“All units, cast acceleration on the bicorns!”
Ariel’s booming voice could be heard even high up in the sky.
“Right, there's no reason our cavalry can't speed up as well.”
“No, Evan, there is. The Archlich is speeding up the monsters with the same spell over and over with returns diminishing at a reduced pace as compared to the Acceleration spell that the cavalry is using. That can only mean this mysterious spell he is using to speed up the monsters is an even lower circle than the Third Circle - Acceleration. He can just repeatedly cast the same spell and catch up eventually.”
“I had a feeling you would have something pessimistic to say, Seraphina.”
“It's a fact. We need to help her immediately.”
“Trust the process, girl.”
Seraphina clenched her fists tighter.
Below, the cavalry, now boosted by acceleration, suddenly lurched forward, widening the gap that had begun to close between themselves and the monsters.
Of course, Gradias was not one to idly stand by, and cast his spell again.
The gap shrunk.
‘Third Circle - Acceleration!’
The gap widened.
Gradias cast his spell.
The gap shrunk.
This dance continued for five cycles, before the gap no longer widened with each cast of acceleration. Furthermore, with none of the cavalry being sixth circle mages, they did not have a spatial storage space in their spirit, thus could not pull a wand out of thin air. They were forced to cast with their innate magic nodes, depleting their stamina on top of their mana. It was clear as day that the cavalry was being pushed to their brink.
Much to their good fortune, however, they were a mere two hundred meters from the first rendezvous point. At their pace, about five seconds away. Though, all five cavalry units only had one person left, the unit commanders.
“Hundred meters!”
Less than three seconds away.
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The rescue squad, the assassin squad, the mage unit, all of them were tense, understanding how close this was going to be.
Just one second away.
Gradias was no fool. He was an Archlich, an archmage that had forsaken his humanity to become a lich, then evolved. Though magic was his speciality, he was an all around genius. He could recognise that allowing the cavalry to meet up would be as according to their plans, and did not wish to allow it to happen.
‘Third Circle - Acceleration!’
Giving up on his wide-area original acceleration spell, he focused on just a single wyrm, and cast the age-old version of the spell with his abundant mana. The S-rank creature, unable to handle the preposterous speeds, had its internals severely rupture and its eyes basically melt away as it shot up to ludicrous speeds, dooming it to die in mere seconds.
Mere seconds was all the time Gradias needed.
Out of the blue, a wyrm, a creature that looked like a miniature oriental dragon, that was near the front of the pursuing monsters of the unit in the mid-left of the V-formation turned into a streak of orange. Evan, the only Lord-ranked spectator, only barely had time to widen his eyes, and the teleporters of the rescue squad could not even react.
Ralph, much like the other cavalry unit commanders, was at the peak of A-rank. With Noah's training, he had managed to climb to that rank from his previous one of the entry of B-rank and was now a strong candidate to become an S-rank powerhouse capable of mass destruction.
But he would not be one, for the wyrm that left afterimages in its wake of its burst of speed bit his head off. He died instantly, without even knowing how he died.
The wyrm’s momentum did not end there. With the momentum, the wyrm changed its direction about thirty degrees rightwards with much difficulty, barrelling straight for the unit commander on the extreme-left wing.
One-third of a second to first rendezvous point.
Unit commander Lucius did not stand dumbfounded. He channeled the rapidly expanding and surging grief in his heart to his blade as he swung with might he never had before, cleanly beheading the half-dead wyrm that came his way. However, the momentum of its corpse did not stop, and the bicorn was flung along with it. Without Lucius.
At the moment of the beheading, he had recognised the series of incidents that would follow, and lunged off in the direction of the rendezvous point.
In the air, he raised his blade, indicating his will to continue, essentially refusing the teleporters. They grit their teeth as they held themselves back. In their eyes, they believed they were witnessing the typical folly of a soldier riding an adrenaline high who made a decision that would get them killed in the heat of it. As people that saved lives for a living, such soldiers frustrated them to no end, as they were forced to watch people they had sworn to save die before them.
A tenth of a second.
“RAAAALPH!!”
With his dead comrade’s name as a war cry, Lucius sent his chief-ranked mana to every mana node in his body, filling it to its brim, his body lightly glowing blue as a thin film of mana aura enveloped him. At the moment he landed, he hit the ground running, the explosive momentum of his legs kicking up dirt behind him. Of course, the monsters were still currently faster than him. Yet this did not daunt Lucius. As a direwolf lunged at him, he jumped forward and twirled parallel to the ground, his blade singing as it sliced through the air and the direwolf’s throat, after which he jumped immediately back into another lunge as his legs touched the ground once again. As he landed, a slight reprieve from his grief and a sense of brief satisfaction welled up from within him.
First rendezvous point. He had reached it.