Before either of the Blue Apes could react, a spear had penetrated one of them from one end of it's body to the other, straight through the leather armor, and nailed one of the Blue Apes firmly to the ground.
The sight was quite stunning, no matter how many times Siegbert saw it.
Unfortunately, the other Blue Ape was given no time to appreciate the sight, as an arrow flew towards it, hitting it right in the middle of it's forehead.
Making a noise you could only barely hear if you were a cultivator and you were really paying close attention, the Blue Ape fell straight backwards, collapsing on the muddy ground like a dead fish.
With their targets dealt with, Nicolaus and Siegbert did not remain atop their trees, but hastily swapped their weapons.
Nicolaus took out his unique-looking and slightly blue one handed axe, along with his large brown steel shield.
While Siegbert only took out his large two-handed axe, with a ordinary looking brown handle, but quite impressive-looking dark blue blade, that looked as if it had been made entirely out of ice.
Down below them, the battle had already begun.
The other three did not wait for the two of them to attack before they made their move, as that wasn't the plan.
Instead, all five of them made their moves in unison, without the need for communication.
The only difference was, that two of them ambushed the Blue Apes from the safety of their trees, while the rest of them had no choice but to jump down in order to attack.
The three other Blue Ape pairings to the North, South and West did not get equal attention given to them however.
Gaston and Ruben each took one Blue Ape from the paring coming from the West, while Hasso alone was left to take care of the pairing from the North.
In truth, during their unknown amount of time spent together in this forest, this was far from the first battle that they had fought.
During all these battles, everyone more-or-less knew where each of them stood when it came to their fighting ability.
The decision for Hasso to be left alone, whilst Gaston was accompanied by Ruben was not to say that Hasso was the strongest, or even that Gaston was weaker than him.
Quite the opposite.
It was Ruben, raised as an assassin and trained to be an assassin since he was a little boy, that had the most difficulties adapting to this kind of frontal assault.
Whether it be as a boy, or later on as a man in service of the Emperor, Ruben had mostly done his work from the shadows.
Attacking enemies that were not even aware they were in danger, people who didn't even know that he was their enemy.
Naturally, he had been in quite a few battles during his time as an assassin as well, as it was not always possible to avoid such scenarios.
Nevertheless, such scenarios were few and far between.
In comparison to the rest of them, who had been fighting their battles with their enemies aware of their presence, Ruben naturally came off as slightly inexperienced.
In their battles across the forest, Ruben was the one most often in danger and need of saving.
It was not always possible for someone to have his back in time however, so Ruben had accumulated quite a few scars across his body during this short period of time.
The most significant of which, was the one on the left side of his head, running from just over his ear, all the way down to nearly the back of his head.
Thankfully for him, it was not always so noticeable, as his grown out hair masked it pretty well.
From a distance, it even looked like a fashionable hairstyle rather than a scar.
That was why, in order to protect their assassin friend, it was decided that he would go with Gaston, so that should anything happen, the strongest one amongst them would be the closest one to him and the first to respond.
Over this unknown period of time spent together, Gaston didn't know exactly what had happened, but it looked like he had warmed to Ruben quite considerably.
'Starting from the impression I first had on the guy, It's quite remarkable how much my thinking on him has changed.
'I guess it's still true, even if this place isn't Earth, the bond acquired through shared experience on the battlefield is the strongest.'
Change of opinion on the man or not, Gaston still focused on himself first.
Launching himself from atop that tree, he repeated his method of attack that he used on the first Blue Ape he had come across.
After all, as the saying went, "if its not broke, don't fix it."
There was no trickery involved in it, just pure strength and power, that no amount of knowledge would help you in resisting, unless you had the strength to match.
This time around, he only used close to a third of his total energy, which was still tens of times more than what was required for the activation of the magic technique.
The reason for this, was that by overloading the total amount of energy, he would get a stronger effect.
For an ambush, especially this one, that required that they take out as many of their enemies as possible before it became a fair fight, the beginning of the ambush was the most significant and crucial point that would determine success or failure.
Even if the method was inefficient, and his magic technique did not strengthen in proportion to the vast amount of energy he had invested, it didn't matter.
It was enough.
As he struck down, with two hands bringing the halberd down from above his head in one smooth motion, the blade of the axe was infused with Earthen energy, glowing dark brown once again.
The Blue Ape could do nothing but barely raise his spear above his head in time, in the hopes of blocking the attack.
It had no such luck however.
Cutting straight through the spear, despite the smaller amount of energy invested than previously, the halberd cut into the middle of the Blue Ape's head, nearly splitting it's entire body in two, as it only stopped at it's belly button.