The enemy had clearly been ready for a fight, while Tesilim’s party looked relatively relaxed. Mainly, because they had been communicating with each other via telepathy as Lili and the orc did their back and forth. Even so, they hadn’t been ready for Tesilim to suddenly teleport. For some reason, the fact that he had that capability always seemed to escape everyone. It just wasn’t something low-rankers could do so easily unless they were given items by their rich parents.

  Aside from rich parents, the only time anyone saw low-rankers teleporting was through less-than-optimal abilities like shadow jump. Not that it was impossible for individuals with a good understanding of space to do so, but more often than not, it was done through specific techniques. After all, teleportation spells defeated the purpose of their use in combat due to their casting time, at least unless the person casting it was trying to escape or if they were doing it for some support reason, like switching places with a party member. However, out of everything, the reason why most teleportation was used with techniques at the lower ranks was that the words for the Advanced Magic weren’t very publicly distributed.

  It didn’t matter at the higher rankers, often around B Rank, because at that point, mostly everyone could figure it out, but even then, rankers tended to keep the knowledge to themselves, which was seen as tradition and a rite of passage.

  Anyway, it went without saying that if his own party was taken aback by Tesilim’s teleportation. Then, the enemy was even more surprised. At their ranks, it was incredibly rare to fight someone who could teleport like Tesilim could. Even monsters didn’t start manifesting such abilities until later on, and when they did so at early ranks, it was rare and often due to magical divergence.

  The orc Tesilim teleported to was High D Rank, and the party had discussed that he, along with the bull, the big human with a warhammer, and the hellion, which was what the half-devil was called, were meant to keep Lili in check. Meanwhile, as they held Lili still, the rest of the party was supposed to be overwhelmed and overcome by the other idiots.

  Tesilim, knowing the guy was High D Ranker, had been expecting him to put up more of a resistance, but he guessed the teleport really caught him off guard. This meant that the orc suddenly had two daggers emerging from his eyeballs. Tesilim had thrust them with his full non-empowered strength, which still meant they went fairly deep since the orc hadn’t been enhanced. Needless to say, no one was truly surprised when the green skin dropped like a sack of potatoes.

  Out of everyone, the first to react was Tesilim’s party. It wasn’t much, but it was long enough for everyone except Alyx to start their enhancements and rush at the enemy. The strategy had been to do three vs five. Lili, Tesilim, and Drex fight one party, with Jasmine, Rose, and Allyx fighting the other. Lili’s team was going to deal with the party containing the three high-rankers for balancing reasons, and even with the death of one, that hadn’t changed.

  With the fight starting, Rose rushed at the bald human with the warhammer, who got into the fight a second or two after she started moving. Sadly, the distance she needed to cover, if small, still let the human start his enhancement, and he was able to take her slash, extending his weapon forward and using part of its metal grip to absorb her strike.

  Right as the big man pushed her back to gain some room, she heard the mooing battle cry of the bull and knew the fight was starting in earnest as the other party, no doubt, was also getting into motion.

  Alyx, along with the rest of his party, had been shifting their gazes between their two enemies. They had all heard Tesilim’s murmur and had looked over to see him dispatch the orc. Alyx had been caught off guard by the attack; he had seen Tesilim teleport hundreds of times by this point, and he was still baffled by the number of teleports the elf had access to. Pretty much all of his dice weapons gave him some sort of teleport. Plus, there was his actual teleport spell that he could use without chanting due to the World Crystal’s intervention.

  Since nothing of what he saw was genuinely unusual from anything else he had seen so far, Alyx recovered and began dumping mana into a spell. He wanted to eliminate those goblins in one go. The pair had lower vitality than most due to their size. That wasn’t really an issue, as they ranked up since the process evened out most things between humanoids. However, at the middle levels of D Rank, where the goblins were, that wasn’t as prevalent. Also, Alyx wanted to end the fight as quickly as possible; he knew his party was skilled, but accidents did happen.

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  Alyx had barely started his incantation before she was already moving to face the two longsword-wielding humans, her Body Enhancement thrumming to life. Their team's plan of attack was simple: Rose held off the High D Rank while Alyx eliminated the goblins, and she kept the other two humans occupied.

