"Scatter," Elias ordered and the team immediately followed his order.

Their plan was simple, the more they stuck together, the easier it was for the Eclipsed to target them all at the same time, so splitting up would confuse it, if only for a moment.

But the team soon realized the flaw in this plan.

Maybe the three could protect themselves just fine and keep evading the Eclipsed, but what about the one person that had no combat training...

And that was exactly who the Eclipsed targeted....

Lorenne.

The creature moved at blinding speeds causing her to freeze and before she could react, the club was swinging towards her.

Yes, she had a barrier meant to protect her, but that was only up to tier 2 attacks since the first years were not expected to face anything above that.

She closed her eyes, waiting for the pain to arrive, and it did, but just not as much as she expected.

Lorenne felt her barrier activate as something crashed into her, causing her to tumble.

Slowly, she opened her eyes, only to realize that instead of the club, what had crashed into her was a human.

"F-fuck, that hurt," Nox let out as he grabbed his arm.

While they had immediately split up as soon Elias gave the order, he realized that Lorenne had froze up as she looked at the approaching Eclipsed.

He knew she couldn't move out of the way in time and neither could he teleport her away, so he immediately switched Morphos to staff mode and teleported in the attack's path.

He honestly didn't know what he was thinking, after all, he would've normally chosen to run and get himself to safety but even before his brain had the chance to be rational, he was already standing before the club.

His staff was extended in a blocking pose as he prepared himself for the incoming attack and it landed hard, harder than he expected.

He wondered how morphos was holding on, but it just proved that it was stronger than his arms.

Because his arms?

Yeah, they felt like they were about to fall off.

The force behind the blow sent a vicious shockwave through his entire body.

His knees instantly buckled, his feet carving twin lines into the dirt as he was shoved back, hard. His vision blurred from the impact, and for a heartbeat, he was sure that either the staff, or his spine, would snap.

But the staff held on, him, not so much.

The moment the club collided, Nox was launched backward, slamming into Lorenne and taking her with him.

They tumbled across the forest floor until Nox's body finally skidded to a brutal halt, the momentum spent.

The only reason she was alive was because Nox had taken the brunt of everything.

"Nox? Nox!" Lorenne scrambled off him, panic rising in her voice.

"I-i'm fine," Nox answered.

No, he clearly wasn't. Even his left arm was twisted at a weird angle.

The moment she got close enough, Nox immediately grabbed her with his good hand and teleported away, just in time for the club to land again.

The Cyclops, fixated on its target, failed to realize that there were two more behind it and Levi immediately took advantage of this.

The Eclipsed didn't realize Levi had silently appeared on on its shoulders until he drove one of his daggers into its neck.

A surge of golden SE flared from the blade, burning through the Eclipsed's flesh.

The Cyclops let out a guttural roar of half pain and half rage as it thrashing wildly as Levi pushed off its back and vanished again.

"Nice!" Elias shouted, already pulling out a couple of orb like weapons before tossing it at the creature's face and they each exploded with a bang, disorienting it even more, "keep it distracted!"

The Cyclops stumbled, clutching at its melting neck, but even injured, it wasn't going down.

It lifted its club and slammed it blindly in every direction, uprooting trees and creating craters in the ground.

Levi reappeared again behind it, driving a second dagger toward its spine, but this time, the creature reacted faster.

The club swept sideways in an arc, but Levi was fast enough to slide under it, completely avoiding the attack.

"You need to get behind cover," Nox, meanwhile, said to Lorenne through gritted teeth.

"But—your arm—"

"It's fine," he lied through his teeth. "Just move."

Before Lorenne could argue, Elias shouted from across the battlefield:

"We need a weak point!"

"Eye!" Lorenne cried, flipping open her oversized book in a hurry. "Cyclopean variants rely on a singular focus organ, A direct Solar-charged strike to the eye will destabilize it and overload it from the inside!"

"Great!" Elias said. "Nox, you still able to move?!"

"No," Nox responded but he immediately activated his boots and disappeared, the sooner this was over, the sooner they'd tend to his arm.

He reappeared above the Cyclops's head, only for gravity to yank him back toward the massive creature. Morphos transformed in his hand, lengthening into a spear mode mid-fall.

The Cyclops looked up, its massive crimson eye immediately locking onto him.

It moved its bat, aiming to squash the bug approaching, but before it could swing, Levi appeared on its wrist, slicing tendons of shadow to disrupt its grip.

The club dropped from its hand with a heavy thud, shaking the forest floor beneath them.

Nox let out a sigh as he poured every bit of SE into the spear which made the solid golden light even brighter as he dropped faster.

The Cyclops staggered, its single massive eye widening as it finally sensed the danger above.

It tried to raise its other arm to shield itself but it moved too slow. Nox slipped between its fingers, heading straight for the eye.

"Haaa—!"

The spear plunged downward and the golden blade pierced straight into the Cyclops' eye, the glow sinking deep before bursting outward.

A violent glow of golden light burst from the creature's skull, shredding through its dark flesh as Solar Energy overloaded its head.

The Cyclops let out a distorted, warbling shriek, one that shook the trees and echoed throughout the forest, before its entire body convulsed violently.

And then,

BOOOM!

A column of golden light ripped through its head as its body dissolved into a puddle of darkness. The shockwave tossed Nox through the air like a ragdoll.

Luckily he was able to maneuver himself midair and grab unto a tree branch without even dropping his Solar tech.....

Wait....

Nox looked at the hand grabbing the spear before slowly looking up at the one holding the tree branch, beads of sweat pooling on his forehead.

"AHHHHH!"

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.