Lando was rushing to the place where the fight was happening as fast as he could. During his sprint, his mind was filled with various thoughts as his panic began to rise. "Did the duke find us? Or is it the revolutionaries? How did they find us? Did Dad's colleague betray us?"

On his way there, he could feel the intensity of the fight as smoke and explosions of water, fire, earth, and lightning magic poured through the streets, demolishing houses and people alike.

The closer he got, the more fleeing people were running his way, fleeing the fight. Some were badly injured and carried by others. As he reached the edge of the fight, he saw his parents fighting two enemy magicians. One of them controlled lightning, and the other controlled earth.

His father was fighting the enemy earth magician with his friend Marcus, who had an expression of fury plastered on his face.

Lando didn't have to search long before he saw why Marcus was so furious. A few steps away from their fight lay the dead body of a woman. It was difficult to identify the corpse as her head had been blasted off, along with a large chunk of her upper torso. But Lando didn't need to identify her to know that this was Marcus' wife, Celine.

The situation seemed dire as even with the combined effort of Marcus' wind magic and his father's fire magic, the earth magician seemed to have the upper hand.

Lando knew that his father was highly skilled as a mage and far in the solid stage, and his friend didn't seem much weaker. Lando considered the only possibility in which the enemy could have the upper hand against two mages in the solid stage with complimenting elements, would be if he was a high mage!

The young Weber was too weak to have any influence on this battle and thus stayed at the edge of the fight, behind some ruins where he could observe with reasonable safety. He knew it wouldn't be completely safe, as some attacks clearly reached the ruins where he was hiding, but his thoughts were consumed by his parents' fight. He tried his best not to become a liability to them in the midst of the battle.

His father shot flame projectiles in rapid succession at the high mage while circling his target. Marcus gathered his wind magic to enhance his friend's fire and shot a few blades of wind himself traversing the sky in high speed at the same time.

Marcus moved so fast in the air that Lando could barely see the mage's movements.

The earth magician, with a literally rock solid-built appearance, stood firm and covered himself in a cocoon of earth magic.

The wind projectiles sliced into the cocoon and chipped away some rock, but that was it. On the other hand, his father's projectiles, enhanced by wind magic, exploded on impact, sending fragments of rock flying everywhere like the pieces of a grenade.

The shield visibly broke, but it was soon rebuilt by the high mage.

After a continuous bombardment, the shield suddenly crumbled under the pressure. But as soon as the shield broke, they were surprised to find that nobody was inside.

Before William could react, his friend Marcus shouted in the air, "Behind you!" and a moment later, the high mage shot out of the ground, obviously tunneled from his hiding place, with spikes of earth in tow.

Lando's father, too late to react properly, gathered an explosion on his side to propel himself away from the attack.

Unfortunately, it was a bit too late, as a spike pierced through his side.

On the other side of the fight, the situation looked a lot better for the Weber family as Anna was fighting an enemy lightning high mage.

A storm of lightning, shards of ice, and water currents ravaged through entire housing blocks and factories. It almost looked like the apocalypse had arrived to bring them all down to hell.

For the many unlucky civilians in those buildings, this may as well be true.

In the eye of the storm, two high mages fought with their full power, unconcerned about their environment.

The two high mages knew each other and exchanged a few words between their attacks, which had likely killed hundreds of unfortunate people in the vicinity.

"Today, a bunch of traitors will die! But you don't have to be one of them, Anna. Just surrender, and maybe the duke will show you mercy and not execute you for working with rebels."

Anna knew that the chance of mercy was practically non-existent, even if she pleaded that she had nothing to do with the revolutionaries, as they lived under the same roof and considered them friends.

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Rather than answering with words, she responded with icicles that formed out of thin air in a huge array and shot them at the lightning high mage like a machine gun.

The lightning mage honored his element and blitzed around to avoid each volley, but despite his speed, a few of them grazed his body.

In return, he shot lightning bolt after lightning bolt at Anna. However, these bolts had little success, as any injuries she sustained from stray bolts were quickly healed by the regenerative aspect of the water element.

As the fight grew even more intense, Lando had to retreat further back to avoid being injured by a stray blast or detected by the enemies.

Using his new skill, he phased through the earth and appeared on the top floor of a four-story building that was far from the reach of the ongoing attacks.

Seeing that his mother seemed to be holding her own, he shifted his focus back to his father's fight.

The earth magician fired stone bullets at Marcus which still was flying at high speed in the air, resembling a gatling gun, while simultaneously shielding himself from the fiery explosions and launching spikes towards William from time to time.

