The formation flickered to life, and soon enough was shining brightly.

The light caught the attention of the crowd, Cronix held back a smile when he saw the formation activate.

Just as planned.

Most of the crowd were confused as to why the light appeared, but not everyone was oblivious.

"That's a formation!" One of the miners shouted and with that shout, word easily spread. Cronix couldn't hold back his smile anymore, but he stayed silent and didn't reveal anything.

Williams with the energy sensing formation was able to sense all of the crystals in the surrounding ten feet, His eyes had a peculiar gleam in them.

He sighed in wonder, Formations really are something.

If Cronix knew the range that Williams could sense using the formation he would've been amazed. Williams managed to double the original five feet range!

Williams looked around him and extended his hands, spreading out the water element, into the stones around. He then quickly used some unknown technique to convert the water into ice.

All the stone in the surrounding ten feet of Williams now had ice growing off it and a few seconds later the ice expanded and shattered but along with it were the stones they were growing out of.

Within the rubble, twenty magic crystals were revealed, which resulted into the gasps of everyone. Cronix's eyes also had a peculiar gleam to them.

His interest wasn't caused by the reveal of crystals, but by the spell, or more specifically the ice caused by the spell.

This spell was a self created spell by Williams, but the method he used to create the ice was from another method, and while Cronix didn't know this, he got a weird feeling from this ice.

Arthur's attention was also drawn over, before he wasn't paying any attention to what's going on with Williams, so he didn't see the formation.

But after hearing the gasps of the crowd and the shattering of ice, he had no choice but to look over.

The first thing he saw when he looked towards Williams' area were the crystals. Arthur paused for a moment, if this pile was of Williams' overall crystals then Arthur wouldn't care, but this was from a single spell.

It was then when he saw the energy sensing array, and Arthur's confusion was replaced with anger, "Blake you hypocrite! How could you use a formation during our competition?!"

Williams sneered, "I don't know what you're talking about, wasn't it you who said all that matters is the one who turns it in, not how they got it?"

"You!" Arthur never would have expected Blake to use a formation, he always thought that Blake was a just and fair guy, so he was caught off guard when he used the formation.

Williams looked at the formation in his hands with an amazed look.

"Maybe I shouldn't have judged too quickly." Williams didn't waste anymore time, he moved to another section of the mine, and did the same thing to that area.

Wherever Williams went that area was destroyed and all the crystals striped.

"At this rate, the eastern tunnel is going to become a dead vein." Ryan muttered.

Cronix frowned, he had to agree with Ryan, if this continued the fourth level's eastern vein would become just like the third's.

"Don't worry the formation is about to explode." And just like Cronix said, the formation showed signs of collapsing, but how could Williams allows that happen?

Williams felt the magic inside the formation becoming unstable, but instead of panicking, he infused more magic inside, he controlled it in a way that forcefully stabled the magic flow for the time being.

Cronix's eyes widened, he was speechless, he turned to Ryan, "You... You can do that?"

Ryan could only shrug, he knew less about formations than Cronix, how could he know?

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Williams didn't pay any attention to Cronix and continued mining. He knew that although he'd stabled the formation, it'll only last for about one more minute.

He made sure to use that time wisely, he now already had almost double Arthurs amount of magic crystals, but his goal was to completely double Arthur's crystals in this last minute.

With his constant moving around and mining, he easily reached his goal, but at the same time, the formation became unstable again and not even Williams infusing his magic could stabilize it.

Without any stability the formation exploded.

With the explosion of the formation there was only ten minutes left in the competition and Williams' previous despair was completely gone, but Arthur was the complete opposite.

Arthur had a dark expression on his face, and he was constantly cursing while he mined. Cronix looked at the scene,

It seems like I overestimated Mr. Mott, but that doesn't matter, giving it to Mr. Williams was a good choice.

Arthur gathered the earth elements and used a technique to integrate them into his eyes. His eyes soon began to shine with an amber light and he could vaguely detect some of the magic crystals and other materials in the mine.

One could say that this spell was similar to the energy sensing array, and in a sense they would be correct.

