Elemental Cats

As far as Hassandra could tell, neither Toz nor his cats were overwhelmingly strong. Even if they held back in order not to kill the death mage with their strikes, none of them emitted the pressure of someone that was more powerful than her. If anything, it was the opposite.

The black-haired young man and the couple of cats that accompanied him were numerically weaker than the death mage and, by extension, herself. Their attacks on the death mage looked fierce, but they had only succeeded by taking advantage of minimal gaps in the mage's defenses. So, they were weaker, but they were still incredibly skilled and knew how to use their strength to its full potential.

However, none of that explained how Toz could so confidently send the death mage straight into the center of her string. Hassandra could only look at Toz with confusion before turning her gaze to where Vatel was since he should still be fighting the necromancer. She wasn't worried about him, but if she could lend a hand and end the fight before anything untoward happened, she ought to do that, especially if it would let her question Toz a moment faster.

Fortunately, Vatel wasn't having any trouble and was already trying to incapacitate the necromancer using shackles of lightning. Seeing that Vatel wasn't having any trouble, Hassandra didn't spare another thought as to why he finished so quickly and turned to Toz with an intense stare.

Toz sensed the gaze, and he could guess the reason behind it. Even with his delicate senses, he hadn't been able to perceive what Hassandra used to slash apart the death mage's attacks. He could tell that she was using magic, not martial energy, but that didn't say much, and he could only sense her mana fluctuate around her body, not where she sliced apart the death mage's attacks.

But Toz had recently acquired a new skill that let him see things he couldn't perceive with his ordinary senses, his mana vision.

With his mana vision active, Toz saw an increasing amount of invisible, unnoticeable string surround Hassandra. He noticed how Hassandra used a couple of strings to slice apart and defend against the death mage's attacks.

The strings she defended with easily cut apart the demonic energy of the death magic, but they also sliced through the mana in the air. Toz realized that he couldn't sense them because of their anti-mana properties, which also helped him figure out what she was going to do with the rest that she didn't use to fight against the death mage.

After figuring out what Hassandra was planning to do with the string, Toz decided to take advantage of her magic. If he wanted to capture and restrain the death mage, Toz would have to put in a lot of effort. But if Hassandra's strings worked like he thought they would, he would only have to throw the death mage to her, and it would be over.

Thankfully, his conjecture had been right. The invisible string's properties prevented the death mage from using magic. And after that, Hassandra even had another kind of magic, a more physically resilient type of string that restrained the death mage's physical strength.

Considering the invisible string's properties, Toz probably wasn't supposed to be able to sense or perceive it. And based on how Hassandra used it, she wasn't used to others doing it, so her shock was probably a result of Toz identifying the spot where her string was the densest. Toz winked at her before regrouping with the cats as he waited for the four newcomers to finish up.

After Vatel closed the distance between himself and the necromancer completely, Mindle didn't have much left to do, so she and Lucy went back to Toz's side as they watched Vatel wrestle with his opponent. But Vatel was a fighter, and the necromancer was a mage with a naturally weak body, so the only reason that Vatel struggled was that he didn't want to injure the necromancer while still making sure that they couldn't escape.

It also seemed like the technique Vatel used to restrain the necromancer required a complicated application process. But it seemed worth the trouble, since when he finished, the necromancer couldn't use magic without having to worry about being zapped by the lightning shackles.

Toz grew curious about it when he noticed the lightning reacting to the necromancer's magic without Vatel actively doing anything. However, it didn't seem very likely that he would get an opportunity to learn such a technique.

Toz didn't know much regarding the status of the battlefield, but he knew more than enough to realize that the group of four humans was from the Transcendent Realm. They might not be from a force or faction that could rival the Obsidian Empire or the Tribe of Death, but they were still elites unlike any Toz had seen in the Mortal Realm.

The way they handled their magic and martial energy was incredibly refined, and it wasn't only due to their innate talent, at least Vatel and Hassandra, since they were the only two he had seen in action. They used their magic and martial energy in a way that showed that they had been taught how to use it by someone more experienced and powerful. Toz noticed that they didn't quite grasp why they did certain things. They just knew that doing it like that was better. As if someone had told them.

And the only ones that could teach and show high level mages and fighters how it's done are transcendent mages and fighters.

Since Toz relied on nothing but his talent to improve, he could tell what Vatel and Hassandra had learned on their own and what they did because they knew it was better. However, he wouldn't have been able to sense that without his mana vision. And the only thing it gave him was an understanding of the way they used mana. It didn't exactly show him an opening in their defenses.

But after realizing that Vatel and Hassandra were from the Transcendent Realm, Toz quickly figured out that the technique Vatel used to restrain the necromancer was from his faction. And if the faction valued its position and strength, it wouldn't just hand out its martial techniques to random people just because they asked for it.

While Toz watched Vatel finish restraining the necromancer, he also paid attention to the technique, and while he was busy with his thoughts, Vatel was already done.

The other three seemed to have agreed to wait until Vatel finished before they approached Toz. Even Hassandra, who could barely restrain her curiosity, realized that Toz wasn't someone they should antagonize needlessly. At least not without all four of them together and after securing their capture targets.

Toz looked at the three humans who stood not far away and waited for Vatel to arrive. None of them seemed to be the aggressive type, but Toz didn't let down his guard. It might just be an act to make him drop his guard, after all.

Well, Toz was going to find out the attitudes of Vatel, Hassandra, and the other two soon.