Enya sat sideways by the window, one hand propping her up, the other palm cupping her chin, her head tilted slightly upward.
She gazed down below.
Her expression was as if she were watching a theatrical performance.
With a careless glance, she swept her eyes over the Black Robed Elder who was being bombarded by a rain of fire, shrouded in flames and black smoke, along with Ronald and the others.
Then, Enya turned her gaze to the sky.
Sophia was constructing a large-scale Mid Tier Magic, one at the very peak of the mid tier, which required a period of chanting and preparation before it could be unleashed.
Magic was also divided into tiers.
While First, Second, and Third Tiers were classified much like Magic Cores, in truth, the two weren’t that strongly related.
Magic below the Fourth Tier was collectively called Low Tier Magic, magic above the Fourth but below the Seventh Tier was called Mid Tier Magic (common folk referred to anything above Fourth Tier as High Tier), and above that lay High Tier Magic.
And then, the legendary Transcendent Magic.
Although Sophia only had a Five-Tier Magic Core, her spiritual strength had already been refined to the standard of the Sixth Tier; as long as she went through the proper training, she could use Mid Tier Magic belonging to the Sixth Tier.
In terms of strangeness, the Elemental Magic system might not match up to other magical systems, but when it came to physical damage and raw impact…
Elemental Magic was still the way to go!
Enya saw threads of Sophia’s magic power streaming into the pitch-black clouds above. Before long,
she’d be able to unleash a truly massive spell.
She lowered her head and glanced at Nina not far away.
At this moment, Nina was hesitating whether or not to use her twin swords to finish off the humans hiding in that turtle shell of a defense, when suddenly, a voice rang by her ear.
“From your right, they’re coming this way.” It was Enya, using Message Magic.
Upon hearing this, Nina pouted, but still turned to face the incoming presence, muttering in a low voice at the same time.
“I didn’t need you, you old lizard, to remind me—I already knew!”
Just then, a figure with an astonishing presence charged toward the people trapped by the rain of fire, apparently intent on pulling someone out.
But Nina wouldn’t just sit back and watch.
She darted forward, her Spirit Twin Swords slicing through the air in a golden arc, slashing toward the charging man.
Clang! Clang!
With two metallic crashes, golden and deep green lights collided, stirring up a wild gust.
Landing on the ground, Nina didn’t retreat a single step. Instead, she stamped forward again, charging at the human silhouette.
It was a hunched man with a head of tangled, dark green hair, gripping two Short Curved Blades in his hands. The blades shimmered with a chilling, eerie green light.
The golden Spirit Twin Swords in Nina’s hands and the man’s twin green blades clashed in rapid succession, then separated just as quickly.
In just a few breaths, nearly a hundred brilliant sparks exploded in the narrow space between the elf and the man—less than two meters apart.
With a final cross of twin swords and twin blades, both infused with magical brilliance, human and elf were knocked back some distance from each other.
“Oh? You have some skill, don’t you.”
The man’s previously lazy eyes narrowed after that exchange.
He sized up the short figure in the Hooded Robe before him, surprised that someone who looked like such a little brat could fight him to a standstill.
He scratched his face, which was as dry as old tree bark, and squatted, his dead-fish eyes staring at the gray-robed dwarf five meters away.
He gave a cold laugh and said,
“Hey, little dwarf, I suggest you run back to your mama for some milk. This isn’t a place for you, hehehe.”
“Hmph!”
Nina’s fair little hands gripped her twin swords as she stood proud and unyielding, exuding an aura at the very peak of Sixth Tier magic.
It was clear from her posture that she had no intention of letting the man get past her so easily.
The man split his cracked lips in a grin, revealing yellowed, blackened teeth.
“In that case, I’ll thoroughly enjoy cutting you to pieces. It’s going to hurt, but I’m not a gentle man.”
Nina couldn’t even be bothered to reply.
Boom!
Thunder exploded in the sky once again. In the instant the lightning illuminated the earth, rain poured down with the thunder’s roar—heavier than anyone had expected.
As the rain began to fall, the firestorm finally ceased.
But hidden within the downpour, those formless, razor-sharp wind blades kept slicing down relentlessly, as if the magician in the sky had endless magic to spare.
Elves were favored by nature, possessing an Innate Magic called “Elemental Affinity.”
It was a natural gift for every elf, allowing them to consume less than a third of the magic other races needed to cast Elemental Magic.
This was precisely why Sophia could use Elemental Magic so extravagantly. It was also the reason the Black Robed Elder below looked so grim.
By his estimate, Sophia—soaring on the wind above—should run out of magic soon and be unable to maintain such ferocious attacks.
But in reality, the onslaught hadn’t weakened in the slightest from start to finish.
The elder noticed the reinforcements were being stalled.
He had originally planned to take Ronald away first, then go all out to test that mysterious woman, but now it seemed he could only continue to hide.
His Shadow Walk Magic could only be used on the ground, and he didn’t have any magic to fly that high. His ranged attacks were still lacking as well.
