The floating island was very small and was filled with arbitrary metallic structures—the nests of Space worms.
All of them were empty except one. The final space worm. Also the strongest.
Helia ignored the creature and glanced at the center of the island. An ancient leather skin flag stood in the air, as if it was frozen in space and time.
Caleb’s eyes flashed and he teleported to the flag. “I got it—”
Or at least tried to.
“Huh?”
Caleb’s hand was inches away from the flag. His teleportation was off by a few inches!
“Impossible!” He exclaimed and the next thing he knew, he was sent flying coughing out blood.
“Idiot.” Helia cursed and observed the space worm that just appeared beside the flag. This thing even sneak attacked upon Caleb.
But why did Caleb’s teleportation amiss by a few inches? For his level, this was a major error!
With doubts, Helia slowly took a step forward. The space seemed to have changed subtly.
‘Is this…’ She took one more step. And one more.
The space worm slithered close to the flag and faced the intruder.
Helia didn’t care about its gaze as she felt the changes in space.
Finally, her eyes widened and she sighed. “I see.”
Through her space sense, she observed some strange patterns that almost seemed random.
These patterns had words written in a script close to Deva script, yet different. There were also various materials used, including precious space related materials.
The result?
The closer she got to the flag, the more solidified the space became.
Helia concluded that the strange patterns were ‘formations’.
An ancient art of arranging items in a specific patter to achieve desired results.
Humans had limited achievements in formations. The best accomplishment being Teleportation Formation.
And these were—
“Space Lock Formation.” Helia muttered as she recalled the information she read long ago.
She scanned the exquisite patterns before shaking her head.
Once she was aware of their existence, these formations weren’t much effective on her. At most, they only affected mid level 6s and low level 6s.
Even they wouldn’t be drastically affected. At most, they’d be frozen for a moment.
If Caleb had been careful, he’d have easily offset the effect.
“I think Ashtarh team is close to getting the flag.” Helia muttered as she leisurely walked towards the flag.
She wasn’t a mid level 6 and these formations literally had no use to her. If she wanted to use them in a battle, she had to set up the formation before hand.
“Let our messengers pick up these scrap. If I don’t do this, they’ll call me stingy.” Helia muttered.
She didn’t care if they called her stingy before. But now, if they compare her to Sarah, she didn’t want to appear inferior.
No. She’s definitely not inferior to a girl one year younger than her.
“Caleb, let’s get this over with.” Helia said and clenched her fist. As she circulated her space power, she felt the tingling pain of the injuries she accumulated.
The space near her fluctuated and Caleb appeared. “Alright. I’ll follow your plan.”
Helia raised her hand and her space power connected her to the outside space and she quickly locked onto the space surrounding the space worm.
The space worm already sensed her intention and was about to teleport.
Helia gritted her teeth and clenched her fist. “Stay!”
Ka!
Ka!
Helia compressed the space, almost squeezing the space worm to which it responded by loosening the space and resisting its attack.
At the same time, the space worm locked Helia’s location.
“Eh?” Helia felt the space around her twist and she instinctively teleported away.
Kacha!
She heard a sound of mirror shattering and her space sense instantly caught what was happening.
The place she was previously standing was now twisting. The ground she stood at was gone and a small crater appeared in its place.
Her space sense caught the fluctuations only in the last moment!
As Helia was about to yell at Caleb for not attacking yet, she felt a new fluctuation behind her.
“Damn!” She didn’t even think and simply teleported away.
Boom!
The space worm crashed into the area she was previously standing, forming a huge crater.
It covered its body with space armor and even tried to melee attack her!
“Caleb!” Helia couldn’t take it anymore and yelled. Her body was already aching from the injuries.
The injuries that were closed after taking the healing potion were now split open and Helia felt a stinging pain all over.
“Argh!” The thick, warm red liquid soaked her clothes and Helia hurriedly downed another healing potion.
“I was about to attack, but you stopped the space lock in the last moment, I lost it.” Caleb appeared at a distance and said slowly.
“…bastard!” Helia muttered under her breath and raised her voice. “We’ll do it again. Tear it to pieces.”
Caleb nodded and teleported again. The location he was standing was torn to pieces.
The space worm wasn’t a spectator.
“Go!”
Helia ignored the worsening injuries on her body and channeled all her space power.
This time, she didn’t hold back at all and imprisoned the space worm.
Ka!
Ka!
The space worm struggled as it loosened the space and tried to teleport. But this time, the difficulty was far higher.
Even though the injuries were beginning to affect her strength, Helia kept a tight grip on the worm.
“Ha!” Caleb appeared right before the worm. His body gave off a silvery hue, he covered himself with solidified space which acted as both an offensive and a defensive—the Space Armor.
Without stopping, he punched out at the space worm.
His fist was about to touch the solidified space imprisoning the worm. If it happened, he would destroy the solid space and instead help the worm escape.
So right then, Helia withdrew her space power.
Caleb suddenly felt like his fist entered a very loose space and his fist’s speed skyrocketed!
Until then, space worm was resisting Helia’s tightening of the space. So, it was loosening the space.
When Helia suddenly let go, all that was left was space worm created loose space.
Thus, Caleb’s fist reached its body in no time and destroyed it into two.
And at its last moment, its space power spewed out blasting Caleb and Helia into the distance.
“Fucking!” Helia gripped her chest and felt the heavy pain from her lungs.
Space Worms made a desperate attack right before dying. That is, they always reserved a good chunk of their space power to teleport when faced with a life threatening fight.
Most of the times, they teleported in the last moment and survived.
But when they couldn’t, they would use that space power to launch the final strike.
This made Space worms much easier to be killed, but the price was taking their final blow.
These final blows were also the reason for Helia’s and Caleb’s injuries.
Helia blocked off the wound with her space power and didn’t allow any bleeding.
After some time, the wound would be closed. Her injury would heal after some time.
But…
“These injuries make us even weaker than Sarah team.” Helia said in a sorrowful tone.
In her opinion, this was as low as they could go.
“I dunno. Aren’t they stronger than us from the start?” Caleb shrugged and threw an object at her.
“Here, the flag.”
Helia caught it and carefully felt its texture. She ignored Caleb’s comment on Sarah’s team.
“Now, follow the plan.” She said and teleported down.
After finding a normal mountain on the island, she teleported to a cave and sat cross-legged.
“Let’s recover. With our current strength, we can’t fight for the 5th or 6th flags. Once they fought it out, we’ll join.” She said and took out a small spacort and aura crystal.
“But wouldn’t they suspect and check the islands?” Caleb appeared at a distance from her and sat down.
“No one would think we stayed in the same island after getting the flag. In their opinion, we would be out there, searching for other flags or sneaking behind other teams.” Helia explained.
“Staying here while others fight for flags might seem stupid, but let them fight and once we recover, we can sneak attack and grab all the flags.” Her eyes shone and she clenched her fists.
“What if a team wants to check on us?” Caleb asked again. He was nervous, alright?
“….” Helia paused for a moment and her eyes narrowed. “I don’t think any team will check on us. By the time they’ve fought for the 5th and 6th flags, we’d have already left.”
Silence filled the twisted islands as the two focused on recovery.