Chapter 100 (1/2)
Chapter 100: The Cost of Underestimating the Opponent
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Once he saw the wind daggers, Link immediately recognized it as one of the spells of the air element – Storm of Daggers.
Storm of Daggers
Level-3 Spell
Effects: Concentrated wind energy formed into three extremely sharp daggers. When the wind daggers hit their target, they will break up into countless small daggers, enveloping an area of about 30 feet wide.
(Note: Its nickname in battlefields is ‘meat grinder’.)
To ordinary people, there was nowhere to hide from this lethal spell. Even if they managed to dodge the direct attacks of the three wind daggers, they would be faced with the deadly shards hat formed after that. The only fate that awaited them was death.
To a Magician, though, as long as they could cast a defensive spell of the same level, the Storm of Daggers was even easier to block than any other spell of the same level.
The reason for that was simple – it was spread out into a big area. The strength of the Storm of Daggers was also too scattered, making it extremely easy to deflect.
With Edelweiss, Link had nothing to fear of the onslaught of the Storm of Daggers. He could even retaliate with his own attacks immediately, although there was a slight problem because the opponent was hiding among the trees. Link could only estimate his location by the trail of fluctuating Mana he left behind.
Right now, what he needed was a powerful spell that would work in a big area. As the thought occurred, Link stumbled on the perfect solution immediately. What would be a more suitable spell to use in this situation than Flame Blast?
Like the Storm of Daggers, Flame Blast’s attack was spread out into a huge area, but it was also a level higher than the Storm of Daggers. Link used the Matchstick wand to cast this Flame Blast, so it was not as powerful as the one he unleashed in Gladstone, although it was still a force to be reckoned with.
Because Flame Blast was a Level-4 spell, its spellcasting time could be as long as 2 seconds, which was far too long to leave oneself vulnerable to the opponent’s attacks. That’s where the Domingo Crystal came in handy.
When Link was in River Cove Town, he imbued enough fire element into the Domingo crystal for one Flame Blast, and now was the perfect time to use it.
Mana surged wildly in Link’s body then rushed into the wand before finally forming into the complex Flame Blast spell structure.
At the same time, under the great attraction of the spell structure of Flame Blast, the Domingo crystal began to glow. The fire elements stored in it came raging out, and there was a strong resonance, quickly forming a large fireball.
Link didn’t stay in the carriage in the process. Before the Storm of Daggers hit the carriage, he opened the door and jumped out. He chose where he ran to carefully, which was in the space between the three wind daggers.
In doing so, he avoided the most powerful part of the Level-3 spell and had to only deal with the tiny blades afterwards.
Then he could hear a whistling sound. Two wind daggers grazed past the side of his body and a portion of the daggers scraped into the Edelweiss force field, rustling Link’s black hair. When his feet touched the ground, the wind daggers hit the carriage behind him.
One of the daggers sliced through the carriage, splitting the entire carriage into two halves. Another dagger hit the horses and the two horses were cut into four chunks. The last one headed towards the coachman, and a second later the coachman was split in half from the waist.
Bang! Bang! Bang! The three wind daggers then exploded and broke up into small blades. The whistling wind suddenly picked up momentum and became violent. The air was now filled with swarms of tiny blades. The carriage, the dead horses and the coachman’s corpse was turned quickly into a mass of minced flesh and crumbling dust.
There were now countless microscopic wind daggers hitting Link’s Edelweiss shield. The elements and the force field kept clashing with each other, each clash showing up as a spark on the outer layer of the Edelweiss shield.
Both were Level-3 spells, but while one was broken up and scattered, the other was intact and stable. The small blades had no chance of penetrating the shield; Link was safe without a scratch under the protection of his spell.
At the same moment Link’s feet was firmly on the ground, he pointed the Matchstick wand towards the direction that the Storm of Daggers came from and immediately a blindingly bright sheet of light extended from the wand’s tip.
It was Link’s Flame Blast, unleashed at a breakneck speed. If slowed down, one would then see that the blinding light was made up of an incandescent fireball the size of a soccer ball surrounded by a visible heat wave about three feet thick around the fireball – a sign that showed just how blisteringly hot the fireball was.
Link had managed to cast Flame Blast in 1.1 seconds – an almost unimaginable speed!
About half a second later, the Flame Blast fireball burst into the forest and exploded.
Boom!
The explosion was ear-splittingly loud. It kept the ground rumbling for a few seconds and it created a powerful shock wave that was visible to the naked eye. It was strong enough to shake and quiver the trees in the forest. This then sent the birds in the trees flying frantically in droves, almost covering the sky in a dark mass.
In the midst of the thundering explosion, Link could make out a scream.
He knew instantly that his spell had hit the opponent and had even seriously hurt the opponent.
He’d cast a Level-4 spell in 1.1 seconds—it was so incredibly fast that he was sure that there was no chance for the opponent to hide or evade from the Flame Blast’s assault. In fact, even Link wasn’t sure if he could survive from such an attack himself because in the absence of preparation. Almost no Magician on the Firuman continent could build a Level-4 defensive spell within 1.1 seconds, unless he was equipped with a powerful magic gear or a defensive Domingo Crystal.
The dense forest in front of him was blown into a mess of wood and leaves. In the center of the explosion, a tree was blown into oblivion and around it there was crater about a foot and a half wide. On the edge of the crater, the vegetation was on fire, making a crackling sound as they burned.
Link then walked up to the crater—he wanted to see who the attacker was with his own eyes. He was capable of casting a Level-3 spell, so Link knew at least that this was no ordinary rogue or bandit.
Link protected himself with the Edelweiss spell and gave himself a boost from the Cat’s Agility spell.
Link slowly approached the crater, but he couldn’t find a dead body. He searched all around, but the shrubs were all burning, so there was no way that anyone could be hiding behind them. Link continued to look around before he finally found a corpse under a tree…no, it wasn’t a corpse, the man was still alive.
He was desperately leaning against the tree, and his clothes were burned to crisp, leaving only a few wisps of rags hanging on it. The exposed skin was burned and blackened too and his hands were tightly clutching a wand, but the wand was already shattered, only half of it remained.
He heard Link’s movement, so he opened his eyes which were slightly shut before.