"…How fast can you create barriers around all of them?"
Eleanor asked, prompting Helga to turn toward her with narrowed eyes.
"Barriers? What are you trying to do?"
"A gamble, that's what," Eleanor replied. "The situation's already bad enough…"
Even as she spoke, Eleanor's eyes remained on the pregnant woman trying to pull her children away from the arguing masked men.
"How long would you need to create barriers strong enough to protect them, and still have enough strength left to attack the leader?"
The leader of the masked men sat silently on a chair beside an overturned table, his head bowed low.
Helga glanced at him and asked,
"Didn't you say he might have some sort of special ability?"
"Yes," Eleanor replied. "That's what your attack would try to find out."
Hearing this, Helga frowned, understanding why Eleanor called it a gamble. But one glance at the escalating situation showed her some hostages attempting to plead with the woman, while another masked man moved to restrain the enraged one.
Any hostage moving too far from the group would make creating a barrier around them harder, so Helga silently sliced her wrist with her nails, letting blood drip to the floor as she spoke.
"Two minutes."
Magic flowed into the blood, replicating it and sending it coursing through the gaps in the floor tiles.
"If it comes down to it, I'll buy you time."
After saying that, Eleanor pulled another pair of glasses from her pouch, put them on, and moved to the side.
At that moment, an arm clutched hers, and she turned to see a terrified Marie shaking her head and holding onto Helga, clearly signalling that they should NOT try anything.
"D-don'ttt…"
Marie barely managed to get the word out through her stammer when Eleanor noticed one of the masked men moving forward from behind.
To give context, the circular food court was divided into four equal quarters, numbered 1 through 4 horizontally.
Eleanor and the other humans were in Section 2, the North-East. The anthropomorphic Beastkin occupied Section 4, the South-East. The elves were in the South-West, Section 3, and the few dwarves present were in the North-West, Section 1.
The commotion was happening somewhere between the North-East and North-West sections.
The man Eleanor had spotted was approaching from the South, moving toward the commotion between North-East and North-West.
He was about to pass by the side of the crowd where Eleanor and Helga were positioned. If he turned his head even slightly, he might notice the blood trickling from Helga's hand to the ground.
Even if Helga's mana control was strong enough to conceal what she was doing from his magic perception, the visual evidence could still give them away.
Realising she needed to distract him immediately, Eleanor scanned the area and noticed someone who had just used an inhaler, likely an asthmatic.
She then turned to the frightened Marie and whispered.
"Scream for help when I tell you to."
Marie's eyes went wide, but Eleanor didn't say another word as she snatched the inhaler from the person, mouthed a quick apology, and turned back to Marie.
"Now!"
The situation terrified Marie, but she knew that if she didn't cooperate and Eleanor's plan failed, things would be far worse.
So, despite the fear gripping her, she forced the word out of her mouth.
"h-he-helP!"
Her stammering, high-pitched voice only made it more convincing, and her cry drew attention at the exact moment Eleanor rose to her feet, staggered a few steps to the side, tripped on her own foot, and stumbled several metres away from the group, coughing harshly as she clutched the inhaler, struggling to get words out between fits of coughing.
She staggered forward a bit, then collapsed onto her knees, letting the inhaler fall and scatter into pieces as she coughed and gasped like someone truly having an asthma attack.
Eleanor's act was incredibly convincing, her past experience with genuine attacks allowing her to mimic the symptoms perfectly.
This immediately drew the attention not only of the one who had been heading towards the earlier commotion with the pregnant woman with a frown, but also of those who had been arguing.
The man who had kicked the child turned toward her with an irritated look, while a few of the others sighed.
One of them stepped forward toward Eleanor, muttering under his breath, "It'd be troublesome if any of you died before we got our target."
Then he raised his voice and shouted, "Can anyone here use healing magic, or is there a doctor among you?"
As he walked up to Eleanor, he bent down to pick up the scattered pieces of the inhaler, but he had no idea how to fit them back together, so he looked around again and asked.
"There's no doctor among you? Come on, there's almost a hundred of you here, and not a single doctor or something?"
The man who had been coming from the south approached the one asking for a doctor, holding out his hand.
"Give me that."
He took the inhaler pieces and began fitting them back together. Once assembled, he bent down, ready to place it in Eleanor's mouth, but just as he did, he suddenly sensed a flow of magical power.
"??"
He looked up in time to see a ring of red light appear around all the hostage groups. Translucent walls of magical energy erupted from the rings, forming domes around each group.
At that exact moment, a fist slammed into the side of his face, amplified by magic to double the impact, sending him flying.
The man who had originally picked up the inhaler froze in shock at the sudden occurrence. As he tried to recover and draw his sword, Eleanor sprang to her feet and delivered a punch to his face with her Impact Compression skill, sending him hurtling backward.
Simultaneously, Helga condensed her blood into a javelin and launched it at sonic speed toward the leader of the assailants, seated in a chair near the exit with his head bowed low.
Some of the other assailants attempted to strike at her magic barriers, which she had formed using neutral magic so she could reserve her blood for offence.
Meanwhile, two of the masked men, including the hot-tempered one, opened fire on her and Eleanor with their magical guns.
[Hmm??]
In that moment when Eleanor used her Mach Step skill to evade the bullets, Helga's blood spear reached the immobile enemy leader, who instantly looked up, his dazed eyes snapping into focus as his left hand shot up and caught the spear barehanded.
"Wha—?!"
"!"
Both Eleanor and Helga were stunned at the sight, but that didn't stop Eleanor from driving a punch into the side of the hot-tempered masked man's face, wrenching his gun free, and immediately firing at his ally.
She then tried to fire at the leader next, but just as she pointed the gun toward him, Amith's voice suddenly echoed in her head.
[Don't do that. Tell the vampire to dodge, now!]
"!!"
Amith's sudden awakening and interruption left Eleanor confused for an instant, but she knew there was no way Amith would step in at a moment like this just to mess with her.
She had known Amith long enough to know such a thing was beneath her, so she immediately shouted, "HELGA, DODGE!!!"
Helga, trusting the urgency in Eleanor's voice, immediately leapt aside just as her blood spear was absorbed into the left hand of the leader, who then extended his right hand and launched the spear back at her with even greater force and magic power than before.
The spear definitely tore through the air at supersonic speed, as one moment his hand was outstretched, and the next, an entire section of the mall erupted in a violent explosion of blood-infused magic.
The blood spear drilled straight through the mall, blasting through shops and hallways and carving a hole clean through the building all the way to the outside.
The balcony above gave way and collapsed while civilians screamed in terror, some trying to run, but Helga's barrier kept them contained and shielded them from the falling debris.
At the same time, both Eleanor and Helga stared in wide-eyed shock, for if their eyes had not deceived them, the masked men's leader had not only absorbed Helga's attack but had also fired it back at her.
'Come on, I figured he might have some kind of special ability, but this is a bit too much, no?'
Such a thought ran through Eleanor's mind in that moment, and Amith then responded.
[That's no 'special ability'. That's a bestowed Pseudo-Authority. Inversion and Counter. It's the Combined Authority of those 'Blue brats'.]
'Blue brats?'
Eleanor questioned Amith's words, and Amith immediately explained,
[You should know them as the 'Blue Devil'. Inversion and Counter are their Authorities. That clone over there possesses a fragment of the Pseudo-Authority bestowed by them.]