36 Curse you Shin! Curse you! (1/2)

Izumi slowly turned her head as she looked at a surprised Ken who shot a look at Izumi and charged forward. Izumi followed Ken's lead as he charged at the guards in front of them blocking the entrance.

”Take the left one!” Ken shouted as he slid to the right a bit and escaped the incoming swift attack from the guard with the lance. Izumi followed Ken's words and slid to the left and hit the protector on the left with her sheathed Katana as Ken hit the right one in a similar fashion and started running towards the exit as fast as he could along with Izumi.

”How the hell is this a training? This is a god damn death trap!” Ken shouted as he ran through the corridor with Izumi. They were being followed by a dozen or so protectors who started to fill their weapons and body with energy.

With every swing from the protectors weapons, a crescent shaped or a sphere shaped energy sped towards them at a great speed but failed to hit Izumi or Ken as they were a few a meters ahead and the passage was in a curved manner, due to which the attacks missed and hit the wall. The energy was absorbed by the walls and windows which were inscribed by powerful and ancient spells.

”We are gonna die if we lead ourselves to a straight path!” Izumi let out a cry as she looked back at all the energy strikes that hit the wall.

”Yeah, exactly. Now I want you both to think quickly and effectively about how to get out alive. I made you both walk all around the fort earlier, just so that you remember the basic blueprint of the fort. Cmon you both, I have high expectations from you, good luck!” Shin gave them both a quick note as he appeared and disappeared from the shadows formed by the moon light making it's way through the windows.

”Wait, Shin…” Before Izumi could even complete her sentence, Shin already disappeared completely into thin air.

'Is this what the guardians and Commander Leo warned them about, they could have been a bit more specific about what they meant.' These were the thoughts that were running through Izumi's and Ken's mind as they made their way into a small space between two walls and hid under their black clothes. They would have been immediately spotted if they hadn't decreased their energy emission as low as 30% to their actual emission quantity.

”Good call. This is the very reason why I taught you both how to decrease your energy emission. Taking shelter and hiding from the enemies is a good tactic to escape them, but if you guys stay here too long then it would be hard for you to get out because they will lock down all the gates and exits to the fort. The exciting part here is, this fort has only two ways to come in or to go out which are the east and the west entrances.” Shin appeared and disappeared from the shadows of the small space between the walls as he said those words.

”I never knew he was such a sadist!” Ken let out a small shriek as he clenched his teeth.

”So, how do we get out of here?” Ken asked as he looked at an Izumi who was lost deep in her thoughts.

”We need to know where we are, the way to get out and how many protectors are blocking the gates.” Izumi picked her right hand up as she summoned her eagle spirit. The eagle spirit was only 55 days old and still looked like an eagle hatchling. The spirit was beaming with blue coloured energy and had no physical body but was small in size given its age.

”Fly over the heads of all the protector and check all their positions and don't forget to keep your energy emission as low as possible. Go!” Izumi patted the eagle's sides as she ordered. A thin layer of white energy covered her eyes as her spirit took off.