“Riftmire. Let’s talk for a moment,” Officer Stanhope called out to her.
The curly-haired woman paused her magic as she heard her name, and shattered her half-formed mana-circles before she came over. She studied him for a moment.
“I see you have yet to completely deal with the fire issue,” she remarked dryly.
“Don’t get me started on- wait.” He hesitated. “Yet?”
She gestured to his hair, which happened to be trailing smoke. He put a hand on his head and scowled as his palm smothered the smouldering embers of a burgeoning fire that still remained. He stared at his hand, his expression stormy.
“May the distorters of Fate get their greedy hands on their miserly fortunes and feed it to the ill-begotten dearth mother who spawned such slime-born brats,” he cursed angrily. “I am so done with this job.”
“I believe your curse may be more effective if spoken near someone of higher status,” she replied tonelessly. “Maybe Commander Arkenast, for example.”
He slowly raised his eyes to stare incredulously at her, disbelieving that such words came from her mouth. “Do you have a split personality?”
She gazed flatly at him, not answering.
Eventually, he groaned and ran a hand down his face. “I- just- whatever. I give up. I’m using up my saved leave after this to take a holiday, superior’s orders be damned.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “Don’t go repeating that last bit to anybody.”
“You said you wanted to talk to me, sir?” she said in a deadpan voice.
He sighed and gestured to her to follow him. “You know, if you acted this differently around all the other cadets, then maybe they would give you less grief.”
She observed the forms of Zhang Mingxia, Catherine, and Liliana in the distance and then turned back to him as she walked beside him. “The ideal extent of my interaction with them would be ensuring they don’t die and that’s it,” she stated coldly.
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure, whatever. Anyway, the Commander has given me an order. As it’s an order, I can’t ignore it, and therefore you will also have no choice in the matter, as this is directly related to you.” He turned to face her with a weary expression. “Do you think you can fight against all the cadets?”
She stared at him, dubious. “All. As in all at once,” she stated flatly.
“Yes, all. I’m asking if you think you can fight off all the cadets at once, with only you to face them,” he said with exasperation. “Again, I have no say over this. I can give you certain handicaps though, if you think you need it.”
She frowned slightly and looked down at the ground in thought. She glanced back up, imperceptibly raising an eyebrow. “You’re being serious.”
“I wish I wasn’t,” he muttered darkly.
She brushed aside the stray hair on her face as she replied, “I can do it.”
“You sure?” he asked sceptically.
She nodded. “If I consider this order to be a demonstration for them and a test for me, I have a way of completing it. But I’ll need some preparation time.”
“Hm. How long?” he questioned.
“45 seconds, although maybe a minute just to be safe,” she replied, her expression neutral.
He stared at her. “That’s hardly preparation time at all. You don’t want something like a staff or mana potions?”
“My firepower should hopefully be enough that I won’t need mana potions,” she responded, shaking her head. “As for a staff… I’ve never used one, so it would be hard to adapt to it in time before the fight.”
He looked curious. “You’ve never used a staff before? I’m sure intermediate level is when a staff becomes useful for a mage, though.”
She gave a slight shrug. “I became Rank-1 a little over 3 months ago. I haven’t needed one yet. And…. with my method of magic activation, a staff is currently unnecessary.”
“….right, magic activation,” he muttered, giving her a side-eye. “Is there anything we should know about it?”
“You’ve probably seen I don’t arrange runes when forming my magic,” she replied, to his slow nod. “Strictly speaking though, I don’t need many rune arrangements at all. My illusion constructs are based on different principles of activation altogether. Principles that use spiritual energy.”
She held out a palm to manifest a small Direwolf illusion. “The illusion essence only forms the ‘shells’ of my constructs. But my spiritual energy forms the cores of them. I can essentially add pseudo-sentience to them to ‘puppet’ their bodies.”
“That’s… not really magic,” he said with a frown. “If that’s the case, your abilities are wholly unique.”
