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Chapter 130 - Stalling Outcome

Headmistress Lenolia maneuvered across the sky as she systematically evaded her opponent's attacks with remarkable agility despite not being a martial mage. Her maneuvers were limited to mere shifts, and yet that alone was enough for her to evade her opponent's attack.

She wasn't just using divination spells to read his magic circles and act on them sooner than she would; she was also deploying divination to read his voluntary and involuntary movements, and the flow of his mana being driven by his powerful mana-motive force.

All of these magic spells gave her profound insights into the immediate future, allowing her to react much sooner than she would have otherwise managed to. The actual time difference it made was no more than a split second.

And yet, in a battle between mages, that was enough to be the difference between life and death.

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!

Her movements were graceful, allowing her to slip in between her opponent's attacks. Several magic circles emerged right in front of her as she cast a powerful storm of light and wind with a wave of her staff, threatening to shred her opponent.

RUMBLE!

The skies shook as the powerful light-wind storm sent powerful wind currents across the entirety of the slum district. The sheer force of her spell was so powerful that, despite being focused on her opponent, just the side effects alone were enough to cause the weak and unstable housing across the slums to collapse and threaten to knock people off their feet and send them flying away.

Given enough time, it would have easily erased the entire district from existence.

"Rgh…!"

"So powerful."

"So this is the power of a master mage…!"

The task force gasped at the sheer power that the Headmistress had evoked, and yet, it wasn't enough to overcome a fellow master mage by itself.

"Rargh!" Master Mordir snarled as several black magic circles emerged in front of him, causing a wave of darkness and death to saturate the light storm. In the blink of an eye, the darkness consumed the light, and the death element caused the dancing winds to die on the spot.

Suddenly, the tumultuous skies grew lifeless.

Sterile.

Cæ's eyes widened with a stunned expression as he understood just what Master Mordir had done.

He had deployed the death element to bring 'death' to the winds that comprised of her attack.

He didn't even think that was possible.

It was a realm of mastery of the death element that Cæ had never seen.

Both sides displayed some truly terrifyingly powerful magic that made him feel small as a mage. He didn't think even a hundred of them would be enough to pressure the powerful master mage or her opponent.

Master Mordir glared at the Headmistress as a single magic circle appeared before him.

A spell to conjure many magic, poisoned arrows.

Ten thousand of them.

"Hyargh!" he snarled as he flicked his wand, causing them to conjure upon her with great speed and power, each powerful enough to destroy a small building. The task force grew horrified as thousands of arrows rained down from across the entire sky, converging on Headmistress Lenolia, leaving her no room to escape.

Her eyes glinted with severity as she rapidly unleashed a powerful wave of light that washed over the incoming attacks, crushing all the arrows into little pieces. She followed through with a powerful conjuring spell that created tremendous constructs of wind and light, shaped like birds that converged upon Master Mordir with great speed and power.

Master Mordir grunted as he unleashed a powerful wave of darkness that not only weakened the incoming light but also obscured his position from the Headmistress. One moment, she was deploying powerful birds of light against her opponent; the very next, however, she found herself dealing with an inscrutable enemy.

"This again," she huffed with a hint of contempt in her composed tone. "An assassin that can't do anything unless he's hiding in the dark."

"A diviner that can't do anything without light." Faint whispers from within the darkness reached her ear.

It was indeed generally true that assassins tended to have an affinity for darkness while diviners had an affinity for the light element. The former was useful for stealth, deception, and ambushes, while the latter was useful for illuminating the truth and gaining information.

"Light always wins against darkness." Several magic circles emerged before her as she conjured a powerful spell of light, unleashing yet another powerful wave of light to dispel the darkness in her surroundings.

VMMMMM!

The powerful wave of light expanded from her omnidirectionally, temporarily dispelling the powerful darkness that had saturated the skies above the district.

And yet, the moment the light was gone, the darkness had returned.

Her eyes narrowed with a hint of grim severity.

"Domain magic, hm? Not bad. I suppose the mages of the slums are worth something after all," she huffed even as several magic circles appeared before her.

It generated a halo of light above her head.

It was a spell that none of the students could even begin to understand.

"You underestimate the Colohen Mafia," he whispered with a chilling tone. "We have not deployed our most powerful apprentices and seniors. It is simply not worth it to redirect our most powerful forces, who are in charge of more important matters, to deal with such a paltry matter."

"Ah, yes," she remarked. "That is why you yourself, a master mage, chose to intervene."

"Once I kill you, I will wipe out your little task force," his tone was malevolent. "No one will ever dare to set foot in the slums with the intention of stealing our talent."

Headmistress Lenolia narrowed her purple eyes.

"The people of the slums do not belong to you. They are not your subjects nor your property."

