Chapter 309: Surrounded

Meanwhile, the situation on Kai's side was not as peaceful as those two.

"I am sorry that I missed them," Sofia apologized while punching the beast near him.

"No. This is my fault as well." Kai shook his head.

"No, no. I should have noticed my own weakness sooner, not making trouble like this."

"In other words, your eyes can see something like their power level or danger level…" Kai asked, wanting to confirm her ability.

"It's power level. I can see a fire representing their power level. But to think I mistook the intelligent B rank beast to a normal A rank beast… I should have realized this first."

"Save it for later. For now, we need to handle these magical beasts first." Kai used his hearing ability to scan the entire area, locating every single magical beast that would come to them.

Because of the low strength from the B rank magical beast, it managed to fool Sofia's eyes since a normal intelligent B rank beast would be a bit more dangerous than the A rank beast.

Luckily, they were fighting this as a group, if not, they would surely become the prey of these beasts.

Kai took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a second before commanding. "Michelle and Ayaka will be the vanguard with me and create a triangle formation. Your positions are on my five and eight respectively, while I handle the ones coming from the front."

"Roger!" Ayaka nodded and positioned herself ten meters next to the group.

"It's not like we can avoid this… Time to get serious." Michelle smiled, releasing her shadow power as symbols after symbols appeared on her skin. She then moved toward her position, looking at the dense woods. Shadows were moving around the woods as expected. "Spotted thirty beasts. Coming here in one minute. Engage?"

"No. Don't expand the formation." Kai shook his head and moved to his own position. "Tasha will provide us with cover, and everyone else shall protect her. Prioritize those coming from the air."

"Roger." Tasha nodded and drew her arrows.

"Sofia will act as a buffer between our formation, but your main priority is to support Ayaka."

"Understood." Sofia nodded and stationed herself between Ayaka and Tasha.

If this were the past Ayaka, she would complain, telling Kai that she would be able to handle this alone. But Kai said this not because she didn't trust her. Instead, it was due to the incoming magical beasts. In other words, she would have the most dangerous position.

No one understood why Kai gave Ayaka that position, but since he had commanded that way, they needed to agree.

"How many are they?" Tasha asked.

"I am not sure… But considering the B rank magical beast is not killed yet, we can safely assume there are more than three thousand. It will also cause a chain reaction, so we need to kill that beast as soon as possible. It is not going to go that far."

"I have memorized the energy, so I should be able to spot it," added Sofia as she wouldn't want to make another blunder.

"I will snipe it then." Tasha nodded.

"Understood."

"Incoming!" Michelle shouted as the incoming magical beasts had come. She summoned her shadow swords and stepped forward.

"Make sure you don't go beyond the twenty-meters mark. If there are beasts beyond that, let Tasha handle it." Kai shouted and raised his swords. Ten incoming cougars filled his vision, charging at him.

He ran a few meters and slashed two incoming cougars that tried to strike him. Five more appeared from the front as if they thought nothing about Kai killing their brethren. The other three, at the same time, appeared from his right, flaking him.

"Oscillation Shield." Kai used the shield to stop the three cougars while shifting his body to the left and waving his swords to kill two of them.

The three that had been left untouched had the biggest chance to strike him. However, three arrows pierced their heads simultaneously.

Kai glanced at Tasha and nodded before retracting the magic circle. The three cougars finally moved again. They were going to go around after hitting Kai's shield, but the latter had calculated that they wouldn't do it if he retracted it soon enough. And of course, this could only happen because he knew Tasha had been aiming for the cougars instead of helping Michelle.

That was why the moment he retracted his magic circle, it slightly threw their balances, and Kai didn't miss this chance and beheaded all three.

Although they would soon be surrounded by thousands of beasts, they were still scattered around the area, so it wasn't like they fought those many beasts in one go. And the group would rather fight thirty monsters a hundred times than three thousand at once.

That was why Kai and Tasha immediately turned to Michelle. Kai had checked that he had thirty seconds before the next wave, so he immediately picked up five pebbles on the ground and summoned his Sound Blast magic circle.

