“Twin sword arts - eclipse blade!”

The mana in the air suddenly condensed into fire and shadow. Brilliant flames and pitch-black shadows gathered to form a gigantic sword.

‘This is…’ the dark grand mage got flashbacks of an earlier fight.

Corvus Fang!

Without hesitation, the dark grand mage took out his rock artifact and poured mana into it.

“Obsidian wall!”

The dark grand mage barely summoned the wall in time as the eclipse blade crashed into it.

Boom!

A huge explosion resounded through the caves as violent mana exploded from the collision. The winds pushed away the vulture spirits surrounding Drake, giving him a moment of respite.

‘So powerful!’ he thought, feeling the energy condensed in the blade.

However, despite its power, the obsidian wall was summoned by a rank four artifact. ‘There’s no way that he…’

Drake froze as he observed cracks beginning to appear on the wall. At first, it was barely a scratch, but quickly it expanded and stretched over the entire wall.

Boom!

Another explosion broke out as the eclipse blade consumed its mana and exploded spectacularly. The shadowy figure jumped through the explosion, landing cleanly on its feet. As it came to a stop, Drake could finally make out who it was.

A young man dressed in black and white leather armour stood facing the dark grand mage. He carried a sword on either hand, one carrying fiery veins, and the other emitting a dark aura.

“Corvus!” exclaimed Farisa.

“You’re finally here!” rejoiced Cain and Imogen.

“It’s really him!” gasped Elwin. He briefly remembered how badly he had lost to Corvus during their match. However, there was no one else he would be happier to see in this situation.

As the dust settled, everyone saw Corvus clearly. In front of him was the obsidian wall, covered with cracks, but intact - barely.

‘It’s as I thought,’ sighed Drake. Sylvia could destroy the barriers with her most powerful attack, boosted by her avatar, but this guy - Corvus - could not summon that kind of power. However, he, the rest of his party, and the Silver Crane Sect disciples could still tell that he was extremely powerful to be able to cause this much damage. Though they didn’t know who he was, they were glad he was on their side.

Meanwhile, the dark grand mage undid the wall and slightly coughed. He didn’t suffer much of a backlash, but using the rank four artifact again wasn’t easy.

‘Why the hell was he here!?’ the dark grand mage screamed in his head.

This was bad.

He was currently far from his peak. He could have defeated Drake and the others, but now that Corvus was here, he wasn’t confident anymore.

‘Wait! If he’s here, that means…’

The dark grand mage looked towards the entrance and, as expected, four cultivators were standing side by side, releasing an imposing aura. One was dressed in white robes carrying the insignia of the Myriad Sword Palace - Alistair Lockwood. The others were the lone cultivators.

The dark grand mage became grim. His dark mages were just about equally matched with the other cultivators. If Alistair and the lone cultivators joined the others, forget him handling Corvus and Drake, his dark mages would all be defeated first. At that point, with everyone ganging up on him, he wasn’t sure if even he could survive!

This was really, really bad. He had to get out of here now with everyone, while they still could. Thinking so, the dark grand mage cleared his throat.

“Well, I’m surprised to see you here, Corvus Fang.”

“I could say the same about you,” Corvus smiled, eyeing the dark grand mage up and down. The aura he was emitting now was far from what it was when he had fought him earlier. Plus, seeing only two, greatly damaged lightning rhino beetle spirits, the blood stains on the dark grand mage’s face and robes, and the pool of blood next to his feet, he couldn’t help but smile further.

“Especially in this condition,” he added.

The dark grand mage chuckled. “Well, with all of us here, the others will be getting closer to the main inheritance as we speak. There is no point in continuing to fight and losing out on the main inheritance. How about we can go our separate ways and save our strength for the finale?”

Corvus smiled. The fact that the dark grand mage was even suggesting this was unbelievable to him. He didn’t know who had damaged the dark grand mage to this extent, but it was fantastic. If he let this opportunity go, there would not be another one like it.

He glanced at Alistair and the others. With a nod, the group disappeared, before each appearing next to a battle. Alistair joined Kurt and Blaze in fighting Theo, while the other three joined Cain, Imogen, and Derald.

Seeing this, Corvus smiled and turned to the dark grand mage again, and pointed his sword forward.

