They did as Azaroth said and poured all their essence into their essence cloak. Under a combination of colored essence, they touched each other, forming something resembling an irregular wall.

Azaroth stood in the middle, Stallus on his left, and the others on his right, his sword still pointed unwaveringly at the Crypt Master. His hand trembled slightly as he looked at the swollen ball of energy that the man gathered.

"Get yourself ready!" the Crypt Master said, then lurched forward with his attack. It blasted out with an echoing shockwave.

Azaroth grappled with the inspiration he got from that day’s power. He took hold of it and turned it in his mind as everything seemed to slow down.

The attack was like a red wave from the sea that rose about to slam into their feeble shield. The fight-or-flight part of his brain took over, and his eyes glowed hotly like melted metal.

His soul screamed at him, and the other three souls cried out in reply. For a brief, horrible moment, Azaroth was connected with the three others as their essence twisted together and formed something else.

Then everything returned to normal, and the attack slammed into them with the roar of a thunderstorm. It washed over them with thundering blows, and just as suddenly as it began, it stopped and was gone.

Azaroth opened his eyes and saw what had just happened. At first, he didn’t understand. The others opened their eyes and gasped as they saw it.

"Is this an essence shield?" Alex asked. He turned to look back and up.

It was, but instead of individual shields, what they now had around them was a massive shield of shining translucent silver. The shield was in the shape of massive clasped hands.

It covered them, tall like a house.

Azaroth felt the essence that made the shield, and his suspicion was confirmed. The shield was a massive knot of essence, tangled together. It carried the essence of the four of them, and when he traced where his essence was going from his fire core, he realized it pooled into the combination from the four of them.

The fist shield stood clenched around them, ending just over a stump at the wrist.

"It’s not my shield," Stallus began, amazement in her voice. "This is from all of us!"

Catena was looking at it as if it had dropped from the sky.

The Crypt Master laughed. "Ah! You lot just keep surprising me! How were you able to make a joint shield on your first try? This is quite something!"

Azaroth stepped forward and demanded, "What do you mean? What’s the meaning of a joint shield?"

The Crypt Master shrugged and scratched his head. "It’s simple really. It’s when a group of people put their essence together to make a bigger, stronger shield. But it’s very difficult to do because your souls must be resonating together to do it. But pulling it off the first time? Well, that’s a surprise indeed!"

And then the Crypt Master lurched an attack at them, weaker, more at their level now, and the attack glanced off their shield.

"And one more thing," the Crypt Master smiled. "It takes a massive amount of mana. Unless you learn how to channel it well..."

He spoke too soon because it was then that they all stumbled as their cores drained, and the shield flickered off.

Azaroth didn’t know what to think about the joint shield. The only thing that came to him was how much of a burden something like that was going to be. To wait and depend on others just because he wanted to make a shield?

As he sat there, harvesting essence, he asked the Crypt Master, "Can we still make individual essence shields?"

"Yes," the Crypt Master said.

Azaroth looked at him flatly because he could hear the "but" in his voice, so he asked him, "But?"

"But it will never be strong, and you won’t be able to use it for offense. Your soul will only click once to make an essence shield. It will only click other times to improve the shield first made."

Azaroth didn’t like the sound of that. Not at all. So, immediately after he got his core filled hours later, he stood in front of the Crypt Master and asked him to send attacks at him. The others looked at him as if he was insane.

But the Crypt Master did as he asked with only a shrug.

It was easier this time. Azaroth captured the feeling he felt when the first essence shield happened and manifested it before the attack reached him.

He felt the hum of the shield around him, and when he looked at it, he knew it was weak. Even though it had stopped the attack, the shield was like an oversized aura of translucent silver.

Azaroth clenched his teeth. He knew then that his shield was part of a whole and it was weaker. Far weaker.

"See?" the Crypt Master said. "Curious, curious!"

He set them to training after that. He had them sit far from each other so they would know the distance not to keep, so they could manifest the shield.

Each time they practiced the joint essence shield, they got better at it and at managing the amount of essence they put in. One of the things Azaroth didn’t like was how they had to jointly do things like increase the level of essence they had to put in.

Through that week and the next, the Crypt Master let them practice the essence shield while he fed them. This made Azaroth suspicious and alert.

An essence shield was a defensive skill. Why did the Crypt Master teach it to them? He took them out of hunting crypt to do it, and if Azaroth was another person, he might have thought he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart.

But Azaroth was Azaroth. And he knew there must be a reason why he was teaching them this hard for it.

At the end of the second week, the Crypt Master announced that they should now learn how to attack with it.