Chapter 616 -Too Smart

BANG!

Ice Princess crushed the Spells she had gathered above her hand, and an instant later, gigantic icicles exploded out from the two of them, wildly spinning around them and destroying all of the images.

The two of them were not some helpless damsels.

The foreign Mage closed her eyes, her hair serenely billowing in the ethereal symphony of Mana around her.

It was like she was fusing with her surroundings.

Suddenly, her eyes shot open, and a bright light appeared in them.

Her right hand immediately pointed towards a direction diagonally below her.

BANG!

A terrifying spiral of metal shot in that direction, its speed far faster than one would expect the Spell of a Late Archmage to be.

CRACK!

The sound of two powerful and hard things colliding reverberated throughout the area.

The foreign Mage's spiral was redirected to the side, but the thing that had blocked it was also thrown into the distance, breaking through tens of different trees.

Shang's original plan had been to distract the two of them with the bright crescent he had unleashed earlier, build up his Distortion Domain around them, and then unleash an attack.

However, the newest Spell from the foreign Mage had just ruined that plan.

'She's stronger than I expected,' he thought.

Right after Shang was blasted away, Ice Princess spotted Shang and readied herself to unleash all her Spells at him.

At the moment, Shang was still being flung away by the foreign Mage's Spells, and he couldn't defend himself from Ice Princess' Spells.

Yet, the foreign Mage put her arm in front of Ice Princess, stopping her with furrowed brows.

"Don't waste your Mana," she transmitted. "He isn't the danger. He's only buying time."

Ice Princess' eyes exploded with rage, but it wasn't directed at the foreign Mage.

It was directed at White Ghost.

Because of him, their carefully laid plans were ruined, and they had to improvise now.

The two of them immediately turned towards the northeast and used Mana Step to leave.

Best

Both of them used five Mana Steps, traversing a distance of over a hundred kilometers.

The next second, they used another five Mana Steps, but they slightly changed their directions.

With the first five Mana Steps, they should be outside of White Ghost's Spirit Sense, even if his Spirit Sense were bigger than normal. With the second five Mana Steps, they would change their trajectory unpredictably, significantly widening the cone of their possible trajectory.

First, they could only be in the front.

Then, they could be in the front, front left, or front right.

Then, left, front-left, front, front-right, or right.

And lastly, they could have gone anywhere.

The longer they hadn't been found, the less likely the chance of discovering them was.

They stopped using Mana Step and focused on recovering their Mana storages while flying further away.

A second of silence passed.

Suddenly, the foreign Mage's eyes opened wide, and she unleashed several Spells in one direction.

WHOOOM!

Several spears shot through a mirage of White Ghost, but they didn't hit anything solid.

Ice Princess gritted her teeth.

White Ghost was still there!

Somehow, he managed to follow them!

"You can't flee," the voice of White Ghost reverberated throughout the surroundings.

Usually, Shang avoided talking during a battle, but this time, there was a specific goal as to why he was talking.

The foreign Mage furrowed her brows.

"He's bluffing," Ice Princess transmitted in an instant. "He had trouble keeping up with my regular flying speed before."

"What makes you think he didn't put on a show?" the foreign Mage asked with a voice transmission.

"He's only an Early Archmage," Ice Princess answered.

"You have seen his mastery over illusions, subterfuge, and stealth," the foreign Mage transmitted back. "What makes you think he isn't actually a Late Archmage?"

"Do you know anything about this colleague of yours?" the foreign Mage asked with a transmission.

Ice Princess gritted her teeth.

She realized that she actually knew nothing about White Ghost.

Ice Princess knew a lot about all of her colleagues, but White Ghost was the only exception.

White Ghost was, fittingly enough, as elusive as a ghost.

He had already been a Named Agent as a Peak High Mage, and he had even taken care of an entire gatherer family led by an Early Archmage.

Was that something a Peak High Mage could do?

No.

The foreign Mage was right.

White Ghost was most likely a Late Archmage. There was a slight possibility that he was a Peak Archmage, but Ice Princess doubted it. A Peak Archmage could earn much more money in other branches.

Ice Princess had thought about many things just now, but the thinking speed of a Late Archmage was frighteningly fast.

In truth, not even a tenth of a second had passed.

"What's your plan?" Ice Princess asked.

Surprisingly, none of Ice Princess' arrogance seemed to come out in front of the foreign Mage.

Apparently, Ice Princess accepted the foreign Mage as either an equal or a superior.

"His Spirit Sense is bigger than normal, and he's also quite fast," the foreign Mage transmitted. "Using several Mana Steps to flee will only exhaust our Mana storages."

"The longer he is near us, the more likely the chance of an Ancestral Mage from the Temple of Blood finding us."

"The only way out of this is to kill him quickly."

Ice Princess nodded in response to the foreign Mage's words.

Shang noticed that the two of them were preparing more of their Spells, and he realized that his plan had worked.

Keeping up with the speed of two Late Archmages using Mana Step to flee was extremely draining on Shang's stamina. 

If they kept fleeing, Shang would most likely need to give up.

That was why he had talked earlier.

He needed them to think that they had to kill him to escape, which was actually not the truth.

Ice Princess had had the correct thought.

Shang was at a lower level than them, and as long as they fled, they would be able to escape.

However, Shang had banked on the fact that the talented foreign Mage thought more highly of others than Ice Princess.

Because of that, she had assumed that Shang had hidden everything about himself and his true power.

Shang's plan had only worked because his opponent was smart.

If the foreign Mage were gullible and stupid, the two of them would have simply continued escaping, and Shang would have had no choice but to give up.

Most of the time, the reason for a plan succeeding was because the target was not smart enough, but this time, the plan succeeded because the target was too smart.

'Now, I can attack them without fearing that they might escape.'