"Ugh, I'm so jealous," Aylin said in the air as she watched Eloise twirl her Wands with delight, "He couldn't get me a scepter?"

Despite stewing in her envy, Aylin noticed the Lizards that had gathered around Eloise were now knocked away and they weren't moving. They looked knocked out. Something she had been unable to do with her pillar spell.

"How did you do that?" Aylin asked pointing at the unconscious Lizards while directing a defensive spell far away from herself to protect against an attack. If the spell and shield contact happened close to her, she might get knocked out of the air. Her stay was shaky already.

Eloise looked at the unconscious Lizards and shrugged,

"Harmony is powerful, I guess."

"No, it's more than that," Aylin said with furrowed brows.

'What was different?' She asked herself.

It wasn't just Aylin's attacks that had been shrugged off by the Lizards. Kaya's had as well. Even Eloise had failed until this success. There had to have been something else to this attack that all other attacks hadn't had…

And then Aylin got it.

"It's sound," she said.

Eloise couldn't help but roll her eyes,

"Of course it's Sound," she said, "I'm a Sound Mage."

As she was speaking, Eloise made a sweeping motion with her spell, creating a spell circle that became constructs made up of Musical Notes. The constructs hit the Lizards, slammed them away with force but they got back up.

Eloise tried this a few more times and the result was the same.

"Ugh, why isn't it working again?" she asked.

"Because you're not doing it the same," Aylin yelled, "Like I said, it's Sound…"

"What do you think I'm doing here?!" Eloise asked, annoyed.

Aylin opened her mouth to answer, her perfect face going red in annoyance.

Kaya beat her to it though, speaking in a mellow and controlled voice compared to that of her agitated teammates.

"No, Eloise, you're using physical attacks conjured with Sound Magic. What you did before… Gods, it was actually a Sound Attack. Not sound made solid, just Sound…"

"Exactly!" Aylin said, mellowing and grinning that Kaya had gotten her point.

Eloise got it as well and her eyes widened in realization.

"Fuck, you're right," she said with a smile. Where she should have been frustrated to have her own magic explained to her, she was just glad she had people with her to point out such an oversight.

So she got to work correcting said oversight. With one wand dedicated to her defense, Eloise began to strip her most powerful spells of their 'physical' components to weaponize their sounds.

It was not so easy.

Eloise was realizing that her spells, while tied to sounds—and at times beautiful music—usually needed to take some sort of physical shape. It was like sound accompanied the attacks but wasn't the attacks. And it had to be the other way around now.

In other words, she had to reverse engineer her spells on the spot.

"We'll cover you!" Kaya called out, looking up at Aylin who nodded.

And indeed, they cast their spells to push the Lizards from Eloise and also took over the task of defending her from the blasts.

Soon, Eloise cried out.

"Got it!"

With that, she swung both her wands like a maestro conducting an orchestra. An actual maestro would require only one baton while Eloise required both her wands. Defensive and Attacking Magical music were required for the task at hand.

Soon enough, she was hitting the Lizards with booms of music that got past their layers and hit them to knocked them unconscious. They were still sturdy enough to avoid getting knocked dead but this was good enough.

Or so the ladies thought.

Until the first set of Lizards Eloise knocked out began to stir. Apparently, the effect was not permanent. Hell, it only lasted a few minutes. And that had been a result of an accidental attack whose power, despite her reverse-engineering, Eloise hadn't been able to replicate exactly with subsequent casts.

"Fucking Hell!" Kaya cried out. Slamming the beasts with her vines only for them to get right back up as usual. She wrapped them with her vines and they layered their explosions and broke free.

She tried creating structures like the ones around Dean but, even with the support of Nature, it wasn't at all a permanent fix.

It let her know that the fact that Dean was still safe was because the Lizards were more focused on taking her and her teammates down first and Dean's fate would come after. If the Lizards wanted and really put their 'minds' to it, they'd get through that structure.

"What the hell are we going to do?" Eloise asked. This was already far more difficult than any of them had planned.

The Lizards were far too many. Each was boosted to Four-Star threat levels. This was a serious problem.

Meanwhile, in the air, Aylin had a finger over her lips with one hand while the other kept her defensive spell up.

"If Sound gets through…" she thought and it was as though a lightbulb came on above her head.

"Kaya," she called out, "Protect me."

"What?" Kaya asked confused.

"Protect me," Aylin repeated already coming down from the air as she gestured at Dean, "Protect me like you did that one. Just for a couple of minutes."

"Why?"

"Trust me!"

"Ngh," Kaya let out in annoyance.

Even with Nature's help, the effort of keeping up the defenses as well as her attacking and personal defense weighed heavily on her mind.

More and more of the Lizards Eloise had managed to knock out were starting to stir so they were practically back to square one.

Still, she listened.

And Nature Motes appeared at Aylin's feet right as she touched the ground. The grass grew stronger and longer and wrapped her up in a chamber to protect her.

"Well done," Aylin called out.

"Hurry up!" Kaya said with a groan of exertion.

Even as Kaya was talking, Fire-Cracking Lizards were turning their sights to the new protective grass sphere-structure. Unlike Dean, they were actually very determined to break through and get to Aylin. Because unlike Dean, Aylin was actually a threat.

Within the structure, Aylin steadied herself despite the explosive bangs against the structure around her.

"Just you wait, ugly fucks," she said through gritted teeth.

With a flick of her wrist, she retrieved Alchemical Vials from her spatial ring. The various vials contained different compounds and when mixed, they became volatile so they couldn't really be prepared beforehand. As such, Aylin needed some time to prepare the stuff.

The relentless bangs shook her and she almost dropped the thing, causing her to really, really get pissed at the Lizards but she kept quite a steady hand. She had practiced Alchemy so much in the past couple of weeks that it was becoming second nature for her. Yes, she was that much of a fast learner. At least when Alchemy was concerned.

Plus, she had a good teacher; Arlette Louvene. The sexy Alchemical genius that she was.

"Done!" Aylin said then, holding five Vials she had managed to create.

"Kaya, let down the structure."

Kaya heard Aylin's request and wondered if she had heard right. Alas, the burden was wearing her down and she couldn't quite find it in her to argue with the request.

The structure unraveled right as the Lizards were priming their next attack.

There was a sound of a glass shattering and from the pieces that used to make up the vial, a thick cloud of nasty orange gas spread. The Lizards took whiffs of the stuff and began to tremble until the layer of red energy around them faltered.

Aylin had an arm pressed to her nose to keep from breathing in the orange fume but she had her fingers free, casting a spell that created a spell circle which in turn rained down spikes of ice that stabbed the Lizards right through and into the soft grass below.

In that single move, more than ten of the nasty critters were killed.

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