The Undying Magician - Book 2 - Chapter 56 - Experimentation Mid-Battle Part I (Patreon)

                                                                 Nathan
                                            Year 2849 | Month 1 | Day 24

In the end we reach a nice little agreement where he has to use his creation mana – the affinity he has being something I learned about during the discussions – to help the refugees build better homes in the caves, and to create supplies for me such as armor to replace the one I currently have pretty badly damaged, and bullets until I can make my own. And in exchange, I’ll protect his city should his dealings with me become public knowledge.

Which will most definitely happen soon.

Probably before he even leaves the area, in fact, considering the sound of travel through the forest I can hear from all around us. Things like brushes being pushed aside, branches being stepped on, leaves being stepped on, and even the minute breathing of people.

Actually, I think he’s about to run into one of them now, since he just left not even a couple minutes ago.

I shout at the others to stay inside before leaving the cave and slowly climb up the cliff holding the cave on its side and getting into place on the top of it. Then I pull out my rifle and move it around till I get into a nice position to see the many soldiers slowly approaching the cave.

This’ll be interesting.

Before I fire though, my eyes are attracted to the sight of a certain creation affinity mage creating literal walls of camouflage between him and the soldiers he’s passing by, letting him escape unnoticed.

Oh? Very interesting.

That aside though, I slowly look through the soldiers as they close their encirclement by moving the soldiers behind this small plateau to connect to the wall of the plateau, making sure not to let anyone escape from the cave. And when I finally find who I’m looking for, I frown.

Looks like Falkner isn’t here in person. He just has one of his captains here instead leading this charge.

A captain that I can’t help but notice is a magician this time.

Interesting.

And judging by the small amount of fire mana I can sense in barrier, he’s clearly a fire affinity magician as well. Which means Falkner is fighting fire with fire.

Literally.

He’s still a coward for not bothering to come himself though.

Either way, I’ll be going to pay the man a visit after I deal with this.

I aim directly at the magician before filling the gem on my rifle with mana and taking the shot right as he opens his mouth seemingly to shout for everyone to attack, my bullet quickly shattering his flimsy barrier before going through his mouth and out the back of his head.

Yep. Thought so. He was only a new Class D magician, probably with around thirty or so arcs of mana.

The soldiers around him all freak out, immediately dropping to the ground and out of my sights. Meanwhile the ones I can see further away from him appear simply confused. Until a moment later when they too drop to the ground with fear on their faces. Likely after being told through comms that their leader was shot down.

There goes the only real threat amongst these troops.

My thoughts come to a sudden halt when I hear the trees suddenly rustle above me, making me immediately roll over, barely avoiding a blade of wind that strikes where I was just lying down. Then I jump to my feet and look up to find Falkner floating through the air with some sort of wind magic.

“I knew you wouldn’t just let us march into your cave, much less even approach it,” the man says, sounding smug for some reason. “Did you really think I was that stupid?”

“So you tried drawing me out by using one of your captains as bait?” I ask with a frown while putting my rifle away and slowly drawing my sword. Then, after he nods his head in agreement, I tilt mine to the side and ask, “Why do you sound so smug then?”

That wipes the smirk off of his face as it’s instantly replaced with a look of anger.

“You think you’re so funny,” he says while spreading his arms out and creating several more magic circles, “don’t you!”

I blink at that, my head still tilted slightly.

“Not really,” I eventually mutter, seemingly making him even angrier as the magic circles immediately begin filling with script before dozens of blades of wind fly out of them. And I combat the blades by making a barrier of fire over my skin and putting mana into my sword to set it ablaze, then striking at each of the blades of wind, slicing them in half.

Over time though, the blades begin to be too much for me, purely due to the massive number of them that he keeps throwing at me, proving very well his status as a Class C magician. They start to make it past my guard, soon shattering my shield and slicing into my arm, then my leg, followed by various other places across my body. And in the process of doing so, it’s shredding my armor.

“Damnit,” I mutter, “how am I going to repair this?”

All of the wounds immediately seal up each time I get hit, of course, but the armor…

Suddenly his attacks begin to shift, more and more blades of wind coming at a faster and faster pace. Then a massive magic circle appears above me, followed by a tornado appearing below it, making my eyes go wide in surprise.

“Well shit,” I mutter right before the tornado crashes down on top of me, cracking pretty much half the bones in my body at once and sending me flying up into the air, all of the trees and even parts of the cliff I was on going up along with me, constantly hitting and scratching at me. But despite all this, I still can’t really bring myself to feel any fear.

And the pain isn’t really much compared to aging myself, so…

In fact, I use this as an opportunity to study the time and space mana in my bones.

Will taking so much damage at once from so many different attacks have any effect on the mana there? Is the time and space mana finite?

The doctor wasn’t really able to study the mana itself in my bones because the only one who can look that deep magically into someone’s body is that someone themselves.

Let’s see…

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