It boosted the power of the pebbles, enhancing its speed. These five hit their heads, and the power carried was enough to knock them down.

During this time, Michelle sneaked in and slashed those five beasts. Her enemies were a pack of coyotes, so it was enough to kill them. However, another ten surrounded her and charged at her at the same time.

Tasha released three arrows, piercing their heads. Kai threw another five rocks toward them, while Michelle killed the two before finishing Kai's portion.

Noticing that the situation had gone under control, Kai turned around again, watching a herd of sheep coming his way.

Unlike the normal sheep, these ones had a bulkier body and good speed. If one got ram by them, they needed to pray they wouldn't die from getting stepped on.

"Around forty…" Kai muttered as he kicked up the corpses on the ground and launched them to the herd using his Sound Blast, causing a distraction to the herd.

He then went around and started his killing spree, lingering around the twenty-meters mark he created earlier.

The group didn't have much problem in the beginning due to Ayaka and Sofia. Their side needed to fight fifty or something Lynxes.

A red fire started covering the tip of her spear as she calculated the timing on the Lynxes before walking forward. She glanced at the left before going to the right as if sending a message to the one behind her, Sofia.

Sofia, on the other hand, completely understood the message and raised both hands, creating two pieces of ice crystal.

"I am ready."

Ayaka nodded, waited for three seconds, and leaped toward the right while releasing her wild instinct. This immediately took the attention of all lynxes here. The one heading toward Ayaka kept charging forward, but those that she tried to avoid turned around, chasing after her.

"!!!" Sofia finally saw her chance and threw the two crystals into the air above the left side.

"Ice Needles. Combust!" A magic circle appeared in both crystals as they exploded, releasing the needles stored inside as if shooting bullets.

These needles were quite big as each of them was the size of a human finger. And the moment it rained the lynxes down, it pierced them as if it was nothing.

*Howl!*

They screamed out of pain while falling down one after another. Most of them were pierced in a few spots, and the blood dyed their fur greyish white fur to red.

Ayaka smiled upon this and noticed that the advance from the left had stopped, so she only needed to focus on those in front of them.

"Flame Fan."

A magic circle appeared on her spear as she swung it. Suddenly, it burst out fire like a flamethrower. Not only it burned those in the front, but it also created a small firewall before them.

*Howl!*

The lynxes began wailing again. Some of them stopped in their tracks because of the burn, while the others had the courage to penetrate the firewall, only to find a net caught them completely and started burning them.

*Howl!*

"Perfectly cook lynxes…" Ayaka smiled, looking at the fabulous grill mark on their bodies, before piercing their heads to make sure they were dead.

At the same time, some of them noticed this and went around. Because the left side was completely halted due to Sofia's attack, they could only go from Ayaka's right. However, if a magical beast could think of this, Sofia obviously could do the same.

"Ice Needles. Combust!"

She used the same magic to stop them as well before delivering the killing strokes using another ice magic.

Ayaka nodded and matched her by removing all the threats from the front. She retracted her fire net and swung her spear through the firewall she created earlier, blowing the firewall off while slashing those staying behind the wall.

"Good work, time to finish this group."

Seeing the situation, Tasha asked. "Kai… We should be able to handle the situation here. Do you still want to warn those around us?"

"No." Kai shook his head. "Although the situation is still bad, we should be able to handle this. Just focus on handling the flying beasts and locating the intelligent beast. As long as we can't kill it, more and more are coming. There are a few magical beasts that have suspicious movement, but I can't see which one is the intelligent one. The others must be his subordinates or something tasked to inform the surrounding beasts.

"For now, the situation is under control, and the intelligent beast will become impatient and come to us… In a normal circumstance that is…" Kai's face suddenly turned dark.

"Kai?" Tasha called his name as the others had their expression turn to serious.

"There is another wave coming. This one is more organized… Around a few hundreds to a thousand." Kai informed while clicking his tongue.

"…"