As they were confused about what to do. Five light bolts crashed into the monsters, staggering them. Another ball of light shot by, accompanied by a figure jumping over their line formation. This figure landed in front of the monster mob and plowed through their center.
“Mister Storm Wind?” Lindsey said after seeing the figure more clearly.
“The Outworlder?” Walter uttered in disbelief.
After all, this outworlder he looked down upon had brazenly rammed into the mob of monsters that had dismayed the six of them. More absurd was this mob of Ice Trolls seemed to be having trouble dealing with this lone intruder amongst their rank.
Jack had taken out his Magic Staff. He had cast Barrier before he attacked the Ice Trolls with Energy Bolts and Mana Bullet. A thin layer of light was enveloping his body, the Ice Trolls hit at him with their clubs. Some even carried small spears, but none of these weapons could get past through his light barrier.
Since he was completely protected by the Barrier, he attacked the Ice Trolls without reservation. He slashed using Storm Breaker in his main hand while holding his Magic Staff in his off-hand, occasionally firing range attacks or spells on the monsters or simply used the staff to knock the trolls aside. He had no qualm showing his dual-class nature to NPCs.
Of course, despite Barrier’s outstanding protection, he didn’t abuse it by ignoring every attack from the monsters. He still dodged the ones that he could, and used his fast movements to weave around the monsters and confused them. The feeling he had when he did the exercise this morning was coming back. He could feel his body doing things that he couldn’t do before. A human did physical training to improve their muscle strength and speed, but in this game world, such improvements were gained from leveling up. With sufficient strength and speed, the fancy maneuver that usually only forms and no substance, could transform into a deadly blow.
Such was the case for Jack, he implemented his grandfather’s martial art in the fight. From the outsider’s point of view, he seemed as if dancing. But each of his strikes and kicks carried great force due to his overwhelming strength.
The kicks only sent the monsters tumbling without damage, but his slashes trimmed a large chunk of HP from the monsters. He spun his body in mid-air and did a double three-sixty degree slash with his sword, cutting each monster around him twice. His Strength and Dexterity stats allowed him to perform such rapid twirl in the air which was otherwise impossible.
At the end of his spin, he sent a downward kick at a nearby Ice Trolls, slamming his head on the ground, before impaling its skull with his longsword.
The six squires were flabbergasted by his display. During his acrobatic spinning in the air, the tip of his magic staff had started glowing. By the time he landed, there was already half a shape of a rune forming on it. He had always been good at multi-tasking, and he had furthered practice forming spell runes during melee fights.
When the spell rune was completed, a ring of bright flash exploded out with Jack as its center. Pushing back every Ice Trolls who stood five meters from him, and damaging them with an average of 110 damage. Most of the monsters stumbled and fell from the knockback force.
After casting that Mana Detonation spell, a clear area around Jack was formed. He looked back at the six dumbfounded squires, and yelled, “why the hell are you all idling? Attack them!”
Hearing Jack’s rebuke, the six was roused up from their trance. They immediately struck at the closest monsters who were still on the ground due to the effect of Jack’s spell.
Jack stayed in the middle of the monster mob, taking away their attention, while the six squires assailing from the side. Their cooperation gradually thinned out the monsters’ numbers.
After the last monster fell, Jack again busied himself in picking up the dropped items. As expected, the six squires still didn’t compete with him on the items. It took him longer to pick up the items this time due to the larger quantity, there was even two equipment that dropped. Unfortunately though, they were only common grades. He picked up the pace in picking them up as he was worried that the disobedient cadets would continue forward and left him again. However, the squires stayed in their places.
When he picked up the last piece, the cadets were still not moving. He looked back at them in bewilderment. “Let’s go,” he said.
“Sir, yes, sir!” They bellowed, with the exception of Walter. Jack was slightly taken aback by their ardor. He guessed that even NPCs respected strength.
They moved forward. This time with Jack at the head, the cadets following from behind in an obedient manner. Walter was at the most rear of the line, wearing a dark expression and grumbling with gritted teeth, “what’s so good about this outworlder. He must have used some sort of trick. I’m not going to fall for it.”
They took care of more Ice Trolls as they traveled deeper into the cave. Jack found several more copper ores behind layers of ice. Walter didn’t come to snatch them anymore. However, since the cadets saw Jack acquired those ores, they had also starting to pay attention to the ice wall. Seeing their eagerness, Jack was mindful enough to not monopolize all the ores even if he could see all the ore’s positions clearly from his God-eye monocle. He let the cadets take some of the ores. Only if they seemed to have completely missed the spot, he then went and took it.
The cave had several branching parts. However, the cadets seemed to know the way so Jack was not worried about getting lost. The lighting apparatus along the wall of the cave starting to decrease. He could see some of them with a broken condition, it was probably the doing of the Ice Trolls.
Without the lighting apparatus to illuminate the cave, only darkness could be seen in the inner part of the cave. Lindsey took out a torch and was about to light it but Jack gestured for her to stop. He waved his magic staff and cast Illumination. A ball of bright light appeared and floated above Jack. The light shone from it could illuminate areas ten meters away from them clearly.
He didn’t actually need the spell since his Dragon’s Eye skill gave him a passive ability to see in the dark, he was doing it for the cadets. It was better to rely on this spell so none of them needed to spare a hand to hold a torch.
The breadth of the cave was getting wider and the air colder as they went deeper. As the temperature dropped even lower, Jack heard a notification that announced he had been afflicted by a physical status ailment called mild freeze. He checked this ailment in his status window and found the description saying that his speed was decreased by 10%.
He saw the squires shivered from the cold temperature. They took out a blue cloak from their bag and used them to cover their bodies. Jack inspected the cloak and found that it gave them 20 ice resistance and 50% resistance to Freeze. They were clearly aware of the cold effect in this cave and had prepared for it. Damn that Bailey, why didn’t she give him a heads up as well?
“Have you people scouted this place before?” Jack asked.
Pablo nodded, “me and Walter had come to scout before.”
“How far does this cave goes?”
“A few hundred meters more, we will come to a large opening. The cause of this cold was supposed to be there. Based on the report of the miners who used to work in this cave. An ice mana site was discovered during their mining, which caused this cold phenomenon.”
“You mentioned before that our mission is to stop this anomaly. How do we stop it?”
“We were given an orb that can absorb the cold energy from the ice mana site. Once all the energy was absorbed, this mine should go back to normal.”
“Oh? Where is the orb?”
“I have it,” Alonzo said and patted on his saddlebag.
Jack nodded. “There should be a lot of Ice Trolls near the ice mana site. How long does it take for the orb to complete the absorption?”
“Every mana site is different, but I think it might take fifteen minutes to half an hour,” Alonzo answered.
“That long? Meaning we have to clear the space around the mana site before we can perform the absorption.”
Walter made a smacking sound, “there is no Ice Troll around the ice mana site.”
“There is none?”
“I’ve scouted the place during a previous visit with Pablo. There is only one boss there, an Ice Troll Sentinel,” Walter said.
“Really?” Jack looked at Pablo.
“I didn’t manage to reach that far,” Pablo said. “It was Walter that had gone ahead and saw the place with the ice mana site.”
“You don’t believe me?” Walter said with annoyance.
“How strong is the boss?” Jack asked.
“So-so. A level 22 Elite boss. It was just the right difficulty for us six here, hence the mission. You can just sit back and watch us in action.”
