Chapter 22: Subdue
All two hundred Summoners and Spiritual Guardians took a deep breath. They were standing in a large open circular area. Trees and dense vegetation surrounded them, making it clear they were in the middle of a massive forest.
When they looked down at the ground, they noticed lots of small circular inscriptions. They looked like the escape runes from the academy's training zones — all you had to do was step inside and use a bit of ring power to go back. Only the ring could activate them, so having those inscriptions there wasn't a problem.
Everyone spent five seconds quietly observing the place.
Darian focused on the people, and that's when he noticed a few Summoners surrounded by a thick red aura. That aura appeared when one used the power of the ring (Chapter 10 for the colors of the auras of each ring level).
These were the elite — people who could fully use that power — and they were clearly activating some kind of blessing.
He thought about what he'd read in the library. Blessings could create random, unique powers, sometimes even capable of distorting reality. But not all were that complicated — some just made the elements work in your favor.
The most popular one among tanks was called the Blessing of the Earth King. For fighters, it was the Blessing of the Sky Shooter.
They were popular because they were simple and easy to use. But the real reason was that they gave the user a way to feel everything around them through the earth or air. It was just a secondary effect and had limited range, but incredibly useful.
Of course, there were more complex blessings that could also scan areas. All those elites were using something like that.
It took less than three seconds before they all started running in one direction. Their groups followed right after. They'd teamed up with that in mind — only one of them needed that kind of sensing ability.
One third of the crowd was gone just like that. Then the rest of the groups began to move, more cautiously, picking paths by instinct.