Archsage Andrew immediately teleported away to random coordinates in the air, all in quick succession, the Fae Queen simply stepping into view at each destination.

  The Fae Queen could obviously still see a decent bit into the spirit realm, and this meant that his teleportations were quite clear for the ferocious goddess.

  However, Andrew was not completely stupid, and had summoned a single rat at each teleported destination, causing several falling furry messes to take his place in the air.

  And with a simple snap of his fingers, he used his teleportation contract to send 7 of his fingertips directly into the stomachs of his rats.

  It wouldn’t do him any good to keep wasting his spirit contractee’s energy with continuous rounds of teleportation.

  With his fingers growing out of its sockets enthusiastically on the next blink, Andrew tapped his staff against the air, creating the flesh of the rats to squirm and morph into small golden balls.

  Then, with another tap of his staff, he summoned 7 of his remaining golems to fuse with the newly formed balls, creating 7 rat-golems with 4 rings now.

  On his next blink, he would teleport these golems into different coordinates.

  And what emerged from geometric lines decorating the air were 8 versions of himself.

  However, the replicas were not perfect, with blurred edges clearly showing their illusory nature.

  He had used the soul shapes infused earlier into the golems to continuously carry out illusions derived from water magic at a crude level.

  However, in the chaos of battle, and with his soul being more directly imbued and connected across his duplicates, it was enough to give the Fae Queen pause.

  “Hmm…” The Fae Queen considered, Her spear slashing through the mirage of one of the fake Andrews, not quite managing to land a hit on its rodent core.

  With a maniac smile, the Fae Queen stepped sideways once more, this time appearing once more in front of the hotel.

  With Her step, another pillar of stone and dirt erected from the ground, and its glow once again caused the battlefield to light up in a frightening manner.

  “Makat” She commanded.

  The world around the Queen blurred, creating ripples in space itself.

  Then, She simply took another step forward. But the blurring figure didn’t shift from Her place at all.

  She had duplicated into… two… then three… then four… then a dozen…

  Simulacrums. The much more advanced version of Andrew’s spell, and also a forbidden spell reserved for mostly just really hare brained mages.

  The figures blurred as they stepped off their metallic perch, reappearing as smiling horrors hundreds of meters away in milliseconds.

  All Andrews looked incredibly displeased at this sight as around a hundred copies of the Queen now appeared all over the sky, chasing after him and his duplicates.

  One by one, the rat-cores of his decoys broke, shattering in an explosion of mana which merely bent past the Fae Queen and her own duplicates.

  And Andrew was finally out of options.

  It was time for his trump card.

  ???

  Archsage Livia almost laughed aloud at the sight of the duplicating Queens.

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  It seemed that She was being pushed to act a little more desperately!

  Orrrr maybe She was just insane.

  It didn’t quite matter for Archsage Livia.

  The Archsage commanded another volley of fireballs to continue their barrage at the hotel, as well as towards the newly formed foes in the air.

  One of those fireballs was bound to slip through the cracks of the Queen’s warding in due time, and that would immediately de-anchor the hotel from the barrier. Crude, but probably effective and efficient.

  And honestly, they looked great in the night sky.

  She faded from the shadows once again, this time hundreds of meters up in the air, looking down at the sight of a hundred maniac dots chasing after Andrew like dogs.

  Gods truly were pathetic.

  She first flicked her wand against the rising air, creating a pulse of heat to radiate downwards.

  She then pointed her wand straight up into the air, and muttered a spell into the cold and smoky air with pleasure.

  “Esto fomes” She commanded, as she suddenly stopped her falling and got jerked up by the sudden change in her momentum.

  3 of her devils were summoned as part of this spell, each one and their flickering bodies reaching into mana to perform the next displays of magic behind her.

  They looked absolutely ominous in the background, signalling the darkness itself to kneel.

  The wand fixed itself in position mid-air, leaving the Archsage dangling by her hand on its ivory grips.

  Letting go of the wand with her trademark smile, the Archsage gave her most beloved command.

  “Burn”

  ???

  With a snap of his fingers, Archsage Andrew summoned his most prized possessions, wasting another 5 teleportations.

  His dragons leapt into the air, fading into existence from the illusory sketch of lines in the air.

  There were 5 summoned in total. Each one having taken a LOT of effort to get his hands on.

  They were all Elder Dragons, who were almost a mythical creature when it came to magical beasts of Teotlcan. Each was at least a thousand years old, had magic beyond any other dragon subspecies, and also, horrendously rare and difficult to take care of.

  Try buying enough high quality potions to treat the injuries of these magical creatures, and one would inevitably send their accountants and assistants to therapy sessions or an asylum.

  Andrew loved these creatures dearly. More so than any other creatures he kept in his possession. Although it was disputable if they loved him back, these were literally mythical creatures and it would be ridiculous not to fall in love with them.

  They were all very expensive, very useful, and not very tame.

  Archsage Andrew teleported onto the backs of one of his beloved dragons, remembering to protect his feet in the process.

  This particular dragon had been acquired from an auction in the Southern continent. At least, the hunting rights had been…

  The moment that he managed to land on the back of his dragon, numerous different variants of the Fae Queen popped into existence all around the dragons, with a few finally breaking the last of the rat-cores.

  However, the dragons merely stepped into the spirit realm, phasing away from existence right under Her noses.

  Gracefully emerging from the ripples in space much further away, Archsage Andrew sighed internally, sending his instructions to all of his pets with magic.

  Avoid injuries at any cost!

  ???

  The wave of heat made a touchdown across the city, almost unnoticeable due to how thin its temperature had spread through the journey.

  However, the spell was never meant to affect real harm on the various clones of the Fae Queen.

  Instead, it was meant to add ‘oxygen’ to the burning fires raging under the iron lids of the Fae Queen.

  Glowing golden threads sprouted once more from the debris under the iron and obsidian circles in the rubble, brushing themselves against the mana infused lids of the Fae Queen.

  Soon, all across the ruined city, the glow of melting iron started to decorate the rubble in a landscape reminiscent of starlights across a night sky as green sprout started to once again peek and gather rubble to reform into golems.

  However, the main event was yet to come.

  Archsage Livia was falling backwards through the air, her hands spread out and her cloak fluttering all around her figure and sketching her feminine outline as she admired her incoming spell.

  With a single thought, the archsage summoned her staff, crafted painstakingly to suit her to perfection.

  Its design reminiscent of a shepherd’s crook, the staff was awe-inspiring to look at.

  Its dangling charms catching the glint of the moonlight that had now started to rise over the eastern mountain ranges, and its perfect ignivite engravings filled with geometric patterns complex enough to make a head spin.

  And one by one, the charms started to glow with mana, assisting Livia with her magic.

  All of the countless units of mana within a 200 meter vicinity of the ivory wand left in the air just moments before were introduced to its intricate carvings, and manipulated deftly with the Archsage’s staff.

  As the Archsage fell, she could see the wand start to warm up, sending a wave of an ozone smell all the way down towards her.

  And when she was done, she took the luxury of turning back towards the ground, and gazing down at the fight between the countless little figures for just a second.

  It seemed that the Queen was… distracted.

  Archsage Livia smiled once more, even wider and yet more sinisterly, as the chains of her monocle danced in the moonlight maniacally.

  She faded into the darkness, and she knew at that moment that the Commission had eked out another win against the divine.