The Prince Of Magic

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"SHIT! SHIT! SHIIIIIIT!" Charles cursed through gritted teeth.

Just when he thought his day could get worse, his friends came out and brought something horrible with them.

The turnabout of the situation was so sudden, it was headache inducing for him just thinking about it.

Earlier, he and Scáthach were battling the heavily muscled Servant.

It had been intense and exhausting, with every arrow the strange-looking servant fired at them could have had potentially killed him or the crimson eyed spear-wielder.

Fortunately, their hard-earned teamwork shined through the fight and allowed them to overwhelm the enemy servant's highly impressive combat prowess.

If not for Scáthach's little diversions and contributions, Charles would have died so many times in the fight.

With their level of cooperation and diverse skill sets, he and Scáthach had pushed the enemy servant back. They had even managed to cause a number of fatal injuries upon the big bastard that he was forced to retreat from the fight, which proved their master's assumption that the intruder was simply a bait for them to be there.

They have yet to discover why they would resort to such a thing though.

Flushed with victory as their objective was within their reach, the two retainers were not about to let their quarry escape after it was clear that he was weakened.

The danger he presented alone was enough for the two retainers to consider killing him then and there, if he were to resort to using his Noble Phantasm just to make their lives difficult.

Then, a huge curveball was thrown at their feet and the two retainers were forced to turn their attention away from the enemy.

His allies came out of nowhere and interrupted the battle, which gave the big guy an opportunity to escape from under their noses. The result of the situation greatly annoyed the two retainers, but the gravity of the situation demanded their attention more than to give chase to a troublesome foe, who have yet to reveal his true abilities.

All Charles and Scáthach had managed to gather from the big bastard so far were his top-notched skills with Pankration (an ancient Greek mixed martial arts) and the bow, his strange armaments, his basic prowess in combat (endurance, strength, speed, etc.) and his equally strange appearance.

Hmm, perhaps his master might have an idea on who the big bastard is.

Astolfo led the group in the front, running towards Charles and Scáthach with a frightened expression on his face that would have sent Charles laughing at him in any situation but now.

Not that Charles could blame his friends for running instead of fighting.

It only took a single glance for them to see what was chasing after their friends that made Charles and Scáthach decide to run along with them.

Now, all of the seven retainers were on the run, doing their absolute best to evade the assaults of the Spider's spawns.

Charles didn't think that the things chasing his friends, and them, would be the actual spawns of the Spider. He had been assured by his liege that they were sleeping, hibernating, somewhere in the isle, but he did not expected that he was about to encounter them in the middle of a battle.

From the bits and pieces he had gathered from Yan and Astolfo's conversation while they are on the run, the intruder that they were assigned to capture used his Noble Phantasm amidst in their fight. It had a close call for the Rider, Yan and Astolfo. The trio did their best to prevent the outcome from occurring, but it happened when they least expected it.

Some kind of explosion went off when they tried to stop him, but the enemy servant used that chance to activate his Noble Phantasm and nearly overwhelmed them as a result.

The trio had no other choice, but to defend themselves from his attacks by switching to their Servant forms, which turned out to be their greatest mistake.

No sooner did they manage to successfully defend themselves from the enemy's unexpected assault, the three retainers were about to go on the attack when something tall, large and eerily menacing had literally dropped in the middle of the battlefield without so much as a hint of its presence.

It was so unexpected it had caught the three retainers off their guards, they stopped and looked at the spawn with similar surprised expressions.

The three retainers were broken out of their stupors when the enemy servant had tried to attack the Spider's spawn with several of his black stakes, deeming the alien spawn as an enemy for intruding on his battle.

Keyword being 'tried'.

The trio received a nasty surprise when the attack didn't work, not even scratching the hard external surface of the spawn's body.

Instead, the attack had only managed to aggravate the spawn. It had growled and screeched before it returned the favor and attacked the intruder by backhanding him across the clearing.

The trio didn't stay in the area any longer than necessary after they had seen their opponent get easily brushed off in such a manner.

If their enemy's Noble Phantasm didn't work on the spider's spawn, what hope could they do with theirs?

And so they ran.

The three retainers did their best to run and hide somewhere, but the spawn was clever and fast.

Hiding did not do them any good since the spawn had terrifying sensing abilities, to the point that it can detect them before they could even think about hiding somewhere.

The retainers had tried to use the runes that Scáthach can cast with minimal cost in magical energy, but even that plan didn't worked in their favor.

It also didn't helped their case when the spawn called out to its kin from nearby as it had chased after them, increasing their chaser into more than just one.

The only thing that they can do was run and used their own abilities to push the spawns back whenever they lunged or try to tackle one of them.

Yan, Astolfo and Rider had managed to keep up their tactic till they met with Arturia and Arash.

Then, the five continued to run and the spawns continued their chase relentlessly. Said five arrived to the scene of where Charles and Scáthach were located, and the rest was history.

The retainers had tried to come up their own strategies to fight back, but none of their attacks had worked so far.

They weren't even given time to rest as the spawns were quite unexpected and shrewd in their assaults. If it weren't for their battle experience, teamwork and diverse abilities, half of them would have been caught and eaten as lunch by the alien spawns.

The retainers had to work together to survive, or they would never be able to leave the island alive.

The current situation was simply that bad.

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