The area that Nick was currently in mostly consisted of tall cedar like trees that were greatly spaced apart and the ground was lined with short Bermuda grass. The pack of wary dogs were focused fully on the group of students so Nick planned to head to the leader of the pack from the side; the number of wary dogs amounted to about sixty, most of them being babies and a small portion being tiger-sized. Nick ran about 30 meters to the right away from where the two groups were engaged in battle, the battlefield having a radius of about twenty five meters. The leader of the wary dog pack was all the way at the back with the other wary dogs in front of it fighting against the students.
The students attacked ferociously unlike the group that Marsha had been in where each Magician had a clearly defined role; every Magician in this group was there to kill their enemies. Fireballs, ice arrows, snowballs, fire pillars, green acid, poisonous fog and killer vines, Nick saw all of these attacks being thrown at the wary dogs but they lacked a sense of coordination so the situation looked like a mess. Daryl Smith was mixed in among the front liners using his magic power to launch steel spikes at the closest wary dogs but his hit rate was only about 50%; the same went for all the other students. Cindy Reece was at the back of the group and had a steel bow in her hands which she would occasionally draw back, an arrow made of orange-red fire appearing and being launched by the string as she let it go, impaling and incinerating any wary dog that came in contact with it.
The group of students seemed to number about twenty five and were barely holding on, not because their attacks weren't effective but because their hit rates were only about one half and they noticeable paused for at least 15 seconds between about every five casts of their spells, everyone attacking at intervals in order to consistently hold the wary dogs off.
Nick looked on as he ran and thought:
(Their disadvantage lies in their inexperience with real battles and that's probably why their hit rate is so low. Not to mention that they are only rank 2 Apprentice Magicians which means that their mindscapes should have a capacity of around 10,000 magical units and assuming that the average one time attack spell consumes about 1500 magical units, after they cast five spells some students wait to recover their magic energy so that they aren't completely depleted of it while other students start attacking in earnest to cover the others who are recovering; they do this in intervals to keep the attacks fairly heavy but constant so that the wary dogs don't rush in at them.)
Spells had the same ranks as Magicians and as the rank of a spell increased, theoretically the higher the power it had; there were generally two types of spells, ones that had a one time, instant effect and others that produced an effect over time. The former kind had a higher base of consumption at around 1500-2000 magical units while the latter kind had a lower base consumption at around an average of 150-250 magical units per second. The consumption of the spells did not necessarily change as the Magicians or the spell increased in rank but the power of the spell would certainly be greater if it was a higher rank attack spell; the power of a rank 1 spell would certainly be greater when cast by a rank 2 Apprentice Magician as opposed to a rank 1 Apprentice Magician because the former had more condensed and generally better quality magic energy than the latter.
A spell's overall rank was determined by the nature and complexity of the laws used to make it and generally not by its consumption, however, even if the description for a rank 3 spell stated that it required 1500 magical units, that was referring to magical units from a rank 3 Apprentice Magician; a rank 1 Apprentice Magician trying to cast such a spell may not be able to activate it or if they can active it the consumption would be significantly greater, depleting their magic energy and the spell would have much lower power than if it was cast by a rank 3 Magician. Nick created his spell, Big, so it did not necessarily have a rank yet but its base consumption was a good indicator of its power, it being almost 600 magical units per second. Soul Pressure was different, with its consumption being only a little above the average at 360 magical units per second but Nick thinks that's probably a testament to the skill of its creator in how exquisitely it was crafted, having low cost but high power. In contrast Nick's, Big, has high power but a relatively high cost and the cost per second shoots up greatly depending on how large Nick wants to make an object.
Nick positioned himself at a 180 degree angle to the rear of the pack without too much trouble after ten minutes of running; he was winded and still had about twenty five meters to run in a straight line to reach the position of the leader of the pack but he didn't need to cross the whole distance to accomplish his goal. Along the way here, there were many wary dogs that clearly noticed him but under their leader's commands, they could not stray from the battlefield and their leader only momentarily looked towards Nick's direction before ignoring him, probably feeling that the power of a lone human couldn't amount to much in this situation.