She shook her head. “I can use mana-circles to achieve the same effect of pseudo-sentience. But they don’t have the ability to turn permeable, so I can’t prevent friendly fire without rigid control operations. Nor can I activate their abilities on command through my pseudo-domain ability.”
He raised his eyes from the construct to stare at her, stunned. “Wait, you’ve already formed a pseudo-domain ability? It wasn’t nascent?”
She thought for a moment. “My Status classifies it as a pseudo-domain ability, but it doesn’t quite use the establishment of an Origin Skill domain to do so. My Origin Skill is closely tied to spiritual energy and the mind,” she explained calmly. “And as I’m not a cultivator, my perception and my spiritual energy are the same thing. My magic is cast through my perception field and so it is classified as a pseudo-domain ability even without my actual Origin Skill.”
“….how wide an area are you talking about?” he asked suspiciously.
She pointed to one end of the training ground. “From there,” she said, “to there,” she added, pointing at halfway to the opposite end. The training ground was about the size of a soccer field.
He went wide-eyed. “How high is your SPRT? That should be impossible for a mage when you need to distribute stats to INT and WIS as well.”
She gazed at him silently for a moment, before answering, “As an individual with spiritual energy before Rank-3, I have a special talent for it. That includes a unique Aspect I gained.” She frowned slightly. “It’s a rare ratio type that increases my soul density, so one stat point of my spiritual energy and mental power is equivalent to multiple stat points rather than one, not reflected on my Status page.”
“Ah, so instead of having the stats just shown on your Status, in reality, you have 25% or even 50% more,” he replied, nodding. He paused when he saw her watching him expressionlessly. “I’m wrong, aren’t I.” He sighed wearily. “Is it higher?”
“Do you want me to answer honestly?” she asked.
He made a face and sighed again. “No, you’ve already been this forthcoming with information. I won’t ask more.” He raised an eyebrow. “But I’m going to have to report all this to the Commander.”
“It’s fine. I expected that,” she replied indifferently.
Officer Stanhope nodded. “So, you don’t need a staff or mana potions then. If that’s the case….” He looked around at the other cadets and turned back to her. “You have half an hour before the fight. You’ll fight against them all each day at this time from now on.”
She nodded in acceptance, before pausing as she noticed something. “Sir.”
“Hm? What?” he said, beginning to walk over to his original position.
“Cadet Deirvetch and Cadet Zhang Meng are attempting to terraform the training grounds,” she replied with an odd expression, pointing at them.
He nervously turned around to widen his eyes as he saw the short grinning freckled man hurling giant bolts of lava at the angry cultivator, who had to avoid the lava lake being formed around his feet and the bolts themselves that sprayed drops of molten stone when they fell. The Officer put his hands on his head.
“What are they doing?! I just told them not to ruin the training grounds!” he exclaimed in anguish.
Adrianna glanced at him, remembering something. “Sir, is this your first time as head instructor?”
He didn’t look at her as he scowled at the two cadets in the distance. “Yes, but I don’t see how that is relevant.”
“The training grounds are protected by a self-repair magic array,” she informed him calmly. “It’s set to activate every third night.”
He turned to gaze at her with incomprehension. “The Commander told me to prevent the grounds from being damaged.”
Her lips thinned into a straight line. “I’ve only met the Commander twice so far, so I’m not sure if I’ve got his personality right, but….” She glanced back at the two fighting cadets. “He might be messing with you.”
He glanced at the cadets, then stared at her, and then back at the cadets again. Then he threw his hands up in the air and stormed off. “I am done! Done! This Navy can go to hell! The Commander can go to hell! I am quitting my job, and never looking back!” He abruptly pointed to a second observing instructor on the sidelines. “You’re taking over my job. Don’t look for me, as I won’t care what new disaster has occurred. I am out of here!”
