This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange

They continued a similar strategy of Princess, some of the Vespirae guards, and Addison and Leonara's contracts working together to drop them into the mist where Slumberpuff and Bea will then make them sink to the ground in a daze. Aiden's contract will deflect any attacks aimed at their contracts fighting above.

Then on the ground the finishing blow was dealt either by the remaining 3 Vespirae guards in the mist, Lady, or Finn's contracts—Frostfang, who Kain had seen before, and a Terravipe, an earth-attribute snake.

In no time the five Pterix were cleared. However, they knew that this was just the warm-up. They had still not seen the yellow-grade adult supposed to be leading the flock. Also, there were probably more orange and red-grade juvenile Pterix on the mountain.

Before the team could even catch their breath, the air around them began to stir ominously. The sky darkened, and the once-clear atmosphere grew charged with energy.

A low, rumbling growl reverberated from the direction of Lunar Peak, the towering mountain that looms in the background.

A Tempest Pterix at least double the size of the others quickly descended the mountain in their direction with a fierce screech that echoed across the vale, signaling its anger and intent. The creature's eyes were ablaze with a fiery intensity, and its wings crackled with electrical energy.

Lagging behind it were 3 additional, much smaller reinforcements. Kain used more of his spiritual power to make the mist as dense as possible. He could feel the immense pressure from where he stood. If he was alone, he'd feel as hopeless as he did when attacked by the White Widow the first time.

To eliminate the subordinates as quickly as possible, Princess and the wasps launched attacks to cause them sink rapidly into the mist.

The quickest of those on the ground, Lady quickly sped up to where they landed and snapped the neck of two, only leaving one for a Vespirae to finish off.

'My GP points!' Kain thought in tears. But he couldn't dwell on it too long before more serious matters.

'Now is the hard part, how do we bring it down?'

"Try aiming for one of its wings! The right one!" Kain shouted. If they could damage a wing, it shouldn't be able to continue flying.

Immediately, everyone who had a contract with a long-distance attack aimed for the wing on the right…except for Bridge who directed Princess to attack the other wing.

Kain couldn't help but stare at him blankly, as Bridge blushed. "I-I wasn't sure if you meant our right or its right…"

"OUR RIGHT!"

Unfortunately, their attacks didn't have any effect except to piss it off.

"Hmm…" Kain needed to drastically increase their strength to leave a heavy enough blow. But how?

Suddenly he remembered the wasps' berserker skill that could only be activated when Queen was in danger. Struck by an idea on how to activate this skill when he wanted, Kain directed Eve to leave Queen's body.

Immediately he could sense an intense rejection for the order from hid contract. After all, although Queen's life was dependent on Eve, Eve was as dependent on Queen after the establishment of the secondary contract.

Whimper

Queen couldn't help but let a stifled noise out as her strength began to fade. Immediately the guards sensed the change and their eyes began to slowly change from black to red.

"Hurry!" Kain yelled, "It's doing something to Queen."

Not questioning his words with their reduced intelligence, and also not thinking he could have anything to do with Queen's reduction in strength due to the contract between the two that they sensed, they immediately turned in anger to face the Pterix.

When their eyes were fully red, the Berserk state was activated and all of their stats doubled.

Boom

Screech!

The next strike to land on the Pterix left a blood hole in its wing, but it was still not enough to bring it down.

"Aim for the right wing again, everyone!" Kain directed.

Scrreeeeeccchhh!

Finally, the head of the flock crashed down to the earth. But it was far from defenceless. Instead, it began to launch lightning strikes all around it with abandon. After all, it did not need to worry about any of its children still being alive in the mist.

Even after having the blows diverted by the Wind Sprite and barely successfully dodging the attack, Kain and the others were still injured from the large debris flying from where the attacks hit the ground.

The lightning was so dense around the Pterix that they couldn't even get a solid blow to it.

'We need to interrupt the attacks'

"Elias! Can you give me some of your contract's puffs?" After receiving an affirmative nod from him he put some into a satchel he pulled out of a space ring and handed it over to Kain.

"Make sure not to let them touch you!"

Kain then had the now-strengthened guards carry him on their backs towards the Pterix. After all, unlike the others who could not afford the permanent loss of a contract, rendering the star space housing that contract useless, the guards were expendable to Kain. They weren't his primary or even secondary contract, and with enough time Queen is able to produce more of them.

They quickly sped toward the Pterix while acting as Kain's ride and shield

Bang

One down

Bang Bang

Another two lost.

By the time Kain was close enough to throw the satchel at the Pterix he had lost half of the guards, leaving him with only 6.

However, they had played their role. The pieces of fluff covered the Pterix, but only had a marginal effect on slowing down its rate of attack, but Kain had never intended to rely on that anyways.

Kain then abandoned his control of the mist, allowing it to begin dispersing away, and input the rest of his spiritual power in the armor he wore to trigger a mental attack. At the same time, Bea also put all of her energy into stopping its movements.

For a brief moment, it went still.

"Attack now!" Kain yelled, before dropping to the ground to dodge the attacks that soon came. This was their only shot. He hoped that they would succeed.