Initially overwhelmed with fear, Emberwolf thought his plan had been discovered and entered a trap set by Xu Feng.
However, after careful consideration and inspection of their surroundings, Emberwolf realized there was no one else here aside from Xu Feng.
'Wait a minute, could there be more hiding in ambush?' Emberwolf thought to himself, trying to open his map to check the position of everyone else.
To his disbelief though, the map was disabled, prompting him to be shocked.
"Hey, can you use the map function?" Emberwolf cried aloud and asked one of his subordinates.
Within a few seconds, the subordinates attempted to use their map, only to end up realizing it could not be opened.
After a few attempts of opening, a system prompt warning appeared that stated their map function had been disabled by the authority of the Raid Leader.
And who was the Raid Leader?
It was none other than Xu Feng, the person who was calmly waving his hand at them right now, almost as if he was greeting them in a friendly manner.
"T-The Raid Leader is capable of disabling our map function?" Hunter Rick, a subordinate of Emberwolf from the Sky Hunters Adventure Team, exclaimed in shock and horror.
"Not just our map function, but even our communication is disabled." SpiritFang, a member of the Astral Guild, commented.
With that revelation, Emberwolf hurriedly checked on the message that he had been receiving along the way, only to realize what Hunter Rick said was correct.
"Wait a minute, where is Soulstrider? We had an agreement to meet here. Did he betray us?" Emberwolf started interrogating SpiritFang upon realizing Soulstrider was nowhere to be found.
He refused to believe it was merely a coincidence for all these things to suddenly occur the moment they revealed themselves and thought victory was near.
"Our Guild Captain said he can't get away because he was watched intensely by Blake from the Solaris Guild." Hunter Rick snorted coldly in response, clearly displeased by Emberwolf's empty accusation.
"Damn it." Emberwolf gnashed his teeth upon hearing that explanation.
Without a doubt, with Blake constantly watching Soulstrider, there was no hope of getting away from the former.
Not even he could slip away if Blake was keeping him in check constantly.
Amidst their confusion and the sudden blindness caused by the disabled map, leaving them unable to check on their teammates or to be more precise, the ambushers that could be lurking.
Xu Feng let out a quiet yawn and casually leaned his chin on his palm. "Are you done discussing among yourselves or should I give you more time to discuss?"
"Shut up…" Emberwolf shouted, clenched his fist tightly, and pondered the current situation that was still extremely confusing.
"Give me 5 more minutes!" He then exclaimed, requesting more time for him to figure out the situation.
Speechless, Xu Feng was truly taken by surprise that his sarcastic remark was actually being taken seriously by Emberwolf. He even found it heartbreaking to deny Emberwolf's request on the spot, given it was he who asked it in the first place.
'Fine, I can use this time to check up on others anyway.' Xu Feng thought to himself, not minding about wasting another 5 minutes.
As long as the oppressive pillars had not been destroyed, Xu Feng could not proceed further in the raid anyway. Not to mention, finishing his side of the oppressive pillar first would only result in more work for him.
Additionally, he only needed to clear the raid, and as for the speedrun to complete it faster, Xu Feng could give zero damn about it.
Those who strived to speedrun and get record-clearing time could do as they pleased.
Meanwhile, 5 minutes quickly went by and Emberwolf still had yet to figure out how they were caught.
"No, this doesn't make any goddamn sense." Emberwolf scratched his head as he banned another logical process on how they were caught red-handed.
"You've been saying that for the past 5 minutes already." Xu Feng chimed in and continued, "Will you surrender yourself now or attempt to fight and get defeated? I just received a message from my teammates that they have reached the cracked fountain."
Dumbfounded, Emberwolf gnashed his teeth and decided to stop thinking altogether. Too complicated, so he might as well duke it out with Xu Feng.
"Lin Feng, just stop acting so arrogantly when you have people surrounding us. I dare you to come at me alone." Emberwolf pointed at him and demanded a fair battle.
Speechless, Xu Feng tilted his head and nearly stumbled to the ground.
"People surrounding you? There's only me." He was honestly feeling quite pitiful for Emberwolf that he didn't even have the heart to lie to him.
However, his honesty created a severe backlash and nearly caused Emberwolf to puke in blood instead.
Emberwolf coughed repeatedly and asked, "A-Are you saying you have been here alone all along? There's no one else that is lurking around and waiting to ambush us if we try to make a move?"
Nodding, Xu Feng responded, "That is correct."
Emberwolf's body crashed to the ground, nearly fainting from anger or frustration. He had spent the last 5 minutes racking his brain and wondering how to break through the enemies, only to realize his effort was for naught.
It was almost as if someone was studying for their exam and realized on the examination day that they had studied the wrong thing completely.
"You couldn't have said it earlier??!" Emberwolf, with the assistance of Hunter Rick, got up and shouted like an aggrieved victim.
"You never asked, and I didn't want to stop your cooking. Let them cook, they say, right?" Xu Feng shrugged, clearly not finding anything wrong with his actions. In fact, Emberwolf should be thankful that he let him cook and not cut him off from the get-go.
"To hell with you!" Emberwolf roared and dashed toward him. In the blink of an eye, Emberwolf closed the distance between them, his face flashing a menacing grin.
"A cleric should just stay back and be a heal bot!" He cursed and unsheathed his sword.