Rosily reacted quickly, launching herself over ten meters into the air almost instantly. Those stone spikes couldn’t even touch her shadow, but Bella, who wasn’t far away, was a bit slower to react.
The greatsword girl didn’t jump high enough, and her sturdy, powerful waist was struck directly by a stone spike.
With a sharp cracking sound, a faint, translucent light screen appeared over Bella’s body, and the spike aimed at her shattered at the same moment.
“This is the protective blessing Simona gave us. Everyone has three layers applied.”
Rosily held her sword horizontally and unleashed a silvery Sword Qi Slash that cut through dozens of spikes heading toward Bella. Then she chopped down the spike beneath her own feet and drifted down to land on a stone pillar.
Simona, watching from a distance, saw the dangerous scene resolved by Rosily’s quick thinking and breathed a sigh of relief.
But just then, she felt the ground trembling beneath her feet, and the young woman instinctively squeezed her legs together.
Before she could even process what was happening, a pair of hands wrapped around her waist from the side. The next moment, Simona saw the world blur before her eyes.
“Whoa!?”
Scarlett carried Simona up into a tree. The very next instant, over a dozen sharp stone spikes erupted from the spot where Simona had been standing. If not for Scarlett, the Nun would likely have been skewered.
Seeing this, Simona squeezed her legs together even tighter and shuddered, clearly feeling a wave of lingering fear.
Elqi, high in the sky, also witnessed this. She felt a twinge of guilt, thinking she should have kept Simona close, since who would fear ground spikes while flying in the air?
Seeing that the ground spikes hadn’t achieved their effect, the Earth Dragon lowered its body.
Rosily was about to slash at the creature a few times when she suddenly noticed the stone beneath her feet crumbling.
Not only that, all the stone spikes shattered into small fragments that, as if pulled by some unseen force, flew toward the brass-colored Earth Dragon.
Stones of all sizes converged from every direction. Rosily and Bella were too close together, facing an even fiercer storm of debris.
Fortunately, Rosily was agile, and her protective Sword Qi turned any stones that flew near her into dust on contact.
Bella wasn’t so lucky. She could only block the stone storm with her Greatsword, relying on her Magic Body Shield and physical toughness to endure.
Thanks to the courage hymn’s blessing, minor wounds healed quickly, but her clothes were still slashed with quite a few tears.
Rosily chose not to help Bella, because helping wouldn’t do any good. Instead, she focused her attention directly on the Earth Dragon.
As the stone storm neared its end, the Brass Dragon draped itself in a layer of magic stone armor, and a pair of stone wings grew from its back.
Seeing this, Rosily couldn’t help but let out a cold chuckle.
“A crawling worm puts on stone wings and thinks it’s a real Dragon?”
The Earth Dragon closed within five meters, and Rosily’s Silver Sword Qi erupted. Ignoring the stone storm, she dashed between the stone wings.
Using the leaps of her four limbs and the recoil from stone pillars beneath her feet, she shot up to a full hundred meters into the air.
This action infuriated the Earth Dragon even more. It flapped its stone wings to fly. It spread its wings and opened its front claws, as if trying to tear Rosily apart.
Rosily’s sword strike cut through empty air, but she didn’t continue chasing the Earth Dragon.
Instead, she turned and rushed toward Bella, grabbed the back of her collar, and ran in the opposite direction from the Dragon without looking back.
The Earth Dragon, now airborne, still couldn’t fly with those fake stone wings.
A rookie Adventurer might not understand what was about to happen, standing there dumbly watching, only to be met with a painful lesson.
Through her training with Tristan and Samuel, Rosily had learned a crucial technique: when your enemy strikes a pose, either dodge or charge in and interrupt them!
Tristan was a warrior, and Samuel was a Magic User. Their tactics always involved Tristan holding the front while Samuel unleashed a High Tier Magic that sent everyone running for their lives.
Rosily had been caught by that once, and she’d learned her lesson.
If the Earth Dragon flew into the sky, it was definitely preparing something big.
Although Rosily was highly talented and among the strongest at her tier in combat, facing an enemy nearly two Orders of Magic higher meant she’d need to reveal quite a few trump cards to win alone.
To avoid revealing her trump cards too early, Rosily chose to evade.
If a Monster strikes a pose and you don’t dodge?
Then you clearly haven’t died enough!
Rosily had experienced countless deaths on that Bone White Land. She might seem aggressive, but in truth, she treasured her body and her life.
After all, if she truly died, she’d be separated from her mother forever.
The Brass Dragon’s movement in the air didn’t last long. In less than two seconds, it was enveloped in a brass-colored glow, crashing down like a giant meteor into the shattered ground.
The shockwave kicked up dust and smoke, sparks scattering and dancing across the stone Dragon.
The magic stone armor encasing the Brass Dragon cracked under the immense impact, and the tremendous heat from the chaotic Magic Power melted some rock into magma, glowing starkly against the gray darkness of the dust cloud.
After landing, it didn’t stop. It slid toward the direction Rosily had fled, carving a scorched, deep trench into the ground.
Rosily held her sword in her right hand and carried Bella with her left, sprinting at full speed. After covering over thirty meters, the shockwave caught up and blasted both her and Bella into the air.
Elqi, high above, was also disrupted by the shockwave. The barrier Magic she had cast in front of her shattered with a bang, but fortunately it absorbed some of the force.
What remained was absorbed by her protective light screen and her Long Robe.
The young woman’s form wavered slightly, but she quickly stabilized, including the Fifth-Tier spell she had already prepared.
Elqi scanned through the dust, confirming that Rosily and Bella were both unharmed, then raised her cyan Staff high.
The two teachers, Tristan and Samuel, not only sparred with them but also taught them some Battle Techniques and practical Magic.
Elqi had once been utterly defeated by a Wind Element Magic, so after class, she went out of her way to seek instruction from Lady Samuel.
To her surprise, Lady Samuel agreed to teach her. Elqi had expected to pay some price, but it turned out to be that simple.
Asking was simple, but actually learning was no ordinary challenge.
Fortunately, Samuel was a good Teacher, guiding Elqi step by step. And since Elqi did possess some talent for Magic, she managed to barely master the technique after spending some time on it.
Above the Staff, a pale cyan airflow condensed into a sphere of wind, about half Elqi’s size. She aimed the Staff at the Dragon in the pit, then released her hold on the wind sphere.
After a dull thud, the freed wind sphere transformed into a straight, focused beam that blasted into the Earth Dragon in the pit like a ray of light, driving the creature that was trying to climb out even deeper.
Under the sustained bombardment, all the dust and smoke were blown away. This was an attack concentrated with half of Elqi’s Magic Power.
Wind Element Magic, Fifth-Tier, crimson storm.
Through highly compressed, sustained impact, it deals physical damage to the enemy, along with wind erosion effects that pierce armor.