Chapter 88: A Battle of Two (Part 3)

  "It's impossible for elves to control fire attacks so well. Those two attacks must have been from that human boy you mentioned earlier. It seems he's not dead." The Necromancer said to his companion. He waved his hand, and the blood mist scattered by the explosion's shockwave immediately condensed again, restoring the magic circle to its original form.

  "Really not dead?" The old Necromancer narrowed his somewhat blurry old eyes and looked down at the ground, but at such height, people were just tiny dots. "I should have hit him with a Thunderblast Bomb earlier." He sat on the back of a gargoyle's neck. The gargoyle howled and flapped its wings, leaving the circle and flying downward. "I'll go down to protect you. You continue controlling this to burn down Whispering Woods, and kill that troublesome boy while you're at it."

  The Necromancer controlling the magic circle looked down at the tiny black figures below, thought for a moment, sighed, and nodded as if having made some decision. He said to himself, "Fine, let's kill him then."

  As soon as the light curtain restored, the focus immediately returned to its original position. The numerous elves within the light circle only had time to let out half a scream before they all turned pitch black in the dazzling light in the blink of an eye.

  Ethan, dragging Luya as he rolled away, had just stood up when he immediately saw the dazzling light swaying toward them. He forcefully pushed Luya away and leaped in another direction.

  Even though it passed at a distance from him, the high temperature of the light circle's focus had already set Ethan's hair on fire.

  But just as he stood up after rolling a few times on the ground, covered in dust and dirt, he saw the swaying light circle wobbling as if moving toward him again.

  Ethan was both shocked and frightened. The reason he wasn't directly hit earlier wasn't because he dodged quickly, but because the Necromancer hadn't controlled it well. Dodging was almost meaningless under such an attack.

  The dazzling focus flickered and swayed, like a living sun dancing on the blackened scorched earth. Precisely tracking a target with the focus was not a simple matter, and the Necromancer was struggling to control it.

  This magic circle, condensed from the flesh and blood essence of thousands of people, was by no means comparable to the one Sedros had cast in the Barbarian Highlands. Although the sunlight here wasn't as intense as on the highlands, the circle formed by the gargoyles was as large as Whispering Woods itself, gathering more than ten times the amount of light. Just looking at the illuminated area for a couple of seconds was unbearable for the eyes. If this continued, even if he didn't die, he would go blind.

  Repeating the previous trick was merely a temporary solution, not addressing the root cause. Ethan looked up and saw that the circle formed by the gargoyles was still rotating. This circle must be what kept the magic array from dispersing in the air. Attacking this was the fundamental solution.

  A fireball so massive it could hardly be called a "ball" roared up from the ground and flew toward the gargoyles in the air. Such a low-level magic, without the high concentration that comes from magical resonance, its enormous size already fully indicated the violent energy contained within.

  A gargoyle that had broken away from the circular formation flew toward the fireball. The old Necromancer riding on it just casually waved his hand, and the fireball's trajectory immediately shifted, grazing the gargoyle as it flew into the sky, growing smaller and smaller.

  The small leaping sun on the ground swept past him again, not far from his body. Ethan cried out in agony. He could feel as if the skin all over his body had been cut by a red-hot knife. The smell of burning in the air grew stronger, because it was the smell of his own skin. But he didn't move. The opponent's attack was also completely inaccurate, and moving randomly might make it easier to be hit.

  "Get away from here!" Ethan shouted to Luya not far away. She was futilely searching for survivors among the pile of charred elven corpses. Her silver hair and face were covered in black ash, mixed with tears, smearing her beautiful face into a mess.

  But after hearing Ethan's shout, instead of leaving, she took a few steps closer and chanted in Elvish. A green light gently brushed over Ethan's body, and the pain on his body immediately began to lessen.

  Ethan took a deep breath of the scorching hot air that felt like it could cook his lungs, and gripped his right wrist with his left hand. "Boom!" He was knocked to the ground by the recoil of his own spell, with dust flying all around him.

  This was still the most basic fireball spell, but there was no fireball, at least not visibly. Only a dark red shadow extended from the ground to beneath the gargoyle ridden by the Necromancer in the blink of an eye. This shot wasn't aimed at the gargoyles forming the circle; he had to first deal with this opponent responsible for defense.

  "Good." The Necromancer's praise was still as desolate as before. This time, he didn't act casually but with the ease of lifting something heavy. He opened his hands and pressed them toward the magic that had already transformed into a fire shadow. The rapidly rising fire seemed to have plunged into a quagmire filled with glue paste, immediately slowing down and reverting to a fireball. Although the fireball continued to rise, it seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the invisible quagmire, growing slower and slower. When it was less than three meters away from the gargoyle, it almost came to a stop. The Necromancer raised his hands, and the fireball let out an unwilling roar, turned a corner, and flew back into the sky, disappearing.

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  The light circle trembled and swept across the ground again, this time a bit farther from Ethan. It seemed controlling it wasn't a simple matter, but Ethan didn't feel relieved. Instead, he felt a chill down his back. That last attack had indeed been his full effort, but that Necromancer had deflected it effortlessly.

  He was giving his all with almost every attack, but the intercepting Necromancer didn't directly confront his magic at all. Controlling a small magic like wind pressure was just a drop in the ocean for a top-tier magician like the Necromancer with his vast magical power. His magical power could even recover between breaths. Even if he wanted to rely on the Sunwell's magic replenishment to wear down his opponent, it was just wishful thinking. Besides, he didn't have that time at all.

  Escape, he suddenly thought. Facing an unavoidable attack from hundreds of meters in the air, with an opponent whose magical level was worlds apart from his专门 defending, how could he fight?

  No, he couldn't escape. There was no escape. The Necromancer above only needed to change the direction of the light circle, and the focus on the ground could cover a thousand miles in an instant. And if he revealed the direction of his escape, he was even more likely to be hit.

  Ethan forced himself to concentrate, and three fireballs flew toward three gargoyles in three different directions.

  The Necromancer high in the air shook his head, disappointed with this triple shot that even advanced magicians couldn't achieve. He waved his hands in a dance-like motion, and the three fireballs, like obedient little animals, immediately turned in three different directions.

  The small sun representing death and destruction flickered and jumped more intensely on the ground, as the Necromancer controlling the air magic circle continued to adjust it.

  "Run quickly!" Ethan shouted to Luya. "We'll run in different directions." He had finally fallen into despair.

  Luya was still standing there dazed. Ethan rushed up, picked her up, and threw her out. Then he turned and ran in the opposite direction.

  Before he could run far, Ethan's vision suddenly filled with brightness, as the entire world was completely replaced by this immense light. In the last moment he could see, he saw that everything within dozens of meters around him was filled with light.

  The Necromancer controlling the light no longer bothered to figure out how to capture his figure with a focus of five to six meters in diameter. Instead, he directly expanded the focus to nearly a hundred meters, directly enveloping him within it.

  Expanding the focus meant dispersing the light and heat, but this was already enough. The difference between gathering light from a radius of two to three li into a focus of five to six meters versus one hundred meters wasn't significant when it came to the human body. It would still dry out and burn anything with moisture, just taking a few more seconds instead of an instant.

  Ethan's eyes had already gone dark after sensing the excessive brightness. He raised his hands to cover them, but only to prevent them from bursting. The heart-piercing pain lasted only a few seconds. Once the nerves on the surface were burned, he could feel nothing at all. He seemed to be screaming, but he couldn't hear it—probably even his vocal cords and throat were charred. What he smelled in his nose was the stench of his own hair, skin, and muscles burning.

  Purely on instinct, Ethan stumbled toward the Sunwell. He no longer knew anything, only that fire filled even his insides, that lava flowed in his veins, and that his internal organs were about to explode like firecrackers. He only knew there was water there, and he needed water.

  With his last ounce of will, he controlled his nearly cooked muscles and rushed to the edge of the Sunwell, tumbling headfirst into it.

  The Necromancer high in the air, controlling the air magic circle, saw Ethan plunge headfirst into the Sunwell and immediately narrowed the light's focus to target the Sunwell's position. When he was burning the elves earlier, he had discovered that focusing the light on the Sunwell was always particularly easy, unlike the difficulty of focusing on other places. He simply narrowed the focus further, completely concentrating it on the Sunwell, which was less than three to four meters in diameter. He not only wanted to roast the target to char and burn it to ash but also wanted to directly use this light to evaporate and destroy the Sunwell.

  In the shadow, the enormous funnel-shaped light curtain now projected all the sunlight that originally illuminated the entire Whispering Woods onto the Sunwell. It was already a dazzlingly bright area, with even the rocks by the well reflecting dazzling light, as if that were the real sun.

  The Necromancer looked at the bright spot that was dazzling even from his height and nodded in satisfaction. Nothing could withstand such an attack. Even if it were a river, it would only be dried up; if it were a fortress cast of steel, it would only be melted.

  Whether the well water was hot or cold, or whether there was even any well water left, Ethan no longer knew. None of his senses were intact anymore, and he was blind. But he could feel the light, the light that seemed to completely penetrate his body like crystal. This light not only penetrated him but also seemed to bend, spiral, and wind inside the well before pouring back into his body. His body was already full of light, and after filling him, this light wanted to leak out again. He felt as if he were about to burst, with the light gushing out from every pore of his already burned body.

  "Hmm?" Under such illumination, the Sunwell didn't seem to have any special reaction. The Necromancer was just finding this strange when he suddenly heard a thunderous rumbling sound. He looked up at the sky, which was still completely cloudless. The rumbling was actually coming from the ground.

  He looked down and saw a red thing as large as a small hill rising from there.

  "Run quickly!" The Necromancer below the magic circle didn't even bother with his gargoyle. He flew up as fast as an arrow himself, grabbed his companion's hand. The latter half of his words was drowned out by the rumbling sound, and his usually indifferent face was actually filled with terror.

  The enormous thing below seemed to rise slowly, but this was just an illusion formed in comparison to its volume. Finally, its lower end had separated from the Sunwell, revealing itself as an immense fireball. The entire sky trembled under the vibration of this unimaginable magical power.

  The two Necromancers didn't command the gargoyles, nor did they fly away. They held each other's hands tightly and simultaneously chanted a spell that even they themselves could not hear.

  The gargoyle below, abandoned by the Necromancer, had already touched the surface of the enormous fireball. Its huge, hard body now seemed like it was made of paper, silently shattering, disintegrating, and being submerged without a trace in the turbulent waves of converging magical power. The enormous fireball wasn't hindered in the slightest and in an instant had risen beneath the magic circle formed by the gargoyles.

  Just at the moment when the fireball was about to contact the magic circle, the figures of the two Necromancers disappeared simultaneously. They didn't use flight magic but had actually used the extremely dangerous Forbidden Spell of spatial transference to teleport themselves away.

  The sky shattered. This was the common description used by all residents of Aery afterward for that terrifying moment.

  The sound of the enormous explosion could be heard even in towns hundreds of miles away. In several villages near Whispering Woods, nearly half of the houses were toppled by the shockwave. Centered on Whispering Woods, countless trees, the broken limbs left by the cultists, black ash, and charcoal filled the sky, scattering along with fragments of stone statues and flames across a radius of dozens of miles, like a rain of death. About half of the followers of the God of Nature who had already fled home or were in the process of escaping had their ears temporarily deafened by the blast.

  Almost everyone in Aery thought this was the arrival of the apocalypse.

  In the historical records of Aery, whether it was the strange forest, the heresy of the God of Nature, the bizarre stone statues that appeared around, or the rebellion of tens of thousands of cultists on this day, the strange celestial phenomena, and the strange fire in the forest—all the turmoil and changes were completely ended and vanished in this explosion that nearly shattered all of Aery.