Magic Apprentice

But his respect for the commander wasn’t going to stop Kebrilio from seizing the opportunity still.

From up on top of the gates, the twelve magi guards with Kebrilio took up a circular formation with him at its center.

Spell circles surrounded each magi while they took out a red cloth. Unfolding it, each magi revealed a golden spell circle three paces in diameter. A similar spell circle flared to life underneath Kebrilio’s feet, but his was thrice as large as the other magi’s. Following the brief chanting from Kebrilio, a crimson light began to shine and basked everyone within its glow. Brighter and brighter, the light soon became far too intense for anyone to stare at. The light eventually started to shrink until it was the size of a regular fireball. If not for the bright light, no one would dare say this was what they expected from the forbidden fire magic: Final Day.

Kebrilio looked tired and weak. His face was slick with sweat, but he remained standing. His shocking physique had allowed him to be the only magus left standing.

Standing still to gather mana, Kebrilio waited. His eyes flew open once a certain amount was gathered and he gave out one loud scream as Final Day was unleashed. So loud was his echo that Charle felt his eardrums give way. He vowed to himself, then and there, that there was no way he would ever dare challenge this magus in the future. Kebrilio’s lung capacity and stamina were clear signs that a barbaric warrior would never hope to defeat a magus like him.

A powerful magus unmatched in long-ranged warfare…Charle had to bite back a bitter laugh. This was not a man he could ever afford to make an enemy out of.

The princess’ face had gone pale. All color bled away from it when the fireball shot into the sky. Try hard as she might, but her head was forced in place from her uncle’s arms. And so horrified was she that her eyes remained transfixed on the knights. Her only saving grace was that her tears were already blurring what she was seeing. Only the crimson sky was defined well.

She wasn’t the only one whose attention was piqued by the sky’s discoloration. Even the knights and bandits fighting in the valley stopped what they were doing to look.

One of the bandits must’ve realized what this meant, for he suddenly shrieked, “That’s Final Day!”

“Final Day?!” Elric trembled. It would’ve been such a pleasure to see a powerful magic like that if he wasn’t currently within the strike range of it. It wasn’t everyday someone would be able to bear witness to such legendary magic because only one person was able to use it in the entire world—Kebrilio the Archmagister of Karth. 

The Sovereignian knights weren’t entirely at a loss for what to do. As ignorant of maguscraft as they were, there was still no way they never heard of what ‘Final Day’ was capable of.

In fact, the knights were probably more knowledgeable about the effects of Final Day given their military background.

Jack clapped Elric gently on the shoulder. “We’re fortunate to avoid death by these base thieves.” He smiled reassuringly. “It’ll be an honor to die by the ultimate spell of a powerful magus like Kebrilio.”

Several of the nearby knights nodded in agreement, but that did little to reassure Elric. How did they come to that conclusion? Death was death! How could anyone be so happy about who it was specifically that’d kill them? Delusional, the lot of them.

Not Elric, though. He didn’t want to die. Already he was firing off an incantation of his own, and a second later, the translucent barrier of Chaos Bulwark appeared over everyone’s head.

Each knight gave Elric an incredulous stare. In their opinion, it was Elric that had a problem. Did he really think that any spell of his would be able to stop an ultimate spell like Final Day?

Ignoring the looks he was receiving, Elric focused the entirety of his time and energy on the only magic he knew. He was trying his best to expand the range of Chaos Bulwark to cover the sky.

The air was quickly picking up in temperature. The skies were a mixture of red and gold as the two colors mixed together. Sometimes, a brilliant gleam of gold could be seen before being reabsorbed into the crimson light. White clouds turned red and rumbled with an ominous sound all around. Multiple bandits were already breaking away from the battlefield in an attempt to flee. Like the bandits, the enemy magi were trying to take to the skies, but Elric could see from the flow of mana that flight was impossible now. Now with the mana being thick and odious like miasma instead of being subtle and free-flowing. Final Day made it impossible for any magi to use any magic but fire.

The influx of mana was having an effect on the warhorses of both sides. Running wild and ignoring the commands of their rider, these horses were ramming into anything in its way as they tried to gallop away. Only the smarter bandits realized that their chances of survival were higher if they were to jump off their horses and run away on their own two feet.

