Esha looked at Jing. Jing saw her waiting for her directions, “Father’s orders are more important than mine. Move it!”

“Thanks, Jing.” I dashed at the robed man clutching a baby. He was the one tossed back farthest by the explosive bulb, so I thought he was one the weaker members of the group. Then he tossed his baby at me.

“You’re joking,” I whispered, catching the baby. I should’ve let it drop, but I didn’t have the time to think that clearly.

An eighth stage aura surged into my hands. I looked down at the child. He seemed strangely calm.

The baby punched me in the stomach. My eyes widened. I coughed and threw it away. I landed on the ground and put my hand on my gut. It throbbed, but it wasn’t enough to slow me down.

The baby stopped falling and floated in the air, watching me with intelligent eyes. He spat out his pacifier. It levitated in front of its face. Yellow liquid flowed off this fingers and formed a bubble around his pacifier. It glowed warmly.

The red-robed man stood beneath the infant. He took a deep breath. He pulled out two gray spools of yarn and began weaving.

I refuse to believe this guy is serious. These were circus freaks. They had to be.

I ran at him and a shower of yellow bolts rained down on me. The bolts hurt about as much as paintballs. I put my arms up to shield my face. The earth beneath me dissolved, demolished by the attacks. I pushed through the bolts and reached out to grab the red robed man. His yarn turned into the shape of a birdcage and clamped over me.

An illusion of metal bars covered the yarn. I grabbed the bars. The illusion was solid, real.

The infant shot his missiles through the cage bars. I hope none of that baby spit gets on me.

I grabbed the bars and tore them apart with sheer force. I grabbed the weaver's wrist, stopping him from weaving anything else. He pulled out a knife and tried to stab me. I swatted it away. It left a small cut on the back of my hand.

I kneed him in the stomach and looked to the sky for the infant. He saw what happened to his buddy and flew back to the original group as fast as he could. I followed.

Less than twenty seconds had passed since I launched the bulb.

I glanced to the side. Jing had sprouted a pair of wings and taken to the sky. Vines with blades at the ends grew off her hands. They whipped through the air, generating a sharp, eerie whine. She didn’t attack anybody. She simply floated in the air and looked down.

Our enemies had one goal: destroy as much of the library as possible before the school’s reinforcements arrived. All I needed to do was slow them down. I had physical strength and toughness, but that wasn’t enough to stop all thirty of them.

A pair twins stopped in front of me, holding hands. They wore matching tunics and headdresses. One of them was the lady I saw in the king’s mansion. They burned in a swirling tide of transparent blue flame. I looked to the ground at their feet to measure the heat of the flames. I thought the floor would be bubbling lava, it was only cracked.

I had distracted four of the thirty of them. It was something, but not enough.

I grit my teeth. My books! My fertilizer! Chucks of black stone torn from the library fell like hail. They were destroying my fertilizer storage box right before my eyes. .

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

They wouldn’t be ignoring me if this were my territory, I grumbled mentally.

The two girls walking at me amped up their Qi and the flames around them expanded. Fog poured off of them, obscuring them from my sight. The fog drifted down as if attracted by the earth. The floor the fog touched began to crack.

The fog flowed back up, forming the shape of a miniature palace. I say miniature, but it was still bigger than my mansion. The smoke engulfed me, sealing me in the castle.

I breathed, and the water particles in my breath turned into little sparkling crystals. It was below freezing temperature, but it didn’t affect my body. I didn’t have time for this.

I tried running in one direction. One of the girls appeared out of the fog and hit me with me a stick, sending me tumbling back. I lost my sense of direction. I didn’t know where I was anymore.

I sighed. It was one of these things.

Psh. Surrounding me in mist and making me lose my sense of direction. This might be a never-seen-before technique in this world, but I’ve seen it in books hundreds of times.

I used identify to find all the plants near me. They knocked me back again. I’d retained my sense of direction by sensing my location relative to the plants around me. I kept running in the same direction until I ran into a wall of blue flame.

