Near Aeridor, there was a second sun. It was green, it was loud, and it was lethal. The beam of pure slime-hating energy was like an orbital beam meant to destroy any slime in the world. Birds were scattering away as Jack closed his eyes.
"Thanks for everything Jeanne," Jack whispered, an image of her face in his mind.
The beam reached Jack. But Jeanne had jumped on top of him, shielding his entire body. Her one good arm wrapped around him as she used her back as a shield.
"Ahhhh!" Jeanne's scream was raw, a sound of pure agony.
Seeing the light disappear, Jack opened his eyes. The ground around them was scorched into a perfect circle of burntgrass and blackened earth, but Jeanne's back was somehow intact. Completely burned but she was alive.
"Jeanne?" Jack squeaked, wiggling out from under her. The beam hadn't touched him. He saw her back, it was raw.
He quickly checked her HP through the system. Jeanne's health was in the single digits. [HP: 4/500] The attack was meant for him but she took the blunt of it.
[Slime designed skills do significantly less damage to other species.]
Before he could process it, Aria had her guard up. They were encircled.
"HAA! a priestess protecting a slime," The Slime Slayer's laughter was as sharp as glass. She hopped off the griffin.
"You see, this is why you and your kind are inferior," Lancel added, looking at the red head with disdain, "Can't even kill a level 20 priestess and a level 15 hybrid."
The Inquisitor's griffin took off to the sky and started circling overhead.
Growling at him, the Slime Slayer shook her head.
"The slime's mine."
Jack was already using healing mucus on Jeanne. This wife of his was crazy.
"Take Aria and run," Jeanne managed to say, her teeth gritted from the pain, "I'll hold them off."
He smiled wryly. There was no holding them off.
[Lancel, ???]
[Renin, ???, Slime Slayer]
Both of their levels were hidden, a stark, terrifying void where information should have been. This wasn't an oversight; this was a deliberate, cruel boast of power that screamed their levels were so astronomically high that the system simply felt it was useless to display it to him.
"Okay," Jack said, "That's it. I'm tired of this."
He took a single wobbly hop from Jeanne's scorched back to the cracked, blackened earth.
"You Slime Slayer," he called out, his squeaky voice ringing with a strange clarity.
Renin had another vortex ready to go. Her fingers were crackling with a green, corrosive energy. Aria was watching Lancel. The inquisitor hadn't even drawn a weapon. He was just observing.
"A specimen worthy of being studied," Lancel said.
"He's actually not a demon," Renin said to the inquisitor. "Just a sentient slime."
"I'll eat you for hurting Jeanne," Jack said.
This made Renin laugh, it was loud and genuine. "Eat me? little glob of jello." She started to walk towards them. The vortex disappeared from her hands. She cracked her knuckles, "I've killed King-Slimes with my bare hands." She walked closer to Jack. "I was the one that made your species extinct on the continent of Asmiria."
Aria noticed Lancel was looking at Jeanne's missing arm with curiosity and not aggression.
Jack's stomach tightened hearing her feats. Yet the rage he felt from Jeanne's burnt back was enough for him to stand there. He wasn't planning to fight.
"Well I'm stronger than a King-Slime." Jack bragged. He extended a tentacle and formed a moonlight dagger.
The Slime Slayer froze. "How do you have that?!"
She got angry, a scary anger. Like an explosive that just lit the fuse. The vortex came back and shot at him again.
Jack had no chance of dodging. But he had no intention to. This was a gamble from the start. As soon as the beamlaunched. He stretched two tentacle one to Aria and one to Jeanne. His mana was stretched thin. It wasn't enough to cast Ghost Hand but he had no choice.
"Hold on!" He screamed.
The beam of energy closed in, promising a swift and final oblivion.
"Dyonis, protector of Yggradsil, grant me shelter."
He chanted. At that exact moment his Ghost Hand grabbed a handful of Elven dirt. It was his only trick. He hoped Toross would understand and be quick enough.
At the last millisecond, right before the incandescent energy vaporized them, the trees seemed to explode. One tree surged from the Vylara side with impossible speed, its roots like monstrous, brown snakes. It blocked the vortex.
Toross appeared in front of Jack, his sword unsheathed.
"Under elven law, you have invoked Asylum. Your safety is my responsibility."
Lancel finally spoke, "Toross of the Treanthe guard, please step aside. This is Rethian business."
But the Treanthe guard's dead-set eyes remained fixed on Lancel. He raised his swords towards Jack's ghost hand. "You have a few seconds to cross fully into Vylara before your invocation is nullified."
Jack was already moving, dragging Jeanne and Aria with his tentacles across the line, over to safety. But Renin had no intention of letting her prey escape.
"I'm on a divine quest. Step aside."
A green sword appeared on her hands. Her form moved towards them.
Toross' calm exterior cracked. "Slayer, this is your last warning."
Renin shot out her arm and a bolt of green lightning shot at Jack. Toross intercepted it. And he sliced off Renin's arm. His bark sword moved with unnatural speed and precision. A clean slice through flesh and bone.
She didn't flinch or scream in agony. A twisted smile came on her face. Her hand glowed red for the first time, a fire magic that Jack hadn't seen before.
However before she could cast it, Lancel appeared behind her. He grabbed the red head's neck and squeezed. With a wet snap, he broke the Slayer's neck.
She dropped limp, and he simply stepped over her corpse like it was a discarded coat.
"Toross, you are now harboring a fugitive of the church," Lancel's smooth, unhurried voice was more chilling than any shout of fury. "This will be considered an act of war should you not hand him over."
The bald man smirked and walked back to his side of the border.
"I serve my god," he replied, a calm statement of fact. "If war is what Yggdrasil's shade demands, then it is war you shall have."