Weak

____ Forest of pain, 3:00 AM. ____

The forest of pain was a sector of the outerlands that was well known for adventurers entering and never returning.

As the name suggested, the forest was a vile and horrible sector.

From the outside it looked normal, but once one set foot in the forest of pain would their troubles begin.

People would take one wrong step and get bit by a clotsnake, resulting in tumors growing all around their body leading to a painful and rapid death.

Almost nothing was edible in the forest and almost everything was poisonous.

Then there were the threats of predators.

Lucid jaguars, creatures that would flicker between existing and disappearing, making them incredibly hard to kill, Seronic eagles, creatures that would be able to dive down from the sky with immense speed, instantly creating a hole in your skull if they dived on you, and so on.

There was a reason that it was called the forest of pain, after all.

Yet, outside of the forest stood numerous tents, torches could be seen set up outside and people were patrolling.

Numerous banners and flags with a green background and a white growing tree.

If you observed the people patrolling the tents you could see that they had long pointy ears and were all appropriately armed.

They made sure no threats from the forest of pain approached the tent.

The soldiers guarding the tents all looked drained, like they had a tough experience right before arriving at their stop.

They were all deprived of sleep and didn't want anything else except to sleep.

However, soon there would be someone to help them sleep.

Although it would be for good.

What none of the guards noticed was a creature sitting in a tree in the forest of pain, looking down on them.

It was an oddly shaped humanoid creature that held an old wooden staff.

"I will make this quick." said the creature as he started levitating.

The creature flew above the encampment before starting to conjure a spell.

"Hey Ezil, what is that up in the air?" said one of the elves to one of his friends.

In the air, an ominous purple orb could be seen growing.

The elf squinted his eyes as he looked toward the orb.

"No idea, probably nothing though. If we would be alert for every single little anomaly we would see we wouldn't have even left the outskirts yet."

The elf shrugged and continued on guarding the encampment, not noticing that the ominous purple orb slowly but surely had started descending.

The orb surely wasn't big, it was a meter at most.

It slowly but surely descended, and more elves noticed it.

They also started noticing the figure clad in old rags floating above the orb.

A feeling of dread welled up in most of the guards as they realised something wasn't right.

"Report this in to chief Ithil!" said one of the guards.

A guard dashed off to a separate more luxurious tent as the descent of the orb continued.

At this point, some of the mages who had guard duty were getting worried.

"Fuck this I can't wait around anymore!" said one of the mages as he started conjuring a fireball.

The fireball was quickly shot off to the creature in the air and quickly after the fireball was shot a massive inferno erupted in the air, followed by a massive explosion.

The orb stopped lowering and most of the guards sighed in relief.

"Holy shit well done Folas! You might've single-handedly stopped another catastrophe!" said one of the guards as he put his hand on the shoulder of the mage who shot the fireball.

The mage laughed awkwardly until a calm yet stern voice could be heard.

"What a rude welcoming, if that is how we are going to greet each other then allow me to act in such a way aswell."

The voice was heard by everyone as most people had woken up by the loud explosion of the fireball.

It felt like the voice spoke directly into the minds of everyone, but only the chief of the operations truly knew how it was done.

"Such an excellent control at wind magic..."

Outside, the chaos only grew once the smoke cleared up.

The figure was still in the air, but this time the rags had burned off, revealing an oddly shaped skeleton.

The skeleton had an elongated spine, clocking his total length out at around 2.3 meters.

The moment the smoke cleared panic could be heard as everyone was woken up to get in a battle position.

"If you are willing to greet me with a fireball to the face, then allow me to greet you in the same way."

The purple orbs color slowly started changing into a sickening dark red.

The orb twisted and contorted like it was alive.

However, this time the orb didn't descend slowly, instead, the skeleton slammed it into the ground.

For a second, nothing happened.

Some people started letting down their guard, but the worst was yet to come.

A blinding white flash could be seen, and shortly after that, a massive explosion was seen.

People who weren't directly affected by the explosion could be seen clutching their ears in pain.

The ground shook heavily as people waited for the flash to clear.

Once the flash was gone, the true damage could finally be seen.

A massive crater was left behind, a crater that would be ten times larger than the fireball shot at the skeleton would've left.

Around forty of the 250 people that were still left of the army were instantly killed.

Another thirty were heavily injured from debris.

The chief looked at her troops as her heart started beating harder and quicker.

Her hands trembled as she wanted to run away from the situation, this threat was on a whole other level.

However, she steeled her resolve, if she was seen breaking under pressure her troops would quickly follow.

It was do or die.

"Everyone group up! I want group 4,5 and 6 of the mages to group up and cast a shield spell together! Mage groups 1, 2 and 3 I want you to focus on a massive all-out attack! Use half your mana! All mages and other troops get to the center of the group! All tanks hold your shields up high in case the mana shield breaks!"

Everyone followed their orders and weirdly enough the skeleton that was levitating didn't do anything, it simply waited.

The chief hoped that the skeleton was considering retreating, but she soon heard why.

"Hit me with everything you got. After you attack it will be my turn."

The chief's heart skipped a beat.

If their foe was so confident, did they even stand a chance?

It didn't take long for the first three groups of mages to conjure their attack before casting it.

After the attack was cast, most mages dropped to the ground.

The chief already knew that the mages didn't listen to her orders and instead used almost all of their mana.

She was mad at them for not following orders, but also slightly happy.

A black bolt of thunder, darker than the night sky could be seen flying toward the skeleton.

The mages hoped to evaporate the skeleton with the lightning, returning him to ashes.

Loud rumbling could be heard as the thunderbolt made its way to the skeleton.

The thunderbolt contained the mana of almost thirty top tier mages, its destructive power was unimaginable.

Right when the thunderbolt was about to hit, the skeleton extended his hand.

There was no impact whatsoever as the thunderbolt made contact with the skeleton's hand, it simply vanished.

The group of soldiers looked confused.

"What happened? Did the attack miss?"

However, the mages knew what truly happened, or so they thought.

"I-it... it nullified it!"

The mages started dropping to their knees in despair, not knowing the worst was yet to come.

Once again the calm but yet stern voice of the skeleton could be heard.

"Nullify it? Of course I didn't. Such a weak attack isn't worthy of being nullified by me. What you just witnessed was dimensional magic. If that truly was all that you could do then you are weak, I wonder, can you even hold off against the attack you just sent toward me?"

The skeleton raised his other hand and aimed it toward the group.

The chief quickly realised what was about to happen and called out to her men.

"Brace for impact!"

The same black lightning that was shot toward the skeleton could be seen being released by his other hand, heading toward the army quickly.

A loud impact could be heard as electric sparks could be seen shooting around the air.

The lightning quickly penetrated the mana shield and made contact with the tanks of the army.

The tanks of the army were electrocuted on the spot, with only a handful of them surviving.

The fact that the group of soldiers stuck together only made it more dangerous as the voltage of that attack was so high that multiple other people got electrocuted, up to the point where only around 75 of the soldiers and mages were left standing.

Somehow the chief was also alive as she gave her final order.

"Everyone scatter!"