Chapter 209: Cowardly Mage
Chapter 209: Cowardly Mage
Then she immediately used this as a distraction to head directly into the dark forest.
As she flew silently between the trees, she did not bother searching with her eyes. She just sent a single, incredibly thin mana thread shooting high up into the cloudy sky.
And she did not stop at sending just one strand. She instantly sent thousands of invisible mana strands spreading out like a massive spider web into the clouds.
And almost immediately, her web touched something.
She sensed another, completely foreign mana strand high up in the dark clouds. It was a thick thread that seemed to be going towards the forest.
She did not hesitate.
Aria instantly converged all of her thousands of mana strands directly onto that single, thread. She wrapped her own mana thread bundle tightly around the enemy’s mana thread, and snapped it clean off.
She basically used the exact same disruption method that the enemy mage had used to cancel Adrian’s flaming tornado spell earlier.
And with this clean cut, she completely severed their connection to the storm clouds.
She knew about the lightning spell that was used a few moments ago. The maximum number of targeted lightning strikes they could actively summon and direct without a tether was literally zero. This was a spell that needed one to learn how to use mana strands to power spells continuously.
And to establish this connection to summon more lightning, the enemy mage would need to stand still and send another thick thread slowly up into the sky.
But with Aria actively hovering right there in the clouds, she knew for a fact that they wouldn’t dare try sending or using this highly vulnerable spell again. She could just snap it immediately if they did.
And just before she could do anything else or push deeper into the woods to find the caster... a really sharp, incredibly long ice spear flew straight out of the trees and shot directly toward her face.
Aria did not really panic or have an intense reaction. Instead, she just casually raised her hand.
The exact moment the deadly ice spear got close, a glowing, complex magic circle instantly appeared right in the air in front of her palm.
The heavy ice spear just flew straight into the glowing magic circle and completely vanished. A moment later, it was instantly redirected, and it shot right back out of the exact same magic circle, flying at maximum speed back in the exact same direction that it came from.
Aria kept her awareness pushed to the maximum limit. She tried to focus heavily on the forest all around her, desperately trying to see exactly where these silent attacks were coming from.
Because unlike the full-body mana shield which passively covered all of her vitals, this specific reflection spell was a highly localized defensive spell that also ended up having the power to send the attack back without issues. She needed to manually summon and position this magic circle at the exact places where the incoming attacks were going to hit her.
So she needed to perfectly predict where the enemy was going to strike from next.
And just as she was thinking about her defensive angles, almost twenty razor-sharp ice spears suddenly flew out of the forest and shot straight toward her from multiple directions. They flew in wide arcs while some flew straight at her.
Aria did the same exact thing again and used the same spell.
She rapidly spawned multiple glowing mana circles. And at the exact same time, she forced the main magic circle to rapidly move around her body.
Every single ice spear got cleanly swallowed up by the magic circles. The glowing rings expanded slightly, and then suddenly shot all twenty of the ice spears right back into the forest.
Aria just floated there in the cold rain. She stared down at the dark, dense trees and frowned.
’I need to just burn these people alive.’ Aria thought angrily. ’I need to burn this whole entire place down, or I will never be able to find them in this forest.’
But then she changed her mind.
’Wait, right.’ Aria realized. ’They are cowardly hiding in the forest to ambush me. But I can easily hide in the forest better. This spell will consume more mana but it’s just much better to use.’
So she dropped her altitude. She dove straight down into the woods and landed softly in the mud. Then she just walked deeper into the forest while keeping her invisibility illusion active.
’Let’s see if I can find you quick enough.’ she thought as she looked around, but a tiny shift in the ambient mana suddenly rippled right under her boots.
She reacted purely on instinct.
She basically took direct inspiration from the way Adrian fought. She instantly triggered a highly compressed Gust spell right below the soles of her tiny boots to push herself forward and into the air.
The wind force launched her backward.
She glanced over her shoulder and saw a massive bundle of thorny vines shoot right out of the wet soil. They came out at the exact spot she had been standing on a moment ago.
The thick thorny plant tentacles thrashed around blindly. They slapped the ground around them trying to wrap around her ankles. But once they failed to grab anything within a few seconds, they began to dry up.
Soon, the dead vines just slumped back down into the ground.
Aria just clicked her tongue in annoyance.
’This mage is such a pathetic coward.’ Aria thought to herself, looking around as she tried to find the mage.
Just then, she noticed a tree nearby move in an unnatural way. It’s roots moved just a little and Aria immediately sent a mana strand into the tree.
She found another strand and immediately cut it. The tree stopped moving but that tree wasn’t the only one that was.
Multiple trees around her began to move and Aria just slowly turned her head to look at every single one of them.