Chapter 198: Disconnected
Chapter 198: Disconnected
They would be in so much crippling pain that they would not be able to effectively fight the soldiers anyway.
And since this specific tornado was moving much faster, he was able to sweep the battlefield and get a lot more monsters severely injured compared to before.
And that was exactly what happened.
The flaming tornado moved across the battlefield really fast. It brutally burned hundreds of monsters in seconds.
Adrian watched the carnage and grinned. The raw damage and the sheer destruction was pretty massive and seeing this, Adrian couldn’t help but think.
’Such a massive spell should be enough to cause damage to the point where they retreat once again.’ he thought to himself.
Dozens of burning monsters trampled over the monsters near them. They shrieked and thrashed in the ground while the hot flames burned them alive.
But then a massive, unexpected problem hit him.
The spell suddenly died.
Adrian always kept himself connected to his spells using a thin mana strand. And he used that exact strand to continuously pump more raw mana into the spell to keep it alive. That was exactly how he could keep such massive, destructive spells active for so long.
But what happened this time was totally different.
All of a sudden, his connection to his spell got severed without any warning. His invisible mana thread literally just got snapped in half.
It snapped cleanly, and he instantly lost control over the flaming tornado.
Adrian watched in shock. He could clearly see the huge tornado rapidly losing its flames and volume because the magical fuel source was totally gone. Raw oxygen alone was not enough to sustain a tornado like this.
He quickly tried to shoot another mana strand out into the sky, desperately hoping that he could reconnect and power the vortex up again.
But this time, the exact moment the new strand barely connected to the dying tornado... it got snapped again.
The tornado received a tiny, pathetic trickle of mana, but it was not enough. The effect of that tiny bit of mana was not enough to show any visual change. The volume of the flames did not increase at all.
Then the entire firestorm just sputtered out before Adrian could even send a third mana thread to the flaming tornado.
Adrian just stood there staring at the empty sky.
But the brutal battle did not pause for him. He instantly whipped his chakrams out to shred a pack of wolves pushing hard against the shield wall. He desperately needed to keep the frontline from collapsing under the pressure of the horde.
He swiftly chopped the charging beasts to pieces while his brain raced to figure out what just broke his spell. He tried to think back and analyze exactly what even happened over there.
’My mana strand just got cut.’ Adrian thought rapidly. ’And I was not even close to going over my maximum range. So the problem is definitely not my range limit.... it is something else entirely.’
As he analyzed what he had experienced, he couldn’t help but frowned deeply.
’The only people who can actually sense invisible mana strands are mages.’ Adrian reasoned. ’And if that is the case, then there is definitely a highly skilled mage out here on the battlefield somewhere. And that mage is fighting on the enemy side.’
He squinted his eyes as he looked at the monsters on battlefield.
’Or we have a rat.’ Adrian thought. ’A mage standing on our side is just sneakily cutting my spells from the back.’
But he quickly dismissed the friendly fire theory.
’The second option has a very, very low probability.’ Adrian concluded. ’And I already know that there is someone orchestrating these waves against us.’
So it was obvious.
’It is either a mutated boss monster that can use advanced magic.’ Adrian decided. ’Or there is a human mage hiding on the other side.’
Adrian just continued killing the charging monsters while his brain worked on overdrive.
And because he was thinking so hard, he could not maintain his complex offensive magic. Instead of using two flying chakrams to actively aim and kill the monsters, he dropped it down to only using one.
Because he wasn’t really able to think about everything and fight at his maximum capacity at the same time. He could not think while putting so much attention on the chaotic battle happening all around him.
So he just dropped it to one ring. Because he knew that he needed to use his brain right now to solve this threat. Otherwise, if he just blindly continued fighting the endless horde, the war might turn into a war of attrition and he’d lose.
So he looked past the monsters and stared straight toward the dark forest.
He ran the math in his head.
The tornado disappeared maybe a hundred or a hundred and twenty meters away from his current position.
And his own maximum casting range was exactly four hundred meters.
And the total distance from the exact place where the spell vanished, all the way to the edge of the was a little less than three kilometers.
Putting those numbers together gave him an answer he did not wish to accept. His blood went cold the more he thought about it.
’If this enemy mage is currently hidden deep inside that forest,’ Adrian analyzed. ’Then their maximum casting range is a minimum of three kilometers.’
He continued thinking rapidly.
’As a third circle mage, my maximum range is exactly four hundred meters.’ Adrian noted. ’And since the maximum casting range for every single magical tier is exactly the same as the maximum mana capacity...’
’A fourth circle mage has a maximum range of one thousand meters. A fifth circle mage has a maximum of two thousand meters.’
Adrian swallowed hard.
’And a sixth circle mage has a maximum range of...’
He looked straight toward the dark, looming forest. He took in a sharp, freezing breath of air before muttering out loud.
"...four thousand meters."