Chapter 431: Causing Havoc

The bear was already on top of Emil, lashing out with powerful swipes of its arms. Thankfully, the chief no longer had to focus on keeping the ceiling from collapsing on their heads. Since the barrier was no longer up, the bandits must have decided that collapsing the ceiling wasn’t as viable a strategy since they were now at risk of getting hurt as well. This freed up Emil to fight the Tier 5 and the man’s gigantic bear without too many distractions.

Of course, some earth mages were still dropping the occasional spike of earth from the top of the cavern, but Emil and the other Tier 4s from the village were handling them. It wasn’t exactly hard to spot a massive boulder falling from the sky.

Since Emil was kind enough to distract the Tier 5, this allowed Julius to go on a rampage of his own. There were a lot of bandits, and while most of them were Tier 3, a good number of them were Tier 4 in their own right.

What was even more worrying was that the bears were all Tier 4. So despite having almost two dozen Tier 4s of their own, the Frost Bear Clan clearly had the number advantage. Julius hoped that he might be able to alleviate some of the pressure by removing some of the Tier 4s, as he had already done.

On the other hand, he spotted that woman from before using her battleaxe with scary effectiveness. She was mowing down Tier 3s like they were wheat in a field. Even the Tier 4s who went up against her were blasted back by the incredible force she was able to generate. The bandits appeared to give up the idea of stopping her and instead focused on slowing her down.

While the woman had enormous power and skill, she didn’t seem to have many other supporting abilities. This meant blasts of icy frost and other attacks were constantly hindering her. They didn’t kill or hurt her too badly, but she certainly slowed down for the time being.

The adventurer team was quite the pain in the ass as well. They were fighting like a well-oiled machine. Each member supported the other, and nobody was ever in any real danger. They were the ones being attacked by the largest number of the enemy Tier 4s. However, the bandits clearly didn’t work together as well, which was exemplified as they got pushed back bit by bit.

It also showed just how much better Jakob and his team were. The quality difference was evident, and the bandits also noticed it.

On the bright side, he had already gotten some juicy notifications for smashing those two Tier 4s.

[Void Strike lvl 3 -> lvl 5]

[Void Step lvl 7 -> lvl 8]

The two skills synergized very well together, as one would expect from skills with such similar names. The more he learned in one of the skills, the more he could leverage that knowledge to help the other skill.

The cost of [Void Strike] was already drastically reduced, and he was still making improvements as time went on. He was thinking about how he could slightly speed up the activation when he was forced to tilt his head as a bolt of stone tore at his face. He unconsciously siphoned some of the kinetic energy from the attack and used this to fuel some of his dash toward the earth mage who had thrown it.

As much as he wanted to use [Void Step] and [Void Strike] constantly, he tried to be mindful of his mana consumption. One skill was already expensive enough, but two mana-intensive skills made things much more complicated if he wanted to conserve his mana.

Fortunately, he possessed other skills and abilities that enabled him to do this. In fact, he had been specifically training his kinetic energy for this exact situation. He fueled his body with kinetic energy and blasted toward the earth mage who was still throwing attacks at him.

The man felt like a Tier 4, but he was a weak Tier 4. At least that was what Julius sensed from the man’s aura. There was no weight or sharpness to it. It felt soft and pliable. That was also the reason why Julius was able to slam his kinetic energy onto the weak Tier 4, freezing him in place.

The earth mage still had an Authority to help him, but it didn’t really make much of a difference. Julius’s willpower and aura were more than enough to swat aside the attempts to escape, and he slammed a leg into the mage. They reacted fast enough to create a shield of stone over their skin, but that wasn’t able to blunt the force of the blow that much.

The mage was still sent flying into the other side of the cavern. Julius was about to chase after them when he felt a large group of bandits suddenly attack him. These weren’t even Tier 4s, though, and he quickly created a dozen spikes of mana over his shoulder, shooting them at these bandits. He barely blinked as the constructs razed most of them to the ground and kept on screeching through the air. He was forced to dissipate a couple of them to avoid hitting some of the people on his own side.

It was as if this was the moment when the Tier 3 bandits realized that he wasn’t such an easy target despite his age and collectively decided not to attack him anymore. He was fine with that. His goal was to hunt down the Tier 4s before they could have too much impact on the battle.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author’s consent. Report any sightings.

He spotted his next target and blasted himself forward. However, he found his way blocked by one of the Frost Bears. Thankfully, it wasn’t the boss bear, but it was still huge. The creature’s mouth was larger than Julius’s body, and its paws were not that much smaller, not to mention the short swords it had for claws that shone with a dull blue light.

Julius didn’t back down, though. He had fought his share of bears before and thought this one would be no different. He rushed toward the bear, answering its roar with one of his own. A smile slowly crept onto his face in anticipation of the clash.

Even with his improvements in kinetic energy, he found himself surprised when he wasn’t able to win the strength contest. He stumbled back as the bear shoved him and tried to remove his guts with one of its claws.

Julius smacked the paw to the side and shot a spike of aura-woven mana at the bear’s face. The bear didn’t have the armor like its leader did, but Julius quickly found out that the pelt of the bear gave it more than enough durability. The spike barely managed to penetrate it, and even when it exploded, some kind of skill from the bear reduced the force.