He’d never faced such an opponent before, never researched how to deal with this situation.
As the heavy rain fell, a cacophony echoed through the city, and the moment the raindrops hit the ground, both Nina and the twin-blade man vanished into the curtain of rain.
A golden afterimage, and a dark green afterimage, flickered constantly within the downpour.
Each time they darted, the distance between them was over ten meters.
Wherever their afterimages swept by, scars were left—on the ground or on the walls—as though sliced by a keen blade.
The man tried to break through Nina’s defense, but she always kept him at bay.
Her nimble form flitted through the rain, cloaked in a faint golden glow.
As raindrops came within ten centimeters of her, they instantly evaporated into mist, which reflected the golden light.
By the Inn window, Enya reached out to catch some rainwater in her palm.
With her exposed golden-red dragon eyes, she could see the magic power contained in the droplets, causing the corners of her mouth to curl upwards.
Back when Sophia was still in the room, Enya had told her: magic, having become a fixed system over time, had long since lost that original, astonishing imagination.
What mattered most in magical combat was creativity—not who had more tricks up their sleeve, nor who had the higher numbers or better mechanics.
Of course, numbers and mechanics helped too.
On Nina’s side, the twin-blade man was growing impatient, his attacks fiercer than ever, but still unable to break Nina’s defense.
What irked him most was Nina’s almost playful attitude, as if she thought this life-or-death battle was nothing more than children whacking each other with sticks.
Although Nina was Sophia’s guard, she was also the brightest genius among the Gold Elves in a thousand years.
Even in terms of bloodline, she and Sophia were cousins.
Her noble status and extraordinary talent—these were the sources of Nina’s confidence.
With a golden Cross Slash, she carved a cross-shaped scar into the street, a meter wide and seven or eight meters long—a testament to the power of Battle Techniques.
By using a special magic activation method, she could unleash powerful attacks similar to magic, but with an extra step: converting magic power into sword aura, making this a warrior skill.
That Cross Slash just now was an ordinary one, yet its power was enough to demolish a house in a single blow—a testament to its lethality.
Suddenly, as if hearing something, Nina stopped abruptly.
She no longer clashed with the twin-blade man, instead leaping onto a rooftop, away from her current spot, as if playing a game of tag.
Ronald craned his neck, peering through the black curtain.
He hadn’t done anything, yet the fighting broke out so suddenly.
It left him feeling stifled, a lingering frustration welling in his chest.
Earlier, one of his brother’s subordinates had snapped at him, making Ronald’s pent-up resentment even worse.
Desperate to vent, his gaze involuntarily drifted toward the Inn window.
Though the Black Robed Elder had already warned him not to act rashly, Ronald couldn’t sense anything terrifying about this gray-haired woman, who only had the strength of a Fifth Tier Magic Core.
Could she actually be the weakest of them all?
Constantly hiding, letting a woman step on his head, and being stared at as if he were just a sideshow—Ronald’s face flushed beet red.
He fixed his eyes on Enya at the window, starting to muster a spell.
The Black Robed Elder noticed too. His slitted eyes widened as he turned to glare at Ronald, growling in a hoarse voice,
“What are you doing?”
He’s obviously weak. Why not just lie low? Yet you want to provoke a monster whose true level is hidden—what on earth is wrong with you?
She hasn’t acted. Why are you provoking her?
As the elder shouted, Ronald felt as if his chest had been struck and his head smashed with a stone brick. Dizzy and dazed,
the spell he’d been mustering unraveled.
The elder had barely begun to relax when he felt a piercing gaze lock onto him.
He didn’t dare turn around to meet it, as if doing so would invite a terrifying blow from its owner.
Sweat beaded on his forehead, but he still held up the black curtain, bracing to receive the imminent assault of a large-scale Mid Tier Magic.
Once Ronald snapped back to his senses, his expression was extremely sullen.
Just as he was about to argue, he suddenly felt all the hair on his body stand on end.
“W-What’s happening?”
Ronald reached up to touch his head, hearing faint crackling sounds.
The black-faced guard at his side frowned and looked up at the sky.
Ronald, seeing him do so, hesitated a moment, then raised his head as well.
And in that instant, from within the dark clouds high above, dozens of lightning bolts burst forth, flooding the entire White Stone City in blazing white light.
The city, once gloomy and dim, was now illuminated by lightning in every exposed corner.
In a flash of lightning, it was as bright as midday.
Sophia raised her brown wooden staff high.
The jade-green gem at its tip gleamed as thunder and lightning gathered to her will, coalescing in the sky above into a white tree formed of lightning.
“Sixth Tier Magic: Divine Might.”
The white light condensed into a spear, descending with destructive intent.
This was the majesty of nature itself—thunder and rain, both under its dominion!
In the distance, a violet bolt of lightning flashed, racing toward the beam of light.
Enya rose from her chair, scooping up Wendy, who had been crouching at her feet, and before the white and violet collided, left the Inn where she had been staying.