“Both targets spotted. Mage unit, drop now.”
“Roger.”
Draven jumped off the side of the wyrm, followed immediately by Seraphina, Elara, and the rest of the twenty members of the mage unit. As they did, Noah's eyes grew a brighter red, then instantaneously grew many times brighter before immediately reverting to their dim red. After this, he immediately took off, turning into a streak in the sky. Noah had been directly above Archlich Gradias, who was above the center of the battlefield. Now that the mage unit had been deployed off of him, he no longer had to be there, and he headed to where he needed to be.
At the exact same time, the dragon lost control of the miniature sun in its mouth as it found its body betray itself for just a split second from a basilisk's paralysis. The bright orange ball exploded, and the following illumination blinded the entire battlefield as it extinguished every nook and cranny of light around for kilometers, though the dragon itself was only slightly burnt.
Right as the light receded and the battlefield and skies were now re-illuminated only by the unobstructed orange sun, both the dragon and Archlich Gradias, who had voluntarily interrupted his own spell, looked to the skies. Archlich Gradias, who had cast a sensory augmentation spell, had heard the fluttering of robes above it, and the dragon pinpointed the source of its magical anomaly that had moved directly above it. Noah, with Evan on his back, had arrived directly above the dragon.
The battlefield was still petrified by the dragon’s mana pressure.
The dragon, recognising that the source of the disruption was too far in the skies for it to fly up to, readied another dragon breath while noticing that the blob in the sky had changed form, instantly growing multiple times in size. It then noticed that the blob was steadily growing larger. It was falling towards itself!
Another few moment passed. The breath was almost ready, and the dragon could now identify the shape of the disruption now that it had fallen close enough. It was a leviathan twice the usual size of one, thus matching its own size.
At this point, the mage unit had descended to be just a dozen meters above Archlich Gradias that was above the center of the battlefield where the two armies clashed. Both Archlich Gradias and mage unit used their spells, with Archlich Gradias's right arm pointed upwards and the mage unit's staffs pointed downwards. Mana swirled and rippled as it responded to their calls. Given the short window of time that the mage unit had before they had to cast Spatial Levitation, only one exchange of magic spells would occur between both parties.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
It was impossible for the mage unit to perfectly predict the spell Archlich Gradias would use to respond to their arrival. After all, an archlich was the embodiment of the peak of human magic, and slightly more. Its options were infinite. If the mages assumed that Archlich Gradias would choose an offensive spell and prepared a joint defensive spell, Archlich Gradias that might have chosen to use a spell that would increase the gravity experienced by the mage unit would find that their defensive spell would be useless and would be killed by the impact as a result of their increased acceleration when they hit the ground. In such a case, what they should have cast would be an offensive spell. However, they had no guarantee that Archlich Gradias would not have chosen defense. Archlich Gradias could also choose to simply move out of the way as well, or simply have chosen an offensive spell that was unaffected by the defense of the mages. It was with this understanding that the mage unit devised their strategy.
‘Seventh Circle - Isolation!’
The twenty mages mostly at the eighth circle and Draven and Lirael cast the isolation spell on Archlich Gradias. This caused a mostly opaque black bubble with tinged with red to encapsulate Archlich Gradias, who took slightly longer to cast his higher circle spell.
‘Seventh Circle - Isolation!’
At the same time, Seraphina cast the same spell, throwing a larger version of the same bubble to encapsulate herself, the mage unit and Archlich Gradias. The bubble was roughly the size of a full football field, and with the battlefield roughly a hundred meters below them having shrunk now that many monsters had perished under heavy bombardment, the remaining monsters on the ground had been squeezed into an area only a couple times larger than that of the black star in the orange sky.
Within the milliseconds that it took for Archlich Gradias to look up and see the mages falling on him, he deduced the mages’ strategy. After all, he had worked together with other humans back when he was one, and was able to deduce their thought process when facing a superior mage.
In this situation where the isolate spell, which was only in the seventh circle and could hence be cast relatively quickly was cast on him, he would certainly be able to break through the isolation barrier around himself to still reach the enemy with a single spell, but the might of the offensive spell would be greatly reduced. With the nature of the isolation spell considered, if he wasted this few precious moments he had now that the mages would be casting levitation spell on themselves on an offensive spell only for it to do negligible damage, the spell they would fire to counterattack in the gap he would expose as they tanked his spell to attack him would be deadly. This was their strategy, and it was undeniable that it was the best one given their circumstances.
But.
‘Ninth Circle - Blessed of the World!’
He was not some random 'superior mage'.
He was an archlich.