By Zephyria With a loud sound, the ground shook, and Hugo and Leonardo raised their heads and scanned the surroundings warily.
Leonardo stopped talking and sharpened his senses. Sensing an unusual energy, Hugo stirred up the wind and blew away all the swirling smoke.
As the smoke cleared and the visibility was somewhat secured, a vast plain was revealed beyond the ridge in front of the mountain range where they were standing. And soon, the ground vibrated irregularly, and the vibration gradually approached.
Eventually, the source of the vibration, which was causing dust to rise from the foot of the mountain and pouring out at a rapid speed, came into their eyes. The black mass, running madly like a whipped horse towards the unfolded plain, was rushing somewhere, cutting across the two people’s vision.
Hugo narrowed his eyes at the number, which seemed to be at least several thousand.
“Dermokas?”
As soon as his words were finished, Leonardo suddenly leaped towards the plain in front of him, trying to jump in. It was to eliminate the monsters.
However, as soon as his feet left the ground, his body was suddenly pulled back, and he could not go any higher. When he wondered why, it was because Hugo was holding Leonardo’s waist with a firm arm, preventing him from moving forward.
Leonardo, who had been halfway in the air and then stepped back on the ground due to Hugo’s strength, looked back at him with a rather embarrassed face. He frowned and grabbed his arm, which was pulling his waist, and asked.
“What are you doing?”
Hugo shook his head.
“You’re very tired. Don’t step forward.”
At that moment, Leonardo stared at him with a face as if he had heard a strange story. Then, he turned his head and looked at the thousands of monsters moving quickly in front of him and asked.
“Then what about those guys?”
Hugo pulled him back a little further before letting go of his waist.
“I’ll take care of it. You stay still.”
At those words, Leonardo stared at Hugo with questioning eyes. Of course, he knew that he was strong, but he knew that his explosive magic power was more suitable than the nature of his main attribute magic to handle that scale.
Hugo held Leonardo’s hand tightly this time, as if he was afraid that he would jump out. As a strong grip that seemed to tell him not to step forward was transmitted through his hand, Leonardo was dumbfounded but decided to watch what he was doing. It seemed like a good opportunity to see Agrizendro use long-range attacks.
“It’s been raining all the time, so the clouds are nice today.”
Hugo muttered to himself, looking at the clouds that were thickly covering the sky. Leonardo also raised his head and looked at the sky.
Just as he was thinking about what was so nice about it, Leonardo felt a powerful energy that was on a different level from the magic power he had felt from Hugo.
Not the subdued surge of cool mana, but the ruthless chill that felt like it would freeze and tear the skin, coupled with explosive mana. It was clearly a different nature from his own mana, but the energy and waves emanating from it were undeniably powerful.
Leonardo felt the intense energy more vividly through their joined hands and shifted his gaze to Hugo’s face. Simultaneously, a strong wind began to blow, shaking his hair. It was no mere gust. It was a strange and overwhelming power that moved the entire atmosphere.
Leonardo, who had been looking up at Hugo, frowned as he noticed thick clouds slowly moving above his head.
‘Is the cloud moving because of the air current?’
Before he could even be surprised, the air currents brushing against his skin were unusual. Leonardo unknowingly parted his lips slightly.
The pounding in his body that had started after sensing the powerful mana mingled with the majestic sound spreading through the atmosphere. The monsters, who had been running madly, seemed to sense something strange as the nature of the air completely changed, and they hesitated.
Meanwhile, Hugo stretched out his right hand towards the sky in front of him, where the Dermokas swarm was visible. Leonardo watched his actions intently.
Generally, mages use their hands when casting magic to more easily draw out mana and visually shape it, using the hand, which can be moved most easily, as a medium.
However, Agrizendro had often shown the ability to freely use mana without using his hands much, so Leonardo was quite curious as to what kind of magic he was shaping by stretching out his hand.
As if to meet that expectation, a loud sound, like thunder, echoed in the sky, and convection of air occurred where Hugo’s hand was pointing, creating a huge vortex of clouds.
The clouds that had been spread across the vast sky were sucked into one point, forming a storm of considerable diameter. As the clouds gathered, the powerful low pressure drew in all the surrounding air, creating a destructive tornado.
Leonardo felt the wind created by his mana and stared blankly at the scene. He then turned his gaze back to Hugo, who lowered his arm, which had been extended towards the sky, towards the monsters and chanted a spell.
“Mega Storm.”
His solemn voice echoed, and the slowly rotating vortex of clouds began to spin rapidly. A strong cracking sound was heard in the sky, and the frozen vapor at the end of the giant storm transformed into sharp ice, plunging towards the black swarm running far away.
Kwaaaang!
As the end of the storm struck the ground, a vibration that shook his feet was felt once more. Then, the screams of the monsters, who were being torn apart and killed by the pouring long, straight ice spears, were heard. The monsters swept up in the storm collided with huge chunks of ice and exploded in mid-air, then fell like meteorites with debris.
