An Owl's Rise

When the two met, the gas ignited and caused a massive explosion that sent shockwaves through the air.

Evelyn was shaken by the turbulence in the air and had to take a moment to stabilize herself with her wind and gravity magic.

However, as she did, the giant six-armed scarlet mantis she had just escaped from charged her from behind while the pitch-black shoebill positioned itself in front of her.

'Their teamwork really is something. I guess that being controlled under the same hivemind helps quite a bit with coordination.' Evelyn thought as she planned her next move. She was already preparing a finisher to end this battle, but needed to hold out a bit longer before she was ready.

Knowing that a clash would not be in her favor right now, Evelyn closed her wings and pointed her head straight down and went into a dive towards the ground.

With the power of her wind magic, fire magic, and gravity magic, she shot towards the surface like a meteor and easily escaped from the pincer attack coming her way.

Luckily the cloud of darkness the pitch-black shoebill had conjured earlier was already mostly dispersed and Evelyn was able to see how Krunnen was fairing.

'Well, I suppose that is what I should have expected.' Evelyn thought as she opened her wings back up and came out of her dive.

Instead of worrying about fighting back in any sort of fashion, Krunnen had simply covered himself in a dome of water and earth. While he may have been a tortoise, he was perfectly embodying the strategy of turtling.

Now that she knew she did not need to worry about her temporary compassion, Evelyn turned her full attention back towards the three peak awakened rank beasts pursuing her.

They were still fairly high in the sky above Evelyn and would need a dozen or more seconds to catch up to her. Even pushing themselves, none of them could hope to match the speed of Evelyn's descent.

More beasts fired attacks at Evelyn from the ground, but she simply put up a magical energy shield below her and ignored them. They were all at the fiend beast rank and not worth worrying about.

'I just need another twenty seconds. I should be able to hold them off for that long.'

Swiftly Evelyn developed a devious strategy to stall her attackers.

With her gravity magic, Evelyn focused the field of control around her body upwards and drastically lowered gravity around pitch-black shoebill, the scarlet mantis, and the pink tapir.

Naturally this caused the three beasts to become disoriented for a few seconds as one of the fundamental forces of the world that should never have changed suddenly became vastly different.

Evelyn used these few precious moments to whip up a giant whirlwind around her launch it upwards.

Her three opponents that were under the effects of a far weaker gravity than normal found themselves beings easily blown upwards as if they were balloons.

It took them far more energy than it should have to force themselves to descend where Evelyn was.

Sadly for them, by the time they got close enough for their attacks to reach Evelyn, she had finished preparing the attack she had begun conjuring since the sound magic wielding elephant had attacked her.

'Heavenly Laser.'

Opening her beak, Evelyn revealed a small, compressed crimson ball that looked like a miniature sun.

No longer being held back, the ball of crimson fire released a thin beam of concentrated energy.

Within less than a second, the scarlet mantis that was closest to Evelyn had its chest pierced by the beam. The powerful and sturdy beast that possessed an immensely tough shell and a high resistance to fire, found itself unable to even slow Evelyn's attack down.

Once she had pierced the scarlet mantis with her magic, Evelyn swiftly turned her head and dragged the searing beam through its body.

Now cut cleanly in two, the once threatening peak awakened beast fell to the ground without a shred of life left in it.

Of course, Evelyn was far from finished yet.

Sweeping her head upwards and into the sky, she directed the power of one of her strongest attacks towards her two remaining enemies.

Both the pink tapir and the pitch-black shoebill used their strongest defensive magics to try and block Evelyn's Heavenly Laser, but their resistance was in vain.

While this attack took Evelyn a great deal of time and magical energy to conjure, it packed enough power behind it to heavily damage or even outright kill individuals an entire rank above her. The two peak awakened rank beasts that stood at the same level as her never stood a chance.

Evelyn's attack sliced through the pink tapir and pitch-black shoebill like a hot knife through butter. Before the two beasts could even feel pain, their lives were ended.

In one fell swoop Evelyn had eliminated three of the strongest beasts under the Mind Manipulating Mushroom's control. Its forces were now only at around a fourth of its former strength after the carnage Evelyn had inflicted.

'The casting time is still a bit of an issue. Even in my current state of heightened focus and using my beast core solely to power it, the Heavenly Laser takes several minutes before it is ready. Plus, it consumes far too much of my magical energy. I've only got around twenty percent left.' Evelyn thought, analyzing her performance.

This was truthfully the first time she was using the technique that let her focus her two magical centers on different tasks during a large-scale battle. She had certainly practiced with it several times, but only alone or on single targets that she was able to wipe out almost instantly.

Against so many opponents that had her casting spells at a rapid pace, she was finding the strain to be greater than expected.

'I'd normally be able to keep it up for another few minutes, but it looks like in actual combat it drains me faster than anticipated. I'll need to keep this in mind.'

Feeling that she was nearing the limit of what her mind and body could take, Evelyn ended her state of extreme focus and allowed her beast core and magic core to sync back up with each other.

Nevertheless, while she would not be able to replicate her explosive performance until she got some rest, there was really no need to.

Evelyn had already decimated the enemy forces and the rest had ceased attacking and were instead rallying around the Mind Manipulating Mushroom's main body. The aberrant fungus has decided that continuing to attack Evelyn and Krunnen was no longer worth it and that it should just let them leave like they had wanted before it attacked them.

However, things had changed, and Evelyn felt that her efforts would be wasted if she were to retreat now. Truthfully, she had been interested in the Mind Manipulating Mushroom since Krunnen explained what sort of entity it was. She figured that it could serve as a powerful ingredient for alchemy.

With its forces already cut down, she figured that she might as well finish it off and reap the rewards of her labor.