Hearing her friend’s murmur, Selena turned slightly, her gaze settling on her shocked friend.
The corners of her mouth curved, just barely, forming what should have been a smile, and she said,
"Are you okay?" she asked, her voice no longer as cold as it once had been, this time carrying an unmistakable note of concern for her friend.
Seeing her like that, hearing those words, tears welled up in Lirien’s eyes before she could stop them, warm, uncontrollable. She didn’t think twice, dropped her bow, and threw herself forward, latching onto her friend like a koala, hard enough to nearly knock her off balance.
"It’s really you. You have no idea how happy I am to see you. I thought you were all dead,"" she said, half-sobbing, clinging tightly to Selena, who was finding it increasingly difficult to remain balanced and tried to free herself from her.
Normally, Selena would have been somewhat irritated by such a sudden and unrestrained gesture.
To her own surprise, though, she didn’t seem to mind it much at all.
She could feel Lirien’s body trembling against her own, a fear still raw enough to shake her shoulders, but beneath that trembling there was something else too. Relief and Joy.
Exactly what she herself was feeling in that moment.
She didn’t try any harder to pull free, and instead said, giving a few stiff pats on Lirien’s back,
"Yeah, yeah, I’m alive, can you let go of me now, though?" she asked, having no idea how to comfort her friend. Of all things, interpersonal relationships were certainly her weak point.
She had no idea what to do in this situation.
Lirien, hearing those words, finally calmed down a little, and noticing she was still clinging to her like a koala, finally pulled back, composing herself somewhat, and said,
"Sorry, I got a little carried away, I didn’t think I’d see you again, let alone in a situation like this," she said, though the smile hadn’t left her face.
Selena nodded simply, as if to say she understood, but their moment of joy wasn’t going to last much longer, because those creatures were still right behind them.
They’d seen their companion attack the pair and suffer no consequences from whatever presence had been there moments ago.
That presence was gone now, and nothing could hold them back any longer. They understood that, and they no longer held back. With a savage roar, all of them snapped forward at once and charged in to attack.
Seeing them coming, Selena and Lirien immediately prepared themselves.
Lirien had already experienced the creatures’ attacks just moments ago, so she knew there was no way they could stand against them. But she no longer cared. At least now, she wouldn’t die with regrets. She had her friend with her, and that was more than enough for her.
Selena, unlike her, held no such thoughts. Her will to live far outweighed that of most others.
Without hesitation, she unleashed her ice affinity completely, infusing mana into her sword’s blade, and with all her strength, drove it into the ground.
The moment she did, an invisible ripple of mana spread outward in every direction at incredible speed, and just as those creatures closed in, the ground beneath them trembled, and before they could react, it erupted, covering the entire area separating the creatures from the two girls.
In an instant, dozens of jagged, towering ice pillars burst up from the earth, forming a wall in front of them.
The wall stood tall and thick,three meters tall and stretched at least ten meters wide, but despite appearances, its durability was far from what was needed to hold those creatures back, and sure enough, moments later it began to tremble, thin cracks starting to spread across every surface.
But that hardly mattered to her. She hadn’t built it to keep them out for good, only to buy enough time to run.
Without hesitation, she grabbed her friend by the collar, catching her off guard by everything that had just happened in the span of a few seconds, and with a powerful burst of speed, shot off into the distance.
Only a few seconds passed before the ice wall Selena had raised collapsed, and the massive group of creatures, already spotting them in the distance, immediately resumed the chase.
Reaching the far side of the clearing, Selena didn’t waste time running forward and instead scrambled up one of the tall trees, Lirien no longer held in her arms but running alongside her.
Both of them climbed and resumed their run, leaping from branch to branch, hoping the height would give them an advantage the ground no longer could.
For a while, it seemed to work. The trees offered escape routes the creatures on the ground couldn’t follow as easily.
But they’d underestimated those creatures.
Selena realized it almost immediately, from the opposite side of the forest, more shapes began emerging between the trunks, cutting off their path.
They immediately changed direction, hoping to find an opening, but even there the forest swarmed with those same twisted bodies, converging from every angle as if the entire woods had summoned them.
There was no clean way out. Not anymore.
Selena’s heart pounded hard, and so did Lirien’s, who had just barely tasted a sliver of hope for escape only to find herself right back in the same situation.
"Well, at least we tried, right?" Lirien said, her tone joking, hoping to lighten the grim mood, failing miserably.
Those creatures, closing in from every side, had finally caught up, surrounding them completely up in the trees.
Selena scanned every direction, desperate for a way out, but found none. Wherever she looked, there were only those creatures, left or right, ahead or behind, above or below them, they were completely surrounded.
There was no escape left.
Selena, growing a little desperate now, watched the creatures closing in, ready to put up one last stand. But the moment her eyes landed on the creatures ahead of her, confusion flickered across her face.
’Hm? What’s happening to them?’
What she saw were the creatures, freezing in place, all at once, their heads all turning toward different directions.
As if they’d sensed something.
An instant later, without any hesitation, all of them turned and fled, scattering through the trees with an almost unnatural urgency.
Seeing this, Selena didn’t know what to say. She turned her gaze to her friend beside her, who was looking back at her the same way, both silent, but their eyes said everything.
’What the hell just happened?’
They had no time to come up with an answer, though, because right at that moment, the entire forest shook.
It wasn’t the familiar tremor that had been caused by the earlier battle. This one was different.
Stronger. And far more unsettling.
The tremor was violent, brutal, so much so that the ground, already trembling, began to crack open.
The trees shook along with it, trunks splitting apart with dry, ominous cracks, branches twisting as if something were wrenching them from within.
In a single instant, the entire surrounding territory began collapsing into ruin.