Bab 34: Battle of Titans [4] - Inferno

Winding his arm back, Silas plunged his hand into the mistwalker before retracting it quickly.

However, when his hand came out, it held a yellow crystal pulsing with mana.

"NOW!" Silas roared.

The bear suddenly slammed its paw into the ground. At the same time, the earth within a 10-meter radius suddenly shifted, turning into dozens of earth drills that spun so quickly that they started rating wind around them,

The sound of bangs echoed in quick succession, catching the attention of the shadowswarm that was about to pierce Silas with its tendrils.

Despite the attack, Silas dodged it quickly with water fusion and air blast.

At the same time, several tendrils shot out of the shadowswarm's arm, piercing some of the drills shooting toward it, but not all of them.

*Swoosh, Swoosh, Swoosh*

The earth drills passed right through the shadowswarm that regenerated the holes instantly, but that's when Silas also saw something. In that moment of weakness, Silas saw the shadowswarm's true weakness.

'Solid topaz core... And every time it regenerates, it uses a ton of mana too. I just have to trap it and make it constantly regenerate... Thankfully, trapping it was already part of the plan.' Silas thought before creating an air blast and appearing behind the shadow swarm.

Since the drills passed through the monster, they were now shooting toward Silas, but that was the intention.

Shifting his body weight, Silas threw the axe as hard as he could, causing it to shoot through the air and pass right through the shadowswarm's neck, decapitating it in the same instance. Of course, Silas knew that decapitation was nothing to a shadowswarm, but it was a ploy to stall it for a moment.

The bear had already stopped controlling the drill, and its mana signature was slowly disappearing. Throwing his hand forward, Silas narrowed his eyes and waited for the right moment. Taking over someone else's spell took much more mana than creating a spell of his own... Or, at least, that would have been the case if the spell was created by a human.

The bear had more control over the earth element and its own mana compared to humans. Removing its mana signature from the spell was easy, but it took a few seconds.

Extending his arm forward, Silas thought-

'Now...' Silas created the magic circle instantly.

The earth drills swerved away from him and shot past him before turning into a mist of sand.

Clenching the crystal in his right hand, Silas concentrated, causing the sand to spin into a circle before turning into a drill.

Tensing his feet, he quickly created two fire magic circles that formed smaller balls of flames that heated the drills and turned them bright orange.

'Shoot.' Silas breathed as the drills shot past him, moving toward the shadowswarm like guided missiles.

*BOOOOOOOOOM*

The explosion reverberated for hundreds of meters, making all the humans within that area look up in confusion.

'Is that Keira?' The town chief thought with furrowed brows before waving to his men to speed up.

On another side of the forest, Keira and Lochras' hearts dropped. They were holding out hope that Silas was still alive, but even they knew that unless Silas hid early on and got lucky, there was no way he would have survived.

Keira bit her lip in worry and also sped up.

Landing on the ground, Silas slid back a few meters. He could see that flame attacks did more damage than earth ones. Hell, even ice spells did more damage than earth spells since they were freezing the area they touched.

'Now that I think about it, if the shadowswarm were truly incorporeal, wouldn't things like fire and ice do not affect it? Maybe there is a core body in there? I've already assumed that it could move its mana core around its body, but what if there's more to it that I can understand at this moment?' Silas furrowed his brows, but he didn't wait another second to give the signal.

Taking in a lungful of air, Silas let his instincts drive him and let out the loudest roar he was capable of creating.

The roar turned into a sonic screech, and that sonic screech ripped through the air and the tendrils of darkness that were shooting toward him the instant he touched the ground.

*ROOOOOOOAAAAAR*

The bear also let out a deafening roar far louder than Silas'. However, instead of creating sound waves that destroyed the shadow tendrils and broke down the incorporeal body of the shadowswarm, its roar called upon enormous amounts of earth energy.

Suddenly, the earth below the bear cracked before rising into the air. Stones floated above the canopy of the half-destroyed forest, and in a breath's worth of time, they all shot toward the shadowswarm.

The monster retaliated by letting out as many tendrils as possible. However, since it had been slightly shaken by the sonic screech and the molten earth drills, its tendrils of darkness were drastically reduced in numbers.

A stray tendril suddenly whipped in erratically and extremely quickly. It was so far and erratic that Silas was unable to see it coming, so he could dodge it in time, but he had expected something like that to happen.

He had already activated earth fusion before the tendrils slammed into his arms that blocked the attack. He was instantly launched away. He coughed out mouthfuls of blood, but even though his sonic screech seized, the attack was too late.

The earth that shot toward the shadowswarm began to pile. As each second passed, the piles grew bigger and bigger. The monster was imprisoned in an enormous earth sphere before anyone knew it.

Due to the amount of control required to create that sphere, it would have been considered a tier-4 spell. Shadowswarms, however, were creatures of darkness created from an element Silas had only theorized to exist until he met the monster.

No matter who he asked, no one told him what dark magic was. From their reaction, he assumed it was taboo.

*Crack*

Tendrils shot out of the earth prison, but the bear didn't stop piling on the earth and patching the holes. Despite the pain shooting through his arms and chest, Silas saw the bear's mana reserves running dry. Sure, beasts are far better at elemental magic than humans. Sure, most tier-2 spells were inconsequential compared to the rate of mana recovery that a beast with a topaz core had.

However, this was essentially a tier-4 spell. It was taking a toll on the bear, so it meant Silas had to be quick.

Suddenly, Silas' vision tunneled as the objective became clear.

Silas' momentum hadn't stopped as he continued to crash through the trees at a tremendous rate. However, his foot had already dug into the ground, and the pain was almost completely nullified by the adrenaline coursing through his veins.

Placing the icewalker's mana crystal between his teeth, Silas created fire blasts behind him to slow himself down.

Throwing his hand up, Silas breathed in and absorbed the mana inside the crystal in his mouth.

His mana channels felt like they were burning from the strain and rejection of the mana, but he still forced it through his mana core and into his hands.

'You can do this.'

His eyes were tight shut.

A rune that was a mix of the main air and fire runes appeared above him.

Slowly, two magic circles formed above him. They were both tier-3 magic circles, but one was silver, and the other was orange.

But, instead of working like they normally would, two tier-3 circles slowly merged, making the air-fire runes fall between the two stars of the pentagrams.

An ember formed above the magic circle, but it wasn't orange. The flame shone pale blue and spun wildly.

The ember turned into a flame, which turned into a sphere that eventually grew to the size of a house.

The topaz crystal was almost completely emptied, but Silas wasn't done.

A vein on his forehead suddenly bulged as his concentration reached new levels.

The sphere began to condense, turning smaller and smaller every second. Eventually, it was the size of a tennis ball. The pale blue flame spun and flickered wildly as Silas lowered it and pointed it toward the crumbling earth prison.

He waited for the right moment. And after a few seconds, when the prison of earth finally shattered, he released his spell.

'Psuedo tier-4 spell.'

'Inferno'

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