章節 45: You can´t hit what you can´t see

The beheaded chief fell to the ground like a ragdoll and the lizardmen army which was being blown away by the freezing winds started losing their morale. Seeing this the group of hunters attacked without mercy.

Not even a minute had passed and Tyler already stood on a pile of corpses, breathing heavily. The only monster left alive was the drake who was struggling against the combined assault of Mark´s automaton and Lucian.

The drake swiped its claws at the silver-blue knight who bashed it with a shield. In turn, Lucian ran around the monster and struck its hind leg with his sword. It roared in pain and turned around to face the attacker which allowed the golem to attack. It shoved a spear into the dragon´s side.

Seeing the one-sided battle Emma dashed towards the drake and thrust her rapier through its head, making it fall dead just like its owner.

"Fuu" Tyler sighed and slumped to the ground with his raging aura gradually calming down. "This was a tough one."

"Don´t worry. We´re not finished at all." Mark said while deactivating his automaton.

"What do you mean?" asked the exhausted tank.

"Well, that probably wasn´t the boss. The gate mana reading was nearly a hundred thousand and this was like nothing much. I could´ve cleared this by myself so there must be more monsters."

"You really don´t lack confidence, do you?" Clark told Mark with a smile.

"I guess."

As the team was taking a moment to relax, a pair of hostile eyes watched them from afar. The creature was hanging from the ceiling waiting for a moment to strike a deadly blow on the unassuming humans.

Tyler was sitting on the cold ground, leaning on one of the lizardmen's huts when he suddenly heard a whistling noise. He swiftly turned his sight upwards to see what was making that sound, but as he looked up he saw a strange creature with scythe-like arms flying towards him at great speed.

Tyler instinctively jumped to the side. However, it was too late to dodge. The monster sliced his right arm clean off.

The team´s tank screamed in pain, attracting their attention to the creature. It was six meters long with tentacle-like legs, two regular arms, and two arms that had giant blades instead of hands.

[Sword Gale]

Emma let out a powerful wind at the enemy, but the creature jumped several tens of meters upwards with its legs and seemingly disappeared into nothingness.

Clark ran up to the wounded hunter and started healing him back to shape. Tyler grunted in pain as his arm regenerated.

"Dude, don´t make this weird. Just be quiet." Clark muttered to the moaning tank.

Emma was frantically looking around, trying to find the monster.

"What was that?" asked Tristan.

"Probably the boss monster." Mark said calmly. He trusted his barrier with his life.

As Clark was healing Tyler, the air next to the two started distorting similarly to when Lucian uses his [Mirage] skill.

'It´s some sort of camouflage.' he thought to himself.

'Page 1, Stream of fire'

Mark blasted the area with flames, driving away the sneaky creature.

"Hey, what was that for?" asked Clark after the wave of heat hit him.

"It´s invisible. So pay attention to your surroundings."

'Page 13, Magician´s eyes'

In front of Mark´s eyes, a screen displayed the boss monster´s outline. Seeing the team having no clue on how to fight an enemy with stealth he decided to take the matter into his own hands. That was his plan in the first place.

'Page 3, Automatic rock spikes, locator: monsters, radius: 100m'

The magical grid spread across the whole village and swiftly located the creature sneaking around and conjured several stone spears from the ground, cutting into its grey skin.

Considering the situation it was in, the beast took off and jumped to the cave roof, and glided away from the danger.

"It ran away." Mark informed the group.

"Let´s get out. We´re gonna die like this." said Clark.

"Are you serious? We can do this no problem." retorted Tyler.

"You lost your arm in the blink of an eye. There is no way you can face that boss monster. Let´s just call Haiden. He´ll know what to do."

"We´re staying." announced Emma.

"What?" asked Clark.

"The boss isn´t that strong if an A-rank magician managed to drive it away. It would be shameful to surrender on our first raid."

"Sure, but we can fucking die."

"You can die in any gate. That´s the job of a hunter. You chose that, yourself." said Lucian.

"Yeah, but dying is kind of cringe."

"Stop bickering. We´re going to finish this gate clear. You!" she pointed at Mark. "Where did the boss monster go?"

"It flew straight into that direction." Mark pointed to the distance.

"Gina, make us a way." commanded the raid leader.

A path of ice sprung up from the water and the hunters started walking. They walked through the mangroves, over the countless islands, and the whole time they were looking around cautiously in case the monster decided to attack once again.

After about twenty minutes of walking, Mark spotted something strange in the distance. There was a cliff-hugging the side of the cave and on top of the cliff, something moved.

"There is a heat signature, over there." he announced.

"The boss monster?"

"No, it´s much smaller and there is more than one." Mark zoomed in on the creature and said. "It´s another village."