anwhile, the Luminhares cages had startled to rattle from the battle happening above and around it. One of the cages tipped causing its door to break open. A tiny Luminhare—the smallest of the group—tumbled out, its gossar wings fluttering weakly.
It let out a high-pitched, terrified chirp as it landed on the muddy ground, directly in the path of the sliding Behemoth.
"Min Tu!" Lancet shouted. "Save it!"
Min Tu desperately called her Summon and pointed to the danger.
The Skeleton abandoned its fight with the wounded Behemoth instantly. It spun, thrust its hand toward the tiny Luminhare, and summoned a focused cyclone of erald wind.
The miniature tornado scooped up the creature gently, cradling it in a cushion of swirling air, and lifted it out of the Behemoth’s path just as the massive beast crashed through the space where it had been.
The Luminhare chirped in confusion, its antennae sparking wildly, but it was unhard.
"Nice save!" Dane yelled, genuine admiration in his voice.
"Co on!" Lancet gestured to Kasto and pointed at the Lumihares. "We’re not going to just stand here. We’ll do the rescuing."
Kasto obeyed, running after him with a smile on his face. Together, they freed the Lumihares from their cages, gathering as many as they could and letting them flutter away into the jungle.
"Be free, younglings!" Kasto made sure to make a drama out of it all.
The battle was far from over. The first Behemoth—the one the Ursine had ambushed—had recovered from its initial shock. It was now bleeding from deep claw wounds, but its rage had made it faster, more reckless. It charged the Ursine head-on, fists pounding the wood in a berserker rhythm.
The Ursine used a portal to trick the irate beast.
It opened a rift directly in front of the charging Behemoth, and the beast, unable to stop its montum, plunged through.
The exit portal opened high above the tree mountain, depositing the Behemoth in mid-air. It flailed wildly as it fell, crashing through branches and vines before slamming into the mud far below with a thunderous impact.
It didn’t get up.
"Two down!" Kasto shouted from the sidelines, pumping his fist. "Three to go!"
The wounded Behemoth—the one with the spear still in its shoulder—had regained its footing. It charged the Skeleton Soldier, its remaining good arm swinging in wild, desperate arcs.
Refusing to retreat, the Skeleton expertly dropped its cleaver into the mud and raised both hands, summoning the Fire Mage’s power with full intensity.
A wall of fla erupted between the Skeleton and the charging Behemoth. The beast, too enraged to stop, barreled straight through it. Its fur ignited. Its rocky armor cracked from the sudden temperature shift.
Even with all that, the gorilla beast still ca, its boulder-fist swinging.
Slightly infuriated by the Behemoth’s resilience, the Skeleton cocked its arm and t the fist with its own.
Wind-enhanced speed. Berserker’s strength. The Skeleton’s bony hand caught the Behemoth’s fist—an impossible feat—and held it. The flas in the Skeleton’s eye sockets blazed with savage delight.
Then, with a sickening twist, it snapped the Behemoth’s wrist.
The beast howled. The Skeleton released its grip, snatched up its cleaver from the mud, and in one fluid motion, drove the blade deep into the Behemoth’s chest. The beast collapsed, its amber eyes dimming.
"Three down," Min Tu reported, her voice utterly emotionless.
The remaining two Behemoths had seen enough. These weren’t prey—these were predators. And for the first ti in their territorial lives, the Cragfist Behemoths felt fear. They turned to flee, scrambling up the tree mountain toward the canopy.
"Oh no you don’t," Dane growled. "Ursine! Portals! Pin them!"
The Astral-Claw Ursine tore open two portals simultaneously, causing its galaxy-fur to ripple with strain. One portal opened in front of each fleeing Behemoth. The exit portals opened directly above the mud pit where the first fallen Behemoth lay dead.
Both beasts plunged through their respective rifts and crashed down, dazed and disoriented. The Skeleton was on them before they could rise, and like an executioner, it lifted its cleaver and ended them both.
The bell sang once more and the leaderboard appeared:
[ 1. Enchanter-D : 590 ]
[ 2. Specialist-D : 585 ]
[ 3. Summoner-D : 555 ]
[ 4. Elentalist-D : 510 ]
"Hah!" Vera exclaid joyfully, punching the air. "We’ve overtaken the Elentalists."
Dane grinned in agreent. "I can accept not losing if we are higher than those show offs."
Lancet, letting the final Lumihare go, glanced at Dane. "Who says we’re even going to lose?"
THWACK!
Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere at all, a vine as thick as a python whipped out and snapped around Lancet’s waist, pulling tight.
With only ti to squirm in pain, Lancet felt the air in his lungs violently forced out as his feet were jerked out from under him.
"Lancet!" Kasto yelled, his eyes going wide with horror.
In a blur of motion, the vine rabidly retracted, dragging Lancet backward. His fingers clawed desperately at the wet earth, tearing up handfuls of moss and mud, but the sudden physical force of the tether was overwhelming.
He was ripped across the clearing, his body crashing through a thick row of blue ferns, and instantly swallowed by the pitch-black shadows of the deeper jungle.
"Buster! Get him!" Dane ordered his Ursine, instantly pointing toward the ragged hole in the brush where Lancet had just vanished.
The Astral-Claw Ursine barked a thunderous command, its claws flaring silver as it prepared to tear open a spatial portal. Min Tu looked surprisingly terrified, she threw her hand forward and her Skeleton Soldier blurred into motion, its cleaver raised to sever whatever was dragging their leader.
But before the Ursine could rip the fabric of space, and before the Skeleton could cross half the clearing, the ground beneath the entire squad began to quake.
Everyone except the Summons were thrown off their feet.
"Watch out!" Min Tu shouted.
From the mud around them, massive roots, as thick as ancient oak trunks, erupted into the air like breaching leviathans. They violently assembled themselves.
It was a strange thing to witness. It almost seed like they were sentient, or being controlled. The roots interlocked with secondary waves of thick, writhing vines and gigantic slabs of tree barks bursting from the earth.
Min Tu’s Soldier slashed wildly, its cleaver biting deep into a rising wall of timber, but the wood proved extrely thick.
CRACK-BOOM!
A thunderous sound signaled the end of it. But the massive wooden structures were now slamd together at every corner, boxing them in.
Everyone was panicking.
Dane got to his feet first and slamd his fists against the curved wooden wall, the impact doing nothing but bruising his knuckles. He spun around, his chest heaving, his eyes darting across the dark, enclosed space.
Lancet was gone.
"Lancet!" Dane cried. "Lancet!"
With no response, he turned to the rest of the team, a terrified look on his face. "Lancet’s gone."
Kasto scrambled to his feet. He stared at the vine walls that had caged them in, then at the rest of his worried teammates.
"What the hell is going on?!"
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