Chapter 1014: Unable to withstand a single blow
“Jelos, there’s a scent of thunder and lightning energy here.”
The shadowy figure with a grayish-white appearance hovered in the air, his shadow magic robe fluttering like a tattered flag in the wind.
This was the Chief City Guard Wizard of the City of Exiles, Perifa Tadding, an Eighth-Circle Shadow Series Combat Wizard.
By his side, the person resembling a ghostly shadow was his companion, named Jelos Tadding.
Both possessed the same surname and hailed from the Tadding Family.
Perifa was a Shadow Dark Soul, manifesting as a semi-transparent gray phantom.
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Jelos was not a Shadow Dark Soul.
On the path of magic practice, he had transformed himself into a shadowy death creature known as “Phantom Ghost.”
Shadow Dark Souls can be immune to physical damage, and so can Phantom Ghosts.
Shadow Dark Souls can be resurrected with Shadow Fragments and magic circles, whereas Phantom Ghosts have a slightly different way of coming back to life.
After being killed, a Phantom Ghost does not disperse into Shadow Fragments but instead resurrects in another pre-prepared Ghost Body.
Only by destroying all of a Phantom Ghost’s spare bodies can one be completely eradicated.
This method of post-mortem resurrection is more ingenious than that of the Shadow Dark Soul.
In a significant sense, Phantom Ghosts are less afraid of death than Shadow Dark Souls, with a combat strength far exceeding the latter.
However, the price paid to transform into a Phantom Ghost is much greater than becoming a Shadow Dark Soul.
Shadow Dark Souls forfeited their ability to procreate, in exchange for physical immunity and fragmentary resurrection.
Phantom Ghosts not only gave up their ability to procreate but also completely lost the capacity to “speak” and “enjoy pleasure.”
Jelos hovered in the air like a cloak of shadows, from within which faint moans and screams drifted out.
Those were not Jelos’s own voice. noveldrama
It was the voice of the souls he had absorbed into his body, undergoing torment and destruction.
Jelos himself could not speak.
He communicated by tormenting the souls within him, simultaneously seeking the sensation of “pleasure” that had long since left him during the process of tormenting others’ souls.
“I…feel…it…”
Miserable howls rose within Jelos’s body and swept through the Stone Forest like a chill wind:
“The residual thunder and lightning energy here is very intense… The enemy just left not long ago… Hickman Arlington might be dead, or possibly captured by the enemy…”
“I have a premonition that the enemy hasn’t gone far,” Perifa said, able to speak normally as a Shadow Dark Soul.
He drew his magic wand and chanted a spell, tracing several black arcs in the air with the tip of his wand.
The black arcs expanded into a circular black light ring.
A large group of shadowy creatures with wings and elongated tails crawled out from the black light ring and wandered around the Stone Forest.
These were a type of shadow creature known as “Shadow Gargoyles.”
They are natural sentries, adept at collective action and rapid reconnaissance.
Their bat-like wings granted them swift flight abilities, the elongated tails served as natural grappling hooks and flight stabilizers, and the “Shadow Cloak” on their surfaces acted as magic armor against all non-shadow magic.
Such a group of shadow summonings, capable of fighting, flying, and scouting, quickly discovered many clues at the scene.
The most noticeable clue was the extraordinarily high concentration of residual thunder and lightning energy.
Electric sparks often burst forth from the stalagmites, turning into tiny electric snakes that zipped away rapidly.
Based on the concentration of residual energy, and working backward to infer the potency of the thunder and lightning spells during the battle, Jelos and Perifa reached an alarming conclusion:
An tenth-ring thunder wizard had been present here.
Only the lingering effects of such a thunder wizard’s magic could remain for so long in the Dark Zone.
Uh, there had been some misunderstanding.
The “Tracking Thunder Arrow Array” that Noland Lee used was a kind of wild magic, not local magic.
By pouring more thunder and lightning energy into it, the potency of the Tracking Thunder Arrow could be directly increased.
Noland Lee currently has 50 Type I Elemental Reactors.
So far, he has used 25 of them.
This was enough to create the illusion that there was a tenth-ring thunder combat wizard in the area.
So, it was no wonder that Jelos and Perifa had been mistaken, it was only because Noland Lee had used an excessive amount of thunder and lightning energy.
In other words, if it weren’t for Hickman Arlington’s extremely strong “life-saving” ability, he might have been obliterated by Noland Lee’s “Mental Magic + Thunder and Lightning Magic” combo upon just meeting him.
“There seem to be traces of spells from other factions here as well, but they’re covered up by the thunder and lightning energy, so I can’t make out their true nature,” Perifa said.
Through the magic vision he had bestowed upon the Shadow Gargoyles, he saw the subtle traces left by the environmental restoration techniques.
Regardless, the turn of events exceeded the expectations of the Upper City Area.
The Upper City had assumed the thunder wizard lingering in the Stone Forest would at most possess the strength of nine rings, deeming the appearance of a tenth-ring impossible.
Worse yet, Hickman Arlington, who had come to scout, failed to send back any information.
Neither the Upper City Area nor the Vigilance Team knew the origins of the thunder wizard they were facing.
“Boom, boom, boom…”
Faint sounds of explosions came from the direction of the Shadow Death Laborers.
Perifa’s expression changed slightly.
He turned toward the direction of the laborers and extended a black claw from his eye socket, sensing energy fluctuations 30 kilometers away.
The collapse of stalagmites and the cracking of the ground caused by thunder strikes lifted waves of booming noise, all hinting that the thunder wizard was hindering the laborers from constructing the Magic Barrier.