All the nearby cadets watched him march off the training grounds with strange expressions, and the temporary head instructor facepalmed with a sigh. It took a few seconds before everyone went back to normal. Adrianna watched him with mixed emotions, before shaking her head and walking away.
Ross didn’t quit during my entire career in the Navy, so that’s not happening. But fighting them all at once….. that was not fun last time.
She sighed slightly as she remembered how it went. She won, obviously, but it was annoying to deal with. She only hoped that a certain gold-eyed man’s plans for the event would allow her to have an excuse to ‘develop’ her techniques against them all faster. Although he was a different issue altogether….
She rubbed her temples with a frown before returning to her position. She had a bit less than half an hour left before she dealt with the fight, so she’d have to plan on how much skill she was going to show so Griffin wouldn’t become suspicious. Well, he was without a doubt going to try to see if he could defeat her this week due to his twisted inferiority complex, so she just needed to pretend to adapt to his abilities in real time. And as for demonstrating her abilities to the instructors….
She had a faint smirk on her lips as she arranged another mana-circle. She was going to show them just what exactly a ‘Core Illusory Construct’ was.
…
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“All right, Cadet Riftmire,” Officer Stanhope said with a sigh. Clearly, his claims of quitting hadn’t stood against the test of time and logical thought. “When you’re ready.”
She nodded, mentally sorting through the structures of her Origin Skill. The 34 cadets were watching her pensively, rather confused and a bit dubious about the command to all fight against one person. They hadn’t encircled her, but even if they had, it wouldn’t matter. She had full 360-degree perception, after all.
She took a step back and spread her hands out on either side of her, her eyes closed. She prepared her pseudo-domain base construct.
“Establish Zone of Control.”
In a silver-white grid-patterned hemisphere, an area 100 metres across with her at the centre lit up with a white glow, before fading. However, she had gained an acute sense of all the mana within her zone, revealing what elements surrounded her.
“Release Illusory Foundation,” she commanded.
Her indigo-blue illusion mana rushed out of her to fill the invisible hemisphere, blanketing the ground with a knee-high film of purplish fog. The top half of the hemisphere remained clear of the illusion mana, but that was intentional. Her Illusory Constructs didn’t manifest in mid-air, after all.
She pointed at the crowd in front of her. “Mark Users. Activate Target Lock.”
She inwardly smirked as they all flinched when the silvery-white grid pattern appeared on their skin, before disappearing. They warily checked themselves but found nothing. And now her magic was primed to automatically target them.
“Synchronise with Core Illusory Construct,” she ordered.
The illusion mana surrounding her seemed to become denser and appeared more ‘physical’ somehow, but nothing else happened. Then she pointed at the ground and opened her eyes.
“Manifest Core Illusory Construct: Morphic Kraken.”
Her opponents paled as the horrific sound and pressure from a few days ago made its reappearance, but this time it was weaker, as she wasn’t devoting all her mana to its cry. Then their eyes widened as a phantasmal beast, three times her height, began to reveal itself in the dense illusory fog.
Ghastly grey semi-translucent limbs began to writhe and twist within the fog, and behind her, a wide circular mouth filled with rotating jagged shards of teeth opened up, spinning at high speeds. Ten horrifying tentacles with sticky fleshy suckers stretched up towards the sky, swaying and coiling while dripping icy water. Its eerie cry reverberated and distorted the air around her, the limbs seemingly warping in the light.
They went silent.
“I’m done, sir,” she announced calmly.
Officer Stanhope stared at her, before coughing and gesturing to the crowd. “Go ahead now.”
None of her opponents moved, utterly still. She narrowed her eyes, and then the corner of her lips twisted up in a cold smirk as she made a mocking gesture to them to come forward.
“Didn’t you hear him? It’s time for you to all try to attack one person. You must be so proud of your talents right now,” she remarked, her normally toneless voice gaining a slight lilt to it.
She spread her arms. “I won’t even move from this spot. Would that make it fairer?”
