Chapter 102: Battle Mage

There was not just one exit from the underground; twenty-seven holes had been breached through the surface. Countless grotesque monsters surged forth—creatures resembling hideously deformed bats, rats, and cats that triggered an immediate, visceral sense of revulsion.

Each of these monsters bore strange purple markings. At the intersections of these patterns sat glowing purple stones, though their purpose remained unknown.

The monsters were unnervingly frenzied. Upon reaching the surface, most scattered in all directions, but a small portion, drawn to the Apostles, charged forward with suicidal ferocity.

Provence furrowed his brow. The sheer number of monsters was overwhelming. Even if their combat prowess allowed them to cut through the tide for a time, the ultimate outcome remained uncertain.

"Focus on defense," he commanded. "The Box Garden would not have us exhaust our strength in vain; there must be a turning point."

Ava, along with two other mages—one stout and one thin—took their positions at the corners of a triangle and quickly traced a simple Lightning Lock defensive array.

Dangerous blue arcs of electricity snapped between the three points. Before the charging monsters could even make contact, they were struck by high-voltage currents that tore through the air, blasting them backward.

The smaller monsters that hit the ground were reduced to charred husks, only to be crushed under the feet of their relentless kin.

Suddenly, a wolf-like monstrosity reared onto its hind legs. Its purple markings flared, its muscles surged with power, and it slammed into the blue electric barrier.

The Lightning Lock shuddered violently. The shock stood the beast’s fur on end, but the barrier only scorched a few patches of its hide, failing to repel it. The wolf-man pushed straight through the electrical net, lunging toward the group.

Ran Bingqing, a pugilist, struck first. With a lightning-fast uppercut, she caught the frenzied, drooling beast in the jaw, launching it three or four meters into the air. Before it could land, she stomped the ground and soared upward, grabbing its contorted legs mid-air and slamming it face-first into the earth.

The wolf-man whined like a puppy, collapsing and gasping for air, unable to rise. Ran’s sequence of strikes had dislocated seven or eight of its major joints, completely neutralizing its ability to fight.

"Such incredible vitality," Provence murmured, frowning. "If all these monsters share this resilience, the elites among them will be even more difficult to handle." He issued a second order: "Ran Bingqing, drag it back. Let the medic study it."

Ran Bingqing hummed, seemingly ignoring him. She stepped on the wolf-man’s head, crushing its thick skull until cracks appeared, while purple blood seeped from its nose, mouth, and ears.

***

Ran Bingqing stared blankly, poised to deliver another blow that would have burst the creature’s skull like a watermelon.

Suddenly, Provence appeared at her side. The leg Ran had raised to strike vanished, swallowed at the knee by a ring-shaped black hole.

"If you don’t pull it out," Provence said calmly, "don’t bother bringing that leg back from this mission."

The faint, murderous glint in Ran’s eyes vanished instantly. She silently withdrew her leg from the void and said in a flat tone, "My apologies, Captain. I lost control again."

The black hole dissipated. Provence glanced at her and said coolly, "It’s fine. I will keep a tight rein on you."

Ran said nothing, dragging the wolf-man back to be turned over to a support teammate with medical skills for dissection.

Standing at the edge of the defensive array, Provence watched Adonsa, who remained as unmoved as a reef amidst the tidal wave of monsters. He frowned in secret.

Adonsa was not clashing head-on with the monster tide. Instead, he was conserving his strength by mimicking the monsters' pheromones, blending into the swarm so they perceived him as one of their own. Living underground, these creatures lacked good vision, relying entirely on smell and vibration—a perfect condition for Adonsa to hide in plain sight.

On the other side, however, the Rabbit and the young mage were fighting a bloody battle, with piles of monster corpses accumulating around them.

To protect the three newcomers, Roger the Rabbit swung his iron anchor in a wide arc, using the heavy chain to create a perimeter. He then used his short, powerful fingers to whip the thick chain like a flail; any monster struck by it suffered shattered bones and crushed sinews, never to rise again. The three newcomers were also issued submachine guns to provide limited support.

Anglora, the young mage, was a rare combat mage, her style every bit as fierce and domineering as any warrior’s.

Her black-wood staff, as heavy and hard as fine steel, was held between her delicate fingers, spinning like a gale and striking like thunder without the slightest hindrance. Adonsa suspected it was some form of anti-gravity magic; otherwise, it was impossible to explain how such slender muscles could wield such a massive bludgeon.

Anglora lunged out of the circle of protection. Instead of using her staff, she grabbed a calf-sized bat mid-leap with a claw-like grip. With a quick thrust and release, she used mysterious magic to instantly lock the bat’s movements, turning it into a living projectile. As she hurled it, the binding energy detonated into a boiling magical bomb. The shockwave shattered the bat and inflicted varying degrees of damage on a dozen other monsters, clearing a small space in the suffocating swarm.

*Protective Flow: Capture Palm!*

Using the recoil of the throw, she grabbed the end of her staff and spun it in a terrifying windmill motion. A flash of magical patterns appeared, and the staff's weight was momentarily released. A crude magic circle formed instantly, generating a lever arm many times the length of the staff, which sheared through dozens of monsters at once.

*Combat Flow: Great Windmill!*

When Anglora struck with her palm, Adonsa had keenly detected the peculiar flow of her magic.

Her otherwise erratic magical network had abruptly fused into a concise, efficient magic circle under the force of her strikes. The magic acted like fuel, channeled through the engine of the circle to unleash dozens of times its usual power.

Every subsequent move followed the same principle: she treated the incomplete magical circuits on her body and staff like building blocks, snapping them into different configurations. In the midst of combat, she successfully released various field-effect spells that would normally require calm meditation, all while maintaining high priority over defensive enchantments.

Anglora traced a wide circle with one hand, condensing a swirling vortex of magic into a tight space. She ensnared several calf-sized, rat-like monsters as if pulling them into a sack, then swung them around, crushing dozens of other monsters and turning the rats inside into pulp.

*Protective Flow: Wind Urn!*

She then raised her heavy staff and brought it down in a crushing blow upon a charging giant lizard, shattering its skull and carving a ten-meter-long trench in the ground, nearly tearing the massive beast in two.

*Combat Flow: Overhead Strike!*

Unmoved by the carnage, she hooked the massive corpse with her staff and whirled it about, extending her reach by seven or eight meters and clearing the immediate area into a sudden, eerie silence.

*Combat Flow: Vajra Dance!*

Adonsa watched this precise, domineering feast of martial arts, becoming momentarily distracted. A gargantuan, undulating earthworm had just crawled from the depths. Seemingly unaccustomed to the surface, it opened its tentacled, smooth head into the shape of a chrysanthemum and, indiscriminately, swallowed Adonsa whole.

Seeing this, Anglora’s eyes widened in alarm. She tried to rush to his rescue, but the overwhelming tide of monsters disrupted her rhythm, forcing her to retreat.

While combat mages possessed peerless instant-casting abilities, powerful bursts, and sustainable mana cycles, they sacrificed the vast array of spells and wide-area damage capabilities of traditional mages due to their incomplete circuits. They could not deal with large-scale threats all at once.

Provence’s hands moved, two black holes flickering into existence, yet he held back, his power remaining dormant.

For in the next instant, a terrifying sight unfolded.