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-Chapter 27, DGM-
Watching the charging figure of Lund, Link’s expression remained neutral. He softly asked Celine, “Are you able to block him?”
Celine quirked her elegant eyebrows. “His power exceeds mine. I can only block 3 hits of his at most.”
Celine was a level 5 warrior, a grade below the level 6 Lund. Blocking him would be no mean feat.
In fact, being able to block 3 hits from him was probably due to the superiority of the demon blood in her veins.
Link examined his status. Because of the increase from ‘murmur of magic’, his current mana was 1010. This was sufficient enough to cast 3 more ‘flame burst’s.
The gears in Link’s head turned as fast as electricity. In a blink, Link had formed a suitable countermeasure against Lund. “One hit is enough.”
He turned, speaking to the archers, “Get out of here. Evacuate everyone far away from this tower!”
One ‘flame burst’ had earned more than enough recognition for Link. Without the slightest hesitation, the human soldiers on the sides of the archer tower begin to steer clear from it.
Lund had already arrived at the foot of the ramparts. As the dark elf soldiers caught sight of their unscathed commander, they begin to follow his lead. However, because of the deterrence of the terrifying magic, the momentum of their charge was far from their previous one. Every movement they made seemed to contain a hint of hesitation and cautiousness.
It was understandable. The blackened corpses reposed at the base of the ramparts soundlessly reminded them of the powerful magician. As long as the magician lived, the paranoia of the dark elves would not fade.
What if that bastard cast another ‘flame burst’?
Lund dashed to a thick length of rope attached to the sides of the archer tower and begin his ascent. The dark elves followed their commander, beginning to scale the walls. Above them, the human defenders had begin dropping boulders from the heights of the ramparts again.
Having learnt his lesson, Lund did not display gaudy techniques like condensing warrior qi into an attack. Instead, he chose wisely to evade anything fired at him.
He had already eaten an ambush once. Cautiousness was of foremost importance.
In this period, Link quietly relayed his plans to Celine. His explanation was fast, but it was concise and easy to understand. Evidently, the powerful enemy in front of him did not cause him to lose his nerve or wit.
Celine listened carefully, her eyes lighting up slowly. She shot the teenager beside her a sideways glance. Her black pupils gazed into his equally dark eyes.
His eyes were as deep as valleys, but they were as limpid as polished crystals. His gaze was sharp and numbing, like a sword’s edge soaked in freezing temperatures. This was the light of knowledge.
Celine’s heart seemed to beat faster. The ordinary-looking teenager suddenly seemed dashing.
“Got it?” Link finished his plans.
“Yeah.” Celine nodded her head.
Lund had already hauled himself onto the city walls. With a few strokes, he cleared the human defenders in his surroundings before charging at the archer tower.
“Secondary hailstorm!” Link’s tone was faint. He was calm, as if his opponent was a normal soldier and not a life-threatening enemy.
White light begin to spread from the end of his magic staff. In an instant, the archer tower was mantled in a blizzard.
This time, the hailstorm was not used to slay Lund, but to obstruct his field of vision instead.
With the sanctuary of the hailstorm, Lund found it hard to pinpoint Link’s specific location. This meant he was unable to condense his warrior qi into an attack without knowing where his target was.
If his warrior qi slash did not connect with his opponent, a good deal of his warrior qi would get depleted. When that happened, he could only defend passively.
“Hmph, you think this is enough to stop me?” Lund grinned, his expression frigid. Even if he could not utilise his warrior qi slash, he could still easily kill the enemy. He was unafraid of the opponent’s ‘flame burst’. The second the fireball was launched, he would simply use his warrior qi slash at the direction it came from.
The distance between the two rapidly closed. However, no signs of movement could be heard after the opponent cast a ‘secondary hailstorm’. A stiff silence hung in the air.
Regardless of side, every soldier on the battlefield was watching the confrontation with bated breaths. Therefore the rhythm of battle on the battlefield seemed to lower a notch.
Hope blossomed in the hearts of the dark elves as they anticipated the death of the magician.
On the other hand, fear had begun to eat away at the hearts of the human defenders.
