The defenders had one Pseudo Adept and five Advanced Apprentices, something Black-hand found puzzling but welcoming. Greem knew where the other Pseudo Adept had run off to. He only hoped the cores he gave to Sabrina would suffice.
That aside, the mercenary force serving as disposable meat shields were composed of three Gnoll Assassins, two Lizardman Beastmasters, a Soul Hunter, and eleven werewolves.
The group had to get through this force before they could reach the apprentices gathered in a formation at the back.
They had to deal with the Gnolls who disappeared at the start of the fight, the Lizardmen summoning creatures to bolster their forces, and the charging and howling werewolves.
Standing on the Giant Alligator golem to get an elevated view of the battlefield, Greem fired arrow after arrow towards the fallen apprentices, most of the explosive projectiles not even reaching them due to their spells catching and destroying them midair.
The few that slipped through exploded harmlessly against their various personal shields.
Quickly discovering the futility of his actions, Greem shifted his focus to the underground creature mercenaries like Black-hand and the others were doing. If their numbers were culled, his team would be free to focus on the defending apprentices and bombard them to hell.
He first dealt with the Petrified Lizards summoned by the Lizardmen Beastmasters, commanding the Hunter golem merged with and sticking out of the Giant Alligator's back to shower the approaching creatures with Dirt Spears.
The muscular, crocodile-sized lizards gliding across the ground were slowed in their advance by the lethal and sharply thrown earth projectiles, their tough hides unable to withstand such precise, repeated strikes.
Unable to refute the commands of their masters though, they weathered the storm and crawled forward, leaving trails of blood in their wake.
These trails morphed into a full-blown pool as numerous earth spikes jutted from the ground and skewered all three of them—now that they had entered Giant Alligator's attack range.
Nodding at the sight and shifting it out of his mind, Greem focused on their summoners, the other mercenaries, and particularly, the missing Gnoll assassins. One of them had reappeared, falling from the dark ceiling with a slit, bleeding throat.
Mary had vanished from his side at that start of the fight, presumably to hunt down the underground assassins. It seemed things were going smoothly for her as she finished off a second one less than a minute after she dropped the first one.
Unlike its first unfortunate brother, this Gnoll—its eye sockets now a pair of bloody holes—dropped listlessly in the center of the battlefield, joining the rapidly growing pile of werewolf corpses.
The bulk of exchanged spells from both sides frequently met in the vicinity of the wolves, clashing together to produce explosions of pure force and wild, unregulated elementium, an effect that was devastating to them.
They'd been struck left and right by the inhospitable and downright lethal effects, reducing them to less than half of their original number. Even then, the surviving ones were covered head-to-toe in grievous injuries.
Sensing an opportunity to reduce these meat shields to absolute dust, Greem and his companions didn't even have to prompt one another.
They acted in unison and shifted their spells and arrows to the unlucky werecreatures, swiftly cutting their numbers down to zero.
Things were looking bad for the defenders, but it was about to get even worse.
Right as the last of the werewolves were dealt with, the last remaining Gnoll jumped out of a random dark corner and broke into a fleeing sprint.
It only managed to take three steps until a barely visible blur flashed past it and sent its head airborne. Its headless body staggered forward a few more steps and then fell down.
What followed next was the swift annihilation of the exposed Lizardmen Beastmasters and the Soul Hunter, the former falling to the Hunter golem's Dirt Spears and concentrated spell fire, and the latter to Mary's dagger.
All that remained now was the "naked" fallen apprentices, their various, colorful and diverse elementium shields the next targets of the spell bombardments.
Lowering his bow and storing it, Greem checked his quiver and found three explosive arrows left. He stored them too and jumped off the Giant Alligator as it sank into the ground, his attention focused on the minute movements of the defending apprentices.
Now that their meat shields and cannon fodder had been removed from the equation, it wouldn't take long before their elementium shields crumbled before the assault of the two Pseudo Adepts and single Advanced Apprentice spellcasters on Greem's team.
When that happened, the group would abandon all thoughts of resistance and flee, most likely in different directions, leading to multiple chases that were not likely to yield any results.
Hence, Greem decided to take matters into his own hands.
He needed lots of merits points and magic crystals to get the materials necessary for his advancement. And he would be damned if he didn't do his utmost best to stop these walking resource nuggets from escaping.
Pulling out all the stops, he engaged and overclocked his body and shot from his position, leaving a dusty trail and small craters with each step as he weaved through the hail of spells crossing and intercepting each other over the battlefield.
What the werewolves experienced as life-threatening danger, he processed as love taps, his defensive force field weathering the unstable atmosphere of wild elementium and unregulated force with ease.
"Damn it! Move! Move! Move!"
As a Pseudo Adept with a Spirit of 20, the leader of the fallen apprentices could perceive Greem's super fast movements perfectly, unlike the Advanced Apprentices under his charge. They could, at most, make out a barely visible blur.
And that would even be for a brief second before they all died. Because the enemy apprentice had crossed one third of the 120 meter battlefield in a second, displaying Pseudo Adept level Agility whilst emitting the aura of Advanced Apprentice.
If things continued like this, he would reach their position in less than two seconds. And when that happened, he'd go straight for the helpless apprentices and finish them off.
