Several more beams of golden light illuminated the sky, followed by the loud booms that each one produced. They were aimed in different directions, and save for a couple of them, they were all aimed in either mine or Feng Liu’s direction.

Reacting just as fast as the other few times, I reached for my power and created a darkness barrier. What bothered me about this is that those beams were infused with Holy Power, so they were feeling heavier than expected, but if I didn't block them, then the army below and behind was likely going to suffer from them.

Unexpectedly, both Nicole and James created their own barriers. A fiery barrier with a golden hue appeared right on top of mine again, and right away, the beams of golden light crashed with it. I worried if they were able to withstand the several hits that followed one after the other, but to my surprise, the barrier stood still as if it was just being hit by rocks.

“Impressive,” I said, my eyes set on the horizon, prepared for any more of those shots.

“Hehe, learned from the best, after all,” Nicole replied with a wink.

“Come on. We don’t have the time to be standing around here while they attack. We should go give it to them as well,” James said, and after giving him a nod, the two of them started flying up ahead.

There was someone else that needed to come with us, and with a quick glance down, I saw a certain skeleton with a black mask covering his head and looking all around at the other soldiers and knights that were pushing head. With a flick of my finger, I forced him to fly up, the sound of his scream increasing as he made his way next to me.

“You’re coming with me,” I said, looking at the flailing skeleton. “Don’t forget the reason for why you’re here.”

“I-I-I—” he tried to refute, but I wouldn’t allow it as I quickly flew ahead to catch up with Nicole and James.

From Feng Liu’s side, I noticed that the barrier that they used was able to withstand the shots without an issue, just as our side did, but they didn’t immediately start flying ahead like we did. I didn’t have to question why that was as a large ball of fire formed on top who I assumed was Kang Hana from the exposed skin I could see on the person. After a couple of seconds, that ball of fire was shot to the sky in a wide arc, just like the beams of light that were being fired our way. It left a trail that illuminated the sky, until it reached one of the places from where the beams of light were being fired.

“Looks like you’ve got competition,” James said with a mocking tone as we looked at the ball fly.

“Hmph, I can do that too, but I can’t see where it’s going to land, so it’s going to be a waste of magic,” Nicole replied, crossing her arms with a dismissive tone as we watched the fireball fly.

And she might’ve been right, as right before hitting the ground, one of those beams of light was fired, hitting the ball and creating a large explosion of both golden light and fire in the horizon. The beam of light was stopped, but the handful of others that were fired from other places still managed to be aimed this way.

We prepared once more to block them with our barriers, but I felt a strange magic signature coming from the sky, so I urgently turned to look up at the rainy clouds. I saw several lightnings streak across them. There were too many for them to be natural, and as if to prove me right, all of them turned in our direction.

I defended the same way as usual, by creating a dome of darkness around us, where the lightning hit several times, causing it to shake as its booming power hit it several times. Because of that, I couldn’t properly see where the beams of light were going to hit, so while the lightning was striking, a beam of light hit the dome as well.

An explosion of golden light and a lightning on top of it caused the dome to crack. I quickly filled the gaps with Hellfire, making it able to withstand both the next beam of light that hit it and the several lightning that kept falling on us.

Once it was clear, I withdrew the dome to assess the situation.

At Feng Liu’s side, a large silvery sphere stood, with a few cracks that were being filled with pale blue mana. At the horizon up ahead, there was nothing more than the dark forest. And in the sky, there were just the rainy clouds, but I knew that someone was up there.

As if realizing that very same thing, from the silver sphere, I saw Kang Hana burst out at high speeds, breaking the air around and pushing the rain away, quickly making her way to the clouds. I only managed to see her disappear into the thick clouds, and thought about making my way up there to help her, but with a shake of my head, I decided to trust her abilities and turned my attention back to the horizon, where our real target was supposed to be.

The sky was illuminated with lightning once more, but none of them came down to us, which meant that whoever was up there was being taken care of by Kang Hana. “We must move quickly. We don’t know for how long she can hold out against whoever’s in the clouds.”

“W-w-wait! I’m not sure if I can—wah!” Super-Demon tried to say something, but I couldn’t afford to stay and chat with him, so with Nicole and James, I burst ahead.

More beams of light were fired from the horizon, but it seemed like they couldn’t do that for much longer, since they just fired three of them. One of them was coming in Feng Liu’s direction, another one was coming our way, and the last one was going behind us, to where the soldiers were.

I didn’t have the power to block them all, and I couldn’t allow it to hit us either, so as before, I prepared myself to block. However, I was yet again stopped as Nicole and James worked together to create the same barrier from before while Super-Demon screamed non-stop.

Over at Feng Liu’s side, a silvery barrier was raised once more, and behind us, where the soldiers were, a large dome of golden light was raised—Helena’s doing, most likely.

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As it had been so far, every barrier was able to withstand the blow. Though, James seemed to have felt the expenditure of magic more harshly than Nicole, as he heaved slightly after the explosion of golden light was disappearing. I wondered if everything was alright, but after taking a sharp breath, he kept going forward, so both me and Nicole followed after him.

An explosion from the side of the silver barrier caught my attention, and I saw someone bursting out of it, much faster than Kang Hana, but going in a straight line in the same direction of the base. I couldn’t properly see who it was, so the best I could do was track the blurred shadow’s movements as the air and rain around them was pushed away.

This person was going much faster than we were, so in a few seconds, whoever that was, got ahead of us. If it was Feng Liu then I’d have to hurry as well, since he said that he wasn’t going to give me the opportunity to deal with Eletha the way that I wanted if he got there first, so I focused a bit more power in my flying magic and sped ahead, passing by Nicole and James as Super-Demon screamed behind me.

