Shades of the New World

Chapter 276: A dangerous fight

He burnt some of the soul in his possession and set the Luminous spell on a powerful fire. The spell was still activated and its pull had gotten stronger after Evin appeared from inside his spell. So, he definitely needed to get rid of it somehow. Thankfully, Soul-burnt Flames had the ability to burn literally anything and spells weren't exempt from that. But the process wasn't instantaneous it seemed, as the weird pull still lingered on Evin's body. 

'For now, I'll just have to survive until it's gone and we can get out of here,' Evin thought and cast the suffocation spell on the woman who was removing herself from the walls.

But he noticed that when he tried to affect the air around the woman, the white mist prevented Evin's Storm energy to do anything around the air her. Cursing, he used a Heavy spell to spontaneously increase her weight 10 times the normal amount, by thickening the World Switch that he could see under the woman. This seemed to work, as the woman was violently pulled to the ground face first. Though this feat cost the rest of his spare mana, so he had to undo the Heavy World spell, lest he overworked his mana-core. 

'I could affect her weight pretty easily, so why is my suffocation spell not working now?' Evin was thinking, but he was forced to worry about something else.

[Brother I'm cold] Runa's weak plea sounded in his head.

Evin immediately focused on the skinshifter he was wearing, and realized that Runa's body had become abnormally cold to his touch. He glanced at his hand and found countless holes on Runa's body all of which had tiny needles stuck inside them. The needs were quickly spreading frostbite around themselves and Evin could see that its immediate surroundings were showing signs of cracking. He looked around the ground and saw that the spots where the needles hit the ground, they had bloomed into huge chunks of sharp and pointy ice sculptures. 

'How the fuck is she able to send out so many of these overpowered needles, anyway? Is she a peak half-core?'

He then looked at the woman who was struggling on the ground, moaning in pain. She looked quite beat, Evin definitely knew she had some fight in her, with the large amount of white mist that she was emitting from around her. She hatefully glared at Evin, and he could notice the frostbite effects on Runa's body getting stronger and faster. 

'Shit!' Evin cursed and frantically created a ring of flames around himself, hoping it would help the frostbite somehow. The next moment, Enri's voice appeared in his head. 

[Evin! Focus on destroying the Luminous spell and running away! We can have mother solve Runa's ice problem! The man's still conscious, but I'm sure he won't be casting anything else for a while,] the fox growled confidently.

The shout gave Evin some much needed direction and he quickly increased the amount of mana and soul he used for the Soul-burnt flames, to the point he was probably unable to use any other spell for quite some time. Glancing at the woman, Evin noticed that the white mist was healing her battered body, and the accursed array of needles appearing around her once more.

[You'll be fine, Runa. Just hold on for a minute or two.] Evin said warmly, trying to comfort Runa during this brief pause of the battle. The skinshifter murmured something in reply, but was quickly interrupted by the battle's continuation. 

Countless needles flew towards him once more, but was met with a huge wall of Sorbothium and some other metals. Evin decided to block it with the pile of materials he had inside his shadow. The needles didn't manage to reach Evin himself so he knew for sure, that the makeshift sorbothium shield would be effective.

He couldn't fall back into his shadow, as that would make the Soul-burnt Flames disappear, and he didn't want to use the shockwaves of air that Nasst taught him, since the needles managed to drill through Runa and get stuck on her body. He also couldn't dodge the needles as the frostbite on Runa's body didn't allow him to move that freely.

During all this, Enri was also not lying around freely. She had swum through the Dark Room, and attacked at the woman. But the other had expected something similar to happen due to what happened with her teammate so she made sure to deflect Enri's fangs. Though she wasn't quite able to save herself from the swipe that followed afterwards, as she was flung towards another wall inside the alleyway.

But it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. The woman had also managed to stick a handful of her needles inside the fox's pelt, which swiftly bloomed to become a huge spiky ice shard on Enri's body.

The fox screeched painfully, before managing to find her way back inside the safety of Evin's Dark Room. Evin felt that Enri's attack was a bit unnecessary, but all that didn't matter anymore, as Evin felt the pull of the Luminous spell finally disappear. 

He quickly fell into his shadow, pulled the Dark Room back to his location alongside the wounded Enri. Without delay, he scurried away from the battlefield as fast as he could move.

After thirty seconds of fleeing, Evin found a dark corner somewhere in town, and opened the gateway to his dimension, before swiftly jumping into it. He made the gateway appear where Enri had fallen, so the fox was lying on a patch of grass, with seven huge ice shards dangling from her body, soaked in her black blood. Some of the World Sprites were gathering around her, shock and fear all over their faces.

Evin didn't bother to worry about the children's reactions, made the fox weightless, before he quickly flew towards the Vulpine Mother's location.

"Kyune, wake up!" he bellowed after he saw the black fox sleeping peacefully. He landed next to her, started some fire near himself to warm up Runa and Enri.