Haydith struggled fiercely, but the masked man’s muscles were imbued with superhuman strength granted by the System. There was no way a mere human like Haydith could meaningfully resist the man in a grapple. As she resisted, however, she realized that she could still move one of her arms. The man wearing the deer skull held one hand to Haydith’s mouth and the other hand to one of her wrists, leaving Haydith’s left arm free.
[Enhance Agility, Lvl. 2]
Moving faster than her body would otherwise allow, Haydith grabbed her knife and brought it plunging toward the masked man’s neck. Only seeing the striking knife at the last second, her attacker brought a hand up and knocked the knife away. The blow landed with a powerful force, knocking the blade into darkness and causing pain to explode down the length of Haydith’s arm.
Though she failed to kill her attacker, Haydith had managed to remove his hand from her mouth. As loud as she could, Haydith screamed, “Help me!”
She was only able to get those two words out before the masked man’s hand was back on her mouth. Haydith struck at the masked man with her free hand a few times, but her blows did not harm the man at all. It was like she was punching an iron wall.
“She’s resisting,” the masked man said just loud enough for his allies nearby to hear. “Good. That will make it easier to justify any damage in transit.”
A loud yelp followed by a dog’s whimper could be heard from just outside of Haydith’s sight. She craned her head to the best of her ability with the man holding it firmly against the dirt. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw blood falling from Sherlock’s flank and a man in a skull mask holding a bleeding spear.
Tears began streaming down Haydith’s face and into the dirt below as she saw the two masked men baring down on her companion. There was only one thing left she could think to do.
[Time Stop]
The world around her suddenly became motionless. The combat between Sherlock and the two masked men became a tableau of activity like the cave paintings of tribesmen hunting a wooly mammoth.
Stopped time had always been a safe place where Haydith could escape to in times of stress. It was a place where she could be truly alone. This time was different. Horror sunk into her bones as she realized that the man grabbing her could still move.
“Oh, that’s not gonna work here, Princess,” the masked man said with naked glee. “We know how to deal with people like you.”
Haydith tried with all of her might to push against the ground underneath her. [Time Stop] had made both of them weightless, so she thought that knocking them both airborne would help her situation. Her resistance did nothing since the masked man kept them both anchored to the ground by firmly grasping a tree root with the hand he had used to hold her hand down a moment before.
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A sudden realization dawned on her. She realized in that moment that she had been doomed from the beginning. They had probably been tracking her for hours, and they were just waiting for her to go to sleep. They had a counter to everything she could possibly do. From the beginning, there was nothing Haydith could have done to save herself.
That little message appeared at the top of her vision just as her upper core emptied and she could no longer maintain [Time Stop]. The moment [Time Stop] ended, noise returned. This time, however, the noise was deafening. A loud crash filled the forest like the sound of cannon-fire.
Both Haydith and the masked man looked around in fear. Haydith could at least find some solace in her knowledge that the masked man was just as terrified as she was.
Craning her neck once more to look at Sherlock, she saw a completely unexpected sight. One of the masked men was laying on the ground with a massive shard of ice sticking out of his chest, and the other grasped his arm in pain. He had sustained some injury to his arm that caused blood to flow freely to the ground.
“What did you…?” the man grabbing Haydith began to ask, but he was cut off by the sound of roaring flames.
The sky lit up like it was mid-day as the entire forest was blanketed in a layer of roiling orange fire. Haydith and the man both looked up to see that the canopy of trees had been lit completely on fire. In an instant, they found themselves in the center of a forest fire.
“Is that a… dragon?” the masked man asked, the fear on his face turning to panic.
Another sheet of fire roared into existence between Haydith and the two injured men fighting Sherlock. With this second attack, it was clear that the source of the fire was flying high above and moving quickly.
“We’re getting out of here,” the man hissed, trying to cover up his fear with vitriol. “Dragon or no dragon, I’m finishing the job.”
The masked man forcefully lifted Haydith to her feet. Just as he wrapped one iron arm around her midsection, a loud voice called out from above the flaming tree line. “Fulgur!”
A bolt of electricity shot down from the sky and struck the masked man. The electric current passed through him and into Haydith, causing her to cry out in pain. The pain was immense, but it caused the masked man to finally release her.
Haydith fell to the ground as electricity caused her muscles to spasm uncontrollably. Everything that had happened over the past day piled up. No matter what she did, she couldn’t convince her legs to work.
The masked man recovered first. He was a higher level than her, and he was not exhausted. He lifted himself painfully to his feet and lunged toward Haydith once more. The masked man was not able to make it, as a massive vertical wall of fire blazed into existence that stopped him from moving any further.
As if it was alive, this wall of fire surged toward Haydith. For a moment, she was certain this would be the end of her life, but the wall of fire curved around her harmlessly at the last second. It took her a moment to realize that, instead of harming her, the fire was protecting her.
Several blasts of flame forced the masked man back. After one of the blasts burned him, Haydith could see him begin to retreat in earnest.
An eerie silence fell over the forest as Haydith looked up in fear in an attempt to spot the entity that had just defeated the three masked men. As she watched, Haydith saw a single figure float through the flaming canopy above. This figure with pale skin and burning red eyes was completely unphased by the fire.
For a moment, Haydith was convinced that the figure actually was a dragon and not a teenage boy.
“Hello, I come in peace,” the boy with pale skin said in English a moment after he landed in front of Haydith.
The instant the floating mage with gleaming red eyes said that, Haydith's eyes closed, and she fell unconscious.