Chapter 730
Too far away for Ben to read any of their minds, it didn't matter as he looked at his girlfriend, floating above them. Even before they'd started dating he'd been told he was unusually good at understanding the subtleties of her expressions and features despite her golden eyes making it a challenge for even her family at times and seeing her there, it was undeniably the woman he loved. Not a construct or illusion, that was Thera in every way but the look on her face, distinctly out of place compared to everything else he was seeing that told him that even if she was right in front of him in every way that mattered, he wasn't facing her.
Therein lied the problem. If that really was Thera but she wasn't in control, her mind and soul dominated by the same attempt that had been made on himself, then that implied the thing that had her also had access to her insane pool of mana, leaving it ready to be used against them.
That also meant the others around her were no longer in control of themselves either but that was basically ignorable in comparison. As strong as they were, Ben was sure he could have either handled and subdued or at the very least escaped from the rest of them if it came down to it but she was different. If it meant a fight then he’d be putting his life on the line and one of them was going to die, an unacceptable result that led to a different choice.
With time at a standstill, he wove his thoughts deeper into the connection he was already keeping up among the others and giving both an order and a desire to follow it before they even understood what was happening.
Run.
He already had their feet moving for them, not choosing forward or back but off to the left since the path seemed more clear before they could understand they hadn’t moved through their own will, with that changing at the first sign of reaction from Thera and her group.
They could hear the pounding of feet behind them and through the eyes of his swarm of bugs, he could see an arrow fired by Galda aimed for him in particular that left him stuck deciding if he should take the hit.
It was aimed at his legs and he’d designed his pants to be better than any armour, Galda shouldn’t have had the strength or quality of weapon to break through them to bring him to the ground but the fact that something was controlling her created an unknown variable as to how much damage he might actually receive. There had been too many times in the past he’d encountered attacks that had bypassed his designs and he couldn’t judge through what little mana sense the insects he’d bound to him possessed when they were his eyes on the coming blow.
In the end, he tried to split the difference. Dodging faster than an arrow could fly would put undue strain on his body and letting it be a clean hit would have been too much risk to one of the limbs currently carrying him so instead he gently shifted his weight, not wanting the archer to hit her mark and changing it to a glancing blow.