Her audience scowled, clenching their weapons in anger. She pointed at the ground. “Does it count as my win if the opponents are too scared to even come near me, Officer?”
Officer Stanhope just regarded her with a complicated expression, before he sighed. “If none of you move within the next minute, the last two people to attack her will be kicked from the camp.”
The crowd’s eyes widened in panic, and they began whispering to each other. Then, with a grimace, Catherine Sherwood stepped forward, a spear in hand.
“What the hell. This is stupid,” she growled. She pointed her spear at Adrianna. “I’ve fought you before. You’ve only grown more disgusting limbs, that’s all.”
Zhang Mingxia also stepped forward. “It could hardly end worse than our normal spars. Very well then.” She readied her sword for combat and shifted her feet into the best position to launch herself from. “Let us fight.”
And with that, they both dashed towards her. Adrianna’s expression cooled and without moving, she directed the nearest tentacles to attack the two girls. Both of them slid under the slimy appendages, having predicted that move from earlier battles, and attempted to dodge the maze of grey flesh to get towards her.
Catherine growled, and her spear end lit up with blazing dark-orange flames. She sliced at a tentacle in an attempt to char it, but the limb distorted in impossible ways, stretching itself sideways.
Zhang Mingxia bent backwards to avoid a tentacle and flipped as she dodged the second limb trying to grab her ankle.
The others warily watched, before hesitantly moving forward. Drew Baxtimer grinned and the black chain tattoos around his neck and wrists disappeared to materialise as thick metal links in his hands, wreathed in red fire.
“Catch me if you can, shorty!” he exclaimed as he dashed forward, swinging them like whips to try to entangle the grey tentacles.
Ruel Deirvetch scowled and ran forward as well, the path he left slowly melting into dark-red molten stone. Bolts of lava materialised as he began trying to chuck them at Adrianna, who easily blocked them with a distorted illusory tentacle.
Slowly others joined the battle. Zhang Meng began swinging his sabre, clashing against the limbs.
Liao Tengfei started waving a fan encased with ice, the frosty crystals briefly forming around the illusions, before shattering as they couldn’t hold them for long.
Wilden Leutia, the long-haired necromancer, sighed and held out his staff as he released thick dark and death mana, skeletal hands breaking through the ground.
Palin Zoc’uraghets dashed forward with two long curved daggers, sand swirling around him.
Liliana aimed her raven longbow at the battle, and clear blue arrows of water shot out at regular intervals, warding off the illusions when they were about to attack them at certain times. Officer Stanhope gave her an approving nod for that.
Noirel Arventiel was pale, but grimaced, and flew off to join the fight. Her ribbons curled and stretched as she tried to occupy one of the tentacles.
And Conlan Griffin….. he was observing the battle calmly with gold eyes. Then slowly, he withdrew his longsword from its sheath, and it lit up with a layer of yellow mana. He charged forward into the throng to aid Catherine as she tried to slice through another tentacle.
Officer Stanhope glanced at his blade with a slight frown but returned to focusing his attention on the battle. Slowly, more and more people joined, and to their horror, more and more tentacles appeared as well. They could not overwhelm her with pure numbers if they wanted to defeat her.
…
“That’s a kraken.”
“Yup, it’s a kraken alright,” Officer Stanhope replied to his superior with a sigh. He glanced at the burly blonde-haired man beside him.
Commander Arkenast had cast an invisibility spell and was watching the battle curiously with his arms crossed. The cadets were unaware he was there.
“She didn’t pick some other creature to mimic?” the scarred man asked.
Officer Stanhope shook his head. “She has other illusions, but she seems to use this one the most, whether it be partially materialising it or in full, like now. She called it a ‘Core Illusory Construct’.”
“Hm,” the Commander mused. “I think this is the full form of what she demonstrated to me several months ago. But I remember her saying it can’t use abilities as it’s not based on a true monster.”
