Seconds remained before the two giant pieces of earth closed and formed a semicircle above the ground. A shadow leaped into the air from among the thirteen-strong Hell Realm forces. He spread his two arms to the sides, and after stopping the earth mass weighing tons, he roared.
"Is this all? Is this all the power those competing to be the future Pope of Nakitav have?"
As the attack that wanted to crush its victims by squeezing them in between turned back to earth in small pieces, Joshua was floating in the air. He brought his two arms, which were spread to the sides, in front of his body and began to raise them with his palms facing upwards.
"Here is my head that adorns your dreams, right here! If you have the power, come and take it!"
Simultaneously with the movements of the Hell King, the blood of the mages who died in the first attack wave was coming out of their bodies, and concentrating around their comrades, they were turning into needles with sharp tips.
"Field of Death!"
After Joshua said the two words, Blood Needles began to rain down on the mages of the Lands of Light. Faced with the attack coming from the ground, the sky, the right, the left, from every direction, there was no place to escape. They thought the enemy was only opposite them, but they didn't expect the Hell King to attack using the blood of their comrades.
"This was what I wanted to tell you. You are blinded by your arrogance; you are too green to face people who have been fighting non-stop for five years!"
General Alaben spoke without hesitation even though Franz, the leader of the Companions of Light forces, was next to him. There was nothing wrong in his words; he had repeated his warnings several times over the Death Pass.
"I hope you came prepared, otherwise your companions might not last until the weapons of the Death Pass are fired again!"
Franz, possessing hair the color of daylight, did not respond. He was aware that every society, like the Companions of Light, gave importance to the leader they sent here. They might be green as said, they might rush and make mistakes, but this didn't mean they were weak.
"Wall of Fire!"
"Impenetrable Wall!"
"Wind Scythe!"
"Fluid Ramparts!"
The forces of the four societies responded with barriers consisting of the elements they mastered over the attack. It was obvious they didn't enter into a distinction regarding defense or attack like druids; when the time and place came, they could even do both simultaneously.
Even though the Companions of the Wind seemed to be the side in the most difficult situation due to the casualties they suffered because of the attitude they adopted in the first moments of the struggle, even they were doing a good job against the Blood Needles. The Companions of Fire and the other two fronts were counterattacking and destroying the Blood Needles before they even got close.
The mages who died in the first attack were doomed to vanish; there was no longer a corpse that could return to their civilization. Their weapons, their clothes, and their existences were erased forever; they would become the source of life for a new kind of life beneath the earth.
"Druid warriors, I want them to stay on the defensive a little longer!"
When Joshua gave his order, the nine people in green robes struck their one-and-a-half-meter-long wooden staffs on the magic circles beneath their feet and began to attack along with the power flowing from there.
"Stone Cannonball!"
"Water Thorns!"
"Roar of Fire!"
"Windmill!"
Four kinds of elemental attacks accompanied Joshua's Blood Needles, but their targets were specially chosen. Sphere-shaped rocks the size of a human head, shooting out from the magic circle one after another, were heading towards the Companions of Fire led by Ignis.
The firepower they used for defense wasn't like Ignis's bone-melting lava, and instead of shattering the incoming rocks, they were hardening them even more. If it was overwhelmingly powerful it destroyed, if not it strengthened; the relationship between earth and fire was a difficult situation to resolve.
The Water Thorns, joining the Blood Thorns, advanced towards the enemies building a wall of Earth. Both attacks possessed a fluid nature and shattered when they hit the earth, but even in this way, they managed to weaken it. Due to its softened outer surface, the erosion accelerated; the thorns were the size of a finger, but there were so many of them that the Companions of the Earth mages couldn't find the time to counterattack due to transferring their elemental energies and repairing the wall.
The four druids using the Fire Element who organized the attack named Roar of Fire were perhaps the ones making the most spectacular attack. They were both numerous and, since they would destroy each other with the Blood Thorns, they allowed Joshua to help the other three fronts more.
Their target was the group formed by the mages of the Companions of the Wind; the people under Ventus's leadership had to use so much magical power that sweat trickled down their foreheads. Only in that way could they keep the flames licking their faces away from them; otherwise, not only their sweat but their entire bodies would vaporize and vanish.
When the Windmills reached the Companions of Water, they encountered the Fluid Ramparts, which had a wall shape but could change shape according to the incoming attack. The attacks possessing the shape of the thing they were named after first entered the ramparts without meeting any resistance, but a few breaths later, they vanished due to the pressure coming from all directions.
Joshua made eye contact with Nympha, who drew attention with her relaxed demeanor. In the face of the arrogance in the young woman's gazes, the Hell King merely laughed. This wasn't the first time he was looked at like this; those who didn't know him might think the throne was offered to him on a silver platter, but the truth was entirely different.
Joshua had started hunting mages in the early years of his teens; thanks to the night raids he conducted during the Two-Year Wars, he had met the races living on the World of the Six Civilizations. Even if Nympha, the Leader of the Companions of Water Society Forces, looked his age, in the eyes of the old warrior inside Joshua, she was no different from a little child.
"Twenty people are enough for defense; the rest of you begin attack preparations!"
Nympha wasn't of the same opinion as him; she wasn't going to shy away from using the advantage she caught while the other societies were in a difficult situation. She had tested the Hell Realm's attacks twice and hadn't taken the slightest damage. On the contrary, the attack she sent could only be stopped by using two elements.
"I want you to taste the sharp temperament of water! You will see with your own eyes the feebleness of the wind attacks you send!"
The young girl, who was beautiful enough that you could fall in love at first sight if she wasn't your enemy, shouted with furrowed brows. Whether her attitude of superiority was directed at the enemy or the other mages from the same civilization as her is unknown, but the violence of her attacks corroborated her words.
"Diamond Cutter!"
The water the thickness of a pinky finger coming out of Nympha's staff had covered half the distance to the enemy in the duration of a single blink, and it wasn't alone either. The same attack was made from thirty different points at once; the Hell Realm forces, especially Joshua, were targeted.
"Muslo, Hueso!"
The Holy Bone Cult Family, receiving the order, built a milky white wall without needing to hear anything else; a single massive bone emerged from underground and formed a barricade in front of the finger-thick water attacks.
They managed to prevent the danger at the first moment, but the attack named Diamond Cutter didn't stay where it was; it advanced by carving the bone wall millimeter by millimeter. Nympha must have thought of this; it was impossible to stand before water, which could cut even the hardest thing in the world if you could compress it enough.
Muslo and Hueso didn't bother repairing their defensive methods. They immediately built another wall right at its end, because before five seconds passed, the first Bone Wall had already become useless. It was followed by another, and a fourth Bone Wall established seconds later.
Water flowed and found its way; it was impossible to stop thirty mages solely by defending, but the Windmills falling on the Fluid Ramparts along with the Blood Needles couldn't meet the need for a counterattack, or so the members of the Companions of Water, who couldn't see the enemy's movements, thought.
"I want you to buy us ten more seconds, Hueso!"
When Joshua called out to the young-looking old man in the position of his subordinate, he was next to the two druids using the Wind element and was moving his hands towards the magic circles.