172 Pick your partner (1/2)

Part 1

Marceus was a champion blessed by the gods with the ability to turn his whole body into any weapon he wanted, made of the holy metal able to cut anything he wanted.

Ellie was a mage from planet earth, a world whose people seemed to show to have much more power with regards to their affinity, being able to produce even more powerful spells than the people from the magical world itself.

Mia was an immortal child who had both a blessing and a curse. Her blessing allowed her to absorb energy from her palms and convert it into power for herself, while her curse allowed her to heal all her injuries by taking in the negative energy from those around her, making the girl extremely strong, extremely fast, and extremely hard to defeat.

Aside from that, there was still another mage that appeared to have some kind of wind magic at his disposal, and three knights armed with silver metal created by Marceus.

These were the opponents that Detra's group needed to overcome.

On her side, she had pretty much a younger version of Marceus that wasn't nearly as experienced as he was, a little mage that could use a wide range of spells but with very little control over her emotions, resulting in her jumping into things without properly thinking and making many mistakes, and one very skilled swords-woman who just would not stop glaring at Detra for even a second.

These three kept looking at Detra waiting for her to answer whether they actually could pull this off properly.

”Well... There might be a way... But it will not be easy...” she admitted.

”Are you sure about that??” Lilith questioned.

”Hey, you're the one who can see the future... Why don't you tell me?”

”I can't properly see the future when there are so many champions present... The different types of blessed energy keep interfering with one another... I started to get better at it after a while... But trying to see a future with Marcus, Marceus, and Mia is just too much to ask...”

”I see...” Detra sighted, ”What about you, young miss? Do you have this problem as well?”

”I don't know... I can't really mirror Lilith's ability unless I'm in some kind of danger... I... I still can't control it that well...” Ellie confessed.

”Wonderfull... No pressure for me...” Detra grumbled sarcastically.

She looked at her group one more time and wondered if they could win this fight if they properly worked together, but they were looking like they would be unable to cooperate right now with how madly angry Lilith and Ellie were looking like while glaring at each other, how irritated Lilith stared at Marcus for not taking her side in the argument, and how the lad looked like he was very uncomfortable right now with all these women around him acting as if they were in a bad mood.

But then an idea came into her. What if she didn't need them to work together?

”Really?” x 3

”Yes!! Trying to face all of them would be suicide... But if we can split them apart and try to take them one by one, we can pull this off!”

”Split them apart?” Ellie repeated.

”Exactly!” Detra grabbed a stick and began to draw on the ground the figures of the seven opponents.

She then drew two lines among them to split them into groups, very similar to how her previous strategy was looking like.

”If we can separate them into groups for each of you to face using the blue diamonds from the young miss to create a wall, they won't be as big of a challenge and you can finish them off without having to worry about any interruption. All we need to do is make sure to separate the three heavy hitters, Marceus, Evlin, and Mia, so that they can't help each other!”

The group stared silently at the drawing while awaiting for Detra to finish her explanation.

”We need to make sure Marceus gets isolated so that he can't make weapons for the rest of the knights, so we will try to separate him with the wind mage. Evlin is good at fighting at long distances but her spells are so big that she can get her allies in a crossfire so we can split her with two of the knights. And that would leave only Mia and another knight remaining.”

The three traded glances at each other. They felt like these were still some bad odds to overcome but far more favorable than trying to go all out on all of them at the same time.

”Now... All we need to decide is who will fight who...” Detra finished while staring at her drawing.

”I'll take Mia!!” x 3

The three of them said in unison while raising their hands. Detra was impressed with how Mia managed to get more people to hate her than herself.

”Mia was my old partner! I know how she fights better than anyone!” Marcus stated.

”No, Marcus! You should take on Evlin. You already managed to defeat her before remember? I'll take on Mia!” Lilith stated.

”No way! I wanna face Mia! The whole point of us coming here is for me to do that anyway! This will be great for me to get prepared for my fight!” Ellie also stated.

Detra just kept looking at the three of them trading glares to see who would get to fight against the memory of Mia. They all appeared to have a bone to pick with her.