“But isn’t a key feature of her skillset using monster abilities in her illusions?” his subordinate replied sceptically. “Why would she purposely limit herself like that? Especially when she has to fight them all off. If this was later when she had a better handle on how much power she needs to deal with them, then I would understand.”
“Well, it seems to be working,” Commander Arkenast commented. He pointed to the fight as one of the cadets was gripped around the ankle and raised into the air, dangling there uselessly as the fiery-haired girl with green eyes shouted in anger. “And she seems to be doing a very good job of making herself seem like the villain.”
“….yes, I had noticed that. So, it’s intentional then,” the Officer responded, a strange look on his face as he held his chin. “To be honest, her attitude towards the instructors has been fine, and she’s not as cold with us. But why is she…” he paused and then facepalmed. “Oh, I’m an idiot.”
He turned to the Commander who was watching him with interest. “Before this, she told me her perception was enough to cover half the training grounds. She probably overheard my discussion with the Heavenly Realm girl about how she was treating them. It seems the Sect heir is aware of the likelihood of her becoming their Squad Leader.”
The Commander grinned. “So Riftmire’s already decided what type of leader she’s going to be then, has she? I suppose I’ll just have to see how well it works in the end. But if the Sect girl has said that… then perhaps she sees Riftmire as her future leader already.”
Officer Stanhope gave his superior a dubious look. “You sure, sir? I’ve had nothing but complaints from her about Riftmire this week. From her and Sherwood, in fact.” He narrowed his eyes at the girls fighting Adrianna. “But they’ve improved greatly by fighting her. They’re still in the fight.”
They watched as a cadet was flung by a tentacle out of the battle zone, where they laid face flat on the ground, groaning in pain.
“I’d normally tell her off for such violent treatment, but in this case….” the Officer muttered.
Commander Arkenast nodded. “She’s only doing that to the warriors. Not even the hybrid warrior-manipulators are being treated like that, for all, she strung that redhead upside down. A constant awareness of the capabilities of the cadets, not attacking them with more than they can handle, all while fighting multiple at the same time…. she’s an excellent battlefield controller. I’m not sure there’s even a choice here. She’s going to be their leader whether she likes it or not.” He smirked.
They both blinked when Adrianna shot them a flat look and then redirected her attention back to the fight. The Commander turned to his subordinate in surprise. “Can she see me?”
“Well…. I did just discover her ‘nascent’ pseudo-domain isn’t nascent at all…” Officer Stanhope replied awkwardly. “And we’re standing in it, technically. She can probably hear our conversation.”
Commander Arkenast rubbed his chin with a sly grin. “Should I reveal myself?”
Officer Stanhope gazed at him wearily. “We’re doing this for combat data, remember Commander? We can’t collect that if you scare the living daylights out of the rest of the cadets.”
“Hmm. True,” the man replied with a nod. “I’ll stay invisible for now. But back to her magic… she’s still using that kraken illusion. And none of the cadets have been hurt enough to be counted ‘out’ of the fight yet. What is she doing?”
“I think I heard it be called a ‘morphic’ kraken…. But why morphic?” Officer Stanhope muttered. “It can’t be the fact it can turn immaterial because that’s a feature of all her constructs……”
Then they paused. One of the tentacles distorted, and then it stretched out to twice its original length, making the nearby cadet jump. Then it seemed to gain a ghostly haze of fire that set the clothes of the cadet alight, and they hastily tried to beat down the flames. They bumped into a second cadet and the fire jumped to them as well.
The Commander burst out laughing. “Oh, I see! Just because it has no abilities of its own, doesn’t mean it can’t use the abilities of other monsters. And here I was thinking she just had strange taste for a girl, but the monster’s form was for practical reasons. That’s rather creative.”
They fell silent for a while, just watching the fight. Then Officer Stanhope turned to his superior with narrowed eyes. “So, is it true that the training grounds have a self-repair magic array that activates each third night?”
