Bel looked at the ships surrounding them, a strange calm coming over him. The fog that he had conjured fell back as he took back the mana, calling on other powers instead.

"Fire the fire cannons." he ordered.

"The cannons are easily countere-" the Garron family representative began.

"Just do it." How irritating. Bel knew that the representative meant well, but he was tired of humans presuming he didn't know what he was doing. This might be his last battle. There was next to no chance he would live more than a few months after this.

Even if the Garron family representative hesitated, his people did not. The ships let out huge gouts of fire, heading towards the Fringe ships. The entire pirate group must have gathered here. Bel could vaguely sense the other Adept out there, but he was slippery. Hiding himself among his people. Using them as cannon fodder.

A wall of water erupted from the ship as the Adept countered the attacks. Bel took the chance. A bolt of lightning emerged from his hands, splitting the Adept’s ship in two. Of course, he didn't die. An Adept didn't die easily. But this did expose him.

Now, Bel could fight him head on.

"Strovn has command." Bel said. "I will deal with the enemy Adept."

A few more bolts of lightning left him, splitting ships into two as he chased after the fleeing Adept. A coward that was using his subordinate’s lives to reduce Bel's mana. But it wouldn't work.

If Bel was the kind to fall for such a cheap trick, he wouldn't have survived a century in the Elves continent. The lightning bolts barely took any mana from him. The target was the ships, not the Adept. As soon as the coward thought he had exhausted Bel enough, he would come to him to fight.

But he wouldn't block Bel until then. The fight continued until he had destroyed seven ships, splitting them apart in one after the other.

A darkish mana circled him, appearing behind him.

"I must say, I did not expect there would still be someone this powerful that I hadn't heard of." the man said.

A beautiful man by all means. Bel would even say that he could pass for an Elf or Fae. The man's black hair fell down onto his red eyes, reminding Bel of the Mad King. But the resemblance ended there. The Mad King would have tried to kill him by now. This man was dawdling.

The water rose under him, coiling as it fell under a silent struggle between two wills. Bel's and his enemies’.

A black dagger headed toward him, shooting as fast as his lightning had shot before. Bel shot it down, replying with lightning. The man dodged, flickering into the weird shadowy form again as he circled Bel.

“Tell me, what is your name?”

Bel did not answer, instead calling on the power of nature. The power was similar to the Druid's in many ways. After all, the source of the two was the same. The wind answered his call, more hesitantly than lightning or water, but it answered him just the same.

The water, still under contest by their two wills, began to move under the influence of the wind. A hurricane appeared around him, powered by his will and mana.

"Oh my, you're actually using so much mana?! How delightful" the man said, laughing as he disappeared from his place.

"Well, well. This shall be an enjoyable fight."

Bel just kept the same smile on his face. If he got provoked by a youngling like this, then he would have wasted the last five hundred years of his life. And he didn't have anymore to waste.

The hurricane continued to rage, and the man continued to taunt him, not attacking, just waiting. An assassin type, then. What exactly was an assassin doing, being a pirate? A pirate fought on the open sea, not the shadows where an assassin thrived.

If this were an enclosed room, then Bel was sure he would have a much harder time detecting and fighting this man. Perhaps he might even have died. An assassin did not exactly declare their presence when they entered.

The man finally lost his patience, attacking with his entire power. Bel stopped him. Lightning combined with water and air, slamming into the man as it attempted to kill him.

And at the same time, a black shadow slid towards him, like a dagger about to end his life, but at the speed of light.

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Strovn.

Strovn was not overwhelmed. No, he couldn't be. The Elder was busy fighting with the enemy Adept, and he'd already destroyed most of the enemy formations. There was no way that he could fail at simply protecting the ships for the Elder. But doing it was harder than he had thought.

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The pirates didn't seem to care for their ships or their comrades, going as far as to collide with each other to land an attack on their ships. But Strovn could not do the same. There were a few ships without cargo, but most of them had huge amounts of highly combustible and easily spoiled food in them.

"Draw them away!" he yelled, forcing the water to push the pirate's ships away as a few of their ships with fewer cargos separated from the fleet. The pirates, predictably, went for the sacrifice. The weaker targets were too attractive to them.

"Now!" Strovn yelled, making water shoot upwards into the leading pirate' ship's hulls. A few attacks followed, gouts of flame taking three more ships, and seven falling to the attacks of various Master stages on their side. But it was not without cost.

A sacrifice ship had fallen, taking a ton of food with him. At least the sailors should have escaped. The ships were driven remotely by mana. A little trick of the Garron family that was useful in situations like this.

"Don't falter!" he yelled, calling on mana to attack again. "Fire at will!"

