Princess Purple cast Bless on Red Death, who was now dueling with the enemy's healer, Purple Mist. It should have been a short work but this Purple Mist turned out to be more formidable than Red Death thought.
While Purple Mist used her magic shield to block most of Red Death's attacks, she had caught Red Death's arm on one occasion. Red Death felt that arm of her losing strength instantly.
"Pressure points?!" Red Death uttered. She used her other hand's fingers to stab her forearm that was held, her weakened arm was immediately invigorated. "You are not the only one who knows how to do it!" Red Death uttered.
Red Death's revived hand twisted her dagger into a backhand stab. Purple Mist was caught off-guard when her pressure point attack failed, suffering the stab. At the same time, a phantom dagger struck. Purple mist immediately cast Full Heal and Regenerate on herself back to back, all the while trying to defend against Red Death's relentless assault.
But a Priest was not built for a melee contest, Red Death's movement was much faster. Even though in reality Purple Mist's martial arts might not lose to Red Death, she was still handicapped by the game system.
Purple Mist cast Heal again as a final struggle, but Red Death's unceasing assaults finally claimed her life just as Disco Rain managed to slip past Giant Steve and came to aid.
Red Death reviewed the situation as she clashed with Disco Rain. Giant Death was struggling against Four Winds and Violent Blizzard even with the help of Yellow Death's interference. Water Lily's spells were also troubling. He caught a glimpse of Jack, only his head was visible now at the center of the sand Whirlpool.
'Shit!' She cursed within. Her plan was to have Jack initiate the combat while they sneaked behind to ambush the enemy's healer. This plan should be fine since Jack was a freak who won't die even when getting ganged up. It had worked wonderfully, except why did that freak end up getting himself trapped in a sand whirlpool?
If that didn't happen, they should be able to secure victory by pinning the enemies from two sides with the enemies missing their healer.
After a short consideration, Red Death gave the team the command to retreat. They moved back with Red Death and Giant Steve taking the rear while Yellow Death provided support. Princess Purple healed the two from time to time.
Cipher Flight team tried to rush forward to get to the healer at the enemy's backside but since the enemies kept moving away, the attempt was much harder. Only Four Winds and Disco Rain had the speed but Red Death and Yellow Death interferences kept them at bay, while Giant Steve hindered Violent Blizzard and Water Lily. Any damage the human team suffered was easily remedied by Princess Purple while the damage on the orc team kept piling up.
Seeing such a disadvantageous situation, Four Winds instructed everyone to halt and let the human team go. The two teams backed away while keeping their eyes from one another.
After they were out of sight, Violent blizzard said with displeasure, "Why are we letting them go? We should just finish them. We might have lost our healer, but they had lost their strongest member as well."
Four Winds looked in the direction of the sand whirlpool where Jack was, it was quite a distance from them now. Jack was not visible anymore.
He then said to Violent Blizzard, "Without a healer, we can't fight recklessly. Even during the clash just now, we slowly lost our HP while they kept on getting healed. We have to take another approach. Let's move away from here first."
*
On the human team's side who was still retreating, Princess Purple similarly expressed discontent, "Why are we retreating? All you three need to do is just fight and I will keep you alive. They will surely lose since they no longer have a healer."
"That may be, but it's a gamble," Red Death uttered. "They still have two big hitters while that assassin of theirs was pretty nimble, it will be difficult to keep any of them from reaching you."
"If this big lump of meat does his job, then I will be fine!" Princess Purple said while pointing at Giant Steve.
"Hey!" Steve uttered.
"There is no need to be hasty," Red Death said. "They have lost their healer. We will sneak on them again and take another one out. Once they only have three, our chance of winning will be higher. We will fight them head-on then."
"How can we sneak up on them again?" Giant Steve asked.
"The same way we sneak up the first time. The difference is that we no longer follow Storm Wind this time," Red Death said. "The skill I used to track them has no cooldown, but can only be used to track one target at a time. When I clashed with their assassin. I have placed my tracking skill on her. I know her position for the duration of this match."
"Good, at least you didn't just give orders carelessly," Yellow Death, who had been silent all this time, said.
Red Death looked at him, who turned away from the look. She never truly interacted much with this fellow teammate of hers, but considering they both carried the Death title, they normally respected one another. Why did she feel animosity from his tone just now? Red Death decided that might just be her feeling. Even if it was true, she attributed it to Yellow Death feeling dissatisfied because she was chosen as the team leader while their position should have been equal.
She didn't give the issue too much thought. She said to them, "Follow me!"
*
At the place where the two teams had clashed. Everything had settled down. The whirlpool had just ended and the ground was back to flat sand again.
After a moment of silence, the sand trembled before an arm burst out. The hand grabbed onto the soft sand and made a pulling motion, a head popped out soon.
"Pfft…!" Jack spurted out the sand in his mouth. He then rested his head on the sand while panting.
"Damn, that was close," he uttered.
Peniel hid inside her hidden dimension when Jack's body was submerged in the sand, she just came out again.
"Do you think I would have died if I sink all the way down?" Jack asked her while still resting his head on the sand.
"I figure you would," Peniel answered.
When Jack was pulled down by the sand whirlpool, just as his head was about to disappear inside the sand, he had remembered his Float spell. He didn't know if the spell would be useful in this situation but he thought he might just give it a try.
However, the spell in its first level only lasted thirty seconds. He still had three archmage's free skill points from leveling up two days ago. He never thought he would be using it for this Float spell but he was doing it then. Peniel informed him that leveling up the float spell increased its duration by ten seconds. With the addition of three skill points, the Float spell leveled up to level 4 and last a full one minute.
He was still being pulled down by the sand at the time. After leveling up the spell, he cast the Float spell under the sand and willed himself up. The force of the sand was too strong that he couldn't float up, but at the same time, his body was no longer getting pulled down. So he just hung there in limbo.
He was relieved. If he kept getting dragged down even after casting Float, he would need to ask Peniel to cast Second Life on him just in case.
After what felt like a long time, the sand stopped sinking. His Float spell also ended at the time, though. So, he ended up stuck in the middle.
Since the sand was no longer moving, it felt solid enough for him to maneuver, but not too solid that he couldn't move at all. He thought he should be grateful the sand here was dry sand. He could also feel that he was not too deep, since the pressure from the sand above was not too heavy. With his great strength, he pushed himself up. Finally thrusting one arm free before pulling himself up.
After pulling all his body out of the sand, he looked around. Everybody was gone already. Heck, no one even gave him a glance when he was sinking. Some teammates, he thought.
He was not sure what had happened then. He was too busy struggling against the sand swirl but he thought he might have seen Red Death taking out the enemy's healer. He looked up to the sky. Yep, the healer was gone.
Where had they gone to? If they were still fighting, how come they changed places? He was expecting to see the two teams still in heated combat when he pushed out from the ground, but no soul was in sight. Now, he had to run around searching for them again.
He looked around. Where to go?
"Hell!" He cursed. He then sat down and decided to just do that out-of-body scouting again. He preferred to not do this when he was alone and out in the open. His real body ended up in a vulnerable state since he didn't sense his close vicinity, someone might ambush him then. But there was no visible hiding place around here and he was not fond of running around like a headless chicken.
