172 Pick your partner

Part 1

Marceus was a champion blessed by the gods with the ability to turn his whole body into any weapon he wanted, made of the holy metal able to cut anything he wanted.

Ellie was a mage from planet earth, a world whose people seemed to show to have much more power with regards to their affinity, being able to produce even more powerful spells than the people from the magical world itself.

Mia was an immortal child who had both a blessing and a curse. Her blessing allowed her to absorb energy from her palms and convert it into power for herself, while her curse allowed her to heal all her injuries by taking in the negative energy from those around her, making the girl extremely strong, extremely fast, and extremely hard to defeat.

Aside from that, there was still another mage that appeared to have some kind of wind magic at his disposal, and three knights armed with silver metal created by Marceus.

These were the opponents that Detra's group needed to overcome.

On her side, she had pretty much a younger version of Marceus that wasn't nearly as experienced as he was, a little mage that could use a wide range of spells but with very little control over her emotions, resulting in her jumping into things without properly thinking and making many mistakes, and one very skilled swords-woman who just would not stop glaring at Detra for even a second.

These three kept looking at Detra waiting for her to answer whether they actually could pull this off properly.

"Well... There might be a way... But it will not be easy..." she admitted.

"Are you sure about that??" Lilith questioned.

"Hey, you're the one who can see the future... Why don't you tell me?"

"I can't properly see the future when there are so many champions present... The different types of blessed energy keep interfering with one another... I started to get better at it after a while... But trying to see a future with Marcus, Marceus, and Mia is just too much to ask..."

"I see..." Detra sighted, "What about you, young miss? Do you have this problem as well?"

"I don't know... I can't really mirror Lilith's ability unless I'm in some kind of danger... I... I still can't control it that well..." Ellie confessed.

"Wonderfull... No pressure for me..." Detra grumbled sarcastically.

She looked at her group one more time and wondered if they could win this fight if they properly worked together, but they were looking like they would be unable to cooperate right now with how madly angry Lilith and Ellie were looking like while glaring at each other, how irritated Lilith stared at Marcus for not taking her side in the argument, and how the lad looked like he was very uncomfortable right now with all these women around him acting as if they were in a bad mood.

But then an idea came into her. What if she didn't need them to work together?

"Really?" x 3

"Yes!! Trying to face all of them would be suicide... But if we can split them apart and try to take them one by one, we can pull this off!"

"Split them apart?" Ellie repeated.

"Exactly!" Detra grabbed a stick and began to draw on the ground the figures of the seven opponents.

She then drew two lines among them to split them into groups, very similar to how her previous strategy was looking like.

"If we can separate them into groups for each of you to face using the blue diamonds from the young miss to create a wall, they won't be as big of a challenge and you can finish them off without having to worry about any interruption. All we need to do is make sure to separate the three heavy hitters, Marceus, Evlin, and Mia, so that they can't help each other!"

The group stared silently at the drawing while awaiting for Detra to finish her explanation.

"We need to make sure Marceus gets isolated so that he can't make weapons for the rest of the knights, so we will try to separate him with the wind mage. Evlin is good at fighting at long distances but her spells are so big that she can get her allies in a crossfire so we can split her with two of the knights. And that would leave only Mia and another knight remaining."

The three traded glances at each other. They felt like these were still some bad odds to overcome but far more favorable than trying to go all out on all of them at the same time.

"Now... All we need to decide is who will fight who..." Detra finished while staring at her drawing.

"I'll take Mia!!" x 3

The three of them said in unison while raising their hands. Detra was impressed with how Mia managed to get more people to hate her than herself.

"Mia was my old partner! I know how she fights better than anyone!" Marcus stated.

"No, Marcus! You should take on Evlin. You already managed to defeat her before remember? I'll take on Mia!" Lilith stated.

"No way! I wanna face Mia! The whole point of us coming here is for me to do that anyway! This will be great for me to get prepared for my fight!" Ellie also stated.