Lund’s speed was really too quick and they were unable to catch up with him. They could only helplessly watch from the sidelines.
Minsk eyed the dark elf warrior before his eyes, but he also repeatedly cast sidelong glances at the archer tower. No move had been made by the magician yet. Anxiousness clawed at his heart.
‘Don’t tell me his mana is exhausted? Right, he’s so young, it should already be difficult to cast one ‘flame burst’. But he can’t lose!’
If this magician died, the morale of the human soldiers would really hit rock bottom and crumble into pieces.
It was just as before. The situation on the battlefield was all too clear to Minsk, but he was powerless to change it. His role seemed to be destined as an observer.
It was both painful and frustrating.
Annie’s movements were swift and succinct. She wielded her dagger, recklessly speeding towards the archer tower. Even if she could only trade her life for a tenth of a second, she was willing to make the sacrifice.
She did not owe her life simply once, but twice to Link.
However, her speed was far too lacking from the speed of a serious level 6 warrior’s charge.
In a blink, Lund had reached the bottom of the archer tower. The archer tower only stood at a height of 3 meters above the ramparts, nothing too impressive. Borrowing the power from his sprint, Lund leapt up, ‘blood glory’ blazing crimson rays of light in his hand.
Suspended in the air, Lund prepared to use his slash of warrior qi against the magician’s attacks.
In this moment, Link leapt off the archer tower. His movements were agile, like a feline cat.
Level 1 magic spell: Feline boost!
While suspended, Link cast another spell at the walls of the archer tower: Vector resistance forcefield.
“Thump.” The archer tower faintly trembled. The tremble propelled Link’s body outwards. Link’s body drew a graceful parabola in the air, rapidly retreating from the archer tower.
Until this conjunction, Link’s magic staff had been aimed at the archer tower. A blue hum begin to emit from the end of his magic staff as he cast a spell: Flame burst!
However, Lund who was within the sphere of the hailstorm could not detect Link’s movements. When Lund reached the top of the archer tower, he was met with a piercing glint of light.
A cerulean sword that sparkled like sapphire pierced towards him. The blade of the sword screamed like thunder because of its terrifying speed even before it hit Lund.
This sword had astonishing power!
“Wha-who’s this?!” Lund cried out with alarm, meeting the sword with blood glory.
“Ding!” The clash of blades rang out. Lund felt his wrist tremble, but the opponent’s sword was easily parried as he deflected it back to wherever it came from. In terms of strength, Celine was slightly inferior to him.
Lund broke out of the icy hailstorm, stepping onto the roof of the archer tower.
To him, the level 2 ‘second hailstorm’ was like normal hailstorm to him, totally incapable of penetrating his defense. Its sole use was to obstruct his field of vision.
‘Where’s the magician?’ Lund’s heart jolted.
What greeted him on the roof of the tower was not the figure of the magician, but a teenage girl whose beauty bordered on otherworldly. She gripped the previous sapphire sword he had parried previously.
“And who the hell are you?” Lund could not understand anything.
What met him was only silence as Celine casted the level 5 magic: obsidian ward. Because she was gifted, the magic spell was deeply imprinted in her memory. Her spell was cast almost instantaneously, forming within the tenth of a second. The powerful obsidian fortress materialised, safely shielding Celine.
Lund was dumbstruck. Hurling a sword at him before retreating to her tortoise shell? What games were they playing at? Or was this a new technique?
As time tarried away, 1.8 seconds was up.
A bolt of cerulean streaked past the night sky, accurately slamming into the archer tower.
“Boom!”
It was another ‘flame burst’.
Under the intense heat of the bolt, the archer tower was no more.
Debris exploded everywhere. In the confusion and chaos, two figures flew out from the ruined archer tower.
The first was Celine. Her ‘obsidian ward’ had blocked the vast majority of the ‘flame burst’. The remaining power of it had been effortlessly blocked by her demonic warrior qi. As for the shockwaves of the explosion, she had long been prepared to borrow it to widen the distance between Lund and her.
The second figure was Lund.