Commander Arkenast blinked and then looked down at the Officer with a strange expression. “How’d you know? None of the other head instructors worked it out until after the camp.”
The dark-haired man just stared incredulously at him. “So it is true! You told me to protect the training grounds, knowing full well how futile it would be! I can’t believe you!” He pulled at his hair as he groaned. “Do you know how much stress I’ve been under trying to deal with this lot? I tell them one thing, and then they immediately do the opposite! I tell them not to use destructive attacks, they use destructive attacks! I tell them not to antagonise their opponent, and they start mocking them straight after! This is torture, I tell you!”
The Commander just gazed at the man with amusement as he began muttering curses under his breath, and then returned to watching the fight. Then he blinked again and turned to his subordinate. “But seriously, how did you know? The magic array is controlled by the mainframe array two miles below the fortress. The only people who should know are the Navy’s magic engineers and me as the Commander. And the past head instructors.”
Officer Stanhope stopped wishing ill upon the cadets and his superior to give Commander Arkenast a dubious look. “But Cadet Riftmire told me.”
There was a moment of silence. They slowly shifted their gaze to stare at Adrianna as she tripped over another two cadets. They narrowed their eyes.
…
Attack coming from 81 degrees to the right. I’ll activate the Mire Serpent’s ability, turning the ground to mud around them. That will stall them for 5.06 seconds where I can direct my focus to the ice attack coming from Liao Tengfei.
She observed a warrior swing his greatsword at a tentacle, trying to slice it in half.
That will turn permeable… now. And because he over-extended, the weight of his swing caused him to trip over the cadet’s foot next to him. I can leave him alone for a bit.
A redhead with green eyes dodged the swipe of another illusory tentacle, while the blue-eyed and dark-haired Sect heir beside her succeeded in avoiding the entanglement of slippery flesh attempting to intertwine her ankles on the ground.
Zhang Mingxia and Catherine Sherwood, the ones the most used to my combat style, have given up on defeating me and are instead trying to adjust to the chaos, so two of the biggest threats don’t need my attention. But not everyone is putting in all their effort, so I can’t tire them out this way.
She quickly checked her mana and health.
[HP: 1600/1600 {+40/5m}
MP: 3250/5100 {+620/1m}]
If I had four minutes of no fighting, I’d be back to full. But the casting of monster skills is draining me with little merit in the long term. Then….
A cold smirk danced on her lips.
Should we pick up the pace?
Startling the cadets, as she hadn’t moved once yet, she raised her arms to point directly at either side of her. They watched warily as two dual-layered mana-circles began to arrange themselves before her fingertips.
“Blast Shock,” she announced.
BOOM!
With a sound reminiscent of a cannonball, the air rippled as an invisible force shot out, a resonating pulse sending the air thrumming with power. Two cadets who got caught directly by the blast were thrown from the Zone of Control and laid there, unconscious. The ones who had been on the fringes of the attack were holding their heads with dizziness and wobbling, disorientated, a few beginning to bleed from their noses.
[-1264 Damage]
[-1322 Damage]
[-520 Damage]
[-520 Damage]
[-750 Damage]
[-415 Damage]
She frowned slightly as she glanced at one of the cadets.
-750? Seems they had weaker CON than I thought. I’ll reduce the intensity of my attacks for them. And… oh.
She blinked as she noticed Officer Stanhope drag the two unconscious cadets away from the battle.
They haven’t even lost half their health. I guess going unconscious on the battlefield means death for you anyway though. Then, 32 attackers. Let’s reduce this further.
She spread her hands again, and the cadets quickly tried to avoid the path of her spells. But she wasn’t going to use the same trick twice.
“Tremor.”
They all wobbled as the ground beneath them rumbled and groaned, becoming choppy and jagged as her magical earthquake spat the ground up, making the floor uneven and harder to navigate. She didn’t stop as she gestured with her hands for the rocks to rise.
“Earthen Artillery,” she said. And then she pointed a finger to the other side of her. “Wind Enhancement.”