A cackling voice emerged from within the darkness that had consumed the entirety of the district.

It sent goosebumps across the skin of not just the task force but also the residents of the slums, who had been terrified by the turn of events that had occurred.

The Graveyard had always been a violent place, but that was generally limited to gunfights.

Two battle mages going at it with each other above the skies of the slums was far, far beyond anything they had ever seen and beyond anything that they had ever even fathomed.

They heard the conversation.

They heard the chilling voice of Master Mordir.

"The people of this district belong to us."

His words inspired horror in the district.

"The people of the slums are merely property of the Underworld."

His tone was devoid of warmth.

Neither he nor the magetants who they fought before him avoided inflicting damage to the slums because they earnestly cared for the people's wellbeing out of compassion and kindness of their hearts.

No.

The reason that they had avoided harming the slums in their battles with the mages of the Elendir Institute of Magic was for the same reasons that people were careful about not dropping their phones.

They didn't want to damage their property.

The people of the slums weren't just a source of magical talent to fill up their mage ranks.

No, they were also a source of goods and services.

Many of the women and girls could be forced into sexual labor for people in the inner city, a substantial portion of the earnings of whom would go to the Underworld. Many men and boys underwent different kinds of extraction, from manual labor to combat labor.

Not to mention, everybody paid 'protection fees' to the gangs for essentially existing in the slums unharmed, even though the notion was laughable.

It was also true that more than half of all slaves in Elendir came from the slums.

To them, the slums were essentially an economy to drain of capital and labor.

This was hardly a closed secret.

And yet, hearing it uttered out loud by someone high up in the slums was truly horrifying for the people in the district.

The air darkened.

Not just because of Master Mordir's magic, but also because of the despair and misery that came with the realization of what their fates were.

"I will not allow you to exploit the people of the slums anymore."

Headmistress Lenolia's voice was loud and clear, reverberating across the entire district with some manipulation magic of the air element. Her aged purple eyes flared with a hint of defiance as she directed a sweeping gaze across the cloud of darkness she found herself in.

"I have fought to break the Colohen Slums of your shackles," her voice was powerful. "To give them a better. To give them the opportunity to break past your constraints and master the power of magic."

Realization dawned in the eyes of the people of the slums as the residents gazed at the task force with a hint of understanding.

If before they hadn't even the faintest idea of what this battle was about and why these people were here, they had a very slight inkling of what this conflict was about.

"When I'm done with my goal, the slums will have broken free from the darkness of despair that you have imposed on them." Her tone contained a glint of intensity. "I will have integrated the slums into the magicademics industry."

This had been her plan, and with Cæ's idea of selling the data of those with significant magical talent to other magicademies, it was a way to get the entire sector scrambling to the slums to recruit the portion of the youth who did have magical talent.

Of course, this was far from destroying the Underworld's stronghold over the slums, but it was a very powerful start at eroding their influence.

"Not if I kill you right here and right now."

RUMBLE

The skies shook as the domain of darkness intensified.

It grew stronger as Master Mordir poured in the magical energy of another element.

The death element.

Headmistress Lenolia's eyes widened as she felt an impending sense of death around her.

She was now in a domain of death.

"I'm afraid I was just stalling, Headmistress." his raspy voice was hostile. "Now die!"

The darkness in the air gave birth to countless killing attacks comprised of weapons, death, and other all but dangerous phenomena that would like in an instant. The death element was infinitely versatile, as people could die in infinite possible ways. The attacks converging upon Headmistress Lenolia were myriad in their diversity, reflecting his experience as an assassin.

And yet, not a single attack struck her.

For she wasn't even there.

WHOOSH!

The attacks crashed into an empty image of light.

Illusion magic.

While it was not her forte, she could cast very powerful and convincing illusions with an incantation.

The halo of light over her head was a powerful divination spell that allowed her to locate him amid the domain of darkness.

"I was stalling as well."

Master Mordir's eyes widened as her voice emerged from behind him.

And yet, by the time he turned and leaped away, it was already over.

SPLAT!

"ARGHHHH!" he roared with pain as a powerful beam of light impaled him through the back and out the front of his chest despite the powerful raiment of darkness that he donned. His body quivered with pain and agony as he directed a hateful glare at Headmistress Lenolia from the corner of his eyes.

"You bitch…" he spat blood. "You think you will be able to get away with this?! You will—!"

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!

Several spikes of light emerged across his entire body inside-out.

Including through his head.

His corpse grew limp as the final embers of life were snuffed.

The extraordinary domain of darkness and death that was spread across the entirety of the district on a colossal scale was dispelled, freeing the district from its dreadful grip.

The overhead Sun shone brightly over the district once more as a sense of relief and salvation spread across the entire district.

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