Book 3: Chapter 57 (1/2)
The four red people, two men and two women, stood up at the same time. One of the women retreated to the back of the room and reached behind a book shelf, pulling out a wooden staff, while the other three people reached underneath the table and behind their chairs, equipping themselves with wooden weapons just in time to clash with Alice. A metal tower shield and a wooden buckler collided as Alice and one of the red men smashed into each other. With a grunt, Alice dug her heels into the ground and pushed outwards, but it felt like she was trying to shove down a wall. The red man pushed Alice back and swung his arm upwards, sending the diminutive guild master flying into Tafel, who was in the middle of casting a spell.
“Urk!” Tafel caught Alice before the guild master could hit the ground and righted her with a gentle push of her staff. “Careful.”
Alice snorted. “How does that make any sense? He used a buckler and I used a massive shield, yet I was the one sent flying?”
“That’s because you’re tiny,” Tafel said. “It’s physics.”
The red man with the shield puffed its chest out and pointed at Alice with its index finger before twisting its arm, retracting its finger and giving her a thumbs down with a wide smirk on its face. Alice’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head as she slammed the bottom of her shield against the ground and activated her awakening, her eyes turning yellow as claws made from aura sprang out of her hands and feet. A tail and a pair of lion-like ears appeared as well, adorning her head and bottom.
“Hey!” Tafel said as Alice charged in and clashed again with the red man, more evenly this time. Neither side budged as they both pushed, Alice grunting while the red man squelched. “Don’t fall for the tank’s provocation that easily!”
While Alice was distracted by the man with the shield, the red woman with the staff unleashed a salvo of bloody arrows that passed straight through her companions and pierced towards Alice and Tafel. Tafel waved her staff, and a wide portal stretched across the air, eating all the arrows. A moment later, the portal disappeared as Tafel pointed her staff’s end at the group of red people. The other man had finished arming himself with a pair of swords, while the other woman pointed a crossbow at Alice’s feet.
“Inferno!” Tafel shouted, channeling her mana into her staff, skipping the casting sequence of her spell as the jewel at the end of her weapon glowed with a red light. Flames roared out of the gem and engulfed the man and woman with the swords and crossbow, but a moment later, they stopped as Mr. Skelly struck the back of Tafel’s head, cutting her spell short. Tafel stumbled forward, nearly falling onto her face. She whirled around and glared at Mr. Skelly. “What the heck!?”
“Are you going to burn all the books?” Mr. Skelly asked, pointing at the bookshelf that the woman with the staff was standing by. “We came to the dungeon to gather the books! It counts as a loss if you destroy them even if you win against the blood people.”
Tafel groaned as she opened a portal beside herself and stuck her red staff inside. Then she pulled out a different staff made of black metal that had a blue gem embedded on its tip. “Then I’ll have to freeze them? At least Vur proved ice was effective on them earlier.”
Vur scratched his nose as Alice let out a roar and shoved aside the buckler-wielding man, knocking him to the ground. She pounced forward and whacked the crossbow out of the woman’s hand with her aura tail while blocking two swings from the sword-wielding man at the same time. “Should I be doing something?” Vur asked and tilted his head. The four elementals were still glowing around him, giving out buffs to the party.