"Fireball!"
After getting close to one of the lizards from its left side, Eren cast his fire-element spell using both of his hands separately. He then jumped high using his movement spell and released both of the fireballs onto the beast's torso.
Eren then executed his movement spell again and tried to create a safe distance from the beast he had just attacked. And to his surprise, he found that he could easily be able to do so.
'What the fuck? These huge-ass lizards are slowpokes as fuck!'
Eren turned back and saw the lizards still maintaining the speed they had approached him with. The beast he had attacked also seemed fine. He even looked a bit faster than the rest as he had started to lead the other two.
The scaly, shiny black skin of the beast that had been bombarded with two fireballs at once exuded orange light before returning to normal. Eren felt puzzled by the phenomenon and tried to perform the same attack on the same beast again– this time right over its back by jumping over it.
Then Eren attacked the other two lizards with fire-element spells with the help of his snakes as well. He had only generated four fire snakes this time. But they were half as big as the lizards. The butcher had opted for quality over quantity with his fire snakes after considering the kind of opponents he needed to battle with.
Eren preferred fire-element spells over his lightning element spells because they could be executed by him while maintaining his distance from his opponents. The lightning-element spells he had in his repertoire were ideal for close combat battles. In addition, they weren't meant to be executed efficiently when the beasts were so large.
Eren made efficient use of the fire spells and his fire snakes to target the three lizards. He had already landed plenty of attacks on all three mana beasts.
But Eren soon found out that his fire-element attacks were giving him no results. The lizards would not get affected by the fire element spells at all– as if they were immune to all the fire-element damage they received.
Their skin turned light orange in response to the fire-element attacks they would receive. Once the smoke cleared after the fire attack, not a single burnt area or bruise would remain.
'Something is wrong. I can sense their threat level is increasing.'
Eren had his mana sense locked on the three mana beasts as they had done on him. He had no trouble getting away from the beasts. But he also couldn't hurt them at all using the fire-element spells. Plus, his mana sense told him the beasts were getting more dangerous with each passing moment as he kept on attacking the beasts.
'What should I do? If I don't attack and just keep on running, I won't gain anything. But if I attacked, these fucking tanks would just tire me out before eating me whole.'
Eren thought as he maintained his safe distance from the lizards and let his fire-snakes do the attack in sync. But the more he took part in the battle and the more he watched the behaviour of the beasts, the more puzzling it felt for him.
That's because the beasts would only focus on Eren. They won't try to attack the fire snakes that were spewing fire on them. This was the total opposite of how the beasts usually behaved.
Eren initially believed the lizards were focused on him and didn't care about the attacks that didn't bother them. But he changed his mind when he saw that the lizards' bodies soon started to have faint traces of runic patterns on them.
'Don't tell me. Are these giant crawlers getting powered up by my fire-element attacks?'
Eren waved his hand and made his fire-snakes stop attacking the lizards after he realized his mistake. But by then the runic patterns were becoming distinct. As if they didn't need external help anymore.
Eren had maintained a sufficient distance from the battle between the lizards and fire snakes all this time after he realized his attacks weren't working. But at this time, his mana sense sent him warnings of ultimate danger even when he was quite far from his opponent.
"Rawr!"
One of the beasts roared at Eren after his runic patterns became prominent. But this time the roar contained a breath attack that the butcher had never seen before.
Green flames!
The mana beast attacked Eren with a stream of green flame breath aimed at him. The temperature of the green flame was so intense that Eren felt like his body would melt away even if he was standing far from it.
The breath attack covered the distance between the beast and Eren quickly. Thankfully, Eren was quicker. He managed to get away from the green flames just in time. However, passive heat from the flames still affected his body, causing his newly worn outer clothes to dry-burn a bit. His hair would have gotten burnt too if hadn't strengthened his mana layer right afterwards.
As soon as the breath attack landed, a cloud of green fire appeared where he stood before. It turned the ground into lava and created a crater of around 5 meters in diameter.
The path by which the green-flame breath attack travelled from was traced on the ground. It created a small canal from the place where the mana beast stood and connected to the crater that was created in Eren's former place.
This was the most intense fire attack Eren had seen in both his lives coming from an F-Rank beast. It was so overwhelming that the butcher didn't think the attack should be classified as F-Rank.
Only after witnessing the attack did Eren realize the reason behind why his mana sense was picking danger signs from the slowpoke lizards even if all they could do was chase him slowly.
The breath attacks the mana beasts used were comparatively faster than their overall battle style. He would have been turned into a skewerless kebab before melting away if his danger-sensing psyche, developed by his fight in his previous life, had been wrong by even a single second.
The appearance of green flames now served as a deterrent to Eren's fight against the mana beast. He couldn't run from the beast. Nor could he approach them using his fire spells.