“How about you stay for a while?” he chided.

“You!” the dark grand mage yelled, but internally, his heart dropped. “Do you really want to push ME to a corner? Don’t think you can win with just numbers, I still have many cards I haven’t revealed yet!”

Corvus chuckled. He poured mana into his swords and fire and shadow burst out. Slowly, he raised his arms and released his grip. The swords began floating midair before rotating around each other.

“Then I would love to see them,” replied Corvus. “Twin sword arts - twisting fury!”

Immediately, the swords began rotating several times faster and shot up to the ceiling at an incredible speed. As they did so, dozens of more arrays of swords appeared around them, each releasing fire and shadow energy. The two elements combined to form a large cloud of fire and shadow above the dark grand mage and his rhino beetles.

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“Damn you!” the dark grand mage cursed.

At the same time, everyone else broke into their respective battles. Drake too began to be attacked by the vulture spirits again. However, he now directed his four black iron boomerangs to attack them. They were fast and deadly, making it much easier for him to handle the vulture spirits. So, he could keep a constant eye on the battle between the dark grand mage and Corvus.

Fire and shadow rained hell upon the beetles. The dark grand mage split the shadow chains into more than a dozen and had them all rotate rapidly above the beetles, deflecting the falling swords. At the same time, the beetles also activated their fractal strike, pulverising any swords that managed to sneak through.

The attack lasted for a minute. Many of his chains broke and the dark grand mage had to summon replacements, causing him to use even more mana. Cursing, he consumed several handfuls of mana pills and continued fighting. Just as the last of the swords fell and the dark grand mage was about to relax, he noticed that Corvus was nowhere to be seen.

“Twin sword arts - shadow phoenix dive!” yelled a voice from above.

Falling from behind the last sword was a streak of fire of shadow which quickly merged into one. The elements exploded, obscuring Corvus's figure behind a myriad of elements that formed a world of mana.

Drake glanced down at the rhino beetles still using fractal strike and felt grave, remembering what had happened to Blaze. He wanted to shout out a warning when six shields appeared around him, followed by a layer of eight, then ten!

‘But still, they can’t withstand the…’ before he could finish, the two collided.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

His shields shattered one after the other like fireworks, releasing bursts of mana. However, Corvus dived towards the lightning rhino beetles even faster.

“NOOOO!” the dark grand mage screamed. However, Corvus had appeared too suddenly and was way too close for him to put up a defence in time.

BOOOMMMM!

A deafening explosion occurred, even bigger than the first. Waves of mana surged and physically pushed everyone back.

The piercing mana transformed into a giant, infallible blade that cut through the rhino beetle’s shell like butter, and pierced its body.

BOOM!

The beetle shattered into a million pieces and dissipated into mana while Corvus crashed into the ground below. A large dust cloud rose into the sky and violent winds swept at the surroundings like a mad storm.

Drake was at a loss at seeing this kind of power.

It took a few moments for everything to settle down. The winds slowed and the dust settled, revealing Corvus who was standing on his feet.

Despite falling headfirst into the fractal strike, he was mostly unscathed. On the other hand, one of the lightning rhino beetles was now dead. Looking back, the dark grand mage was clutching his chest and coughing out more blood.

The dark grand mage wiped his cheek with his sleeve and smirked. He opened his palm and numerous orbs of black mana flew out. As they reached several metres above him, they each condensed to form a new rank two vulture spirit.

Thirty… fifty… eighty… hundred… and they kept coming!

Drake grew more and more dismayed as he saw the numbers.

One hundred and twenty… one hundred and fifty!

After what seemed like forever, the dark grand mage finally relaxed, and his arm fell by his side. More than a hundred and fifty rank two vulture spirits condensed in the air above him.

‘This is…’ Drake didn’t know what to think. But it made sense, with two rank three spirits gone, the dark grand mage would have the mental energy to control more rank two spirits. Yet… this was a crazy number.

On the other hand, Corvus was smiling. In his mind, if the dark grand mage chose to summon them over more rank three rhino beetles, that could only mean that he was running low on mana. With how powerful those beetles were, Corvus was sure that summoning them would cost at least as much mana as a hundred of those vulture spirits, if not more.

What Corvus didn’t know was that it was also a lot easier for the dark grand mage to summon rank two spirits in this inheritance than rank three.