Mana leapt into the air as hundreds, no, thousands of attacks sailed onto the enemy ships. But it was once more not without cost.

The pirates had a sacrificial streak of their own. The remaining twelve ships fell one after the other, but each unloaded its entire ammunition onto his fleet. Strovn protected the fleet proper, their vastly superior defenses and numerical advantage proving decisive.

But the other two ships that had separated fell. Taking another ten tons of food with them. Not to mention the loss of three ships. Strovn's heart ached at the loss. The ships were quite advanced. Making more would cost more than he would earn in a decade.

At least the pirates should have bounties on them. And loot that could hopefully be recovered from the bottom of the sea.

----------------------------------------

Bel called upon his defenses, but was unable to stop the attack completely. There was no way he would have been able to. The shadow mana was just too hard for his powers to counter. The less the mana had to do with nature, the less his power worked on them.

A Druid would simply use pure mana to counter it, but he didn't have that ability. A fault of his partial Elven heritage, he simply did not inherit that ability.

The fight wasn't over yet. The man had been flung into the sea, taking more damage than Bel, but he was far from dead.

Mana swirled within as water transformed into a whirlpool, rising into the sky as it headed towards him. Bel dodged, swiping bolts of lightning as he tried to avoid the suction. This would be a battle for time. The man must have some sort of artifact that made him resistant to the lightning. But if Bel fell into it, then he would die.

A flash of pain stabbed into his side as his old body protested the movement. A sigh of regret passed through him. If this were still twenty years ago, and he was able to handle channeling even fifty percent of his mana…then this man wouldn't stand a chance. But that time was long gone. There was no need for him to sigh in regret now, it wouldn't change a thing.

The lightning bolts continued to fly between them as they struggled. Bel called on the wind, rotating it into the whirlpool in the opposite direction to reduce the whirlpool's flow. The man called on more mana.

The bastard actually had a better affinity for water than his strange shadowy element. But his usage was coarse. Bel was sure that he did not have a manual for it, these moves were simply him moving mana around instead of using a manual's powers or a Skill.

"Are you done yet, old man?" the man said, calling on water once more. A desperate push. An idiotic one, even. There was no way he could kill Bel. But the man had clearly been angered by something.

The destruction of his ships? No, he did not seem to care for them before. And he could easily make a new group if he escaped. If he wanted, he could even swear loyalty to some Empire. Bel was sure most of them would be happy to take a man like this in. So what had made him so angry?

Three daggers of shadow shot towards him, nearly killing him while he was distracted. Oh dear, he'd grown careless in his old age. This was no way to fight.

Bel called on more wind, lacing it with electricity as he called on as much mana as he could. A slight groan emerged from the whirlpool, muffled by the water but still audible to his ears. The artifact was breaking. Bel added more mana.

The man reacted this time. The whirlpool broke apart as shadowy wisps began to coalesce. The shadow energy began to seep into the water, almost merging as it began to turn into something different.

Bel moved to block it, interfere with it, but once again his inability to wield pure mana hindered him. There was no way for him to stop the man, there was no element in his arsenal that could phase him.

The power turned to him, twisting as shriveling as it shot towards him, the attack clearly incomplete. A desperate final blow.

Bel dodged, the attack twisting to target him again. But it lost some of its coherence. Had the attack been complete, it would perhaps have ended him. Or at least forced him to use his full power, which would also have killed him. But this was not enough.

A series of dodges later, he counterattacked. The attack fell apart as he called on the water to swallow the shadow, destroying it from within. The water resisted for a few seconds, but Bel felt a fatigue there. And then, it stopped. The shadowy wisps disappeared, and he let go of the water. The man had disappeared. The water fell down into the ocean without any will supporting it.

Bel stared at where the man used to be, wondering if he was really dead. There had been no teleportation, and there was no one hiding in the air. The man must have died with the shadowy wisps. Or had he?

Bel sighed as he turned back, his knees popping as he relaxed. Flashes of pain spread throughout his body now that the battle was over. A headache threatened his mind, his legs flared with such vigor that he was tempted to cut them off.

The fight had taken more out of him than he had thought. Perhaps he should - an arrow swept past his ear as he suddenly dodged, his body screaming in protest at the sudden action, turning back as quickly as he could as he stared at an illusion falling away.

An illusion of light that had blocked his vision. And the scene before him did not look good at all. In fact, it looked quite deadly.

This would be his last battle after all.

"Verde Islar Elvorum Giarnal Meari." he chanted, calling on his power as he took a deep breath.

An Elf of Nature lives for the good of all.

The motto of his lineage, and what, he had decided, would be his final words.