The countless corpses and ice chunks crushed and trampled the monsters on the ground, turning the middle of the plain into a scene of utter chaos.
Kiaaaaak!
As the monsters scattered to avoid the judgment falling from the sky, a blue magic circle covering the sky spread out once more. Then, ice walls surged from the ground, blocking the Dermokas’ retreat, and thick water snakes crawled out of the cracks, strangling and biting them.
The surface of the ice wall was opaque, so the inside was not vividly visible, but it was possible to know that the monsters were desperately struggling to survive and dying miserably without having to see it with one’s own eyes.
The acidic liquid from the torn bodies melted the ice, but as soon as the ice wall was about to melt, new walls endlessly rose from the ground, as if a fortress for slaughtering the monsters had been erected in the middle of the vast plain.
Leonardo watched the scene silently, marveling.
‘Powerful.’
Agrizendro’s mana was clearly not of an emitting nature. But even so, his mana possessed destructive power and ripple effects comparable to his explosive mana. The reason this was possible was probably due to the perfect trinity of his vast mana, the application of the techniques he used, and his precise control ability.
Aside from using their hands, the reason mages chant spells is to realize magic with shaped mana, reduce casting speed, and increase scale.
The reason Leonardo usually doesn’t chant spells well is because the realization speed of magic is faster than he thinks, and his primal mana is so strong that there is no need to increase the scale.
However, the magic that Hugo Agrizendro is chanting and using now, in Leonardo’s view, goes beyond the conceptual level of reducing casting speed and increasing scale.
The giant magic he shaped in the sky resembled a natural disaster as it was actually realized using nature, and the other two magics, creating ice walls and drawing out thick streams of water to move freely, were being implemented independently without spells, sufficiently proving their destructive power.
‘Even if I released the thing on my neck, I’m not sure I’d be stronger.’
Leonardo felt pure awe at the sight that filled his vision. This man was that strong.
At that moment, the monsters struggling to survive inside the ice wall dug their claws into the ice and climbed up. Not only that, but they trampled on the bodies of their own kind and climbed up to survive, finally leaping over the high and massive wall and escaping the fortress of slaughter.
As the escaped Dermokas began to run again, Leonardo looked back and forth between the direction the monsters were heading and the giant swirling clouds.
‘At that scale…’
He thought it was a good opportunity to try something he had only theoretically considered.
In fact, he was already quite exhausted from consuming a lot of mana and stamina, but seeing a tornado created with that much mana right in front of him might only be possible now that Hugo Agrizendro was in the Eldermilli Peninsula.
Therefore, he strained himself a little and focused his mana on his left hand, not the right hand held by Hugo.
Soon, intense sparks flew from Leonardo’s hand, and golden lightning was grasped in his hand.
As Hugo sensed his mana and turned to look at him, Leonardo threw the lightning in his hand towards the giant storm with all his might. The lightning quickly crossed the sky and disappeared without a trace into the clouds.
Hugo raised one eyebrow and shifted his gaze along the trajectory of the lightning. Soon, the entire gloomy cloud flashed and emitted light for a moment. The storm itself became a charged body, and thunder and lightning began to strike due to the rapid low pressure.
Leonardo sensed that the simulation he had only run in his head had a chance of succeeding and stretched out his arm towards the escaping monsters, chanting a spell.
“Thunder Stroke.”
The sky briefly turned yellow, spreading dazzling light in all directions. In an instant, a discharge occurred in the air, and streaks were drawn across the sky, and a huge lightning bolt struck strongly in the middle of the plain.
At the same time, a cracking sound and a violent explosion occurred, and a gust of wind struck the place where the two were standing. Hugo immediately shielded Leonardo with his body and erected a barrier in the direction the gust of wind was blowing.
Positively charged particles surged back into the clouds, causing lightning strikes, and as he felt the thunder sound particularly loud due to the sudden high temperature expanding the air, lightning fell from the thunderclouds onto the plain, burning everything on the ground.
Lightning struck the giant ice wall, causing an even bigger explosion. Because of that, Dermokas, who had ice fragments embedded in their bodies, tried to escape but were struck by lightning and left without a trace.
The bottom of the plain was sizzling as the burnt soil and the acidic liquid that had burst from the monsters’ bodies met, and the piles of corpses that had been piled up in the area disappeared without a trace, leaving only black powder scattered.
Perhaps because the medium was good, the power was much greater than he had expected, and Leonardo peeked out to see the front, which Hugo was blocking, even as he felt the energy draining from his entire body.
A few were still alive here and there, but most had been burned by lightning or electrocuted to death, and the ground was all scorched black and devastated.
As Leonardo was somewhat satisfied with what he saw, he suddenly felt a gaze from above and raised his head to see Agrizendro looking down at him with a face that seemed to have a lot to say. Leonardo frowned and preempted him.
“Well, this hand was still.”
Hugo shook his head as he saw Leonardo, who seemed to think he was going to say something because he didn’t listen to his words to stay still, holding up his tightly grasped right hand and shaking it in front of him.