True magic all came down to the deep connection with Mogar that those whose core had Awakened and those who bore the blood of magical creatures shared.
Quylla had to learn from experience and countless failures before giving up on learning it. Until she had entered the Fringe and discovered that every spell that she cast would receive an answer that actually made sense.
While Friya had used the time during Nalrond's recovery to improve her skills and to find a workaround to control Gravity Magic, Quylla had learned magic back from scratch.
She had to start from first magic and work her way up to the second tier of spells for every element.
While Quylla chanted, Nalrond gently grabbed her, making sure to not disturb her focus and Blinking them out of the encirclement. The elves recognized his energy signature and aimed their spells at his exit point, turning it into a crater.
The detonation was powerful enough to stop their escape but not strong enough to shatter the defensive hard-light construct that they had seen him prepare via Soul Vision.
<"Time to take the kid's gloves off! Maim them as much as you want. I want this over, now!"> M'Rael entered the fray right after throwing a disgusted look at Kimo.
The elder and his people just stood there without moving a finger in the attempt to preserve the last shred of their precious honor, putting the entire mission at stake.
'I knew that I couldn't trust the Dewans. During the conflict between my people and the humans, Emperor Beasts refused to help us, claiming that we were no different from our enemies. Both of the Werepeople's halves are rotten to the core.' He thought.
Thanks to Nalrond's protection, Quylla managed to complete the tier five War Mage spell, Crimson Hail, without ever stopping to release low-tiered spells to keep the enemies at bay.
Crimson Hail was a mix of water and air magic that turned all the humidity in the surroundings of the caster into a storm of razor-sharp ice crystals. Air magic would further enhance their edge by covering it in air blades and their piercing ability by making them spin like a drill.
The spell owed its name to the fact that the blood spilled on the battlefield contained quite a lot of water and it would bestow the ice crystals their characteristic color. On top of that, with each enemy hurt or slain by the spell, the projectiles would increase in size and number, like a swarm of deadly mosquitoes.
Quylla had Crimson Hail spin around them, getting rid of the nearby enemies and using the mass of the spell to hide from the elves' Soul Vision.
"I don't know why they are holding back, but if they start to use tier four spells and above, we're done for." Quylla said amid pants.
Casting a tier five spell while keeping active so many cantrips with true magic had drained her mana and put a heavy burden on her body. She didn't use tier three true magic not because she had no idea how to, but because every time she attempted it, her body writhed in pain.
"They want us alive, but if you and your sister keep slaughtering them like that, I don't think that-" M'Rael's arrival cut Nalrond short and cleaved Crimson Hail in two.
Both his longsword and his armor emitted such intense heat that the ice crystals evaporated faster than the spell could freeze them, yet the elf lord didn't seem to be affected by the flames that engulfed him and that charred the ground below him.
With enough training and skill, elves could do more than infuse raw elemental power in their equipment. They could even infuse magical metals with spells, giving them long-lasting effects based on the enemy that they were facing.
This way, elves had no longer need to consume mana to keep high tiered spells active because the mana crystals would fuel them. This ability also relieved the elves from the mental strain needed to control such spells thanks to the pseudo core controlling them akin to their own enchantments.
On top of that, mana couldn't affect their caster which allowed elves to fight without worrying about the effects of their equipment being turned against them.
M'Rael was enveloped by a Raging Sun that instead of exploding made every one of his movements produce a blazing shockwave. A single swing of his blade had been enough to melt all the crystals on its path and blast the others away.
"Enough with this foolishness! Surrender now or die. I've lost too many of my brethren to care about your secrets any longer." He didn't wait for an answer and took a lunge at the space between his prey instead.
Quylla managed to brace herself by boosting Orion's Skinwalker armor with mana and covering herself with Orichalc.u.m from head to toe, but Nalrond had no such protection.
The scorching air burned his lungs while the violent pressure made his eyes, nose, and ears bleed. The elf lord then punched Nalrond in the guts while activating a light spell from one of his rings.
The combination of damage and healing almost made Nalrond faint from exhaustion. Quylla tried to use her twin chains, Bloodbind, to block the enemy's blade, but fusion magic made M'Rael so strong that he only needed to flick his arm to drag her close and swat her to the ground like a bug.
Meanwhile, Friya wasn't faring much better. Now that she had lost the element of surprise and the enemies understood the limits of Dimensional Ruler, she was running out of tricks.
Whenever she Blinked, her targets would move away from the exit point while the others would unleash upon her volleys of elements-infused arrows so thick that she couldn't deflect them all.
Both using dimensional magic and boosting the Skinwalker armor to avoid being turned into a pin cushion drained her mana whereas using fusion magic barely affected the energy reserves of her enemies.
To make matters worse, the elves were slowly adjusting their position according to the range of her Blink. It was only a matter of time before she ended up in a trap, no matter where she moved.
'Dammit, I knew that winning was impossible from the beginning, but our aim has never been to kill all the elves, we only need to buy enough time to escape. Between my gravity magic and Quylla's tricks, we hoped that they would fall back for the surprise, yet they didn't flinch.
'We have overestimated our skills and underestimated the amount of training these guys underwent. I've got only one gravity spell left and the others are about to get captured. I must make it count!' Friya thought.
She unleashed her tier two Gravity Magic spell, Whirlpull, amid the enemy lines behind her and flew rather than Blink toward her companions. Her move made the elves smirk, thinking that she had run out of mana since she moved in a straight line and focused only on speed.
Yet to their enhanced vision further boosted by air fusion, she moved no faster than a bird. The elves aimed where she was going to be rather than where she was and unleashed a new volley of air-enhanced arrows so quickly that they had nocked a second before the first arrow hit.