That's why the fallen apprentice yelled at his charges to move whilst preparing a spell to attack the bold and foolish attacker the moment he arrived close enough.
True to his deductions, Greem struck at the fallen Advanced Apprentices the moment he arrived, their weakened elementium shields falling apart like wet paper before his gauntleted fists.
Blood burst from the eyes and nostrils of the first unfortunate target, two of Greem's punches shattering the remnants of his Ice Crystal Armor and his heart, the concentrated lifeforce ripping the organ to shreds.
Right as Greem shifted his focus to the next frozen target, the Pseudo Adept's spell hit him square in the back, something he barely felt.
With his Spirit fully extended, he had of course noticed the attacking apprentice's actions but ignored him anyway. The latter was only 3 meters away. This made dodging the spell a—not impossible—but extremely difficult task. If he had indeed tried, he would not have escaped it fully.
On the other hand, he had finally upgraded his defense and wanted to test it out. What better way to do that than tanking a full powered attack from someone on his actual level?
Ignoring the attacking Pseudo Adept but observing his spell's effects, Greem struck at the other alerted apprentices in quick succession, their shifted attention to his blurry presence and movements unable to help them in any meaningful way.
A dirt yellow aura surrounded him as he took them down one after the other, his movements not slowed in the slightest. Before the last corpse even reached the ground, he turned to face his attacker and found the latter running.
Breaking into a sprint, he ignored his petrified jacket and pants as they cracked and peeled away, revealing his pitch black, heavily tattooed skin.
The earth Pseudo Adept had adopted his strategy of earth swimming and sunk into the ground, restraining his aura as he moved through the earth like a fish did through water.
His movement speed was drastically faster underground, nearly matching Greem's full and unrestrained Agility. This led to a scene where the latter seemingly dashed after empty air through one of the tunnels, slipping on a necklace with a single yellow bead.
Upon exiting the tunnel, he vaulted towards a random spot on the cave's floor and stomped his foot, channeling the Strength of his whole body and life force as well, the latter ignoring the rock and travelling deep into the ground.
A huge boom bounced off the walls of the small cave, a small cloud dust rising up to accompany it.
Like a television signal regaining strength after bad weather had passed, the thin spiritual presence and fading life signs of the earth Pseudo Adept popped on Greem's radar again, this time unmoving.
Quickly sending out a command, the trailing Hunter Alligator golem rose up from the soil beside him and went to work unearthing his prize.
Out of the parted ground rose a thin, middle-aged man covered in blood, dirt, and detritus. He was deader than a doornail, a fact his killer confirmed with Meat Vision and his Spirit.
Greem strode forward towards the body and controlled the golem to elevate a platform beneath it, raising it to match his height and removing the need for him to bend down.
It was time to loot.
☀☀☀
Back on the battlefield, Greem's stunning but reckless actions had left everyone speechless… Mary included.
When she watched his performance unfold, their earlier conversation came to mind.
Greem always seemed to be ten steps ahead, calculating and planning all the time to see how best he could milk the profits from any situation. To her surprise, she found her attraction to him growing because of this.
Unlike before when she'd have deigned it a weakness to be so enamored with someone other than herself, Mary embraced the increased affection and butterflies in her stomach with a smile and strode towards the bodies.
She would squeeze the blood from them like she knew Greem would want her to and loot the bodies for him. When he returned with the Pseudo Adept's head or body—whichever he preferred—he wouldn't have to do anything else.
Watching the smiling vampire zip across the football field-sized battlefield to where the corpses lay, Black-hand pushed down the awkward feeling in his chest and signalled one of his team members to fetch the queen of the Ratmen.
In the short moment it took for the underground creature to arrive, Greem returned, stepping out of the dark tunnel he dived in with firm and bold steps. He had a fresh pair of clothes on, a bloody sack in his hand and his skin showing no sign of the Petrifying Ray he was struck with.
Hugging and sharing a kiss with Mary, both of them made their way to the rest of the team as Black-hand hastened negotiations with the ratwoman, letting his disgust at her attempts to flirt with him show.
The naked, plump, humanoid rat had offered to waive the mining fees for a single night with any of the male apprentices present, her bean-sized eyes shifting from one to the other with unrestrained lust.
Uneager to subject himself or any of his male colleagues to that horror of an experience, Black-hand gave the horny rat a double payment of 500 magic crystals.
This earned them 26 Blood Garnets, each the size of a chicken egg and weighing a kilo. He then had a quick talk with the Pseudo Adepts and decided on how to distribute the gems.
Greem and the two Pseudo Adepts received three each.
He himself got two, and Mary and the last Advance Apprentice one each. All of them were free to do what they wished with these.
For the remaining thirteen, they would be handed over to Hulk and he would sell them to the Turlock merchant catering to the camp's resource needs, giving them their share of the profits afterward.
With this, the main mission was over.
The secondary part was now getting back to the surface in one piece. Most of the casualties sustained in resource site raids were not only by the losing team.
The winners also lost a few members on their return trips. The enemy would not let them leave with their fattened pockets so easily.
So with the go ahead from Black-hand, the team members bid each other farewell and split-up, everyone going their own secret way with their own secret methods.
Greem's method lumbered towards him and opened up its body, swallowing him and the girl he was hugging before diving into the ground.