Faced off against Felica as well as over two dozen other strong mages and fighters, Marcus knew that no half measures were going to get him through this battle.
Therefore, in order to stall for time, he was going to give it everything he had, even if he could only keep up for three minutes.
‘Death Dance.’
Immediately using his strongest attack skill, Marcus began swirling around with fluid movements that were difficult to track and seemed to come from multiple angles.
At the same time, as he moved like a blur, a massive five-hundred-foot-long iron sword appeared above where he had been and began descending down on top of Felica.
Bracing herself Felica’s charged her shield with an impossibly great amount of mana and received Marcus’ cataclysmic iron sword.
Without even moving an inch, Felica took all of the force behind Marcus’ spell, though it was obvious that it had taken her everything she had, her legs and the mana footholds below her strained to hold herself aloft.
She then slashed out with her falchion, carving through Marcus’ spell with a full powered swinging.
Still, in the few seconds where Marcus had Felica pinned down, he had gotten to work on shaving off his other opponents.
Moving like a flash of light Marcus attacked the first of Felica’s adjutants, who was like his master wielding a falchion.
Unfortunately, this man could not use spiritual energy, and as he tried to block Marcus’ scythe, he simply had it go ethereal, passing it through the man’s weapon and slicing his head off with one fluid movement.
Seeing Marcus do this one of the mages in his fright cast a fire storm spell at Marcus, and engulfed him along with a couple of his allies.
“You idiot, now I cannot target him.” The elite mage who was preparing his own spell said.
‘Rending void.’
From within the flames having gone ethereal, Marcus cast his tier six darkness magic spell, and sent it directly for the elite mage who was one of his biggest problems..
At the same time, he flew towards the mage that had tried to hit him with the fire storm, and appeared right in front of him while brining down his scythe.
However, this mage was incredibly lucky and the defensive spell he had cast as well as the automatic protection item he had, created a barrier that blocked Marcus’ first slash.
Though the single slash from Marcus did break the barrier, and without even an instant of time in between attacks, Marcus’ spectral arm came out and punched the guy in his torso.
The loud sound of cracking bones followed, and the mage spat up a mouthful of blood as his body went hurtling towards the ground.
After that Marcus continued his death dance moving onto the next unlucky soul to be his target.
Quickly he cut through two more people, before Felica who had just finished dealing with his cataclysmic iron sword charged him with rage in her eyes.
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇtAs she approached, she sent out a rapid fire of mana slashes towards Marcus, each one infused with spiritual energy.
‘Looks like I got her attention’ Marcus thought as he took evasive action.
He began spinning around and evading the slashes from Felica while flying away and using his spells and mana barrier to block the attacks he could not full dodge.
Of course, he was having to use an explosive amount of mana to keep up with all of the spells and skills he was using with impunity, but with his mana thief skill he was receiving a constant supply from his enemies.
Still, even as he did his best at trying to keep his distance, Felica was faster than him and caught up.
Taking powerful attack after powerful attack, Marcus was having a difficult time absorbing Felica’s onslaught, even with both the effects of his embodiment of eclipse and soul burst active.
‘Damn she is strong. But at this rate she should run out of mana. I just need to hold out a bit longer.’
Yet even after doing his all to fight Felica off while also dealing with the attacks form her partner elite mage who had successfully blocked his tier six spell. Marcus found that Felica was not slowing down on her mana usage, and seemed to have plenty to spare even under the effects of his mana thief.
‘What the hell, she is burning through mana even faster than I am with all the powerful attacks she keeps unleashing, and the skills she is using.’ Marcus thought wondering what was going on.
Unfortunately, what he did not know was that Felica had two unique skills, one called mana efficiency and the other called bottomless well.
With these two unique skills, Felica’s mana was nearly endless, and she could go at full strength for much longer than most, having no need to conserve energy while fighting.
Also, while Marcus did have Felica’s and the elite mage’s attention, the other high-level fighters in her group had gone off, realizing that they were only going to be a detriment in this fight.
“Gahhh.”
Eventually, while evading one of the elite mage’s attacks, Marcus got caught by one of Felica’s attacks, and even though his armor took the brunt of the attack, Felica’s falchion cut through it and deep into Marcus’ side.
In the next instance, Marcus just barely shoved the Falchion out of himself as Felica tried to angle it up wards and split his body vertically.
However, he did not get off unscathed as his right arm went flying.
Marcus then felt an overwhelming force crash into his body as Felcia hit him with a shield bash that sent him flying.
He had even tried going ethereal, but it seemed that Felcia was not going to let him avoid her in that way, all of her attacks were infused with spiritual energy.
‘Luminous Prison.’
Trying to trap Felcia for a couple seconds, Marcus cast one of his tier five light magic spells, and bars of light began forming around Felcia.
