Ashton channelled the sylph's magic, glancing around the space while dragging around as much air as possible. A storm was being created within here, pushing the effects of the freezing enchantment even further. Through the undine, Ashton controlled the water in some leftover bottles that he handed out earlier, making them burst open.

  He threw the water onto the lizardmen, that were by now approaching him fast. But even so, Ashton would win this fight, even one versus ten. The first of them wasn't even able to react before being slammed in the skull. Only with the third and final attack against it did it manage to swing the cleaver it was carrying at him.

  Before the body fell down, Ashton pushed his staff right underneath the lizardman's ribs, pushing it up and onto the monsters following. They weren't able to react in time to dodge, and were toppled over from the weight and impact.

  At that moment, Ashton jumped back and built some more distance, and looked at the wisp and sylph. He controlled some air with magic and pushed it into the wisp. Right now, the most important thing was to ensure he couldn't be surrounded. Strong winds combined with the force spell were a great way to knock these monsters around.

  But when Ashton had the wisp absorb the air magic, he could feel something different. Following that thread of thought, that twinge, Ashton shifted something about the wisp's mana as it combined with the air magic. Before, the wisp's body stayed solid, simply becoming a lot faster and surrounding it in thick air magic. This time, instead of simply borrowing the magic Ashton was placing into it, the elemental truly fused with the air magic. It essentially moved a step closer to being a sylph, rather than a wisp. But even so, Ashton could channel it in the exact same way as before.

  He had the wisp shoot toward the monsters. The wisp's body, no longer physical in the same way as before, practically passed through the monster. The air moulded around its body, but the lizardman was still thrown back. As it landed, it grasped at its chest and tried to breathe. The way it twitched and winced, it had broken ribs and maybe even its arm was injured.

  It wasn't as strong as the wisp's normal attacks, but it was much stronger than a simple blast of air that Ashton could usually create. Like the wisp had turned into extremely thick air.

  Spinning his staff around, Ashton made the air-wisp shoot through the crowd of lizardmen. The elemental passed through, hitting and pushing away a few of them. It didn't seem enough to be lethal like this, but as long as it incapacitated the monsters for a few moments, that was enough. With the freezing cold air and the wisp in this new state, Ashton was able to get the upper hand easily. Before long, the corpses of a little more than a dozen monsters were laying around Ashton. He exhaled slightly, seeing his own breath in front of him. At the same time, he heard something in the distance, from beyond the hole in the wall. A blast, followed by the sound of lizardmen screaming.

  Clementine had thrown the chest at the pursuers. The magic stone that Ashton attached to the front reacted to the impact of being dropped, just as he had enchanted it, and released its mana to open the chest. Everything that had been trapped inside was let out, and the monsters were reacting.

  Ashton was even getting a few additional kill notifications. It probably counted as a shared kill. For these, since Ashton's share was still above five coins per monster, they still counted as sacrifices for the Daughter.

  With a deep breath, Ashton looked at the monsters on the ground. They were extremely muscular compared to usual lizardmen. It was like they were on steroids.

  He took a deep breath. Right now, it wasn't like the entire store was on complete red alert. They must be trying to figure out what all the cold air was about, but for all they knew, it might be something related to this weird building. The lizardmen, and all the other monsters, will have encountered weird and unfamiliar things a lot. They'll be investigating right now, but they wouldn't immediately come to the conclusion that someone was here to kill them all. Which gave Ashton enough time to, at the very least, take down the dangerous elite monsters first.

  He ran toward the wall and jumped up, making the wisp shoot up below him. It was like the wind was assisting him, pushing his jump up to three times as much as he would usually be able to do before the elemental passed by him. The rest of the way up the makeshift wall was relatively easy.

  The reason why none of the people here escaped wasn't because they couldn't climb out of their jail, but because they couldn't do anything once they reached the other side. But Ashton had plenty he could do.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  He looked around and had the wisp assist his leap over to one of the nearby tall shelves. At this point, he didn't care about being particularly careful anymore. He had to hurry up and take out the healer first and foremost. If that guy was still around later, the entire fight would be for naught. That elite monster might have magic that let it counteract the cold air. Or, hell, it might be able to interrupt the enchantment in the first place. Another reason why the magic users had to be dispatched first.

