Signals were being sent through the pendants on both sides of the cavern. The plan was to attack at the same time within the next ten seconds. The moment Novius' lightning current was sent out of his hand, all hell would break loose.
Elijah had not a clue as to what spell he could create. His water affinity isn't something that can do much damage except for the soft chests of kappas.
Water would only add to their power, allowing them to create more of the "mud" clagmires were naturally drawn to creating.
Crack!
Sparks of lightning lit up the right side of the cavern, alongside crackling sounds that reverberated off the walls. A thin beam of fire shot through two clagmire's at once during the process of Raylen vaulting the ledge.
With the element of surprise, and chaos echoing through the cavern, Elijah was practically forced into action — thinking of a possible counter with water itself.
Elijah's hands lifted into the air as he pushed a massive amount of water forwards towards the four clagmire's that Raylen had not attacked yet. Elijah acted on instinct and gave the mud beasts too much water to work with, which revealed their peculiar bodies and orange-eyed heads bigger than their torso.
"Nice work! But you could have at least avoided me…" Raylen had his head low as his body erupted into small spurts of steam.
'Heating the body up for the sake of evaporating the water? That is very interesting!' Elijah thought while vaulting the ledge.
A single step was taken by both Elijah and Raylen, causing their feet to become stuck in a deep pool of mud.
"This is the trap!" What Elijah thought was the trap, was just how these monsters lived.
More water was excreted from Elijah's hands as it flew out of the mud with Raylen holding onto his foot. Elijah had masked his flight ability with what looked like water propulsion, which is something Elijah did not even think was possible at his core level. The stronger his core grew, the faster and more powerful he could make the water shoot out of his hands.
The same could be said for Raylen. Condensing fire into beams was a popular method of attack at the red core stage, but was rather slow to build up. Only after advancing would one gain the ability to condense the fire even further.
So he believed.
After landing on the right side of the upper ledge — where the mud was not present but only stone, a knife was slotted into the head of a clagmire while Raylen sliced three within seconds.
"They are helpless! Hahaha!" Laughter was heard coming from Raylen who effortlessly sliced through water with his fire-imbued sword.
"Let's move to the right! I'll send another water wave!"
With a knife in his right hand, Elijah's plan was to catch them by surprise, and kill them one by one as he noticed the cold stone floor.
First, Elijah sent a large ball of water at where he thought the head was, then followed up with a stab to its vital point.
The clagmire's were being absolutely slaughtered by the party of eight. Emelia was watching in the background as she figured out that her magic didn't do much to them in small amounts if you couldn't get up close.
Theon had two blades of ice in his hands that shot icicles and sliced the heads in two, while Harry was acting as support by erecting metal barriers the further they pushed up.
Bam!
Elijah was sent flying forwards as he was shot from behind. His back was dripping in mud that seeped over his shoulders. After face-planting against the cold stone floor, he angrily pushed his chest off the ground with his fists.
There were more clagmire's coming from behind, which no one saw due to their focus being on what's in front of them.
Thankfully, it was a simple ball of mud that struck his back.
One thought came into his head. The shoes of Elijah were thrown to the side, and his body swiftly rode the water being created underneath his feet towards the clagmire standing directly in front of the slim entrance.
With a simple wave of his hand, the viscous outer body of the beast was cut in half along with the small torso of the beast. The knife swiftly pierced through the center of the eyes.
"Woooo! Go Elijah! That was awesome!!"
Behind him, were voices of excitement. They had never seen water magic being used like that before.
No gloves were ever worn in dungeons because the magic coming out of the body would be blocked by the glove. This led Elijah to believe that he could use his water magic to increase his movement abilities.
"We need to make sure to watch our backs. If this had been any other beast, I might have died." Elijah's words received nods of agreement, and the voice that continued the mission.
"Let's go, everyone." Aslan guided the party through the first part of the cleared cave.
After walking around a tall wall standing as a barrier between one part of the cave and the next, they saw a whole lot more clagmire's, which were moving towards the direction of the disturbance.
"Theon! Can you freeze the floor? Everything in front of us is muddy!" Harry asked Theon as he used his metal shield that blocked multiple different brown sludges being thrown at them.
"Wait! First let me and Emelia create a huge water wave. I did it on the left side of the cave and realized too much water will reveal their bodies. Freeze the floor after we have disrupted their magic, forcing them to do nothing but die." Elijah quickly responded.
Everyone was in agreement however, with only three people to peek around the corner to cast spells, they needed to make this quick.
Elijah and Emelia nodded their heads, and walked around the stone wall.
Their hands raised above the metal shield that was now sitting on the floor. A huge wave of water that emptied a large portion of both of their mana pools expanded, and swept across the soon to be battlefield.
Amidst the hideous screams, as the water receded, Theon pressed his hands to the floor, which gradually froze and spread beneath the bodies tumbling clagmire's.
There was not a single speck of water they could use, which caused them to shield themselves in a mix of dirt and rock. The only iteration of earth magic they knew.
Aslan spoke his words. "It's time to go guys! Use everything you can!"
The entire party of eight ran around the stone corner into the massive room with dangling glowing vines. The sound of shoes skating across the icy floor made the beasts start to tremble in the cages they made for themselves.
Lightning bolts, fire beams, water slashes, metal spears, wind blades, and a fanatic man swinging his icy longswords gave waste to the still life of the battlefield. Black blood seeped out of the boulders as many of them were split in two, while others were decimated by explosions.
Elijah had wanted to test out dual casting his water and space slash together. What he found was that he used less mana by combining the two to get the same splitting effect that the space slash gave him — albeit less powerful which in this instance meant nothing. Manipulating space used more mana than manipulating water.
That was the cruel reality of having a special affinity.
"Incredible Elijah!" Harry and Aslan were both astonished at how easily his water slashes were slicing through the beasts. With every earth cage cut in half, someone followed up with a death blow to the small clagmire trembling at either the top or bottom of its cage.
The party of eight stood still and observed the wasteland. Asian's hand was clenched in a fist, and held above his head, which meant no moving and no talking.
"Good work. Let's continue moving."