Instead of their normal speed, the rocky shards that were raised into the air shot out towards the cadets in all directions, passing through her illusions and sped up by the force of the wind backing them. The cadets dived to cover their heads.
[-780 Dam….]
[-675 Damage]
[-825 Damage]
[-340 Damage]
[-530 Damage]
[-965 Damage]
[-265 Da…..]
[-430….]
She clicked her tongue as Ruel Deirvetch raised his arms and a wall of earth blocked her bombardment on one quarter of the [Zone of Control].
With a twist of her spiritual energy, she guided the rocky bullets to go around the earthen barrier, but the man was too quick and shielded the other sides of him and the people around him as well, having detected the movement of the earth mana.
At least he’s smart enough to realise he needs the others if he wants a chance of defeating me. But not that smart.
She calmly called out “Tremor,” once more, and his impromptu shelter collapsed as the ground turned choppy again. The man cursed as he fell into a pit of his own making, having taken the earth from beneath him to make the walls. The cadets around him grumbled as they got buried in rubble and dust.
Behind her, the cadets were regaining her footing, and warily watching for where she would point her spells next. But they had forgotten something.
Her immaterial illusions quickly turned back to being material and thrashed about as they stretched and thinned to impossible sizes, the cadets having forgotten what they were originally fighting. Noirel Arventiel yelped as several of them tried to grab her out of the sky, her luck of not being on the ground applicable no longer.
Zhang Meng grinned in victory as his sabre finally managed to cut through a tentacle, the cadets around him gaining brighter expressions as well, but then he paled as two new tentacles reformed from the illusion mana, and continued to attack him, transforming into bony spikes with faintly poisonous tips.
Drew Baxtimer had a smirk as his black chains wrapped around several illusions, binding them together, and his flames did briefly cause the mana to lose cohesion, but then his eyes widened as the tentacles merged and he was strung upside down, dangling there in a tangle by his weapons. She discarded him outside the zone, and Officer Stanhope dragged him off.
Ruel managed to climb out of the pit, but not before she cast a [Quagmire] spell that sent him and the five people around him sinking back down into the mud, pulled in by her illusions. They likewise were eventually dragged away as well.
She shot a [Blast Shock] at Liao Tengfei, who, thinking he could be smart by doing some strange martial art flipping technique in mid-air, couldn’t tell which way was up or down when he landed and faceplanted, his immaculate white and blue robes finally getting dirty. She chucked him out of the Zone when he didn’t get up for a whole minute.
She tried to send a [Fireball] at the perpetually angry Catherine Sherwood but narrowed her eyes when a well-timed water arrow was shot by Liliana from the edges of the Zone, interrupting the spell.
The blue-eyed archer gave a small fist-pump of celebration, but then she had her bow wrenched from her hands and was unceremoniously dumped upside down by a tentacle that had manifested while she was distracted by her ‘victory’.
Palin Zoc’uraghets was kicked out when she blasted him with a [Firebolt] that made his sandstorm too hot for him to handle and the [Ice Squall] she gave him to cool him down was not appreciated, the sand crumbling into strange crystals around him that he couldn’t manipulate. He left the battle of his own will, his mana not high enough to manifest more sand.
The other fighters were slowly removed through varying spells and other movements from her illusions, slowly becoming whittled down. And then one man made a move that surprised her.
Conlan Griffin willingly got hit by a [Blast Shock] so he could be removed from the battlefield. Even though it was painfully obvious to her that he was perfectly capable of continuing.
But with what she knew about him, it didn’t take long for her to guess his plans.
Ha. I see what he’s doing. Then I suppose I’ll have to keep waiting for a few days.
By the time her MP was down to 250, there was nobody else left standing within her [Zone of Control], and she had kept her promise of not moving from her spot. She ignored the suspicious stares of the Commander and Officer Stanhope as she deactivated her skills and left to go have a shower.