I clenched my jaw to stop my teeth from chattering. Now that’s cold. Some kind of liquid filled the flames. The liquid soaked into my clothes, stealing the heat from my body.

I pushed through and landed outside the castle. The fog poured off of me. The castle moved at me, trying to capture me again.

Fights at this level moved quickly. Less than a minute had passed from the time I fired the explosive bulb.

Esha stood not far from me. She surveyed the fights and said, “Grandmaster, Mistress, please excuse this.”

Everything stopped. Everybody except me and Esha put on a blank expression and collapsed. Jing stopped flapping her wings and she dropped from the sky. The library stopped shaking. The castle behind me dissolved. The people trying to destroy the spirit scrolls stopped attacking and slumped over.

I felt a small pang of… sleepiness? I couldn’t put my finger on it, but whatever she did also had some small effect on me.

Jing woke up first. She caught herself before she hit the ground and flapped back up. The others woke after. They saw Esha and ten people splintered off the main group to fight her. I could tell what they were thinking, “That’d better be a single-use ability.”

Seconds after, Jing shouted, “I found him! It’s that big Dao Journey stage person we met earlier!”

My brain put the pieces together. Jing had been looking for the person counter-controlling the library’s rooms. I focused all my strength in my legs and launched myself at the burly man we’d seen earlier. I shot through the crowd and grabbed his neck.

His concentration broke and the library’s rooms began pulling away. A set of fangs sunk into my arm. “What the?” I shouted. I let go of his neck.

A slimy bulbous leech was stuck to my elbow. It was no ordinary leech. It’s round set of fangs penetrated all the way into my arm. I grabbed it and exerted my full strength to tear it off. It stretched, but stayed firmly attached.

I panicked. Lifting my elbow to my face, biting into it like it had done to me. It’s slimy skin broke and it loosened its bite on me. I tore it off with my jaw, my heart pounding. I’m weaker without my plants. Far weaker.

I looked in the direction the leech had come from. It led my eye to Er Yi, who was in a throwing position. I threw the leech back him. It hit him in the chest and sent him flying. The place I was bit started to tingle and turn blue.

Poison? Sorry, that won’t work against an alchemist. I slapped an all-purpose salve on my arm and threw a few pills down my throat.

The bulky man regained his concentration and pulled the rooms towards himself. I ran at him and grabbed his arm, breaking his concentration again.

The sword form I read in the library I was protecting appeared in my head. One of the attacks was a hilt strike.

I made a fist and copied the pose of the man in my head. I positioned my fist to slant down and tilted my body forward. Finally, I swung the side of my fist into his head.

I pulled it off, but not perfectly. Gravity, the punch, and the way I braced myself should’ve all balanced out. Instead, I flew a few meters back and landed on my back.

I looked up and breathed sharply. His head was gone. All that was left was a stump of a neck.

Wait. That’s not it, he’s not bleeding. The remnants of his head lie scattered on the floor. The pieces glittered red and blue like gems.

He grabbed a rock from the ground and put it on his stump. It reformed into the shape of a head. He got up, unharmed.

...an elemental.

Esha walked up from behind me, “Give up.”

The elemental collapsed. Esha stood over his body. Unlike the other times, the elemental didn’t get up.

The tower master regained control of the stone. With the elemental disabled, the rooms retracted themselves and the rest of the group stopped attacking. They had nothing to attack. She descended with hundreds of black blocks. They fell on the people attacking the tower, pinning them against the earth.

“You won’t be able to make any more progress with me here,” Esha said to the elemental's comrades. She turned to me, “Should I kill the stone man?” she asked.

“No! Don’t!” Jing yelled, “Keep him like that for now, but kill him if they don’t leave.”

The stones weren’t able to keep the freak show down forever. The stone crumbled, but they couldn’t do anything to the library while the tower master controlled it. Looks of distress appeared on their faces, accompanied with some looks of anger. But they had no choice. Thirty people, all at the eighth stage and above, scampered away.