“Only FOUR drops?!” Lady Danae threw a stare at Sunders, anger appeared on her aged face. She snapped, “Sunders, this was your plan all along eh? You knew Boko is greedy, so you watched him trap himself in the ruptures, did you not!?”
Sunders only grinned without saying anything. He stood inside the magic array in a relaxed manner and watched Lady Danae’s outburst nonchalantly. His arrogance was plain on the look.
Lady Danae felt really uneasy against Sunders’ attitude. However, when she thought about the fact that a group of elites from Gravity Forest was standing behind her, she also returned her own gaze at Sunders.
Even though she was not expecting Sunders’ mere presence to be enough to inflict great pressure on them, the elites behind her were either looking aside or trying to show negligence about the situation. The black-haired man, Saipan, was the only one who was seemingly supporting Danae by keeping his own angered gaze on Sunders.
“Lady Danae… that was wrong of you. Boko was already inside the ruptures when we arrived,” Flora spoke in her usual smiley manner. No one could tell whether she was telling the truth. Even Boko was not exactly sure when Sunders arrived to save him.
“There aren’t many such coincidences in the world,” Lady Danae humphed.
Saipan spoke to her, “My Lady, should we…”
He placed his hand on his neck and made a slitting gesture.
Lady Danae only grumbled at him, “You see that spell array at their feet? It’s capable of both offense and defense, a perfect protection and a teleportation effect in a small area. It’s an intermediate spell array. Must have been drawn by a master of spell arrays.”
Saipan checked. As she said, a faint spell array was shining beneath them.
“Even without the spell, we couldn’t keep them here,” Lady Danae sighed. There was nothing she could do about the loss.
“Hey, professor, they gave up?” Flora giggled.
“They have to. The fusion will soon begin stage two, and the greyspace barrier here will turn fragile. One wrong move and the world’s consciousness will deal with her,” said Sunders. He was not worried about having to fight Danae at all. Lady Danae was also a Level-2 Wizard. She was more than twice as old as Sunders, so she knew a lot. To fight in such a situation was to suicide.
Sunders still remained careful. He knew that plane fusion would attract various figures. Most of them were still on their way. As he predicted, once stage two began, the exact location of the fusion spot would be known by everyone traveling in plane passageways, by which time there would be total chaos. Not everyone was as wise as Danae, and conflict would be easily created. Staying inside the magic array allowed them to retreat safely when something went wrong.
The plane fusion was getting faster, and the thunderclouds in the sky turned thicker and darker. It should still be around noontime, but the surrounding area was as black as midnight. The water tornadoes disrupted the sea waves and created giant tides reaching hundreds of meters high.
Roaring thunders, raging waves, and rampaging hurricane created a total mess in the area. Nobody could hear others’ voices. The wizards had to use their own tricks to communicate. Various spells from all three Major Arts shined among the crowd.
In the center of the chaos, the absolute darkness slowly devoured the smaller ruptures and grew larger.
No ruptures were appearing around the edge now. When all ruptures fused into one, the fusion spot would enter its second stage.
A giant water explosion came from behind. One of the water tornadoes which stretched all the way into the thunderclouds was sliced in half.
A great ray fish appeared from the created gap. A group of wizards in different clothes decorated with pearls were standing on top of the fish and slowly headed towards the scene.
Flora cast a glimpse at them and saw a clean-looking woman whose breasts were only covered by a pair of seashells. There was a blue fish tattoo scale near her navel. Beside her, a bulky man wearing black armor was sitting with his legs crossed and moving a giant sword in his hand. There was also a fish tattoo scale between his eyebrows, but it was black.
On careful look, each wizard on the fish had a scale on his or her exposed skin with unique shape and color.
“Song of the Deep,” Flora muttered.
The tattoo scales were the symbols of wizards from Song of the Deep.
Song of the Deep was one of the commonly agreed top ten wizard organizations in the south. Its headquarter was located at the bottom of the Endless Sea. They controlled a number of underwater cities. Most wizards from this organization possessed talents related to water. Also, their personalities were like water too. Not gentle water, but furious torrents.
“Now that’s trouble,” Sunders shook his head.
Song of the Deep came earlier than he expected. The second stage of plane fusion had not started yet. Seemed like they had really good sources to receive information. Still, the sea was like the back of their hands, so no one was surprised by their fast arrival.
“The first stage ended? Looks like I won’t get my share of the fragments,” The leader of the group muttered to himself. He was a handsome young man with long, silver hair.
“‘Sorcerer of Big Fish’ Sliv,” Flora said his name in a low voice.
He had a young appearance, but his actual age was greater than Sunders. Sunders never actually tried to remove the traces of age from his face, so his middle-age image was the natural result after living for centuries. Sliv, on the other hand, constantly spent his mana to maintain his good looks.
“Stay away from that man. He’s dangerous enough. He does anything without thinking about consequences,” Sunders whispers to Flora.
“Understood.”
Saipan from Gravity Forest heard Sliv’s “muttering” (Silv used Amplify Voice spell on it), caught a new idea, and yelled out for everyone to hear, “Daaaaamn! Flora took ALL of the Fragments of Eternity!”
That caught everyone’s attention.
Saipan smiled in content while Lady Danae gave him an angered gaze. The bastard had no idea he just offended Sunders, badly. Sunders was an extremely powerful being and the Brute Cavern behind him was a bunch of unreasonable ruffians. The Song of the Deep might still have several “gentle” wizards, but every single individual from Brute Cavern was someone that enjoyed utter chaos and disorder.
Gravity Forest had always been a peaceful and neutral organization. If they offended Brute Cavern… no one knew what would happen next.
Sliv looked towards Saipan and smiled. Then he addressed Sunders.
“Aha, Mister Sunders, the Phantom Master. We haven’t met in a long time,” Sliv stepped in the air and approached him.
When he was about a hundred meters away, Sliv hurled an abrupt water arrow at Sunders.
The arrow was blocked by the spell array.
Sliv smiled widely as he said, “Oh no! My hand slipped.”
He then changed his attitude as he said, “A multi-layer spell array… Man, you’re being really careful.”
Hearing Sliv’s unpleasant voice, Flora complained in her mind. ‘Oh no’ my arse!
Like Lady Danae. Sliv carefully inspected the spell array with a frown and decided to halt. He moved back to his own group. Silv was bad at dealing with spell arrays. He also knew that the array must be the work of a master which would probably take hours to breach. Meanwhile, Sunders and Flora were free to retaliate or teleport away.
A perfect balance between offense and defense.