Rebirth of the Phoenix God

"Everyone, close up the formation!"

As soon as the caravan owner was done with reprimanding me, he instantly moved to his other tasks. Previously, all the forces that this caravan could use were dispersed over the entire area of the camp, as to given all those seasoned warriors a room to fight. But in the face of the incoming boss wave or something, it was clear that using this kind of tactic would only prove to be futile.

"Are we going to give up the carriages?"

Seeing how the duets and triplets of warriors that previously guarded each corner of the camp were completely ignoring the carriages and gathering around Fen's carriage, even without any real world-experience the young man could tell that something was definitely wrong.

"They are just decoys. All the important stuff that can allow me to reimburse all the costs of organising this caravan are right below your love-nest."

Shaking his head with a hint of pride visible in his eyes despite barely any illumination in the area, the caravan owner directed his attention back to the possible directions of the attack.

"Mind telling me a bit more about this… boss wave? You should know that this is my first time taking this route."

After all the times of being completely oblivious about the details of everything that was happening around him, Fen could no longer accept this kind of situation. Right now, he wasn't a fugitive, but a proper, damned mercenary! And how he was supposed to help in fighting if he didn't know what he was up to against?

"Eh… So far, we were only attacked by the trained monsters. The people that guard this passage are masters at brewing and forcing them into obedience. But now… Now we are in for some human enemies."

Given how everyone was clearly more cautious about those humans that were about to attack them than the hideous beasts that did so before, Fen couldn't really know what kind of extreme power he should expect from the next round of assailants.

"Here they come!"

Suddenly noticing something that escaped Fen's attention, one of the other mercenaries pointed his hand towards the forest.

"Too bad."

A glint of moonlight reflecting off the blade of a sword was the only giveaway of the attacker's position. Sadly, the swing that allowed for the moonlight to appear on it, was also the movement that decided whether the whistleblower mercenary's head should remain attached to his neck!

"We are already here."

Thump.

The sound of a body falling to the ground was what finally shook the rest of the camp awake from their daze.

"KILL!"

Leading by an example, the caravan owner unsheathed his sword and jumped at the position where the last attack occurred, only to find that the place was already empty!

"FEN! LIGHT UP THE AREA!"

Shouting a desperate order to the young man, the caravan clearly hoped to shake the daze off Fen's mind, only to find out that he was actually nowhere to be seen!

Shaking his head with pity when seeing the man's reaction, Fen continued to crawl on the floor towards the true source of the attack.

'To think that they would be able to do something like that…'

It was the glint of the sword that was the giveaway for how the attackers managed to penetrate their formation and throw it into disarray. In fact, the true question was not how they got inside, but how the heck did they manage to transmit the voice of one of their men to make it appear as if it was actually here!

"Fen, god damn it! What the fuck are you doing?!"

Quickly losing his sense of reason when noticing how the man that he employed was nowhere to be seen, Fen realised that he wouldn't get the chance to do what he planned. Unless he would start doing what the caravan master expected him to do right now, it would be only a matter of second before the entire group would dissolve into a series of lone warriors!

And given how the enemy was currently waiting for it to happen so that he or she could pick them up one after the other, Fen couldn't allow for it to happen! Even if that didn't mean they would end up ultimately losing, given how he promised to protect Arla from any harm, if their formation were to completely dissolve, Fen would have no way to protect his fragile girl!

'Just a little bit more!'

Screaming desperately in his mind while seeing with the corner of his eyes how glints of reflected moonlight ended up claiming two more lives. Sadly, unless the young man was willing to unravel his entire power and potentially put himself in lethal danger, he could only use some basic fires or his newly acquired fire-whip!

And as pitiful as it was, the enemy location that Fen managed to track, was just outside of the range of his longest reaching weapon!

"KILL!"

Seeing that the situation was deteriorating too fast for his crawl to bring him close to the enemy enough to execute his attack before everything would break down, Fen had no other choice but to act stupidly. Following the maxim of his master, that a bad action was always better than no actions at all, Fen used a tiny bit of his power to cover himself fully in flames while a long threat of fire exploded outwards from his feet, crawling at a breakneck speed towards the location of the enemy!

"THEY ARE THERE!"

Pointing his hand towards a totally random direction, Fen leaned towards it, only to suddenly jump towards the real direction where the enemy is! Grabbing a sword that fell out from the now relaxed fingers of another corpse, the young man didn't even bother with taking aim before he threw it right in the direction of the enemy!

"What the fuck…"

Watching Fen's actions with the corner of his eyes, the caravan master was so stunned by how ridiculous they were that he even forgot to guard himself for a moment. Surprisingly, this lapse of concentration didn't result in his death, as the attacks of the enemy suddenly ceased!

'Faster…'

Forcing himself to give up on any distractions, Fen rushed ahead, wildly smashing the tip of his fire-whip around in hopes of hindering the enemy during his approach.

'Faster…'

Step by step, the reality of the situation was revealing itself in more details to the young man, as the darkness of the night could no longer fight against the light produced by the fires that Fen's whip started.

"Here you are…"

Muttering to himself as he fell down to the ground, Fen suddenly retracted his fires, allowing the darkness to cover his own whereabouts. With the silhouette of the enemy clearly visible against the fires all around the two of them, there wasn't any point in hindering the opponent. Given his or her frantic reactions against an attack that was directed at them, the close-quarters combat was clearly not the strong side of the leader of this so-called boss wave!

Jump!

Once the silhouette of the enemy got close enough, Fen didn't hesitate even for a second. Using his own firest to create small-scale explosions below the soles of his feet, the young man jumped forward, outstretching his now burning hands towards the enemy.

"Got you!"

Ignoring the events back at the caravan's formation, Fen could feel his burning fingers digging against the soft flesh of the enemy's neck. Not hesitating for even a second, the young man closed his grasp on the enemy's throat before using his momentum and the weight of his body to pin him or her down against the burning ground!

"Die…"

Despite how in this slight moment when the fires raging in the surroundings illuminated a relatively cute face of a young girl quickly turning pale as no more air could supply her lungs, Fen didn't dare to hold himself back. Adding a bit more force to his fingers, he was about to snap the girl's neck and end the madness of this fight, when a powerful force suddenly crashed right into him!

'What?'

Some kind of liquid instantly gathered in Fen's lungs. Still flying through the air from the hit he received a moment ago, Fen could feel a sharp pain in his chest, indicating that at least one of his ribs gave up when he was attacked squarely in his solar plexus. 

Cough.

At first, coughing up the liquid from his lungs seemed to alleviate the pressure on his chest. Sadly, when Fen attempted to repeat this treatment, the ground finally reached for his back!

Crash!

Slamming full force against the hard soil of the ground, Fen felt as if the sudden pressure somehow managed to push all the liquid out of his lungs, instantly filling up his throat and nearly choking him out!

But what was even worse, was the fact that no matter how much the young man coughed, he was unable to clear his throat and take a proper breath!

"Grhgrgl"

Gargling on the liquid that persistently refused to buckle an inch from his airways, Fen was quickly approaching the limit of his endurance. With the ideas of ripping his throat open just to take a single more breath appearing in his head, the young man realised that his body was also nearing its limit, providing him with more and more desperate ideas for saving himself!

'FUCK!'

Unable to even scream with the liquid in his throat, Fen's rage that continued to burst through his veins could only be expressed internally. Yet, it didn't affect the manifestation of the young man's full power in the slightest!

"BURN!"