Ardea watched as Everett Praesse moved out of the way after giving his army the command to “take them down."

His army began walking forward, their fingers twitching in anticipation for the upcoming battle.

“Get back—both of you,” Ardea said to Candice and Elise, “These people are too skilled for you to face.”

Candice looked ready to protest, and Elise even more so. However, a single glare from Ardea stopped anything they had to say in its tracks. Elise looked vaguely hurt as she and Candice retreated, but Ardea didn’t have the time to sugarcoat matters.

“Can you defeat them all?” Guiles asked, looking as infuriatingly unflappable as ever. Did he not understand the precarious situation they were currently in?

Ardea thought over his question. If Guiles had asked the Ardea of a few weeks ago, then she would have undoubtedly answered with a resounding “yes.” She was far more powerful than any of these people after all.

However…

Her battle with Rex Optime flashed through her mind. She had been far more powerful than Optime as well, and yet…

“…No.”

Cadmus nodded, looking as though he understood.

“Buy me some time then.”

Ardea didn’t say anything in response. Instead, she brought up her hands, and envisioned a specific magic circle in her mind. The enemy sprang into action, trying to draw their own magic circles in time, but it was too late.

Her magic circle shined into existence, and a mighty snake-like dragon made entirely of flames shot out of it, rushing towards the enemy. Instead of simply crashing against the enemy though, she directed her [flame dragon] to surround them and tighten around them like a noose.

Her number one priority currently was to stop them from spreading out and surrounding them.

Some of the enemies finally finished their magic circles as some of their number in the outer layer were slathered in flames. They synchronized with each other as one group used a wind spell to push the [flame dragon] away from them. Their plan worked as intended, however the [flame dragon] also grew more powerful due to the increase in oxygen being fed to it. The enemy seemed to be aware of this result though, because a second group fired some water spells next, which crashed against the [flame dragon], dispelling it with a blinding explosion of steam.

Had the [flame dragon] been closer, a significant portion of the enemy would have been wiped out by that steam explosion. However, since they had used a wind spell to push it away first, there had most likely been very limited casualties.

The steam cleared away, revealing that the enemies had also created a few barriers of earth to protect themselves.

Ardea had to admit, these people were on an entirely different level than the people she had encountered in the forest…

“Guiles!” She yelled. This should have bought him more than enough time to draw any magic circle he wanted.

“A bit more time, please,” Guiles said, sounding polite and unconcerned as usual.

Ardea clicked her tongue in annoyance and fired another [flame dragon]. This time though, water spells instantly came flying at it, destroying it in another explosion of steam before it could even reach them. Normal water spells like the enemy were using would never have been able to do enough damage to dispel something as powerful as her [flame dragon], however, the enemy had made up for that difference in power through the sheer number of water spells they threw at it.

Ardea grimaced, envisioning another magic circle and then creating it from her outstretched hand. She fired the spell as rapidly as she could, creating one [flame tiger] after another. They charged ahead, a veritable platoon of [flame tigers], however, it wasn’t enough. They were being destroyed too quickly, and some of the enemy were already aiming their spells at Ardea herself. She used some of her [flame tigers] to intercept the projectiles headed towards her, but that had the adverse effect of her depleting her [flame tigers] even faster.

She grunted as she barely managed to create a shield spell on time to block an incoming attack. It quickly succumbed to the combined magic bombardment from the enemy. Her hands blurred, trying to create as many magic circles for [basic physical shield] as she could, but all of her efforts were rebuffed under the enemy’s non-stop barrage.

“GUILES!”

She noticed with a fair degree of annoyance that she had let some of her panic leak into her voice.

“One second…” Cadmus replied calmly.

Ardea’s grimace worsened. She didn’t have any more seconds left to give!

The last of her shields were shattered, and, as a final ditch effort, she created another [flame dragon] to rush at the enemy. As expected, it was easily destroyed in under a second.

A few spells tore through her [flame dragon] magic circle, leaving her with no more options to attack or defend with. Then, they turned their magic circles on her again and fired.

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She dived to the side with all the energy she had, barely avoiding the next barrage of spells, and created another [basic physical shield]. She simply had no other defensive magic circle she could create as quickly.

“GUILES!”

“Done!”

It wasn’t an instantaneous thing. The enemy still had enough time to break her final shield and clip her in the shoulder with an earth spell of some kind, however, soon enough, a large beast made entirely of ice protected her with its body, while another one launched itself against the enemy.

She recognized this spell. It was the [ice yeti] spell.

Certainly, it was a powerful spell. However, it shouldn’t have taken Guiles nearly this long to create this spell.

Then, something strange occurred. Numerous spells, all high level, and all consisting of completely different elements were fired at the enemy.

[Lightning beam], [gravitational orb], [sand monster]… all of these spells required completely different specialties!

A ripple of unease seemed to pass through the enemy, and the attacks on both sides slowly died down. The enemy devolved into a sea of muttering, sounding strangely frightened.

“Hey… weren’t those people… dead…?”

“Y-yeah! I remember watching the guy on the right die!”

“Is this… necromancy…?”

“I-impossible! Magic cannot create life!”

“Wh-what about that kid who created the homunculus? He’s a first-year in the Academy, r-right?”

“Y-you idiot! That’s just a lie!”