  The two humans reacted right as she moved in sync with Rose, and they all met at the same time. Jasmine was worried about her friend dealing with someone stronger than her, but the redhead specialized in defense, so if anyone could hold out against a stronger opponent, it was her.

  For her part, Jasmine went for the human who had been standing still, ready to receive her charge. The other human was trying to move behind her, but that was something she didn’t plan to let happen.

  Parrying the longsword from the human she had engaged, she boosted her enhancement in a quick spurt, catching the swordsman by surprise as she managed to bring her staff back around faster than he had expected. The staff smacked his cheek and caused him to slightly stumble to the side.

  A few seconds after that, and knowing it was coming, she pirouetted around her first target, dodging a slash from the human behind her. Then, setting her sights on her new attacker, she unleashed her technique to keep him still for at least a few seconds.

  “Binding Light!”

  Tesilim had not been expecting the orc to crumble so easily, and he spent a little too long looking at the body as he double-checked to make sure that the orc was truly dead. Of course, pausing on a battlefield was dangerous, and he paid the price as a bolt of darkness smacked into his chest right as a mooing scream came from the bull. The hellion girl had launched the bolt, and he felt the magic invade his mind. Instantly, he started his enhancement, but the attack had done its job, making his thoughts feel sluggish. This was problematic because the bull guy was rushing him, and he found his body hard-pressed to respond to his thoughts.

  Thankfully, as the discount minotaur was about to swing his large axe at him, Lili smacked him into the bull's chest at full speed and strength, sending him flying backwards toward the archer, whose arrow went off to the side as she dodged the bull's body.

  “Shield up. Cleanse yourself, then come back into the fight,” Lili said, and before he registered the words, she was gone. Drex ran after her right as Tesilim fully understood what she had said, and he began working to summon his shield, even if the process was much slower than he liked.

  Rose was taking a hammering as she took hit after hit from the warhammer. Each strike had plenty of power behind it, but as infused with her diluted godly mana as she was, each hit was reduced enough that it wasn’t a problem. Though it also helped, the brute wasn’t fully powered up and had mostly lost himself in his swings. She imagined that she might be in real trouble if he were fully empowered and even used some techniques if he had any. Not that she would lose; it would just be a much harder fight. In the end, she had more combat skill than he had, and if it wasn’t for the fact that she was content with her defense for now, she might have actually pushed harder. However, she wanted to wait until numbers evened out, so she didn’t garner too much attention and ended up getting ganged upon.

  Alyx’s shield was struck by a couple of daggers as the two goblins ran at him. They had waited for Jasmine and Rose to start the fight and had been clearly ordered to deal with the mage. Sadly for them, that small amount of time would be their doom. He was almost done with his spell, and they would be a second or two from reaching him as he finished it.

  “From darkest soil and forest deep;

  Hear my call as tendrils creep;

  Winding, coiling, snare the breath,

  Ensnare the heart in choking death!”

  Roots shot out of the ground and quickly wrapped around the two goblins. The two green skins struggled and managed to cut a few of the roots, but Alyx dumped enough regular and pure mana into the spell that it wouldn’t be a problem. So, it wasn’t long before the goblins were completely tied up, the roots choking the life out of them, while Alyx simply ran by them as he got ready to engage in the melee.

  Jasmine dodged another slash from the red-cheeked swordsman, and she retaliated by extending her staff as she used the dip from her dodge to her advantage, trying to bring the man's legs from under him. The move didn’t catch the human by surprise, and he jumped easily, avoiding her sweep. However, seeing as she was already in the perfect spot, Jasmine rolled forward, catching the swordsman by surprise as she pushed into his legs, making him fall forward into what would hopefully be a face plant.

  Finishing her roll and knowing Alyx was about to engage the other twin, who was almost free of her chains, she got up and hoped to find a swordsman with their face planted on the ground. Sadly, he had instead managed to roll with the fall and was now sending slash after slash of mana blades at her. Sighing, Jasmine countered as she dodged or blasted the slashes with her own beams of white power while getting ever closer to the apparently desperate swordsman.