The leader of the Skelefiends first shoot an acid arrow to the team of the first princess to make them hide behind their bastion, before he used the momentary gap to look at the leader of the pirate.
"Oi, Joshua you piece of trash, what the hell are you doing!", he shouted.
The leader of the pirates who was already angry after being lied to and used as cannon fodder, because the Skelefiends had a sudden "emergency" that made them late for their joint attack against Daphne.
What the pirates didn't know is that the Skelefiends weren't lying, the so called "emergency", was them going to look at the place where their envoy was supposed to be as well as one of their allies in the form of Ulkrear.
They felt something was off since the envoy hadn't returned, so they had to take a detour to see what happened, and ended up finding an empty land which had signs of having being used as a battlefield.
And no matter how they looked they didn't find anything, then after receiving a signal from the pirates they had to hurry up to the battle, and ended up arriving late just to see a blue stream utterly destroying one Bottom Shredder.
In other words Daimon had screwed the Skelefiends before revealing their spy in Karmandi's army, and he screwed the pirates over now by framing them.
"So now you are accusing me of your subordinates being stupid, Feller, you were the ones that didn't follow the deal causing most of my subordinates to die, what the hell do you want from me now!", shouted the pirate leader.
The Skelefiend snorted.
"So what, you are taking a petty revenge by making my subordinate die in vain, is that what's this all about?".
The pirate leader frowned, not understanding what the Skelefiend was talking about, but then a supposition hit him like a bolt out of the blue.
'They want to put blame on us, to eliminate our group, then capture the princess who is at the end of her rope and keep the rewards for themselves', he thought.
A second of silence fell in the area, before both leaders reached the same conclusion.
'The one who strikes first win', they both thought.
"Rock Massacre!".
"Acid Rain!".
The pirate leader's spell hit first, the ground below the Skelefiends trembled and then without any warning, a plethora of stone spikes raised from below, but this time the Skelefiends were able to react on time… or so they thought.
Because once the spikes had risen from the ground, they bloomed more spikes horizontally.
"Aghhh", out of the remaining twenty Skelefiends five died on the spot while another one lost a limb.
But the pirates also suffered a loss, one of the two surviving pirates didn't even have the time to scream and was melted into a pulp due to the attack of the Skelefiend leader while the other one suffered chemical burns.
The two leaders didn't stop in the ceremony and started bombarding each other with spells, while their subordinates took some distance from them to not get insta-killed, also they didn't completely ignore the first princess's group and continued with the fight, turning the whole situation into a chaos.
…
"Their leaders are distracted fighting between themselves, it's now or never princess Daphne", said the only guy who was capable of fighting.
Three of the girls who were also shooting spells towards the pirates and Skelefiends, agreed.
"Larry is right princess, we have used about half of our mana reserves, if we just keep launching spells to keep them away from us without moving, we'll be doomed once we run out of mana".
"Yeah, we need to run, there is a small forest ahead of us we can look for a way to hide from these guys to rest there", added another of the three girls.
The girl who previously helped Daphne not to collapse, and has been using her mana to protect the three paralyzed girls, raised an eyebrow before saying.
"Amira, Nadia and Pamela are unable to move due to the arrows used by the pirates, and the terrain inside the forest is too irregular, we won't be able to move fast enough while carrying them with is, not to mention the young miss is still too weak after having pushed herself to eliminate those two monsters".
"Chris I know those three are servants of the princess just like you, but if we don't do anything we'll all die… for the common good we can help the princess through the harsh terrain of the forest, how about it?", asked the third girl.
The girl called Chris frowned.
"They received the arrows for you three and you are going to abandon them at the mercy of the pirates and the Skelefiends?", she slowly asked with an angry voice.
"The pirates were using a paralyzing poison instead of a deadly one, which means their goal is to capture us not kill us, once we recover we can return to look for them", said the guy who was missing an arm, with a coward expression, he needed a hidden place to properly cure his wound if he wanted to be able to grow it back with a potion.
Everyone of them looked at Daphne who was still trying to catch her breath, but then after a couple of seconds the first princess only shook her head.
Just as Mellie mentioned, she would never leave her subordinates behind, she instead looked at a bracelet she was wearing and pressed a hidden button which revealed a little glass bottle kept inside of it.
Daphne drank the content of the bottle and she recovered a bit, just enough to be able to move be herself and not trip in the process, and also be able to use some spells again.
Apparently, that was an emergency potion she had on herself all the time, instead of having it inside her spatial ring.