Detra just kept looking at the three of them trading glares to see who would get to fight against the memory of Mia. They all appeared to have a bone to pick with her.

"Quiet, you all... Give me some time to think!" Detra announced. She felt like she really couldn't leave these people alone to decide anything. She was really starting to miss being a goddess and not having to deal with people so much all the time.

The woman kept considering her options and finally reached her conclusion.

"Marcus, you will face Marceus and the wind mage!" Detra explained.

"What! You want me to face dad??"

"He's not your dad!! He's just a memory of your dad! A memory that has a metal that can cut anything! You are the only one who can face him on equal foot since you two have the same metal!"

"Ugh... Makes sense... I guess..."

Detra continued by looking at Ellie, "Young miss, you will face your aunt!"

"Me!!? But... I don't want to fight my aunt!" Ellie cried.

"Well, you can't fight Mia either... With her blessing, she will just eat any spell you launch at her. You're still not ready to face her at your current level. On top of that... Your aunt has a great variety of spells... You are probably the only one who can deal with all of them since your pool of spells is pretty large as well."

"But... But... Ugh... Fine...." Ellie whispered as she gave up noticing that Detra had no intention of changing her mind.

"So that leaves me to face off with Mia..." Lilith commented.

"Correct... This memory of Mia is not nearly as strong as the current one is, so you should be able to handle her on your own" Detra said.

"Works for me..." Lilith replied.

The three exchanged one final look with each other. Detra could see in their eyes that they were still on bad terms with one another and realized that splitting them right now might be a godsend after all.

"Perfect..." Detra answered back, "Then let's get to work!"

The team started to plan their strategy on how to properly face the memory warriors for the rest of the day, and after a good night of rest, they began their attack.

Part 2

The group of memory warriors continued to patrol inside the blue forest of the memory ring.

Marceus was walking in the middle with one sword user on his left, and another on his right while Evlin and the wind mage were right behind him. Mia was walking on the front with one of the knights by her side.

They all kept walking with complete blank expressions. Their sights were wide open as if they were looking at some kind of invisible eye test chart. They would often make quick stops to analyze the area to see if they would spot or hear something moving.

If this was the current Evlin, she would be able to just use her geo-radar to locate Ellie and her group, but since this memory was from the mage when she was just fifteen, she still didn't have many of her current powers.

As they continued their search around the memory rin they suddenly heard the noise of a small branch cracking as if someone had just stepped on it.

The entire group turned towards the direction of the noise and spotted a shadow moving not too far from them.

Mia and her knight partner who were on the front decided to approach it to confirm what it was. They both began to draw their silver swords to show that they had no intention of letting their prey escape again.

But as soon as they gained a little bit of distance from the rest of the group, a massive blue wall began to erupt from the ground completely splitting them from Marceus and his team.

They turned around in shock but quickly realized they were not going anywhere anytime soon as the walls kept showing up looking like they intended to divide the entire forest.

Mia realized that the walls were made from Ellie's blue diamonds and started to prepare her hand to absorb the mirror magic once again, but the moment she did so, she heard the sound of her partner falling onto the ground after being slashed by a sword while they were distracted.

The culprit was the shadow from before, who now was revealed to be a woman with long black hair wielding a sword with her two hands holding a battle stance by the side of the opponent she just slew.

"Hi!" Lilith said as she locked her gaze on Mia's memory.

The projection slowly tried to raise its hand to dismantle the diamond wall but Lilith responded by thrusting her blade at the girl with unbelievable speed.

Mia noticed her attack coming and raised her own blade to parry her charge. The two swords ended up colliding with one another letting Mia and Lilith stare at each other very closely with their faces inches away from one another.

"I know you're not the real Mia..." Lilith whispered, "But I'm still going to enjoy this a lot..."

The fight inside of the memory ring was about to begin. There were now five days left until the battle with Mia.