Chapter 224: Hit the Mark by a Fluke
Translator: Kris_Liu Editor: Vermillion
Having no time to think too much about it, Lucien instantly made a mirrored clone of himself and extended the cover of the fire shield to the clone as well. Careful as Lucien was, he even changed the side on which he wore the piece of monocle on the clone’s face.
It was the second-circle spell, Mirror, and it was one of the three second-circle spells that Lucien actually had their structures built inside his soul. The other two were Mechanized Mind and Maskelyne’s Acid Arrow.
As soon as his mirrored clone showed up, a green light ray hit the clone right in its chest and destroyed it instantly into pieces! Then the light ray did not just disappear but it reflected so fast that there was no way for Lucien to dodge, as the spell was cast by a sixth-circle sorcerer!
The green light directly hit the flame shield covering Lucien. The flames suddenly rose up and quickly broke down into red particles in the air.
The green light was a sixth-circle spell, Dissociation!
Lucien was lucky enough that his mirrored clone and flame shield gained him some time, so he managed to activate Fire Weaver’s Bracelet barely in time, or he would have been dissociated into those floating particles already!
Nevertheless, Lucien’s robe, Transformation, still got damaged. Strange blank patches appeared on his robe, as if they were taken away by an invisible eraser.
Lucien was in cold sweat. He could not imagine what would have happened to him without the protection of the three spells and the robe.
Furthermore, Lucien was lucky that his enemy’s Dissociation spell was not as powerful as he thought. After all, the Flame Shield enchanted in the bracelet was only a second-circle spell, and thus Lucien thought that his robe would be completely ruined when the green light came to him directly.
Lucien had learned a lot from his past fights. Right now he remained quite calm and activated the power of his partly-damaged magic robe.
At this time, the necromancer summoned mummies that were wrapped in black and rotten-smelling bandages. After the mummies climbed up from the ground, they all rushed at Lucien, who was still surrounded by red flame particles.
Like real knights, these mummies moved very fast. Among those mummies which were immune to spells under fifth-circle and physical attack from grand knights and below, there were also ghasts, which could exert some necromantic spells.
However, after the mummies and ghasts tore apart the flame shield, there was nothing in there.
Lucien was gone!
Standing in the air, the necromancer wearing a hood was a bit surprised, but soon, with his spiritual power, he murmured to himself, “Umm… A hole in the ground… Mouse transformation…”
When the necromancer raised his hand, the ground started shaking violently, like an earthquake arrived.
Sixth-circle spell, Earth Shake!
The half-destroyed carriage swayed up and down together with the ground, and the coachman’s rotten body was broken into pieces. The human who had been thrown over the coach from a great height was stilly lying there, seemingly completely dead.
While in the sophisticatedly constructed system of mouse holes under the ground, Lucien, who was right now a red-eyed mouse, felt the great power as the ground shook violently. Knowing that if he stayed there any longer he might be buried alive, Lucien had no chance but to go back to the surface.
As soon as Lucien dismissed the spell and returned to his human-being form, he was ready to activate his ring, Element, to try his very best to survive.
Lucien never expected that he could escape from the attack of a senior-rank sorcerer, so what he had been doing was to waste the necromancer’s time, hoping that the senior-rank sorcerers and archmages of the Will of Elements nearby could notice what was going on here and came to rescue him.
However, as time went by, Lucien realized that at that moment they were probably too busy studying the Mind of Nature to pay attention to him.
At the same time, when Lucien came back to the ground, he finally recognized the man who was thrown on the coach and was right now lying beside the remaining pieces of the transport—it was Felipe from the Hand of Paleness! He was killed by another necromancer!
Lucien was shocked.
In the air, Traquair’s eyes were shining with red light that pierced through the darkness under his hood. He was ready to cast Death Stare, a sixth-circle spell, on Lucien!
Just at the same time, a dim light shot out from Felipe’s chest, and it immediately froze all the black mummies and ghasts within in fifty-meter radius. Then, the mummies and ghasts just exploded silently all at once!
The dark gas produced by the explosion then turned into a long sword covered with weird-looking eyes. Very swiftly, the sword directly hacked at Traquair.
Dark Sword, a seventh-circle spell enchanted in Felipe’s Immortal Throne amulet! This spell could not only control the movement of the dead, but also collect the power of death, which could degrade the power of the one struck by the spell by one circle. Without some kind of special rites, the affected would never be able to recover from it!
Surprisingly, Felipe did not die. He was just pretending, and then he gave the enemy a totally unexpected strike at the most critical moment.
After the bitter fight with Felipe in the air, Traquair had already consumed all his protection spells. Felipe also used some spell which looked quite similar to Dark Sword before, so Traquair was not alert enough to avoid the attack.
The dark sword absorbed Traquair’s power, and instantly, Traquair was turned into a fifth-circle, middle-ranked sorcerer. Thus, of course, he could not use Death Stare anymore.
Seizing the chance, Lucien immediately activated his ring, Element, and bright light burst out from it. Surrounding Traquair, a colourful swirl composed of black, blue, green, and golden particles showed up in the sky, and the swirl devoured Traquair in no time, tearing him apart.
Elemental Swirl, seventh-circle spell!