With a smile, the dark grand mage pointed at Corvus. At once, almost a hundred vulture spirits flooded towards him. At the same time, the lightning rhino beetle began preparing a storm spear. The dark grand mage looked around to see his dark mages falling into a disadvantage. He pointed his hand towards Cain’s battle and immediately, the rhino beetle shot its storm spear towards her. Simultaneously, the remaining vulture spirits scattered into packs of tens and reinforced the other dark mages.

“Bastard!” cursed Corvus. Despite his power, it would still take him some time to deal with this many vulture spirits. The dark grand mage was planning to attack the others in this time.

“Solar barrage!” came a voice from behind. Corvus tilted his head to the side to spot Drake running towards him, several fireballs floating by his side. Drake finally finished dealing with his share of vulture spirits and ran to help Corvus.

In the blink of an eye, the fireballs arrived, shooting into the storm of vultures. At such a distance, most of them managed to dodge the attack easily. However, just as the vulture spirits rejoiced, they spotted a shadow shoot past. The next second…

Poof!

The four black iron boomerangs hid among the fireballs and took down several vultures by surprise.

‘Not bad,’ thought Corvus.

Seeing everyone engaged in battles, the dark grand mage finally relaxed. He turned towards the other end of the mines and smirked. Activating a martial technique, he disappeared, then reappeared several metres away. This repeated over and over.

‘He’s heading to the inheritance!’ gasped Drake. The dark grand mage was planning to take the inheritance and flee while everyone was engaged in battle!

“Bastard!” screamed Drake. He turned to run towards the dark grand mage when a dozen vulture spirits swooped towards him.

“Octane blast!” yelled Corvus, shooting eight blades at the vultures and causing them to scatter. Drake glanced back, about to thank him when Corvus interrupted him. “Go! I’ll take of this!”

Nodding, Drake poured mana into his boots and activated shadow steps, pushing his speed to the limit. Electric sparks appeared around his feet as he became a shadow and dashed through the mines.

Although the dark grand mage was fast, with the boost from his rank two boots, Drake was catching up. Seeing this, the dark grand mage hurried faster. He could see the rank three artifacts lying on the floor now - a metal pick axe, a black sword, and a copper urn.

‘Just a little… more…!’

“Chain lightning!” Drake shot a bolt of lightning towards the dark grand mage.

“Curse you!” the dark mage spat. Taking out his bronze goblet again, he yelled, “Shadow chains!”

A large black chain appeared and collided with the bolt of lightning. The lightning split into numerous smaller bolts and travelled along the chain, inching towards the dark grand mage.

“Split! Corrode!”

Upon his instruction, the shadow chain split into five and began releasing a dark red substance. The lightning was quickly drowned by the substance and disappeared.

However, this was enough time for Drake to catch up. He faced the dark grand mage without a trace of fear.

“You! What do you think you can do against me on your own?” he laughed.

However, Drake smirked, releasing a cold killing intent. The next instant, he began pouring mana into his ring.

Seeing this, the dark grand mage’s face grew pale.

‘Not this again!’

Having no choice, he took out his rock artifact again. “Earth shattering wall! Obsidian wall!”

Two huge walls appeared in front of the dark grand mage just a gigantic dragon claw condensed before Drake emitting a powerful aura.

Drake coughed as his mana became dangerously low. He bit his lip and pushed the claw forward.

With its speed, it reached the walls in a second.

BOOOMMM!

A large explosion resounded through the mines as the claw pressed against the wall. Within a few moments the earth wall broke.

BOOOMMM!

The claw crashed against the obsidian wall. Drake consumed mana pills one after another like it was food. Doing so would make him suffer for sure but he had no choice. He couldn’t let the dark grand mage go now.

Determined, Drake continued pouring an endless amount of mana into the dragon claw.

Boom!

The second wall also collapsed.

Cough! Cough!

The dark grand mage suffered another backlash but he couldn’t worry about that now. Looking forward, the enormous dragon claw was descending towards him. Adrenaline pumped through his body as he felt danger unlike anything he had ever experienced before. Every fibre of his being was telling him to run for his life, yet he knew there was no escape from that thing.

‘Am I… going to be defeated here?’