However, the earth exploded soon after in the path of whoever was ahead of me, with trees, dirt and rocks flying all over the place. A mountainous titan was rising from the earth with arms as thick as the thing's torso, and legs just as wide, making it look like a set of barrels put together. It was about thrice the size of the tallest trees in the forest, and it had no face, just another stump at the top. With a faster movement than its size would make one think possible, it swung its arm, launching a large boulder that flew straight in the direction of whoever was flying its way.

The boulder exploded as soon as it made contact, but whoever it was that it crashed with kept going. The earth titan raised its arms in a defensive stance, and the person that was flying crashed with it. There was a shockwave from the impact that nearly reached the place where we were, but the earth titan was just pushed back a certain distance, able to withstand that attack.

“Should we go help?” Nicole asked, her eyes in that direction while we moved forward.

“No,” I said with a shake of my head. “I’m not sure who it was that just crashed with that, but we’ll have to trust them… same as with Kang Hana up in the sky.”

As if to let us know about it, the sky cracked with lightning once more, and the earth titan pushed back with a spike that poked out of its chest, sending a figure flying back slightly.

“I think that’s coach Reeta,” James said, “Only someone like her would go out to fight like that.”

I couldn’t be sure, but when I turned to look at the place where Feng Liu's group was before, I saw that an extremely long silver lance was formed in the air. That wasn’t the kind of magic that Reeta could use, so James might’ve been right.

The lance then shot through the air, just as fast as Reeta did before, going straight for the earth titan, but the titan reacted by creating a small hole in its body, where the lance passed right through. I thought it a miss at first, but once the lance was half-way inside, it exploded into several smaller lances, appearing from this distance like needles blowing up in every direction.

However, the titan was simply filled with them and nothing more. It would take more than that to take it down.

“We’re almost at the place where Holy Power was used,” Nicole pointed out, causing me to turn my attention away from the other battles.

The place that she was pointing out was indeed odd, with a few trees that looked as if they didn’t belong there, so with the two of them close to me, and Super-Demon’s scream behind me, I quickly made my way over there.

We brushed past a few tree branches as we descended, quickly touching the blackened ground under us. An explosion was heard somewhere in the distance, but we couldn’t see what was going on anymore, so I just focused on trying to find out where we should go from here on out.

“Do you see anything?” James asked, turning in every direction as he was desperately looking for someone. “Is that Saint here? Where is she? Shouldn’t she be at the frontlines?”

He was right that as the Hero of the Holy Gods she should be at the front…

“Could she be up in the clouds? Or be that earth giant?” Nicole asked, throwing a small fireball in the air to illuminate the area.

“No. None of those things were using Holy Power… the only things that had it were those beams of light that have stopped being fired… which likely means that she’s got to be somewhere around here…” I replied, trying my best to sense her Holy Power or hear the voice of Altheras.

I quickly turned my eyes to the side, where I sensed Holy Magic being used, and soon after, a shot resounded in the middle of the trees and the rain. A golden light was getting closer to me, so with a swift move to the side, the shot went straight past me, hitting a tree and causing it to split in half.

“Where is she?!” James shouted, reading his stance in the same direction from which that shot came from. “Come out and face us!”

However, there was no response as a volley of those shots were fired. James raised a Holy Barrier and those shots were easily stopped by him… which was to be expected, since I didn’t feel the particularly burning Holy Power that Eletha carried.

“You should’ve just allowed me to finish you off right here,” a woman’s voice came from deeper in the dark woods. “But I guess that ending the Icon of Darkness isn’t my job.”

“Tch,” James clicked his tongue, before half-turning his face our way. “You girls go ahead. I’ll deal with whatever cunt is trying to act like her Holy Magic is better than mine.”

“Are you sure you’re going to be alright? I can stay and fight with you if—”

A burst of golden light from James interrupted Nicole as the man disappeared from his spot in the same direction from where the golden shots were fired. There were a few more of those lights in the distance from where we were, but, again, I had to trust that James could handle it.

“How rude!” Nicole exclaimed, turning her frown my way. “Whatever. Let's just find the entrance to that base.”

I nodded and tried to shift my attention from the explosion in the horizon, the lightning in the sky, and the shots being fired not too far away from me to the task at hand. But I was once again distracted when the sounds of guns being fired from where we came from started booming. They were too quick and not as loud as everything, without any magic power in them, which meant that by now, the soldiers had come to face something as well.

Hopefully, they weren’t any people with magic power, but even if they were, the soldiers were being looked after by Holy Knights and the Knight-Commander. So I turned my attention once more to the zone around us.

“I don’t see anything that could be a base…” Nicole said jogging forward in the same direction that we were going before. “And I can’t do any Earth Magic to lift things up…”

“Wait!” Super-Demon shouted. I was still holding him in the air with flying magic, and since I hadn’t paid attention to him, he was currently upside down with his finger pointing somewhere up ahead. “I see something that looks like a wall in that direction!”

I didn’t question how, or what he saw up ahead, and instead quickly went that way with Nicole. It was hard to see anything in between the trees, the rain, and the darkness of the night, but after a couple of minutes, we did find a strange wall. It looked no different than a piece of earth being lifted from the ground, and from the position we were looking at it, it could be confused with just a random small hill in the jungle.

But from the distance that it had from the place where it was reported that Holy Power was used, it could very well be what we were looking for. So with a bit of Earth Magic of mine, I tore a hole into the hill. It exploded with rocks and dirt going up in the air, until my magic crashed with a piece of steel.

It seemed like we had found the place we were looking for.