kept on for about a whole minute, before the monster finally gave up and stopped, again going dim.

-Everybody good?

I gazed behind me, while still keeping the concentration on the spell, just to be safe. To my surprise, we actually were fine. For managed to successfully defend us from every other side, even from the back.

There was no time for discussion, because the one who replied was the monster. A guttural growl, deep enough to shake your bones from the sound alone.

-What is it this time?

Before any of us was able to react, the massive leech changed its color again - this time to blue and, in a span of less than a second, the waves of thorns were replaced by a wind, so cold and sudden that I even felt the temperature drop through the flames.

And it did not look like it had any intention of slowing down. From the maw of the creature was now blasting a literal blizzard. Even worse, because instead of snow, it was shooting a barrage of icicles.

I was glad that I did not drop the spell, although I was at a very big disadvantage there. The first second of the blast instantly extinguished the fire kept alive by For, and even mine started to die down. Whatever that was, the frost spell was indeed potent, which was strange, since I was pretty sure that at the beginning I saw the least amount of blue patches on its skin.

The situation started getting dangerous. Besides the fact that my barrier was barely holding on against this, well basically frost breath, even if I managed to successfully defend us against it, what next? Most likely the monster would’ve started with yet another element, and while I still felt like I had mana in me, plenty in fact, I couldn’t say the same about everyone else.

The whole group was barely holding on, some even collapsed already, despite being completely undamaged. I guess that explained the lack of communication…

Right now, there were only three people that did not look absolutely exhausted: me, king, and the kid.

If that was to continue, I’d have to actually start using different elements, and then I definitely would not be able to get away from here.

If all that was not enough, the monster again started glowing, this time with all three colors at once.

-We have to counterattack somehow… - I muttered, still keeping hold of the spell, thinking of how the hell I should resolve this situation.

-Sadly, I am limited to melee range - I heard the voice right behind me.

It was the king. I did not even realize when he was able to approach me.

-Getting closer might prove problematic.

-Indeed - he nodded, gazing at the pulsing patches on the monster’s skin. - Can you protect me while I move?

I gazed again at the monster.

-I doubt it. I am not sure what this thing is planning to use next, so I don’t know how exactly I should counter that… Also, protecting mobile targets is not something I am confident in…

-Understood. So we somehow need to predict that monster’s attack…

-That is not the only issue - I shook my head. - There is a good chance that it’s going to use some kind of combined magic - I pointed to the patches of light on its skin. - If it’s anything like the one I've seen before, the color is equivalent to the magic type it’s using. And since those are right now in the process of mixing…

-Fascinating creature…

-I guess we could slowly approach, although if we get too close and it uses the frost magic again, I’m not sure if my fire can negate…

I stopped and gave it a second thought. Yeah, I guess that could work…

-Are you sure you can kill it if we get in close enough? Those things are capable of absorbing different kinds of mana.

-Of course. Do you doubt me?

I gave him another look. He indeed looked confident, even in this situation.

-Well, I guess we can try this…

He nodded and raised his weapon, pointing it towards the creature.

-Let’s move.