That being said, not even the warhorses, as frightened and confused as they are, were capable of outrunning the area-of-effect of Final Day. On what basis could humans claim to do better?

Their inevitable demise was made clear even before the bandits could go far. The crimson clouds above them were already transitioning into something even more ominous.

The red and gold lights mixing with the clouds had finally reached a peak. Something was altering the physical properties of the cloud from within as multiple bubbles began to appear all over the clouds. Like water put to a boil, the clouds began releasing multiple bubbles from its body. Fluid the color of gold and the consistency of lava exploded from them when they popped and soon the entire sky was filled with a similar phenomena.

The bandits began to run even faster at the sight.

Suddenly, there was a clap of thunder. The rest of the unpopped bubbles either impacted against the ground or exploded, raining down the lava contained in them.

Everyone was doing their best to run and be touched by it.

It was meaningless, however. Rather than explode or anything, the lava expanded across the landscape when it touched down and brought fire to everything it touched. Soon, the entire battlefield became something an artist would cry out as being the very landscape of hell.

Like a continuous stream of water flowing down on a surface, the lava expanded in a circular fashion, transforming anything it touched into fuel to be burned. No one screamed when touched by the lava. To scream meant death wasn’t instantaneous when afflicted, but that wasn’t the case here. Anyone engulfed by the lava had no time to even react before they disappeared from the world. The only sign that there had ever been anything alive was a smoldering pile of ashes that would rise up from the lava.

Such a sight was not for the faint of heart. It wasn’t for the resolved hearts of the knights either, whose faces grew pale and their bodies trembled at how the bandits had died.

Then the lava was upon them. Tendrils of fire and lava licked at the barrier around them, violent in their surges and repeatedly in their attempts. Elric trembled, the strain of his spell causing him to nearly scream out in pain. The effort of fending off this lava was causing his entire nervous system to tear itself apart as his mana struggled to power the barrier. But the pain was too much. Practically the moment after his barrier and the lava began to touch, Elric blacked out and crumpled to the ground.

Far away in safety, the princess blacked out as well, terror struck by the gruesome death that’d come to her knights. She was held up not by the power of her own body, but by Charle, who remained steadfast despite the show, much like the knights around Elric.

But the knights had no confidence that Elric’s spell would protect them from the lava above or around them. Another cloud was overhead and was brewing with the same lava as the clouds before. It was just a matter of time before it’d happen again.

Then something strange began to take place within Elric.

Black mist began to seep from underneath his skin. Covering every inch of his body but his face, the mist somehow took control of his limbs. The first part to move was his arms. Propping themselves against the ground, Elric’s arms pushed upward. And with the help of his legs, Elric’s body stood up. 

The minds of every knight went blank at the sight. This wasn’t the Elric they knew, who was this? Eyes dark and expression solemn, Elric stood there looking at the world around him as though he had already lived for centuries. He had an expression born only from the repeated experiences of having weathered everything life had to give. The black mist, now in the shape of a black robe around Elric, looked as though it was constructed from night itself with how deep-reaching the darkness seemed to be. His arms were barely even visible beyond the sleeves of his misty robe, but some of the knights would swear that they could see claws rather than fingers attached to his hand.

A gray shadow covered his face, altering the perspective of his face and even making it seem like he had a beard due to how some parts of the mist gathered around his chin. This in turn made him seem older than he really was, though the aged look to him was not something based on just appearances alone. 

If anything, he looked something akin to a mythological figure one would engrave into stone to protect the tomb of a king. He had an aura to him that defied the passage of time and gave him an unordinary feel.

A guttural and deep sound began to escape from Elric’s mouth, but these sounds were nothing like what the vocal tubes of a human was capable of. When the knights heard those sounds, they flinched as though struck. None of them knew what was going on.

The left hand of Elric grasped onto the wrist of his right arm. Extending the fingers of his right hand, Elric began to concentrate the mist around him to it. Gathering around his palm, the mist eventually condensed into something like black mercury. Beads of it extended outward in two directions, elongating the matter until it formed a long jet-black spear nearly four meters in length.