Chapter 992: Friendly Reinforcements: Turning the Tables
Tank, Greenie, Beast, Mia, and Aelrinder all appeared behind Reign, their auras on full display, causing the enemy to stare with worry.
They held the numerical advantage before, and they had an equal number of real Tier VI combatants, but now, they were the ones that were at a disadvantage.
They had the same number of combatants, but those combatants were not equal in strength.
The tall man had previously been confident not because he believed he and the other Tier VI were stronger than Shadow and Wolf when it came to raw strength and mana, but because he was able to quickly confirm the fact that none of the three in front of them could utilize soul power.
Soul power was almost a cheat in the leveling realm as even though one could train to combat it, to utilize their mana and strengthen their spirit and soul in order to better resist soul attacks, it was far from being enough to go against talented soul manipulators.
But with the appearance of Reign, a person who could actually do the same as the tall man, and by how easily he had blocked all the soul missiles the man had launched, perhaps do it even better than him, that advantage was completely gone.
"So, these are the guys that have been spreading the corruption in the jungle, huh?" Reign asked as he calmly walked toward Wolf who calmly nodded at him.
Shadow was standing still, not attacking his opponents, even though his boost that was given by the activation of the mark wouldn\'t last for much longer.
He didn\'t need to worry, everybody had arrived, and even if the enemy brought more reinforcements, he was fully confident that they could take them all out.
Reign alone was enough of an assurance for that.
His transformation made him the undisputed number one of the group, the most powerful of them all, and if he truly went all out, then even if the enemy had tens of fake Tier VIs, their fate would be sealed.
"Interesting, soul manipulation, not what we expected to see from you." The tall man said as Reign glanced at him weirdly.
"Oh, so you were expecting something else?"
"Does that mean you already know about us, were you watching us, was it the spy from last time?"
"No, you took care of that, remember?" Wolf said as Reign nodded.
"Which means these bastards have been observing us some other way, maybe after the death of the spy, or perhaps before his death." Wolf continued, observing the tall man and the other Tier VI, who, in his opinion, was a girl.
It was an opinion he got after observing her for a bit, her stature, her posture, the way she moved her arms, everything was telling him it was a female.
"You will not gain any answers from us, there is no need for you to try." The tall man said as Reign nodded his head.
"I know, but you are wrong though, I will gain answers, but that will be after beating you guys black and blue."
"I think I\'ll personally take care of you, the rest can beat up whoever they want to beat up." Reign said with a smirk on his face as he cracked his knuckles while approaching the tall hooded man who shook his head.
"As honored as I would be to trade blows with the leader of the \'Heaven\'s Hooligans\', I am not suicidal, and neither are the others."
"You have won for today, I hope that you cherish this victory."
And with that, the tall man took something out of his robe, as did the others.
It was a glass ball that was no bigger than a golf ball. They all clenched their hands, to which Reign and the others responded by attacking them with long-range attacks, and the balls broke, enveloping them in a weird smoke that caused space itself to ripple around them as they suddenly disappeared from the spot.
"They teleported?" Tank asked as they all stared around the area, searching for any signs of the enemy.
"They did, and that\'s not all." Reign said with a sigh as he glanced at the four wounded people who were down on the ground.
"Those bastards took care of them as well, those three are done for, their souls are damaged, this guy though, he still seems fine." Reign said as he crouched next to the man who was chained up and smirked.
He had done it when he first arrived.
He didn\'t just block the attack of the tall man, he had also struck this person, the one person out of the four who was not really injured, and was already bound by mana-restraining chains.
He had used his soul manipulation to create a very thin blade with Aethion\'s help, and he used it to strike his soul, leaving the control of the blade in Aethion\'s hands, who was able to get rid of whatever was in the man\'s soul and had damaged to the soul of the other three so much.
It was not a phantom, even though there were some amongst the enemy that had a phantom around them.
What Aethion noticed was a small fragment of a soul that was hidden inside the man\'s soul. A fragment that could easily be activated, and if need be, used to quickly deal immense damage to the soul of the person.
To plant such a fragment was not an easy thing and required great patience and control over soul power, but since Aethion believed that these people were tricked into believing that the person was doing something good for them, they probably didn\'t struggle at all and allowed them to do whatever they wanted to do.
"Luckily, he\'s quite good at getting rid of such things, otherwise, the enemy would have been able to clean their tracks easily."
\'By the way, will the enemy know you did that?\'
"Had I destroyed the fragment, they most definitely would."
"But I didn\'t do that, instead, I used the blade to envelop the fragment slowly, adding more and more soul power to make sure that the fragment would not be able to get away."
"When the enemy was about to leave, they sent a sort of signal, the tall man had done so, and the fragments all responded to it, I had intentionally allowed the signal to pass through the soul barrier I had made so that they wouldn\'t notice that something was different, and then, the fragment exploded."
Reign nodded his head and sighed in relief.
Had it been him, he would have just destroyed the soul fragment, which would have probably alarmed the one who had placed it, and would have made the enemy realize that he had a hostage that could give them a lot of info.
But thanks to Aethion, the enemy was in the dark.
They probably believed that what they had done turned out perfect, all four people they had left suffered from the soul attack, their souls being heavily damaged and shattered, and they were incapable of telling them a single thing.
Well, they would be in a rude awakening after Reign finished up with the guy who was lying on the ground.
He smirked and glanced at the man who was staring at him with apprehension.
Be suddenly struck him, striking the side of his neck and causing his body to stiffen up as he lost consciousness.
Reign then, with the help of Aethion, extracted his entire soul out of his body and placed it in his consciousness, leaving it there with Aethion who would get all the information that Reign would need.
"I was getting a bit worried there, to be honest, glad you made it in time," Wolf said as Reign smiled at him.
"I\'m glad about it as well, the marks you guys left in the tunnels helped out immensely, we wouldn\'t have been able to track you down had it not been for that."
"Well of course they helped out, that\'s why I left them after all," Wolf said with a smirk as he and Reign bumped their fists before he glanced over at Laura and Shadow.
"Tch, in the end, I was forced to use the mark against those four, I have to get stronger," Shadow said in an annoyed voice as Laura shook her head.
"No, it\'s my fault, I suck at fighting up close, had it not been for me, you would have been able to win even without using the mark."
"Maybe, but your job isn\'t to fight up close, nor do you need to, you\'re a mage and a healer at once, without you, there would have been many times when we would have been out of commission for god knows how long, not to mention the number of times you saved our asses with your healing, just like how you did so with Beast and his wyvern the last time."
"So don\'t worry about it, you got nothing to be sorry for," Shadow told Laura with a smile as the others nodded as well.