Fine Shield

Tch, am I dreaming?

That was the only thought in her mind.

But all around her was the most brutally real battlefield imaginable: dust, blood, corpses, slaughter. Even the pain and her own breathing felt so real that she could not fool herself.

Kill her! The berserk magical beast that had just been flung aside by Lance's lightning strike was still seething from the shock. Seeing its original prey standing there in a daze was an insult to its very nature as a beast. Unforgivable! In a fit of temper, it did not bother to think and simply opened its jaws and charged straight at her, aiming for her head.

Small, fresh, delicious.

As it lunged, the beast, clear-headed even in its frenzy, did not forget to appraise the meal about to land in its mouth. It even tilted its jaw a few degrees wider, its body dropping under the pull of gravity as it drew ever closer.

At the very instant it was about to clamp down, the seemingly frail girl before its eyes suddenly burst forth with a fierce, blinding pale-gold radiance. The light was plainly not for decoration. Within those elusive shadows swirled a strange magical force, yet unlike any clearly defined element or known branch of magic, so much so that even a beast with a longer lifespan than ordinary humans could not tell what it was made of. It could only watch as those abruptly appearing magical particles drifted and shifted according to some hidden pattern, swirling around the girl until they fused into a seamless, all-encompassing shield that sealed her away tightly.

But the beast could not be bothered to care about the shield. So what if there was a shield? Since it had already pounced, what did it matter what kind of shield it was? Once it was bitten through, wouldn’t that be the end of it? Thinking this, our poor, one-track-minded beast made no attempt to alter its course and lunged straight toward the girl, only to reward everyone present with a crisp snapping sound that struck every nerve in the battlefield.

Crack—

Awooo!

The beast that had been lively a moment ago, ready to end the hunt by ripping off the girl's head, suddenly toppled backward. Blood covered its mouth; it clutched its cheek with a giant claw and whimpered miserably, both eyes instantly brimming with tears. My teeth!

Not far from where it had fallen, two white front teeth, together with a huge canine and two incisors, lay quietly in the sun.

Seeing this, the human soldiers were instantly ignited with fighting spirit. The girl's forceful counterstrike was the best shot of adrenaline they could have asked for. Shouting for the kill as if they had seen the dawn of victory, they rushed toward the very front where the beasts were clashing.

Li Yi had no time to care about any of that. Once he confirmed that the girl was unharmed, he turned and looked sternly toward the woods in the distance. In the forest, the irregular black shapes were the mixed army of beasts and monsters rushing in as reinforcements. Among them, the beast troops glaring hungrily at Li Yi and his men were precisely the twenty-thousand-strong force that had previously disguised itself as deserters.

The beast that had just attacked the girl was one of them, and the angle at which it had fallen while clutching its teeth was perfect, allowing everyone nearby to see the red dragon emblem partly hidden beneath the armor on its chest. Once that mark appeared, anyone could tell that these beasts and the beasts currently being surrounded by Li Yi's army were absolutely on the same side.

So it really was the vengeful force after all. Li Yi understood at once. He raised an arm, and the human army immediately received his command. The troops in combat were swiftly divided into two parts, standing back to back to separate the enemy into two spaces.

Sang Qing gave the girl a puzzled look, but most of her attention remained on Lance, who had fallen. Setting everything else aside, just the fact that Lance and the girl had both selflessly helped Aikasia meant she could not possibly ignore Lance now.

Huan Luo, by contrast, paid the girl's sudden change no mind at all. As though she had been prepared for it long ago, there was not a trace of curiosity or confusion on her face, and she did not even look back, continuing only to press on with the slaughter.

Among everyone, Xia Kui was the one most visibly shaken. She stared at the girl as if facing a great enemy, her lips parting as though she wanted to say something, the hand holding her staff even trembling slightly. She looked as though calamity was about to fall. But seeing her daughter's calm reaction and her own husband locked in fierce combat with the reinforcements, she could only force down the urge to speak. Lowering her head, she averted her gaze from the girl entirely and continued using her powerful wind magic to help the soldiers on the battlefield.

What had once been a proper battle to encircle the beasts instantly turned into a battle in which the beasts had encircled them instead. Every worst possibility arrived all at once. Human casualties kept rising, Huan Luo's swordwork gradually slowed after the prolonged fight, Lance seemed to be in grave danger, Sang Qing could not reach him because the way was blocked, Xia Kui was burdened with worry, while Li Yi became the valiant vanguard resisting the combined force of more than twenty thousand beasts and monsters, leading the soldiers in a tenacious struggle at the very front line of the new battlefield.

Then, for some reason, the beast that had just pierced Lance's chest with a claw went mad again. After Lance fell, it did not leave to seek another target. Instead, it raised its claws once more, preparing to smash the fallen pretty boy to pulp in one blow and eliminate future trouble. Imagining the blood and shattered flesh that would soon spill beneath its palm, a cruel, bloodthirsty smile curled at the corner of the beast's mouth.

It gathered force and struck down with all its might, yet the blow landed on no flesh at all. Instead, a searing pain shot straight into its palm, so sharp it felt as if it might drive the beast to cripple its own arm.

The girl's furious voice rang out before the beast: Get lost!

It was only two simple words, yet they made the beast's already throbbing pain flare even worse. The red-haired girl, who had been far from the fallen pretty boy only moments earlier, was now standing in front of him. A dangerous pale-gold magical aura swirled around her, and one thread of it had just struck the beast's claw that had moved against Lance.

That strange magical shield, which had originally been guarding the girl, had somehow already shifted onto the young man, wrapping him so tightly that not a single gap remained.