Unfortunately, she broke through them in and instance with just one slash, and continue perusing Marcus who had just barely stabilized himself after taking her shield bash.
‘It can’t be helped.’
Realizing that even with soul burst and embodiment of eclipse active he was not going to be able to hold out for even the next minute he had before soul burst ended, Marcus resolved himself to dip into the power he did not want to use.
‘Soul devour.’
Burning his own soul for a sharp increase in power, Marcus felt the euphoric strength that the skill provided for the first time in months, and for a moment he wondered why he had been so reluctant to use this incredible power.
‘Acid geyser.’
Yet as Marcus used this power the elite mage who was working with Felica used one of his tier six acid magic spells, and a torrent of acid began raining down upon Marcus.
‘Eclipse meteor.’
Except now that he was under the effects of his soul devour skill, Marcus disregarded the acid coming for him and flew straight threw it as his powers coalesced around him.
Smashing through the flood of acid, Marcus headed straight for the acid magic using elite mage, at a speed that surprised both Felica and the mage.
So far Marcus had not shown this level of speed, but now all of his albitites were multiplied to an even greater degree by his soul devour skill.
Impacting into the elite mage who had used his best defensive magics and skills, he found himself total overpowered by Marcus’ full powered eclipse meteor that tore through his defenses like paper.
With a powerful explosion, Marcus’ eclipse meteor blew apart the level sixty-six elite mage who was one of the kingdom’s strongest.
After that he turned his sights right for Felica, knowing that his time was running out.
He only had around a dozen seconds left before soul burst wore off and he needed to finish this before then.
‘What the hell is that thing.’ Felica thought seeing Marcus appear out of the explosion he had caused unscathed and fully restored even after the damage she had done to him.
Right now, he was giving off such an overwhelming and sinister aura, and of course she had appraised him and found that he was only level forty-eight.
This seemed to be an impossible amount of power for anything at that level, other than maybe the absolute strongest mythic grade magical beasts.
‘The top forgmaster is going to kill me, but I cannot hold back.’
Charging her falchion with as much mana as she could channel at once, Felica began overloading the top tier adamantine weapon, which even as strong as it was could not take all of Felica’s power.
She then flew towards Marcus her weapon glowing brightly, and cracking under the strain of her full power.
In response, Marcus turned towards her and followed suit, useing all the power he had to wrapped around his body and scythe as he used another eclipse meteor.
Clashing head on, Felica swung her Falchion against Marcus, and he swung his scythe against her.
The two powerful weapons charged up with their wielder’s full power, fought against each other in a deadly struggle, and in the end Felica’s weapon shattered.
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏmHowever, this was exactly what she had excepted, and the enormous power she had had infused her weapon with went wild blasting against Marcus.
In response, Marcus’ explosive power from his eclipse meteor fought against Felica’s, and the two merged together into one immense blast that broke apart the sky and shook the ground.
As the blast cleared. two figures began falling out of the sky, as both Felica and Marcus plummeted.
Crashing into the ground Marcus was even too out of it to go ethereal to lessen the impact
‘Ughhhhhh.’
After a few seconds his awareness began to return to him, and all he felt was soul crushing pain.
Of course, this was to be expected after going all out with not only embodiment of eclipse and soul burst, but soul devour as well.
Yet what was currently causing him the most pain was the fact that he had a huge hole in his right side.
From his shoulder to the center of his torso, his entire right side had been completely destroyed, and he was currently leaking his essence like a fountain.
In fact, Marcus’ health was siting at only around five percent and was draining in spite of his regeneration skills, that could not quite keep up with the damage he had received from Felica and his own skills.
“So, you really are some type of spirit.” Felcia said as she stood at the top of the crater Marcus’ falling body had created and looked down upon him.
Felica then slid down towards Marcus, and when she stood over him, he could see that she had not gotten out of their exchange uninjured.
Her left side was horribly injured and bleeding profusely, and half of her arm looked like it had been sheared off.
Still unlike Marcus who was completely beaten down, having hit and gone over his limits, Felica still had more than enough power to spare.
“Looks like you do not even have the strength left to use your spiritual form to try and flee. Felica said as she raised up her spare weapon.
“This is the end!”
Swinging her spare weapon down, Felica aimed right for Marcus’ head, yet before she could finish her swing her danger sense alerted her to another threat coming from above.
Swiftly jumping out of the way, Felica just managed to avoid the beam like attack that impacted where she had been standing an instant before.
Immediately as the attack hit, the ground began to freeze over, and large icicles began to form all around the area.
Except even as this attack expanded, it seemed to completely avoid Marcus, leaving a circle around him that did not become encased in ice.
“Damn I missed.” The person who had just saved Marcus said as they landed next to him.
And as he looked up, he saw a familiar face he had not been expecting to see here on the battlefield in Tralenstein.
“Mrazivý?!”