“B-but then, what about…”

Ardea looked at Everett Praesse to the side, and noticed that he too looked stunned beyond belief.

She turned to Cadmus, and instantly, she understood what had been so shocking enough to silence the entire battlefield.

There stood Guiles, flanked by three Academy guards on both sides. The only thing was… all those Academy guards were clearly dead. Their skin was paler than the moonlight, their eyes were blank, and the fatal wounds on their throats were still visible.

Guiles was holding four magic circles, all layered on top of each other, and all packed to the brim with symbols so complex that even Ardea couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

“Guiles… what…?”

Guiles smiled, “I wasn’t just sitting idle while I was in fiftieth place, you know?”

“You’ve achieved it? Necromancy?” Ardea asked, all thoughts of battle forgotten.

Guiles shook his head, “Unfortunately, I still haven’t been able to develop a spell to bring back the soul.” He gestured at the Academy gaurds, who all just stood there, looking ahead like lifeless puppets, “This is necromancy in an incredibly limited sense. In simple terms, I’ve used a mind-control spell to give these dead corpses an objective, and then I’ve reactivated their muscle memory so that they can work toward achieving those objectives.”

There was a lot to unpack there, but one thing caught her attention more than the others,

“…Guiles, there’s no such thing as a mind-control spell.”

Guiles only looked confused at her statement, as though she had said something blatantly wrong. She could feel the annoyance well up within her. If a mind-control spell existed, didn’t he think she would already know it?

Guiles shook his head, “We can discuss that later. For now—”

“And the magic as well!” Ardea cut him off, “Dead people don’t have mana!”

“Dead people can’t replenish mana,” Cadmus corrected. Ardea grimaced, realizing that he was right, “The mana that they already have in their body will slowly seep out once they die. However, since these guards died without being able to fight back, they still have most of their mana left inside them.”

He turned his eyes towards the enemy,

“In any case, I believe we should be focusing on defeating the enemy right now. We finally have the reinforcements we need to win after all.”

He wasn’t wrong. Right now, defeating the enemy came first. They could deal with the rest later.

She turned around and prepared for battle again.

Seeing that, the enemy seemed to pull themselves together and readied themselves again as well. Ardea glanced back at Guiles. He smirked slightly, his narrow green eyes seeming to glow ominously under the moonlight,

“Let these guards fullfil their final duty—even beyond death!”

And, even though she was the almighty Dragon Princess, she couldn’t help but feel a tiny stirring of fear in her heart at the sight of him.

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

The [dead puppetry] spell.

It was something Cadmus had come up with after combining the knowledge contained on the fourth floor of the Academy’s library, and the knowledge on magic involving the human body and notable necromancy attempts that he had transferred into Alice’s head from the imprints in the world’s mana.

Unfortunately, the spell was currently only in its prototype phase. He hadn’t received much time to work on it after all.

There was a reason that most spells were contained within a single magic circle, instead of people creating four layers of magic circles like he had been forced to do. This was because people had optimized their spells to fit into a single magic circle.

A simplified analogy would be something like: he was trying to reach the number 4.

However, instead of creating an equation such as 2 + 2 or 1 x 4, his equation read something like:

1 + 7 - 3.5 + 1½ + 1.5 x 2 - 2.6 - 0.9 - 1.5

Now imagine that, but about three-hundred times more complicated.

He still got the same number in the end, but all those extraneous steps took too long to draw, and too much mana to utilize. Just like the equation, he wasn’t even using a consistent format for all his symbols, and that only made it more confusing to remember and draw the magic circles as a whole.

Not to mention, since this was only a prototype, he could only draw out approximately twenty percent of the target corpses’ muscle memory. Of course, since he was reactivating the muscle memory of the recently dead, he would never be able to draw out one-hundred percent, however, Cadmus definitely felt that, with a little bit more optimization, he could draw out far more than just twenty percent.

For now though, twenty percent was more than enough (especially considering that it was twenty percent of muscle memory from the highly skilled guards of the most prestigious academy for magic on the continent). Ardea’s greatest problem against this group of enemies had been the fact that they vastly outnumbered her. Now, with a decent group of reinforcements on her side, she was able to strike back, and wreck havoc amongst the enemy troops.

Soon, the enemy scattered, and it was obvious they were going to lose.

This is when Everett Praesse stepped in. He raised his hands to indicate his surrender, and said almost carefreely,

“Alright… I can tell we won’t be able to defeat you guys! Let’s end this battle here!”

His troops all stared at him in wonder, and Ardea pulled back her rampaging [flame dragon]. Cadmus too cut the mana he was feeding his [dead puppetry] soldiers. They fell, aptly looking like puppets who had just had their strings cut.

Then, Cadmus hid his magic circles behind his back, but he did not erase them. He didn’t know if he would need them again, and he didn’t want to give his enemies a chance to analyze them either.

Ardea eyed Everett Praesse suspiciously,

“You’re willing to surrender so easily?”

Everett Praesse shrugged, “Like I said, I can tell that this won’t end well. No point in dragging it out.”

He turned to look at Cadmus, and there was a hint of excitement and nostalgia in his eyes,

“And you… I finally know why you looked so familiar! Your face looks exactly like hers!”

Cadmus blinked. He had a vague guess on what Praesse was talking about…

“You’re Ember Guiles’ brother, aren’t you?”