Lucien felt great pain from the finger which the ring was on, and the pain was so unbearable that his heart almost stopped, and all of his spiritual power dried out. Feeling extremely weak and tortured, he almost could not stand up.
This was the cost he needed to pay for casting that seventh-circle spell when the seal had not been removed yet.
Although Traquair was still struggling with casting all the defensive spells that he knew, his physical body was being torn into pieces, and so were the magic items he was wearing, as they were also composed of elements.
Both Elemental Swirl and Cracking (Advanced) could destroy magic items, but only the latter, a ninth-circle spell, could ruin legendary level items and the effect of the spell was not affected by one’s defence level, as one could only rely on his or her own spiritual power and several unique senior-rank spells to fight against it.
However, the biggest difference between Elemental Swirl and Cracking (Advanced) was that the former could actually hurt one’s physical body and soul, but the latter only worked with magic items and magic buffs.
Even so, before Traquair drew his last breath, he shouted at Felipe furiously, “You! The traitor of your belief! You can never overthrow Life Force Theory! GO TO HELL!!!”
The great pain drove Traquair crazy, and layers of black gas kept coming out from his body. As soon as his body and soul were completely destroyed by the swirl, a violent explosion burst forth from its center, targeting Felipe!
The Last Strike, a fifth-circle spell. When the caster was killed, his or her body would explode to attack the last defined target!
Immediately, flame and powerful blast waves devoured Felipe. Lucien, on the other side, was also thrown to the ground because of the great power.
When the air blast disappeared, Lucien tried hard to get up. He was about to mourn for Felipe, after all, they were fighting together just now, but then he saw a figure staggering and slowly standing up on the other side, through the heavy dust in the air.
“You’re still alive?!” This was totally beyond Lucien’s imagination. However, right now, he was also too weak to fight against Felipe.
Felipe, who was bleeding all over his body, and whose long coat was covered with holes and blood, said to Lucien, gasping, “Even if you died… I’d still be alive, Mr. Professor.”
After witnessing how Lucien fought, and watching Lucien standing right in front of him, Felipe was quite sure that Lucien was the very Mr. Professor that he was looking for.
The fact that he was fooled by a first-circle sorcerer really pissed Felipe off. However, when he was about to cast spells to attack Lucien, he realized that his body was too weak to do anything right now from the backfire of using the amulet.
“I think you’re dying, Mr. Felipe.” Lucien neither admitted nor denied Felipe’s words. Right now he had already got the support from the Will of Elements, he did not really care whether the Hand of Paleness could recognize him. Lucien continued, “Are you working on synthesizing ingredients for life? Is it why this guy tried to kill you? Hey… You just brought such a disaster to me.”
Felipe sneered, “He’s from the Hand of Paleness. He could not accept the fact that Life Force Theory has been overthrown, so he tried to kill me, and he wanted to kill you as well, because he wanted to make other people think that we killed each other. However, both of us know who he really should have been after! And by the way, I’m telling you… I’ve successfully synthesized an aliphatic acid. So I suggest you to hurriedly submit your paper about synthesizing carbamide to still get a couple of credits.”
“Oh? Is that true? Then congratulations, Mr. Felipe, my dear student.” Lucien smiled, “You’ve proved that I’m really a professor.”
As both of them were too weak to fight, they were fighting using words.
“Although you’re smart, you’re still not even close to me, and you were just being lucky.” Felipe curled up the corners of his mouth, “If Traquair hadn’t got hurt by my senior-rank magic roll, his Dissociation would have killed you already!”
Although Felipe was saying so, he actually paid lots of attention to this guy who successfully fooled him before, when he was only a first-circle sorcerer!
Lucien shrugged, “Mr. Felipe, you’re only a level-four arcanist as well, right? When I am in your age in the future, my level will be way higher than yours. The periodic table alone can bring me a lot of arcana credits each year, so I’m totally uninterested in publishing a paper in synthesizing life ingredients, you know…”
“Oh yeah… When you reach senior-rank, your progressing will slow down.” Felipe retorted, “And I don’t think the Will of Elements really values you that much. As far as I know, you’re not a student of any senior-rank sorcerers or archmages?”
Lucien took a glance at the place where Traquair just exploded, “Nevetheless, the Will of Elements is still way better than a group where its members just kill each other. By the way, I thought your experiment producing life ingredients was confidential, wasn’t it?”
Felipe’s pale face looked serious. He murmured, “Other than Thanatos and Demigod-lich, there are only three people including Mr. Rogerio who know about my experiment. There’s no way that they would leak the information… What’s going on here?”
“Emmm… I’m not sure. Not really my business.” Lucien wanted to laugh at Felipe, but the pain stopped him.
Felipe felt that his body, or say, the body he was using now, was close to falling apart. He thought for a few seconds and then said to Lucien, “I won’t tell this to Thanatos… Mr. Professor, what about cooperating with each other for once?”
“For what?” Lucien asked.
“I’m gonna take my sweet revenge for what those old guys have done to me in the Hand of Paleness,” answered Felipe fast. Of course, proud as Felipe was, he could not stand this.
“What can I get from it?” Lucien grinned a bit in pain.
