Four Split Personalities

[Oh no!]

Accompanying the girl’s phrase "I’m annoyed," whether it was Scarlett Disel executing an aerial kill or the man in the comical mask, seemingly the leader of the third batch of attackers shielded by teammates in the rear, both instinctively flinched and heightened their alertness immediately.

But their vigilance was destined to be futile, as the moment the girl finished speaking, a ’darkness’ that seemed like mist but was an intangible substance instantly spread out, rapidly covering a nearly hundred-meter radius centered around Double Leaf, reducing everyone’s visibility to less than half a meter while causing strong interference with perception. The goblin engineer, leading the weaker ones in resistance, even fell into a state of confusion, almost unable to perceive their own bodies.

[What is this...]

As expected, Scarlett plunged forward into darkness and missed, with Double Leaf evading her shield strike range which had already expanded significantly. Immediately afterward, she crouched on the ground, cautiously shrinking behind her shield, and vigilantly stood guard in place.

At this moment, a somewhat distorted gentle male voice suddenly sounded behind her: "If I’m not mistaken, this should be the relatively obscure restrictive magic [Gauze] from the Shadow School, which itself has no lethality but can greatly interfere with the vision and perception of all units, except the spellcaster, within its range."

"You’re that..."

Scarlett wasn’t startled by the collaborator who suddenly appeared behind her; instead, she slightly nodded and asked in a hoarse voice different from her usual tone: "Forget it, in short, our situation is extremely dangerous, and we could be attacked from nowhere at any moment, right?"

In the darkness, the other party paused and seemingly shook his head, then said: "Not exactly, the reason [Gauze] is classified as an obscure magic is because it has two major flaws. First, the consumption to maintain its operation is very high, requiring the spellcaster to expend a great deal of energy and concentration. Second, in this environment already filled with dark elements and negative energy, casting magic itself affects the stability of [Gauze], and like a candle in the dark, it’s very easy to detect."

"So what?"

Scarlett nodded, the beautiful and delicate doll face under the mask was tightly tense: "You mean this magic won’t last long, and we just need to wait and see?"

The other party immediately denied this thought, saying in a serious tone: "Not so, we all know that lady’s strength is extraordinary, and frankly, the two flaws I mentioned don’t hold true for her. Bear in mind, a regular [Gauze] would measure twenty meters square at most and drain a high-level mage’s magic power within two minutes, but what we are in now... is entirely different."

Scarlett took a deep breath, then suddenly flung a quarter of the [Scenery] on her arm into the air. After a few seconds, she raised her small hand, perfectly allowing the returning rhombus shield to ’embed’ back into [Scenery], and said solemnly: "Radius is at least nearly a hundred meters."

𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

"My partners have split into several combat groups to disperse and are trying to resolve the [Gauze] from outside, Madam, please remain calm."

Clearly sounding like a girl, Scarlett’s collaborator leader calmly said, then drew the longsword at his waist, bitterly muttering softly: "Truly worthy of being at the top of the leaderboard; it’s not that simple, huh..."

While learning shield techniques with the Fernan Family, Scarlett had trained her hearing and caught this statement, but she showed no reaction, merely continued to hold her breath and concentrate, silently awaiting a turn of events.

She didn’t have to wait long. In less than two minutes, the [Gauze] was dispersed by two spellcasters, who had finally broken through to the perimeter via high-frequency magic power vibrations. Although this maneuver depleted nearly seventy percent of their magic reserves, rendering them nearly powerless in battle, compared to facing a lurking monster in an environment where you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, this level of sacrifice was worth it.

Thus, Scarlett and the third group of collaborators’ vision was restored, and as expected, they discovered that the man originally protected behind several layers of elemental shields had disappeared.

Then...

A whole row of fully armed elemental puppets stood silently in the place that was previously the center of the [Gauze], coldly gazing at the group of attackers with suffocating pressure.

Admittedly, elemental puppets theoretically do not have eyes, hence there is no so-called ’gaze,’ but at this moment, whether it was Scarlett or other attackers scattered around, they all felt they were under the scrutiny of dozens of eyes.

Incidentally, the so-called fully armed, is entirely literal ’fully armed.’ These elemental puppets differed from their obese, large, and bulky counterparts; even the most oppressive earth elemental puppet stood at just over two meters tall.