  When Ashton spotted it earlier, it seemed to be in the place where it was bunked up in general. There were lots of plants around, and the healer had picked out all the things with medical uses in the store. When Ashton saw it, it was making some of the lizardmen injure themselves so that it could test everything out.

  Ashton jumped from shelf to shelf, at least the ones that were still standing, and finally reached the part of the store where that lizardman was earlier. But now, it wasn't. It must have realised that magic was at play and had left to investigate. It wouldn't have gotten far. Ashton looked around, finding a large group huddled together around one of the frost enchantments. A bit of a distance away, so that it itself wouldn't be hit by the brunt of the cold given off of it, was the healer, surrounded by a number of particularly strong-looking skink lizardmen.

  If Ashton headed for them all in a straight-forward fashion, it might lead to a drawn-out fight that might disadvantage Ashton the longer it went on. Monster healers were too dangerous mixed into your opponents.

  But the good thing was that right here, Ashton had a good angle. He jumped off the shelf he was currently on and tightly grasped his staff, pointing it downward. The wisp quickly moved above him, and then blasted him downward. Before the healer even knew an enemy had snuck its way in, its brains were splattered onto the scincidians around it. Ashton could feel the impact in his arms, shoulders, and legs as well, but the healer had actually eased the fall quite well.

  The moment he could, Ashton regained his composure and stomped onto one of the scincidians' tails. As it began to scream, he pulled his staff over and into the monster's mouth, before jumping and kicking into its back with both of his legs.

  While it dropped to the ground with a broken spine, Ashton jumped backward and flipped over the next, which he hit in the face while moving. Both to injure it and to control his momentum.

  He landed safely on his feet again and entered a low stance, hitting the underside of one of the monsters' jaws. As its fangs clattered together and a few were spat out, Ashton hooked his staff into its shoulder and swooped its legs away with his foot. The monster lost its balance, and the impact of its head on the ground was accompanied by a steel-capped staff to the eye.

  Ashton kept moving and jumping around, as he used the undine to spray around as much water as possible, practically making it rain in here, and the wisp shot through the crowd to injure and chill as many of the lizardmen as possible.

  But even so, there were many. Too many. Ashton had barely taken out a bit more than twenty. Maybe half a dozen, at best, ran after the escapees to begin with. With that, even if Ashton had managed to count every single lizardman before, he still had three hundred more to face. That wasn't an easy number to deal with.

  A knife swooshed through the air past Ashton, barely missing his shoulder. That was exactly what Ashton was worried about. Once the lizardmen realised that he was here and attacked him from the home-turf that they themselves had constructed from this store, Ashton's advantage would dwindle more and more.

  Ashton ran toward that lizardman, a geckarian with a bunch of poison-coated fruit knives hanging from its hip. It threw one another one of the knjives at him before he could get there, but Ashton deflected it mid-air with his staff.

  He slammed the small lizardman off the shelf it was hanging on. But the moment he did, almost too easily, the monster fell down to the ground, twitching slightly. Confused, and not wanting to fall for a trap, Ashton slammed his staff down onto its head. When he did, the geckarian's mouth opened up, and a sickly green steam came rising out of it.

  Ashton knew immediately what was going on. He quickly used his staff to throw this geckarian into the group of lizardmen that had been following the healer around, or what was left of it, while holding his breath.

  With a glance to the side, Ashton saw a monster peeking around the corner. It was a tall and lanky lizardman. This one's limbs were so thin and its skin was so dried out that it looked like it had already died and dried out in the sun for a few days.

  Its head was covered with the skull of another lizardman, which it was wearing like some kind of mask. The poison mage stretched out the staff, made from bones that were kept together by roots spiralling up around them, and cast some kind of spell. As Ashton turned, he could see the lizardmen behind him convulsing.

  Their skin began to melt off, and that same green mist that came out of the geckarian's mouth poured out from between their fangs.

  But instead of falling down like the geckarian, these ones seemed to get even healthier. They were cackling and grasping their weapons even more intensely than before.

  There were a lot of poisons, with numerous effects. And it made sense that a tribe like this would have access to poison that strengthened their own, even if it killed them in the process.

  With a groan, with an underlying relief that this kind wasn't infectious, Ashton span his staff around, getting ready for the attack. "Seriously? Poison zombies? What's with everyone and zombies today?"