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(Dumb beast, I'll make you regret ignoring me.)
Nick started preparing his spell, Soul Pressure, and after five minutes, he ran in a straight line towards the pack leader's position. Amidst all the shouting of the students and the growling of the wary dogs, Nick ran towards the rear of the pack, not trying to hide the magic power exuding from his body. The pack leader soon looked towards Nick, and let out a ferocious growl, ordering some of the closest wary dogs to attack the foolish human running towards it and it returned its attention to the group of humans in front of it. By the time Nick was eighteen meters away from the pack leader, he took out two of his throwing knives, holding one in each had. As the wary dogs were about to reach Nick's position, Nick acted:
(Soul Pressure.)
The wary dogs froze on the spot with varying amounts of blood coming from their mouth and nostrils; Nick had put their souls under immense pressure, keeping them in place. Nick continued to run and soon having reached within twelve meters of the pack leader, its movements also slowed, having enough strength to turn its head angrily to look at Nick.
Slade commented:
[It seems that this large wary dog has some resistance to soul magic but not that much so it shouldn't be too difficult to remove its pitiful life from this realm. Get it over with so that we can continue our journey.]
(Understood.)
Nick nodded, the pack leader had completely frozen in place after it turned its head, looking at Nick grudgingly; the wary dogs closest to it had also frozen in place. The wary dogs outside of the range of Nick's spell grew confused at their leader's lack of communication and diverted their attention to see what was happening, creating an opportunity for the students to kill a large number of them with little resistance.
Nick held out both of his throwing knives and pointed at the house sized leader of the pack, the blades positioned vertically.
(Big!)
The magic sea within Nick's mindscape started visibly decreasing until it was completely bottomed out in two seconds; over 15,000 magical units were used up in the activation of the spell. The blade of the knives in Nick's hands extended towards the wary dog and increased in size, burrowing deep into the ground and rising two and a half meters into the air. Because of the nature of the spell, Big, the knives moved unimpeded by the ground or wind pressure, with Nick not even feeling the weight of the transformation until the blades had ran through the pack leader's body, splitting it into three gruesome pieces. Just before the blades had pierced the pack leader, the effects of soul pressure had dissipated because Nick had ran out of magic energy to keep the spell going but it was already too late for the huge wary dog. As the pieces of its body fell onto the ground, its eyes were wide opened as it died silently; a pool of hot steaming blood was created where it died.
SILENCE
The whole battlefield went quiet. The students momentarily stopped their assault as they saw the huge, menacing wary dog cut into pieces, shock filling them at this moment and the tiger sized wary dogs no longer paid attention to the students, now looking at their dead leader they lost their courage to fight this death match and wanted to flee. The tiger sized wary dogs had human like intelligence and were now the ones in charge so it wasn't long before they growled loudly and ordered all the baby wary dogs in the vicinity to scatter and flee. The students screamed ecstatically, Daryl smith commanded:
"Don't let even one of these fuckers escape!"
As the wary dogs began to flee the students chased them down, killing many of them from behind. The wary dogs weren't the only ones that were fleeing at this time as Nick had already let go of his knives that were still firmly rooted in the ground, no hope of them being budged from their high raised positions and was running towards the direction of the swamp.
(No way am I going to stay here while my magic energy is still recovering, it's a good thing that these wary dogs decided to flee outright when I killed their leader or things might have gotten difficult for me. Next time, I should control my expenditure better so as not to become defenseless after I cast a spell so intensely from running out of magic energy.)
Nick learned from his apparent mistake in this moment and ran towards his destination, him ignoring the fleeing wary dogs and them ignoring him.
Out of all of the students on the battlefield, there was one who was not interested in chasing the wary dogs and killing them; she was Cindy Reece, Nick's old acquaintance. As she looked at the back of the familiar man fleeing in the distance, she muttered to herself, unsure:
"Nick, is that you?"