In reality this spell had the potential to be vastly superior to the energy sensing array but when comparing Arthur's understanding of the spell, to the already complete energy sensing array, the spell was inferior.

While Arthur's speed did increase it was already too late, and time was running out.

If he used the spell early it probably would have helped more but even then, Arthur just learned this spell so it still drained a lot of magic.

The remaining time quickly passed by and the three hours were all up.

Williams held a shocking total of three hundred compared to Arthur's total of one hundred forty. "It seems like I won this competition, I hope you don't go back on your word."

Arthur wore a bitter smile and looked at Williams, "Don't worry Blake, I have never gone back on my word. I just never expected you to use a formation."

Williams chuckled and said, "I didn't expect this either, I was gifted this by that little fellow over there with the cloak." Arthur looked at Cronix with his surprise, and he began sizing Cronix up.

He wasn't the only one surprised, the other miners also looked at Cronix with surprise. The guy they thought was a scammer, was actually telling the truth with the things he was trying to sell.

Ryan backed away from Cronix, he didn't feel too comfortable with all the stares coming this way.

Arthur approached Cronix, he naturally noticed the mysterious cloaked figure with the catlike eyes before, but he didn't think much of the Caster stage boy.

Arthur stood in front of Cronix, the crowd stepped a few steps back to give them more space,"I'll give you twenty-five magic crystals if you tell me where you got the formation."

Arthur knew there were formations in the village's market but they were extremely expensive and not something an average miner could buy, even when working five years in the mines.

Cronix accepted the crystals with no hesitation, and casually said "I created them."

Arthur laughed like he just heard a joke, "Seriously, where did you get the formation?"

Cronix frowned when he heard the laughter, "I'm telling the truth, I really did create the formation."

Arthur looked more than a bit irritated, "Do you think I'm an Idiot? You're only in the Caster stage, how could you create formations?" Arthur didn't even seem to consider if Cronix was really telling the truth.

To Cronix, it was obvious that Arthur knew nothing about formations, if he did, he wouldn't think formations were based in magic.

Cronix looked at Arthur calmly but under that calm exterior he was getting angry, Arthur was blatantly looking down on him.

Cronix didn't say anything, he left Arthur behind and approached Williams.

Arthur now looked furious at Cronix, he didn't seem to believe him at all, and if Cronix was lying that meant that Cronix basically lied to Arthur's face and stole his crystals.

A Core Creation aura started to leak out of Arthur's body, Cronix suddenly felt like he was trying to carry a boulder, and his arms felt like they were being shredded.

"Mr. Mott, what do you intend to do?" Cronix asked calmly, he could barely withstand it with his five star Caster strength.

The only reason he was able to find the will to talk was because his bipolar pendant, that he hadn't felt in more than a year, was supplying the calming energy.

"You lie to me while taking my crystals, do you expect me to just stand here and let it happen?" With that said, Arthur increased the pressure on Cronix's body.

Cronix no longer felt like he was carrying a boulder, but a mountain, under all this weight his knees buckled, Soon enough he was on the floor.

He was probably about to pass out when he heard a sigh near him. The pressure on his back suddenly lessened tremendously.

Arthur's face darken, "Blake, why are you interfering?" Williams also released his Core Creation aura, counteracting Arthur's.

"He answered your question yet you say he's stealing from you. How could I not interfere right after he just helped me?"

That wasn't the only reason he was interfering, he also felt bad about assuming Cronix was only a scammer.

"You can't really be telling me that you actually believed him?" Arthur asked, his voice filled with disbelief.

Williams looked at Arthur with disgust, "Acting like an idiot and trying to steal from someone so young, you really don't have any shame."

This time it wasn't only Williams who was disgusted, but also the whole crowd of miners who were watching. They could see what Arthur was trying to do, and it was very shameless.

Before Arthur could respond, Cronix took out a formation, the formation had 12 lines, but one of the lines broke off from the rest and it led off the paper, an obvious mistake in the structure.

But regardless of the mistake, it was still very complex, and Cronix knew it wasn't going to work, but that's why he took it out.

Cronix managed a grim smile at the thought, he threw out the formation and activated it. Immediately an explosion occurred.