Damian felt a sharp pain in his left shoulder as dirt and wood rained down on him. His head throbbed, along with many other parts of his body specially his stomach. He had just broken through three floors, so the pain was the least he could expect. The biggest problem, however, was the fire raging all around him.

He also heard a faint hissing sound, as if someone was dousing the flames with water somewhere in the burning building.

'Sena...? Paul...? Kyle...? Where are they...? Are they even alive...?'

Damian could barely open his eyes to look around. All he could see was fire and broken wood. Fortunately, two of his mana strings were still attached to the iron golem, which he guessed was nearby. He immediately ordered it to stand up. The hulking iron figure took its time pushing through the rubble, but at last, Damian saw a large shape in the distance, standing up with the fire in the background.

Damian tried to sense the mana of the people around him, but the three sharp, oppressive mana signatures above him overwhelmed his senses. He couldn't detect anything else aside from the pain where a piece of wood had stabbed his shoulder and the bruises scattered across his body. The suffocating mana signatures belonged to Vidalia, Moondancer, and an unknown figure—most likely Threadripper, the one responsible for cutting the building in half and setting it on fire.

There was no sound except for the crackling of the burning building. They were fighting, he realized. The link... Oh, the sharp pain—it was from the link. Vidalia was fighting against two third-rankers, even while pained by the link. She wouldn't last long. She couldn't come to him; he had to go to her, but first...

'Can you spare some mana...? I need to douse this building,' Damian sent through the link, the link blocking spell had broken during his fall.

'Yes... Hurry up...' Her strained voice came back. As he had guessed, she wouldn't be able to hold out for much longer.

Wasting no time, Damian pulled the piece of wood piercing his shoulder out with a scream. He hastily crafted a water rune, sending it up with a mana thread. Then, retrieving an advanced healing spell scroll from his storage, he activated it, guiding the spell with his mana thread to the areas where he was bleeding. The spell took effect immediately, and he felt a bit better—the bleeding had stopped at least.

Turning his attention back to the water rune above him, Damian expanded it to cover the entire burning building. He reduced the intensity to avoid flooding the area and activated it while requesting more mana from the commander, who provided it continuously.

The slow, controlled fall of water, with deliberate pauses between drops, gradually extinguished the fire after several minutes. By the time the flames were out, soldiers and knights had arrived to help remove rubble and rescue anyone trapped inside.

With the fire doused, Damian immediately ran out of the charred building, leaving the rescue efforts to the others. He sprinted toward the nearest structure, where the three third-rankers were fighting in the air. As he closed the distance, the pain in his body subsided slightly, though it still lingered. He stored his golem and climbed a nearby building, which belonged to one of the noble families, identifiable by the wood-style mage's emblem on the wall.

From his vantage point, Damian tried to understand what was happening. All around him, dark spikes, massive air blades, and aura slashes rained down on the camp, turning it into a chaotic mess. Explosions went off every few seconds, and screams filled the air as fires broke out in multiple places.

The attacker was indeed Threadripper, and Moondancer was with him. The anomaly, however, was the waygate—a shimmering portal hovering right above the charred building where Vidalia had fought. Both third-rankers rode dark-winged wyverns, launching attacks at Vidalia, who was flying through her own magic, dodging and blocking what she could. She was in her noble attire, not even her armor, and she was barely managing to avoid the deadly attacks by inches every time.

Vidalia wanted to come down, but Threadripper and Moondancer didn't give her the chance. If she did, the rest of the camp could join the fight.

There were a few aerial units in the camp, but they were mostly on lookout, scattered across the large encampment. It was hard to spot them amidst the chaos. The question nagging Damian was: how had they managed to breach the barrier? He glanced up and saw it still humming with golden energy, intact. The waygate must operate on entirely different principles from a regular wormhole spell. The fact that the dark blue portal had stayed open for so long confirmed his theory.

'Okay, let's do this...'

The portal was the reason the enemy felt bold enough to launch this attack. Damian retrieved one of the nine-parchment sewed together version of the wormhole runic circle and spread it on the rooftop. He powered it up using the surrounding mana and took control of the spell with his mana thread, carefully aiming the exit at one side of the unnatural waygate. His spell's portal formed just inches in front of the shimmering blue waygate, blocking its entrance with a dark purple portal.

Knowing both sides of the portal needed to be sealed, Damian created another wormhole to block the exit on the other side using another runic spell roll, maintaining both with his mana threads. The spell had enough power to last for a minute or so, but that was all the time they needed. He didn't intend to trap them permanently; he just needed them to believe they were trapped.

As expected, both third-rankers noticed their exit being blocked and immediately abandoned their attack on Vidalia to investigate.

With a brief moment of respite, Vidalia landed near Damian, resting for a few seconds as the third-rankers made their way toward the wormhole. Vidalia and Damian exchanged a look, one bloody by fall other cut all over and both stepped through the wormhole he had created and arrived at a point just ahead of the enemy, ready to launch their own counterattack.