Rain of Fire!

Due to that ''hold person'' spell, even though Aren had great speed, he was still stopped for three seconds. With the fire barrier separating them, Aren couldn't reach near Fernando. Still, it wasn't as if he didn't have any way.

'Let's see what this can do...' Aren thought as he poured spiritual power into the enchanted yellow bracelet.

Earth Armor!

Just as he chanted the incantations for the spell, a sturdy armour formed of earth elements covered his body. It was one of the strongest earth elemental defensive spells of apprentice rank. Other than that, it also had another perk. Wearing this armour wouldn't affect the speed of the caster in any way.

Whoosh!

Aren directly jumped at the barrier after having the armour on his body. With that armour, although he did feel some heat, he didn't get any magical or burn damage from the fire. As expected, he was wise to choose a magical item with this spell.

Finding out that Aren passed through the barrier unscathed, Fernando was alarmed for the first time. It had to be known that with his spirit, which peered that of senior apprentices, the firebarrier was very congent and yet this hooded apprentice could easily pass it, making an earth armour.

This was only possible if that hooded apprentice also had spirit equal to his or even greater than his.

"Stephen?" Fernando probed but the answer he got was a force punch coming straight at his face.

"Shit!"

He cursed as he backed away and immediately cast another spell enchanted on the red robe.

"Flame chains activate!"

With his voice ranging out, thin but sturdy chains of fire materialized on the air, from the ground, from behind and from in front of Aren, quickly binding him to the place.

This was a restriction spell just like icing lock.

But, Aren didn't panic when he was tied down. He controlled his runic force to gather in the areas of his body where the chains binded him. Yes, he wanted to use runic force to escape from the binding.

Crack!

In about 10 seconds, the spell was already about to crack. The chains also couldn't hold him any longer and snapped afterwards. After being free, Aren could feel that there was some fire damage done on him by the chains.

However, he didn't have time to check them out because he caught a sight of Fernando holding his spellbook and rapidly casting some spell.

It seemed that he had already dealt with the fire on his spellbook with how he was now able to cast the spells.

"Rain of fire!"

As Fernando cast the last fire spell on his arsenal, the fire elements which were already scarce on this forest started flowing turbulently, gathering for the spell which the apprentice had cast.

Hearing the name of the spell, Aren's expression under his hood turned solemn. He knew how powerful and troublesome of a spell this was. Rain of fire, as the name implied was literally raining fire formed of large amounts of fire elements. It was an area of effect spell and maybe even the best spell among apprentices for mass murder.

In within less than half a minute, the darkening sky started burning yellow and red. Suddenly, burning fire started falling from the skies towards the grounds.

Due to him passing through the firebarrier and with him tied down by the flame chains, his ''earth armor'' had lost its effectiveness. The robe he was wearing only shielded him with illusion magic so the only spell he could use for defense was soil wall. But soil wall couldn't shield him with raining fire. Now the only thing he could do was...

Whoosh!

Run! Run like a madman on this battlefield and dodge as many fire rain as possible while casting probability change.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Aren once again turned into a phantasmal figure running in top speed. In the battle field, he was like a ghost, appearing from one place to another. There was also another strange thing happening. Wherever he went, that place ''coincidently'' seemed to have less fire raining which he with ''great luck'' managed to dodge.

Sizzle!

Even so, he still couldn't dodge all of them. Some amount of fire rain still fell on him, due to which his robe sometimes caught fire and the unprotected parts of body skin burned producing sizzling sounds.

After three minutes of non-stop raining, the spell finally ended. Aren looked around the surroundings only to find out that every thing in 50 meters radius of Fernando was burning. The bushes, the trees and even the ground was burning.

Aren looked at Fernando who was now in an exhausted state. This spell had taken a great toll on his spiritual power, almost emptying it.

Aren was not in a better state either. Getting free from the flame chains, rapid use of runic force all while continuous dodging of the torrential rain, his runic force was almost expended. In this state, it was better not to fight with an enemy like Fernando who could still possibly have another trump card up his sleeve.

"Who... huff... who are you? To actually be a rank 1 fighter and even an apprentice." The fire elemental apprentice Fernando asked warily. He had already found out that Aren was a fighter the moment he saw him executing a force punch. He just hadn't found an opportunity to ask eariler.

Contrary to his expectations, the hooded apprentice didn't give an answer and left without doing anything.

"I need to tell father about this when the test is over and find out who he is." Fernando murmured as he looked at the disappearing figure of Aren.

After Aren had walked for another hour, he finally heard the sounds of river water flowing. He had arrived at the river bank!

The sky was already dark at this point and bright stars had replaced the blazing sun. Aren found a hollow tree trunk which he, with some modifications, made his resting place for the night.

As the river was near, he caught some fish and made them his dinner. After he had finally finished filling his belly, he took out a healing potion and started tending his wounds.

Most of the wounds were burn marks from the flame chains and fire rain. He had already neutralised the elemental damage done to him by using runic force so the healing potion was very effective.

Today, he had done three battles and the last one was extremely intense. It seemed that in this test, other than monsters, there were still some apprentices who could pose threat to his life.