Chapter 197

I dispelled the air elemental before I decided to close in, wanting to get a better view of the event. After all, surprises on any battlefield had the potential to be deadly, especially against two mages with little to no support.

The first thing I did was to cast a low-level detection charm, allowing me to get a real-time map of the living — along with the unliving — with no effort and no risk.

[-28 Mana]

Of course, in the past, using such a trick was risky enough to trigger every single alarm of the liches that was found in any area of decent size, but my current skill level was different. I was able to replicate the same trick using much less mana, which made it much harder to be noticed.

And it allowed me to get a sense of the layout, which was simpler than I expected. It consisted of a group of defenders behind several layers of wards, and attackers trying to break them through repeated assaults.

Though, as a nice surprise, Titania and Marianne were the attacking sides, while undead was the side that was trying to put together a desperate defense against the inevitable assault.

It was a nice change of pace.

I started closing in as I carefully focused on their mana signatures. Titania’s incredible assault didn’t surprise me, as I had seen her fighting before. While she had certain flaws — her direct approach to battle one of them — she had the capabilities to justify her fearsome reputation.

The achievements she had gained during our fun only made her scarier.

Marianne, on the other hand, surprised me greatly. The last time I had seen her, she was just a healer — an amazing healer, maybe even the best in Silver Spires, but a healer nonetheless. Yet, the closer I got, the more accurate my feel for her magic got, and what I found surprised me.

The life energy was formed into several complicated shapes, rotating in a self-sustaining space as they danced around the wards of the undead, ready to destroy any undead that dared to get out of the wards for a counterattack.

They even managed to avoid the oppressive bursts of light magic as they rained on the wards — a courtesy of Titania — each formed into thin spears, weakening the integrity of the wards without wasting Titania’s energy in the process.

I had to admit, I was impressed with Marianne’s performance, who was using my trick in a spell that I didn’t even think off — though, admittedly, with my perks, saving mana was hardly the greatest priority for me. Still, the smoothness of her spells and the efficiency of her approach were amazing.

Though, even with Titania, I was impressed by the way she was methodically disassembling the wards rather than overwhelming them in one burst, showing that she had learned quite a bit compared to our first fateful meeting, where she had been trapped by much simpler wards.

I wanted to watch them slowly work on the wards, but, unfortunately, we had bigger issues to deal with, so I started walking closer, intending on helping them.

Yet, before casting a spell to resolve the issue, I repeated the earlier spell, but this time, putting enough magic to cover a much wider area.

After the earlier debacle, after my target turned out to be a decoy in the first place, I decided to treat the undead with more care, in case I met with another tactical disadvantage.

That turned out to be a smart decision, as, the moment the spell spread past a mile, I felt a ping at the distance. I had found a ward that was hiding a couple of presences, which, interestingly, were not undead. Too distant to launch an ambush, but not too distant to observe the battle.

I decided that it was not appropriate.

[-294 Mana]

An earth spell, combined with a furious dash, and barely half a minute later, I was under their location. There, I stopped for a moment underground, focusing my senses upward to examine the little group, consisting of four people.

The first thing I noticed was that they were not necromancers. It was possible to conceal the taint of their destructive spell-casting from a distance, but it was impossible to do so when it was just a few feet of earth that were separating us. The second thing, even more helpful, to note was they didn’t belong to Eternals — at least, that was what I assumed considering their wards were both too weak to be cast by someone over level thirty, and they were not based on the mysterious structure they had used during every encounter I had with them.

With that, I had no fear as I let my mana radiate up, and invade their structure — something that was made much easier by their ward protecting the top and sides much better than the bottom.

Simple mistakes, but simple mistakes were no less critical than complicated ones once someone started to abuse them. I let my mana bypass their wards and slip inside their bodies.

[Level: 32 Experience: 524160 / 528000

Strength: 46 Charisma: 63

Precision: 40 Perception: 42

Agility: 40 Manipulation: 45

Speed: 39 Intelligence: 49

Endurance: 39 Wisdom: 51

HP: 6528 / 6528 Mana: 7923 / 8000 ]

SKILLS

Master Melee [100/100]

Master Tantric [100/100]

Master Biomancy [100/100]

Master Elemental [100/100]

Master Arcana [100/100]

Master Subterfuge [100/100]

Master Craft [84/100]

Expert Speech [75/75]

PERKS

Mana Regeneration

Skill Share

Empowerment (0/1)

Teleportation

COMPANIONS

[Cornelia - Level 22/26]

[Helga - Level 22/26]