Lando observed the fight, unsure of what he could do to help. He considered various possibilities, but nothing seemed viable in the current situation. The thought of calling for help crossed his mind, but he knew there was no one in the city who would come to their rescue.

His frustration grew, causing him to clench his fists tightly to the point where his nails began to dig into his skin. He berated himself for his perceived uselessness. If only he had trained harder and advanced to the stage of a mage, he could have been somewhat useful in the fight.

"I am useless! If I hadn't been so lazy, I could have helped them. I should have trained even harder. If only I had gathered allies during my time at the academy, they could have supported me now. A teacher, a powerful parent, heck, even the revolutionaries."

In reality, Lando was already one of the youngest magicians to soon achieve the status of a mage, and he knew that. But in this dire situation, it felt inadequate.

Lost in self-doubt and what ifs, Lando failed to realize that the situation was not improving, especially for his parents.

Anna had to help her husband from time to time in order to survive this ordeal. In her own fight, she undeniably had the upper hand, as her enemy's body was covered in bleeding wounds that he attempted to cauterize with lightning to stop the bleeding.

But due to her more and more frequent interventions on the side of her husband, the lightning high mage was gaining some ground, even if it was slowly.

Her husband was on the losing end, with his side wound taking its toll, causing him to become more and more sluggish. The wind mage, too, was losing ground, as he was continuously struck by fragments of rock.

Both men fought valiantly, maneuvering and evading attacks made of rock while sustaining wounds all over their bodies. Their clothes were already soaked in their own blood, unable to absorb any more.

On the other side, the high mage, with no visible wounds on his body, seemed to have decided that enough was enough, and began to utilize his earth magic in more creative ways.

He glided across the floor as if skating on ice, simultaneously hurling rocks the size of entire buildings at his targets.

Before one of the mages could be struck, however, the enormous rock exploded like a house-sized grenade.

The fragments of rock tore through absolutely everything in their path. The remnants of the ongoing battle were pulverized, the bodies of fallen civilians disintegrated into a bloody mist, and previously undamaged structures in the distance crumbled.

For the wind mage, every help came too late. He was riddled with dozens of bloody holes and fell from the sky.

In the last second, Anna tried to protect her husband and shouted out loud, "NO!" But her shields of ice were a fraction of a second too late.

The shields managed to block most of the area-of-effect attack, but only on one half of William's body. His left torso, connected by just a few strands of flesh, was barely hanging on.

He slowly fell to his knees and looked in the direction of his wife, who was already soaring through the sky to come to his aid, tears forming on her face.

With no air left in his lungs, William quietly whispered to his wife with a warm smile on his face, "I love you," and shortly after, fell face down to the ground.

Anna, witnessing her dying husband, gathered all the water in the air within a radius of 500 meters and formed a massive cocoon of ice around herself and William.

The ice shield was a dozen meters thick, and the two enemy high mages didn't even attempt to destroy it, knowing it would be fruitless as long as they were inside the cocoon they could not go anywhere anyway.

The high mage with blonde hair, specializing in lightning, fished out a bottle filled with a potion, using the time to mend some of his wounds while heavily breathing.

The other mage dissolved his stone skin, revealing his tanned skin beneath.

Both of them watched as Anna tried to heal her husband's wounds with all her effort but did nothing as they already knew the final result. Tears streamed down her face as she whispered quietly to her husband, "Willi, you stupid idiot. You can't leave me yet. We had such big plans to travel the world when Lando finally graduated. Aren't you willing to come on this journey with me? I love you so much, you..."

As she tried to heal her already dead husband, his heart blown away, her tears fell like a waterfall.

With little mana left herself, Anna was unsure if she could escape alive. The lightning mage was already healing his wounds, but he was close to his limit as well. The true problem lied with the earth high mage. He had simply toyed around at the start of the fight, reserving his mana. He was at least as strong as Anna herself, if not stronger, with more mana remaining. With the combination of the lightning mage, Anna's chances of escape were not looking good, especially as he was faster than her.

Slowly realizing that her husband had long been dead as she held him in her arms, Anna instinctively looked towards where Lando was hiding.

Lando stood there, his face a picture of shock, tears slowly streaming down his cheeks. He was bleeding from his left cheek, as one of the stray fragments had grazed him in a moment of shock and carelessness. The fragment had ran across his cheek and pierced through the back side of the building.

Somehow, through her watery eyes and the crystal-clear cocoon of ice, Anna recognized her son in the distance and made her decision.

She slowly dissolved the cocoon and saw the two enemy high mages preparing for battle.

In a shaky voice, she spoke to both of them,

"I surrender."