Puzzled by the strange occurrence, Markus couldn’t really tell whether it was his senses or the reality around them playing tricks on him. Intuitively stepping forward, he attempted to get a bit closer to the source of the muffled sound, when Yelna suddenly grabbed his sleeve, only to pull him to the back with all her force.

“GET DOWN!” Her scream instantly pushed the saint into action. Using the momentum from her grab, Markus wrapped his hand around the girl’s waist on the go, before pinning her to the ground below his own body.

And then it came.

For the girl, nothing happened. Being as magic-less as one could get, any disaster of magic nature couldn’t really affect her. Without the resonance to the magic within her own flesh, there was no way for the violent magic forces to inflict any injures on her.

Regretfully, the same couldn’t be said about Markus.

For a moment, the reality around him seemed to vanish. Warping into craziest geometrical forms that the human mind couldn’t comprehend, the world appeared to go completely crazy. The trees turned into rivers of wood. A small stream of water suddenly stood tall like some kind of impenetrable wall. The air itself appeared to turn solid, making it impossible for anyone to move in it.

And all of that happened while Markus’ head nearly exploded from an agonal pain!

Thankfully, as suddenly as this wave of magic disturbance came, it went away just as fast. With his headache still prevailing, Markus only could afford to roll off the girl’s body, still torn by the death that seemed to be reserved for the dying moments.

“Aaaaath…” Attempting to say something, Markus voice suddenly muffled when Yelna covered his mouth with her hand.

“Shh… Just rest for now.” For the first time since a certain battle years ago, the saint could see a hint of worry on the hero’s face. But rather than calming down or enjoying the moment of rare care from the girl, his mind dropped into even greater disarray.

‘Am I injured so badly for her to show concern?’ Forcefully stopping himself from looking at his own physical state, Markus forcefully cut the pain transmission from his devastated flesh. For a moment, he managed to think straight once again.

“Is this the source? Is this where the entire problem came from?” Still not any wiser about the reality behind what happened to them, Markus attempted to draw some sort of conclusion.

“No, it’s not that.” Starring daggers into the direction Markus heard the noises from, Yelna squinted her eyes before placing her hand on the handle of her butcher-styled knife. “People are coming.”

Despite how his head threatened to just split apart even with just the gentlest of the moves, Markus forced his body to move up. Finally daring to look at his own state, he almost shook in shock.

‘I’m not… injured?’ From how pained his body was, the saint assumed that half of his limbs was gone, most of his skin was torn apart and at least a third of his guts was spilt to the ground.

But all of that only happened in his head. His skin was in exactly the same state as it used to be before, his guts were where they should be and his limbs were still attached to his joins. At the same time as this realisation struck the man, the pain in his mind finally started to fade away.

“One klik.” Pulling out her dagger from its small scabbard to a special handle attached to her suit, Yelna then switched to her preferred weapon of choice. After making sure that the string was properly tense and the feathers of the bolts were intact. Cocking her small ballista that some mistaken for a crossbow, she stared into the dense foliage of the forest.

“Half a klik.” After several moments, the girl informed once again. Right now, with his mind still recovering after the damned mana disturbance, Markus was no longer able to sound the approaching people off. Right now, he was just a burden to the hero hidden in a small bush behind him.

But at the same time, this was for the best. ‘They will notice me first, giving Yelna the chance to shoot and reload before dashing to another position.’ Already projecting the fight to happen, Markus forced his pained body to stand up, before picking up a portable shield of his.

With a few trained moves, a small package roughly the length of one’s arm and the thickness of one’s hand fell apart, only for the special hinges to force each of the parts to fall into a specific place. In a flash, what used to be just heavy garbage, turned into a plated shield, with each of its parts locked between two of the neighbouring plates.

“Three hundred meters.” Informing in a low voice, Yelna didn’t dare to take any chances. From how the previous attack almost managed to render her husband completely useless, she wasn’t naive enough to assume she was stronger than the one capable of invoking such a force.

Right now, staying hidden was her greatest ace card. While warriors preferred close-combat, mages long-range, hunters like her opted to stay out of the fight, killing the enemies when they least expected the attack to come.

“One hundred.” According to the procedures they came up with way in the past, this was the last message Yelna would utter. Speaking anything else even a moment later would already put her at risk of being heard by the approaching group.

“Let’s do it then!” Cheering himself up, Markus closed his eyes for a moment. In a single second, he managed to cut all his pain, fear and curiosity off, leaving just the bare warrior spirit that carried him through all sorts of ordeals in the past.

And then, from a dense thicket of woods, a small party of burly men clad in thick, animal furs came out.