Chris who was one of the servants of the princess knew how serious things were, the Valas family all focused in long distance combat, so their mana consumption rate was insanely high, and thus they had a big stock of mana replenishing potions in their ring, but Daphne also had one in her person, due to her mother's recommendation, it was for an emergency only, so if she was using it, her subordinates would know it was a life and death matter.
Daphne pointed at the three girls who were unable to move and the other three who could, had no option but to carry them per her orders.
The first princess gathered the mana she recovered and then placed her hands on the ground, a wave of water raised from the ground flooding the battlefield, getting the attention of the pirates and the Skelefiends.
But then as they were about to bombard the group of the first princess, a small swirl appeared on the center of the battlefield, and not even a second later it turned into a whirlpool, which sucked both the pirates and the Skelefiends.
The whole group of the first princess jumped out of their cover, and disposed to make a run, but an earth pillar as well as a green cloud which appeared out of nowhere blocking their retreat.
The girls who were carrying the immobilized maids of the princess didn't doubt a single second and dropped the maids, they activated some boosting spells and avoided the obstacles before they accelerated their pace disappearing into the woods.
The two guys who were supposed to launch spells at the enemies to hold them back stared at each other, and then ran in two different directions.
At the same time the princess ran out of mana, a spell casted by an early Lord ranked like Daphne that could block a bunch of early Lord ranks and a couple middle stages at the same time consumed a lot of mana, not to mention she didn't recover even 20% of her total reserves because she needed to rest, hence the short duration of her spell.
"They are escaping boss, should we...", asked the remaining surviving pirate.
But the pirate leader instead sinisterly smiled.
"They aren't worth our time, the big prize stayed behind, also those three are still paralyzed so we'll be able to have some fun too".
The Skelefiend who just jumped out of the water, snorted as he pointed at the pirate leader.
"Humph, dream on Joshua, the princess is mine, with Lord Horrorclaw's reward I'll reach the peak of the mortal realm or even the Half Stellar rank, so get lost!".
The first princess slowly sank into the water as her legs gave in, but then Chris dragged not only her but the three immobilized girls with her behind the rock bastion again.
"Young miss, you shouldn't have used your own mana to hold them down, those cowards discarded us and escaped", said Chris with an angered voice.
Daphne used her last resort to buy time and they instead of helping her escape, just left them behind, to have a slightly better chance of surviving, it's not that they escaped what angered Chris, but because she knew what they were thinking "If their target, in other words the princess stays behind, then they wouldn't chase after me", it's what they thought.
And unfortunately they were right, after fighting between each other, and also considering the princess had some tricks up her sleeve, both the pirates and Skelefiends stopped their quarrel and focused on them once again.
"She must have run out of mana once and for all, I propose a temporal truce, we kill the nuisances and then decide who gets to keep the princess, what do you think Joshua?", offered the Skelefiend.
While he had the bigger group, the fact that their envoy a peak Lord ranked disappeared without leaving behind a trace, still weighted in his mind, so he wanted to wrap things up as fast as possible.
The leader of the pirate found the compromise a bit suspicious but his chances of losing were higher as he lacked manpower, so he accepted.
"Deal, we have used too much mana and the magic beasts might get attracted to this place, let's finish them first and we can decide between ourselves on our way back to the hideout".
Then a the sound of tree leaves moving drew everyone's attention, the Skelefiend and pirate leaders had bitter expressions as they saw the newcomers.
"Lucas".
"Miserius".
Two more groups, led by a pirate and a Skelefiend came from within the forest, they were each grabbing a battered body by its neck, two of the three girls that escaped before, as for the third one and the two guys, there were two Bottom Shredders in the group and they had blood stains and pieces of clothes on their mouths which resembled to the ones wore by those three.
"Thanks to you two for being disposable pawns, so that we didn't have to lose any of our subordinates, we'll take care from now own", said the pirate called Lucas.
"Do you really think I "accidentally" left the hint I got from young master for you to see it, Feller, I guess you haven't heard that the mantis stalks the cicada unaware of the oriole behind, kekeke", added the Skelefiend.
"Mm?", everyone suddenly looked below because the ground started to tremble but before anyone could do anything, seven holes appeared on the ground from which seven different magic beasts appeared, six of them had girls standing on their heads, they were positioned in a circle around both groups of enemies, two behind the first ones and five around the newcomers.
An eight hole on the ground appeared right in front of Daphne, but this time only a silver haired boy with a smirk as well as a four-meter snake jumped out of the ground landing a second later.
"You took the words out of my mouth, Skelefiend", said Daimon as he pointed his sword at them.
