The wind bit at Reidar’s face, but it felt refreshing. It didn’t smell like it did in the cave, which was a wonderful upgrade.

He sat on the back of a massive Crow from the Apex Menagerie as it fought against the turbulence. The road leading back to Ashwick broke the blur of green that dominated the forest below.

He checked his mana. It was regenerating, slowly but surely, thanks to his many perks and the passive intake from his gear. He wasn’t running on fumes anymore, but he felt the mental fatigue of the fight against Silas. Killing a mutated human almost at level 400 wasn’t something one could just walk off.

As the city of Ashwick came into view, Reidar leaned forward.

“Jeez…”

From this altitude, the situation was as clear as the day itself, and it was absolute. He had expected damage, but this looked like a natural disaster had localized itself within the city walls.

The central skyscraper, the pride of the Church’s engineering in this area, was gone. In its place was a giant pile of concrete blocks and twisted rebar.

The surrounding parts of the city weren’t faring much better. Entire blocks were burning, and bodies littered the streets. It looked as if a wrecking ball the size of a house had been dragged through the residential zones.

And in the middle of the rubble, he saw the cause.

The War Mastiffs.

Jake used them as siege weapons. The massive, armored beasts were tearing through the remaining city militia like they were chew toys, plowing through barricades, ignoring spear walls and spell fire.

Reidar guided the Crow toward the outskirts, past the broken North Gate.

He spotted them near the edge of the treeline. It was a small clearing, away from the dust and the noise of the dying city. A trio of War Mastiffs stood guard around two figures.

He ordered the Crow to descend. The massive bird banked, creating a gust that flattened the grass as it touched down. Reidar slid off before it fully landed, dismissing the summon with a wave of his hand.

“Reidar!” Jake’s voice cracked. The boy was sitting on a fallen log, his armor battered and stained with soot and blood. Some were his, some of their enemies.

Lying next to him, wrapped in a blanket, was Lena. She wasn’t moving.

Reidar didn’t waste time with greetings. He crossed the distance and kneeled beside her.

“What happened?” Reidar asked.

“It was Mara,” Jake said, wiping blood from a cut on his forehead. “She… She could teleport and took us by surprise.”

Reidar used [Wellspring of Vitality], making the surrounding air turn verdant. A pulse of energy expanded from Reidar’s hand.

[Healing Ally: Lena. +4% Max HP/sec.]

[Healing Ally: Jake. +4% Max HP/sec.]

[Healing Allies: War Mastiffs. +4% Max HP/sec.]

The color returned to Lena’s cheeks. Her breathing deepened, the hitch in her chest smoothing out as her wounds knit themselves back together. Beside him, the cut on Jake’s forehead closed up, not leaving a scar.

“She teleported for the entire duration of the fight,” Jake said. “I used Augmentation on my S.H.I.E.L.D., but she just… It was impossible to keep track of her. She kept hitting me from blind spots. I got Lena out, but… not before she got knocked unconscious.”

Reidar looked at the boy.

“Better unconscious than dead. You did well, Jake.”

Jake was healing, yes, but the amount of damage his armor had taken told a story. The kid had to face a mutated human several levels higher than him. One that could fucking teleport. That was not something that anyone could do.

“How was the fight?” Reidar asked. He needed to know more about Mara, as he only saw her for less than a minute—no, less than 30 seconds—before she teleported away. That she could teleport was the only information Reidar had about her and her spells.

Jake nodded, looking down at his hands. “I couldn’t hit her. I’m strong, Reidar. I know I’m strong. But she knew where I was going to be. She countered everything.”

It was a hard lesson. Attributes were one thing; experience and combat IQ were another. Jake was eleven. Mara wasn’t, and that made an enormous difference.

But it wasn’t just that, as it also looked like the spells the church members made for themselves worked better than skills because they were tailor-made for their caster. Skills were almost always generic or so specific that finding someone for whom the skills worked to perfection was impossible.

“At some point while we fought, she teleported away. I don’t know where she went,” Jake said, suddenly looking around at the treeline. “She could still be here. We need to move.”

Reidar shook his head. “She’s not. She teleported to the cave where I was.”

Jake froze. “The cave?”

“Yeah.”

“Then she saw you?”

Reidar nodded. “She saw me. And she saw Silas.”

Jake swallowed. “Did… did you kill her too?”

“No,” Reidar said. “She ran. As soon as she saw the body, she turned tail and teleported out. She didn’t even try to fight.”

“Dammit!” Jake kicked the dirt. “We lost her.”

Reidar grinned. “We didn’t.”

He tapped the side of his head.

“When she teleported into the cave, she was panicked. She wasn’t paying attention to her surroundings. I had a Vorathid Sky-Hunter cloaked above her. Just before she cast her escape spell, I had it latch onto her robe.”

He paused.

“She is Northwest,” Reidar said. “Based on what I’m seeing, there’s a small Church outpost about a week’s travel from here. That’s where she’s gone to lick her wounds.”

Jake looked at him. “You… you planned that?”

“I wish. I just improvised, but at least we have a general direction for our next steps.”

Lena began to stir at that moment. A groan escaped her lips as her eyes opened. She blinked several times, the glow of Reidar’s skills catching in her eyes.

“Reidar?” she said. She tried to sit up, but Reidar pushed her back down.

“Easy,” he said. “You took a nasty blow to the back of your head.”

She looked around again.

“Did we…” She looked from Reidar to Jake. “Silas?”

Reidar smiled. It was the first genuine smile he had shown in weeks.

“We won.”

As the words left his mouth, a blue window materialized in the air between them, bright enough to outshine the healing aura.

[QUEST COMPLETE: The Fortress of Shadows]

[Quest Reward: 5,000,000 C.L.A.S.P. Points, 1,500,000 Survival Points]

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep