Chapter 71

Over enthusiasm and over eagerness, looking others who hail from smaller background in contempt, lack of experience in fights, taking Ranks and power on face value these were some of the reasons why Roger had his two subordinate Rank 2 mages to perform a head on attack using wide range bombardment spells earning a mental scorn from Voight who was planning to retreat, no, to be honest to escape the boundaries of Arcadia Kingdom.

Before preparing for this attack, after hearing that Roger was going to attack head on without any prior preparation or testing waters to check the opponent's power, Voight had made adequate arrangements to retreat. With his path of escape confirmed and having made his resolve to abandon the race to throne, Voight maintained a distance from Roger, while giving the reason of getting in the way of Roger and his subordinates during the battle earning the term 'coward' from Roger.

Hiding at a distance enough for Voight to use his spell eagle eye which could give him a direct view of a particular area for a specific period of time he decided to take a step back and enjoy the show. With his resolve already made, Voight stopped feeling pressure as he decided to let fate take control of his destiny instead of trying to fight it.

The two Rank 2 mages entered the vicinity of the snake palace and as per the orders of their boss, did a reckless wide range bombardment spell in an attempt to destroy everything and everyone around them. When the thought of bombardment comes to one, they would have the thought of explosions and fire. Similar was the thought process of these two Rank 2 mages.

The second they entered their range the two mages spread their arms and started chanting in mysterious tongue. This created great elemental/mana fluctuation as a huge magic circle with mysterious symbols formed encompassing the entire Snake castle.

The second they created such fluctuations the third Rank mage inside the castle Luther had already felt their presence. knowing their plan a sneer appeared on his face as he teleported before the palace to meet the hostiles whom he considered idiots for trying to attack head-on.

Despite the sneer Luther extended his hands and spread his mana to create a shield in order to block the attack and protect the castle as there were lot of warriors within and outside the castle.

From the magic circle extended by the two mages hundreds of fire whips sprouted aiming to strike every part of the castle.

'Flame tentacles!!' thought Luther as he too chanted in the mysterious tongue and within a moment a blue bubble encompassed the entire castle and it's surrounding area in a bid to protect them.

The flame tentacles clashed ruthlessly against the blue bubble which was a water elemental spell called 'water bubble' a defensive spell of Rank 2.

The water bubble's surface rippled with every hit from a tentacle and smoke rose from each hit as fire was being extinguished by the water bubble and steam rose from the surface of the water bubble as it's power rapidly waned from the fire.

The excess fire from each hit by the tentacle fell on the sides and as this manor was surrounded by thick trees of about 10 acres, the trees caught fire and spread rapidly.

Despite facing two times the power of a normal Rank 2 mage as there were 2 mages casting the spell, Luther was at ease showing the difference in terms of spiritual power between a Rank 2 and Rank 3 while also observing the man who was standing a few yards behind these two Rank 2 mages.

'A Rank 3 mage' thought both parties at the same time. Knowing that unless he made the move personally he cannot hope to defeat the opponent, Roger started to chant while thinking of taking the initiative to attack.

'As if I would let you do that' sneered Luther while looking at the greenhorn trying to cast a spell standing behind the two mages.

By this time all the warriors moved inside the castle knowing that staying outside was akin to death. Seeing his coast clear Luther emitted a powerful blow in the form of a strange energy.

The energy not only halted the process of casting the spell for Roger, he was also disoriented. The two mages were the ones who were most affected by this attack. Their spells directly detonated causing them to suffer backlash from stopping the spell midway.

"What the fuck was that?" shouted Roger while holding his head as it was making him nauseous. The two mages had blood flowing from their noses and were left with a splitting head ache.

'Hmph, kids who have not been to battlefield to refine magic techniques think they can fight me?' thought Roger as he twisted his arm and changed the form of the water bubble into water elements in shape of bullets and water thorns.

Roger felt chills while looking at this scene and hurriedly chanted a spell making a tome filled with earth element and covered every part of his body making him appear like a stone man.

The two mages were still recovering from the backlash that they failed to react on time and their magical barrier was left to face the full force of water thorns and bullets leaving them with gaping holes all over their bodies.

With the stone covered in every part of his body Roger was able to escape the wrath of the water bullets.

Being a Rank 2 mage the two mages had the means to save themselves and using their mana they casted healing spells to heal their wounds.

From the time Luther disrupted the concentration of the Mages by using a weird energy to the time he had used the same spell in two different ways had left Roger in the state of confusion by the blizzard tricks used by the opponent.

He did not know that the weird energy was called psyche blast which is a skill which a mage can use once they become skilled in spiritual energy control and gaining the ability to change the spiritual energy to different shapes. This was the difference between Sphinx which utilised their time to research and create new spell models while Iron and Blood sect uses already present spells and through battles learn new skills which were useful for gaining advantage over their opponents.

Some may think that isn't Iron and Blood sect's idea better as skills and battle techniques were more important than researching and creating new spell models. Well in fighting more skills and techniques can go a long way but there is a concept called spell model compatibility (Will be explained in later chapters).

The next technique utilised by Luther was elemental manipulation. This allows the mage to manipulate and change the shape of the element as if it was a new spell casted by the mage. However the drawback of this was apart from the requirement of a mage to be skilled in elemental control it is restricted to the previous element used.

In other words a water spell cannot be manipulated to a fire spell and can only be manipulated into another water spell and last but not the least it's restriction is also in terms of its fire power. In other words a Rank 2 spell of an element cannot be manipulated into a Rank 3 element. Infusion of more spiritual energy won't work as well as this was not a spell model.

On other hand the spell utilised by Roger was an upgraded version of Stone wall except this was his own spell and allowed him to infuse with elements into creating a Golem like body.

With two mages becoming pale from spiritual energy depletion and injury at spirit level it left with the final clash between two Rank 3 mages. The two mages made way for the two heavyweights to clash as air thickened.