Salenia stalked her next prey with her Panther mount only a few steps behind, the wound on its shoulder slowed it down slightly, but not enough to stop it from mauling the dungeons intruders.
Steps sounded from barely 2 meters in front of her hidden figure, leaves across from the party's position rustled and the group turned in unison to face the threat, but they only found a doe standing there before it bolted, Selenia thanked Lucifer in her heart then used the opportunity given to her by lunging forward with her sword already cutting down towards the first enemy.
He was able to lift up his shield in time to block the strike, but the attack was so sudden that he could only raise his arm up from its horizontal position, when the two handed sword made impact on his shield it tore the rotator cuffs in his shoulders, rendering his arm useless.
Selenia clicked her tongue in annoyance then readjusted her hands and attacked from the side, again the warrior was able to repel her blade by placing his sword against his side and using it as a shield.
She was about to go for a third strike however, the other party members had started to surround her, she pumped mana into her legs and started to leap back into the jungle covering, except when she was about to leave the ground an arrow whistled towards her.
Salenia only had enough time to drop to the floor as the arrow flew overhead, now they had completely encircled her, the men did not give enough time for her to steady herself by charging all at once with spears point forward at different parts of the body.
Just as she was about to be impaled her breastplate gave a blinding light then discharged a brilliant emerald field, shielding her body and repelling the spears, Salenia reached into the pouches at her waist and spread a powder over her sword during the flash, then spinning around in a mana induced blade storm she cut several spearheads from their shafts.
Another arrow whistled past but this time she was ready for it, the moment she heard the twang of the bow she had pinpointed the archer hiding in the trees. after cutting down the arrow she stood in a stance in preparation for attacks from any angle, then said as demurely as possible, "You don't fight like adventurers, are you here for the core like us" causing pause in the others.
The warrior that blocked her strikes cautiously replied: "You're her for Prince Geof" while trying to watch for any attempts of deception from his armored foe, Selenia paused then spoke slowly "You and I both know that if we were working for Prince Geof neither one of us would say we were on this kind of mission", before the leader could speak again a familiar voice shouted from the trees "she is trying to delay you for the poison to take effect" immediately the men's face's paled while they tried fumbling for their antidotes.
She took a step into one direction and started to run towards the weakest person in the encirclement before suddenly jumping back and charging straight for the leader, her sudden change of direction caused the arrow to miss badly as she lunged towards the leader.
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As expected the leader was once again able to repel Salenia's sword with his own, then again, now the men had now taken their medicine then caught up, they attacked again in formation, not allowing her any room to dodge the attacks from mutable angles.
Salenia repelled the men with her shield once again, but this time more than half of the men repelled coughed up blood and were forced to kneel down from the backlash. Using the opportunity she lept over the encirclement, cutting one man down as he was reduced to a coughing fit on the floor, then she used the grip enchantment on her boots to run vertically up a tree.
She switched to thermal vision as she cut through the canopy to a surprised rogue, then swung down her sword on the unprepared man, but just like last time he used his ability causing his agility to skyrocket as he dodged away swinging from branch to branch in an erratic manner.
Frustrated Selenia screamed "I've taken your balls next I'll take your life traitor scum" then she dropped from the trees and ran away on foot, only now noticing a Panther on the ground with an arrow between the eyes as she left.
Lucifer watched the whole battle because most of the adventurer teams were dead so nothing exciting was happening elsewhere. he frowned as he watched the familiar rogue escape Selenias grasp. Now with everything over the party regrouped and bandaged their wounds, the leader spoke to the rogue when he returned "you seemed to know her", the rogue replied "she can hide her face but I recognized her sword easily enough", the leader frowned then said "half of my men are still coughing up blood, what the fuck did she use"
After contemplating for a moment the rogue answered "mana-rupture poison, something only high-level druids can make, nothing to worry about it only activates when you use your mana with high intensity causing your mana to go wild and attack the user" The leader frowned even deeper when he thought about the deeper undertones of the rogues replies than said "so your saying that we are in a dungeon with an unknown girl hunting us and we can't use our mana because you want some elf cooking recipes", the rogue shrugged then simply disappeared into the underbrush.
The leader was furious, upon seeing one of his men scratching himself bloody he roared at him to stop before he gets an infection, then he noticed that all of his men were scratching themselves silly, he looked down and found himself scratching his arm lightly to ward off an itch but, instead there was a large gash where he was scratching and blood all over his nails.
He roared at his subordinates to wash themselves off, never in his life did he imagine that itching powder would be used as a weapon instead of some stupid prank by alchemy students on the army recruits. They had cleaned themselves off several times and
They had cleaned themselves off several times and the itching had stopped but, the wounds kept bleeding vigorously. He ordered a forced march back to the others to get healing before they all bled to death, after taking a healing potion each they found that the potions had limited effect at stopping the bleeding, the potions only speed up the body's regeneration to insane degrees but without blood that was impossible to be effective.
The smell of blood perforated the air as they trudged through the floor, unknown to them inside the shadows stalked a far larger cat along with some of her friends attracted by the stench.
The party only had enough time to scream as they were pounced on from all directions when they were at their weakest.
Lucifer finally let a small smile emerge when the last screams died down, then he went to find Selenia, all the while thinking he really needed a body soon so he could give a good spanking while smiling at the thought of it.