The engine of a bike hummed as it drove through the Wasteland's starry night sky, towards the mountain behind a ruined town.
"So, should we burn everything down or sneak and assassinate them one by one?"
Feyd asked Ray as he drove their bike. Ray stretched his arms slightly before replying.
"Well assassinating them will take some time, and I'm not sure if the Steam Cannon or teleporter could catch us. If they could then we won't be able to do much damage before they catch us"
"Instead burning the wooden bandit camp seems like a better idea to me. Causing chaos before rushing in to kill the bandits and their boss"
Ray spoke in a cool and fluid way, though inside he was slightly nervous.
'I would've preferred infiltrating if I was alone, but if Steam Cannon does have an artifact related to shadows then he might catch us. And I could try using the shadows created by the fire to check the surroundings for the artifact, which I can't do when using shadows to stealth me and Feyd'
He hoped Feyd wouldn't find the logical inconsistencies in his sparse argument by thinking about it too much, nor have his instincts warn him that something was off.
'But yeah, those instincts of his are scary...'
Feyd considered Ray's words without much thought and nodded, agreeing to the plan.
"Alright sure"
Ray wanted to sigh, but stopped himself just in time, 'Feyd might've asked me why I sighed if I did'
The two soon reached the mountain and scaled it using shadows produced by Ray. They had left the bike behind.
The both of them hid behind rocks as they observed the layout of the bandit camp.
"Hmm, we can start by burning and taking down the watchtowers, and then those tents. Doesn't seem like those buildings are for sleeping, maybe warehouses, so let's ignore them for now"
Feyd nodded at Ray's words before adding his own thoughts too.
"Ah right, let's also drain that water tank first, so that they won't have much water to put out the flames"
"Alright, should we start?"
"Mmh, let's"
Feyd concentrated hard while maintaining multiple fireballs whilst constantly creating new ones. They were all fairly large and explosively, intended to burn and destroy the structures they hit.
A Rift had already been formed by him at the bottom of the water tank in the camp, connected to another Rift that drained the water directly down the mountain.
After the fight with the rat king Feyd had felt his Rift powers grow stronger, with their maximum formation distance becoming greater than before.
Now as long as he spends time concentrating and making large movements he could open a Rift hundreds of meters away, and the distance between Rifts without a 'casting delay' is much greater now.
After all the water was drained Feyd left the cover of the rock and began to launch the fireballs flying towards the camp.
The fireballs hit the legs of watchtowers, causing them to fall and burn. The fireballs hit tents, causing bandits inside to scream. The fireballs hit the ground, not doing much damage.
Most of the fireballs hit their intended targets and sent a raging fire throughout the camp. Debris from wooden buildings and tents and watchtowers caused the fire to be present everywhere.
"Alright, let's go attack!"
Feyd twisted his hand clockwise and tries to create a Rift infront of him and Ray, leading to the bandit camp, but nothing but a few sparks and fizzling sounds came.
Immediately entering an alert state, Feyd and Ray both began to look around for their enemy. And soon they saw him.
A lean man with brown hair and green eyes, wearing light hide armour with a gun and sword by his waist.
"Hmm, this is troubling. Someone with fire and space powers"
"!"
Ray pointed his blade at the man while speaking, as Feyd dashed forward to strike.
"Are you the vice leader of those bandits?"
Feyd sliced through air as a surprised expression appeared on his face.
'It really is teleportation. The spacial fluctuations confirm it, how interesting!'
"Why ask questions you already have the answer to?"
Ray immediately turned around and blocked but only managed to stop two bullets from piercing him using his shadow coated rapier, the other one hitting his left thigh.
Shadows and flames rushed towards the man but he dissapeared from where he was, appearing a short distance away from them.
"Two elves, both of whom have special powers? Sounds like good money"
Feyd was internally marveling at the man's methods of teleportation, far more different than his! But he also had a troubled expression on his face.
'This man, he can rapidly teleport and it doesn't seem to use too much energ nor get him sick, this is going to be difficult'
Shadows and fire blasted back and forth, created a mystical cascade of light and darkness that consumed the surrounding area but most of the attacks ended up dodged by the man, teleporting away in an instant. The attacks he didn't dodge were ones that would only graze him, not causing much injury.
Feyd and Ray shared a look with each other that seemed to say 'You got any ideas?'.
The vice leader continuously shot bullets and slashed with his blade to injured the two of them, while also teleporting away from their attacks.
