Ning tapped into his core and pulled some pure Essence from it. He drove the Essence into his sword and quickly created a spike out of the ground that shot in the leader's direction.
The leader dodged and shot the arrow at Ning. Ning dodged as well, but the spray of rock from the fire arrow still hit him in the back.
Fortunately, his body was so strong that he didn't even feel any pain at all.
He saw the leader create another fire arrow and shoot it.
Ning couldn't help but wonder why he only kept on making fire arrows. There had to be a reason for it, but he couldn't figure it out right now.
He ran up to the leader and swung at him. Rock sprayed from his sword, but the leader was ready for it.
A pillar of fire erupted from the ground, creating a barrier of sorts that protected the leader. Before the fire pillar could even disappear, another fire arrow came flying out from inside.
It struck Ning's sword once again and both of them were sent flying back.
'Dammit,' Ning thought as he got back up. The leader's physical strength was about the same as his, maybe even less for some reason, but his Essence was for sure way better than his own.
If he was hit by the arrow directly, instead of the aftershock of the explosion, he would most likely have multiple gaping holes in his chest right now.
The fire pillar disappeared and the leader walked out with another arrow. "You damn brat!" he shouted. "I will kill—"
His words stuck to his mouth as a slash of water flew in his direction. The leader quickly threw his arrow at the water slash and destroyed it.
Sophie quickly caught up to Ning and helped him up. "Are you okay?" she asked.
"I'm fine," Ning said as he got back up. "How do we win?"
"Don't worry, we can win," Sophie said. "You destroyed his sword already, so we have a very high chance of winning, especially once the rest are done with their fights."
Ning looked to the side and saw that the majority of the bandits had been killed. Some of the people on his side had been hurt too, but none were mortally injured.
"We can win because I destroyed his sword?" Ning asked with a confused look. He couldn't understand why that mattered at all. After all, they were fighting an Essence Manifestation realm fighter. Why would having or not having a conduit affect the outcome of the battle?
As he wondered, Sophie launched another attack. A stream of high-speed water shot at the leader. The leader created a fire pillar within which he hid. He kept the fire pillar and shot a fire arrow from inside.
Ning jumped in front of Sophie and took the attack with his sword. He was sent flying into the woods this time around, but he got back up and came back running.
Sophie was knocked back too and was in no position to dodge the next attack.
Ning quickly used his essence to create an earthen pillar that sent Sophie into the air. Another fire arrow flew out from inside and hit where Sophie was initially.
The earth pillar was destroyed, but Sophie was fine. He caught Sophie as she fell to the ground.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
Sophie looked around with wide eyes. "How… how did you do that?" she asked.
Ning couldn't wait to answer. He needed to kill the leader. Since he wasn't coming out of the Fire pillar at all, he decided to destroy the pillar itself.
He felt his core drain as almost all of the Pure Essence in his body was dragged into his sword.
Then, he pointed the sword in the sky and imagined a massive rock that would crush the leader.
His Essence disappeared and he opened his eyes to look at the rock that should have appeared in the sky. When he did, he saw nothing.
Or more accurately, he saw darkness. He saw the shadow down beneath the rock that had appeared.
Only, could this even be considered a rock anymore?
It was round in shape and about 50 meters in width. With such a size, it crushed the fire pillar as it came down, and crushed whatever was inside.
The wind from the giant rock falling alone was enough to send most of the people falling backward.
To their luck, the round rock didn't touch them at all. Had it been a cube instead of a sphere, they would have most likely been crushed along with the leader in the fire pillar.
The spherical rock rolled away on the other side of the forest before coming to a stop a hundred meters or so away where it was stopped by the many trees it crushed in its way.
Ning's eyes slowly turned toward the ground where it had landed, and he could see the mangled corpse of the man he had just crushed.
"I… did that?" he spoke in a shocked voice. His was the only voice that was present at all. Every other person was way too shocked to even speak at all.
"How did you do that?" one of the men finally managed to speak.
"I… just did," Ning said, not knowing what else to say at all. They all stared at the rock in the distance for a solid 20 seconds. Their focus only wavered when they heard the shouts and cries of the people and horses now that the rock spikes Ning had created had disappeared.
'2 minutes?' Ning thought as he turned around to look at the people. That was the amount of time his current creation lasted before turning to Essence.
The rest of them quickly finished off the bandits and started checking on the people. As soon as they were done, they all surrounded Ning.
"What the hell was that?" Sophie was the one to ask.
"I… don't know myself," Ning said. "This is my first time seeing that as well."
