An Owl's Rise

As Devurg dove towards Evelyn Bylur, and Rehni with his teammates in tow, Evelyn could only stare at them in disbelieve.

They were not taking any caution at all and charging right for them.

Certainly, from a perspective of just rank Evelyn, Bylur, and Rehni were pretty well outmatched, but it was still reckless to just come directly at them without any sort of plan.

'I suppose that they think they can simply crush us with overwhelming power. Unfortunately for them we have practiced extensively how to deal with stronger opponents. And they pale in comparison to our training partners.' Evelyn thought as Devurg, and his teammates approached.

When they were within about two hundred fifty meters, Evelyn who had formed up with Bylur initiated their first move.

It was similar to the combination that they had used against Katrina during their second sparring match, and together they created a dense snowstorm and sent it directly towards Devurg's team.

A wide blast of wind and snow quickly enveloped the three enemy owls, and completely sealed off their vision.

This stunned them for a moment and without any effective way to deal with the snowstorm Devurg and his teammates had to deploy magical energy barrier to block the snow and continued flying directly for where Evelyn and her team had been.

Overall, their reaction was pretty fast and showed that they had a good amount of experience, and only a few seconds after they were plunged into the snowstorm, they managed to come out the other side.

Yet Evelyn, Bylur, and Rehni were no longer out in the open when Devurg pushed through the snow.

Naturally they were not simply going to sit around and wait for their enemies to approach them and had no intention of meeting them on equal terms and fighting head-to-head.

Before Devurg and his teammates could locate where Evelyn, Bylur, and Rehni had disappeared to, another blast of snow and wind came from out of the trees and covered them once again.

This gave them a general idea of where Evelyn and her team were hiding, but by the time they began to act it was already too late.

While her magical energy barrier protected her from damage, Trine found herself caught off-guard in the thick snowstorm and did not notice the metal cables that had wrapped around her barrier until she was already being dragged away.

Devurg and Kless swiftly noticed Trine begin taken away, but as they chased after her they ran into the wires that Rehni had set up in advance and were slowed down by them.

Once she was pulled out of the snowstorm and into the woods, Trine acted fast and used her nature magic to control the foliage around her and stop the metal cables from continuing to drag her away.

She also incased herself in a thick ball of branches and began firing off multiple spears of wood in every direction.

This served to both protect her while she waited for her allies to catch up and attack Evelyn's team to prevent them from getting close.

Her vision as cut off again, but her plan was simply to defend herself until help arrived so there was no need for her to worry about visibility. Especially when Evelyn and Bylur were already so adept at blinding her with wind and snow.

Except while she figured that this would fend off Evelyn, Bylur, and Rehni, she was sorely mistaken.

There were records of every match in the Ranking Hall and some of them ere even recorded. Evelyn and Rehni had studied every past record they could get on Devurg's team and thoroughly studied their abilities and formations.

Thanks to this they already knew about he move that trine was using and had come up with a countermeasure.

Within just a second of Trine erecting her spiked ball of branches, Rehni had prepared the next phase of their attack and slammed a giant metal spike in the shape of a nail into the wood.

It did not manage to pierce all the way through thanks to how powerful and refined Trine's defenses were, but this was only the first part of the attack.

Following the giant nail being stuck in, Evelyn increased the gravity around it to the highest degree she could.

Then Bylur smashed it with a huge hammer made of ice and the metal nail blasted through the wooden barrier along with a surge of cold air.

Trine went wide eyed seeing the large metal spike coming for her and failed to properly avoid or block it. Never having imagined that her defenses would be penetrated so quickly by Evelyn and her teammates.

In a last ditch effort, she tired forming a shield of magical energy in front of her, but it folded under the immense force behind the attack and her left wing was pierced through.

A loud screech of pain released from Trine's throat as er wing was impaled, and the magic she had been maintaining began to crumble as she lost focus.

Unable to fly with her wing pierced, Trien was quickly dragged down by the large eight-meter-long half a meter thick metal nail sticking out of her left wing.

It seemed that she would crash directly into eh ground and be easy to pick off, but before Evelyn and her team could initiate another attack, Devurg and Kless broke through the web of iron threads that they had recklessly charged into.

A large mound of soft direct erupted from one of the nearby stone spires and positioned itself under the falling Trine in order to catch her.

At the same time Kless fixed a glare on Evelyn, and her teammates, while Devurg helped Trine.

Immediately he began launching attacks at them to force their attention away from his injured teammate.

'It is sound magic as we thought. It was a bit unnerving when we watched the recording and did not see any visible phenomenon, but thankful it is sound magic and not something rarer.' Evelyn thought as she avoided the sonic blasts coming her way.