Faced with a ‘flame burst’ fired from point blank, he was forced to explode with warrior qi to resist the power of ‘flame burst’ again. A huge portion of his warrior qi was consumed in that hit.
While airborne, Lund could sense that the warrior qi in his body had been depleted to less than a third. He was alarmed.
His warrior qi could run out at any moment, and it was already insufficient to launch another assault on Glaston city. Otherwise, him dying in Glaston city after exhausting his warrior qi would be extremely probable.
If that happened, his name ‘Lund’ would go down as a source of shame to the dark elves in history.
As a warrior, he could die fighting, but he could not die receiving humiliation on this level.
As he was suspended in the air, he finally spotted the magician who had disappeared earlier.
Like him, the magician was airborne. However, he was about to land safely onto the ramparts instead.
The opponent was also staring at him. His sable pupils were unusually calm and tranquil, without a single fluctuation in his expression.
‘I can’t fight a magician like that who doesn’t know fear!’ All thoughts of killing the magician were abandoned.
However, the magician was not prepared to let him off that easily.
The cerulean glow at the tip of his magic staff quickly morphed into a sphere. While Lund was still airborne, a second ‘flame burst’ was cast. It bolted over 40 meters, shooting towards Lund.
What made Lund flabbergasted was that the path of the bolt was not straight. Instead, it drew sinuous paths in the air, rendering him unable to predict its movement.
“Fuck!”
He could not use the warrior qi slash because it consumed too much warrior qi.1 Once his warrior qi was depleted, it would be game over the second he got hit by another ‘flame burst’.
He was also unable to use his warrior qi slash because the distance between the magician and him was too far. They were separated by almost 50 meters of distance while the maximum range of his warrior qi slash was 30 meters.
Helpless, Lund could only put up his shell of warrior qi again.
“Boom!” The flame burst connected directly with Lund. The explosion of flames was like a fiery sun illuminating the dark battlefield.
Soaring in the air, Lund’s body shot out like an arrow, travelling over 60 meters before he finally tumbled onto the ground.
“Bang!” A painful sound almost as loud as the explosion shook the battlefield. Every time a ‘flame burst’ hit its mark, Lund would take some damage. This time, his warrior qi was exhausted after he defended against the second ‘flame burst’. As Lund crashed to the ground, he felt something sweet rush up from his throat. Lund coughed out blood weakly.
Dark elf soldiers had crowded around him. Upon seeing Lund cough up blood, their faces froze.
“Marshal, how are you?” Lund’s trusted aide stepped forward, preparing to help Lund up.
“I’m fine.” Lund refused his trusted aide’s help, standing up himself. However, this time, his movements were slower and painful and his voice was weak. He had not gotten off lightly this time.
Breathing in and out heavily, he scammed the walls of Glaston city.
The magician stood on the ramparts quietly.
The end of his magic staff flickered with dazzling speckles of flame. His garments gleamed with crystal-clear magic runes, his expression apathetic.
In this moment, the young magician seemed to be like a diety that had descended from the skies.
“How can my army of 20,000 be impeded with just one magician?” Lund was unreconciled.
At this moment, a loud bugle horn resonated throughout the battlefield.
It was from the south.
The sound was deep, yet it seemed to pierce into the hearts of everyone. Elation and excitement filled the hearts of all the human defenders while panic slowly sank into the hearts of the dark elves.
The darkest moments before daybreak had ended. A brilliant ray of gold emerged from the horizon as the sun steadily rose. The warmth of the cantaloupe disc bathed the human defenders in a shade of gold.
“Bing…Bing…Bing…” The tolls of Glaston clock tower rang out loudly. It was 5 o’clock.
The endless night had finally passed. Now, daylight had arrived.
“Retreat!”
Lund sighed. His tough and rigid temperament was gone. In place of it was bitterness and unwillingness.
The humans’ reinforcements had arrived!
-Chapter 27, end-
And there we go. End of arc 1. Quite a nice ending, chapter 28 features the morning after the battle and a new beginning. Although it wasn’t the ending i expected it was still better than quite some novels.
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