'This is insane! The way space bends when he teleports doesn't make sense, it's almost like... like...'
Feyd fell into deep thought, though it didn't seem like that on the outside since his body continued to attack and dodge by pure instincts.
Ray too began to think of ways to defeat the individual before him. Many thoughts cycled through his head as he dismissed a few while considering others.
'Grab onto him with shadows and try stopping his teleportation? No, his senses are strange, as if he knows the exact position of our attacks! Hmm spacial senses...'
'In that case why not use psychic waves? But my abilities for mental interference don't work with intelligent creatures, nor will my mind reading work, it requires immense strain to do it forcefully which Eribos will definitely take advantage of it'
'Then I have to do something with shadows but he keeps moving around... Moving around... Shadows...!'
However just as the two were about to inact their respective enlightenments the vice leader's eyes darted towards the centre of the bandit camp, before he smirked.
He raised both hands towards Ray immediately causing them both to raise their guards. Feyd gathered flames around himself and prepared to attack the vice leader while Ray attempted to use Shadow Shift.
But it had already too late, since just as Ray was quickly disseapearing away starting from his legs, a spacial fluctuation silently pulsed from his location and sent him to an unkown location.
Feyd's senses sensed a second spacial fluctuation and traced its connection to the previous one– Ray had been teleported to the center of the bandit camp.
The vice leader was also about to teleport himself but just as he was about to Feyd's middle and pointer fingers from his left hand crossed one another, as a small Rift attempted to form on the vice leader.
This disturbed his attempt at teleportation and instead stunned him briefly, since his spacial manipulation was directly applied to himself, thus any interference affected him too.
Feyd launched blasts of fire and a single, concentrated flame arrow which all managed to burn and blast at the vice leader.
However his armour seemed to be magically enchanted, barely allowing him to survive mostly unscathed except for a burn mark on his chest though his armour's magic was depleted now.
He hurriedly teleported away a few meters away from Ray while Feyd began to concentrate and try creating a Rift to reach them both.
Meanwhile Ray was being bombarded by bullets from a dozen or so bandits, who were all being quickly slain by Shadow Spikes.
But just then his senses caught a stream of something flying towards him at high speeds from behind him. A swift roll to the side allowed him to barely dodge a spray of highly concentrated steam!
The vice leader was about to approach but the wave of a hand by a tall, buff man stopped him. It was Steam Cannon.
The vice leader nodded his head and turned around to face Feyd. He could have attempted tp stop the Rift, but it's formation was much more reinforced than before thus he chose to conserve his energy.
His teleportation Gift was much less taxing to use on himself rather than other people, much less people who tried to resist. He could only teleport someone else once or twice more.
However he could also use teleportation to mess with the space where someone else was using spacial powers causing them to fail, he had only figured it out after experimenting extensively, and a random elf saw him do it just once and replicated it!
Although at a loss of words he aimed his gun to shoot the moment the enemy's Gift or Manipulation activated.
A Rift formed and Feyd came through, though blasts of fire caused many of the vice leader's shots to miss him. He shot continuously as his enchanted gun could handle continuous shooting while he teleported bullets inside.
Eventually however Feyd had reached the man and with a slash of his blade the vice leader was forced to teleport away.
Feyd had tried to stop him but just couldn't get it quite right. Ray however was constantly dodging blasts and streams of steam using his high agility or Shadow Shift.
He had tried to use Shadow Stealth but due to the burning flames everywhere there were no good locations to use it.
And also he had felt a strange energy permeate from Steam Cannon, mixing with the surroundings.
'This energy is hindering my ability to use Shadows, so this might be the artifact I had heard about'
Although he tried to occasionally attack Steam Cannon almost all of his attacks were blocked by streams of steam, causing him harm more than just once.
The man was ever silent though his eyes were quite ominous. Another attack came from his extended arms but this time not only did two streams rush rewards Ray, another blast radiated outward like shockwaves from an explosion.
Ray's expression soured as he created large amounts of solidified shadows interlocked to form a plate like shield infrot of him
'Crap! I'm not sure if he has figured out the maximum range for my Shadow Shift but this is bad! I have to dodge now'
-Boom!
The steam crashed against the shadows causing heavy damage but not enough to break through. The surrounding fire was extinguished and the burnt wood became wet slightly.
Steam Cannon looked at Ray with a freezing, cold glare.