Blade Over Magic

Falael = Bomb

Snap

Mia snapped her fingers, and suddenly, all the mages and soldiers in charge of keeping the Azure Tree’s spread at bay felt an irresistible drowsiness wash over them, and before they knew it, that had fallen unconscious.

Before their bodies hit the ground, though, a faint breeze blew, taking them off the ground and positioning them further back.

Still, with them unconscious, the flames keeping the spread at bay lost their power, but Mary had already acted by the. A wall of wind that went deep into the ground went across the entire border of the spread, stopping it from advancing further.

’It is done, Milord.’ Mary said calmly, and Xander nodded, then he turned to Falael who had taken position on a vantage point not too far away.

At first glance, it just looked like a simple piece of earth that was raised and conveniently flat, which it was. However, with the help of Mia, Falael had been covertly coming to this specific spot and slowly drawing a formation for themselves to use.

Taking a breath, Falael put down their wand and instead held up a staff.

The difference between wands and staffs was simple. Wands allowed for mages to cast spells faster, and they could often cut down the chants on spells to do this, but it came at the cost of the spell being weaker than usual.

Staffs were the opposite. They required the mage to chant the spell completely, meaning that casting took longer. But in return, the potency of the spell was increased proportionally. And due to the plan, Falael was going for maximum potency.

After this, they activated the spell formation beneath them. Various characters of starlight activated in the ground, spreading out for ten meters around them in a circle.

There was a difference between magic circles and spell formations. The former allowed the mage to change the properties of a spell to achieve a desired effect differing from the original purpose. For instance, using a magic circle, a fire mage could make a fireball explode or spread across its target like napalm.

For spell formations, though, they had a more straightforward, albeit equally important purpose.

Increasing the efficacy and potency of a spell.

Now one could argue that such an effect can be done using magic circles. And they wouldn’t be incorrect, but the theory behind it would be different. And inevitably, magic circles had the constraint of capacity, which is to say that they cannot alter the properties of a spell past a certain point based on a mage’s mana quantity and quality. So even if one used a magic circle to increase the potency of a spell, it could only be to a certain degree.

Spell formations did not have that constraint.

Theoretically, a mage could continue to increase the amplification effect of a spell formation as long as they had the mana to sustain the consequent cost.

The reason mages did not just spam spell formations is because they simply took longer to set up, and again, if the mage made one too complex, their mana would not be able to handle it, so it would either not activate, or suck them dry.

Under normal circumstances, the size and complexity of the magic circle Falael created should have been far too much for the half-elf to handle. However, due to having formed an artificial star in their mana pool, and therefore fixing their mana issue for the foreseeable future, such a constraint wasn’t an issue.

The only reason Falael didn’t got further with the circle was because going to far put them at risk of suffering from severe mana burnout.

Once the formation was fully activated, Falael aimed their staff forward and began to chant.

They had thought long and hard about what spell they wanted to use for this operation. After all, the Azure Tree was said to have utterly absurd defenses, so much so that sniping it from a distance was almost a fruitless endeavor, as based on the records, it would react as soon as any attack neared it, and a wall of vegetation would block the attack ahead of time.

Eventually, though, Falael figured out what spell they wanted.

’Squeeze it out.’ Their eyes blazed as they forced the artificial star in their mana pool to pump out as much mana as it could to fuel the spell. It was so much that soon, vapor the color of starlight sufffused from their body as they chanted. Their voice sounded, the mana causing it to be almost ethereal.

”In the deepest dark, a stellar cradle ignites,” The reason chants were so important when casting was fairly simple. Visualization.

”Squeeze the lifeforce of the cosmos, compress the might of a million suns,” It allowed a mage to more easily imagine, and therefore create a spell they wanted to cast. It’s also why chantless casting was so difficult. Because in the first place, there was no foundation for one’s imagination to complete the cast.

”Turn the starlight into ash, turn the brilliant dawn into a blinding grave.” That said, after a certain level of proficiency, mages could cast without chanting, especially spells they were very fond of using. In cases like those, chanting was simply to increase the overall power.

”Condense, condense, and condense even more, collapse, and erase all that stands before the light.” But for spells that a mage doesn’t use often that require long preparations, chanting is almost always required. This makes it difficult to cast the spell on a whim. However.

This also meant that the spell would be at the peak of its power when cast.

”Starlight Magic: Stellar Collapse — Supernova!” All the starlight converged at the tip of Falael’s wand, the brightness utterly blinding, and the sheer density of mana was suffocating. But Falael wasn’t done yet.

”Threefold. Overlap.” Three magic circles appeared in front of the condensed starlight before overlapping, the patterns instantly becoming exponentially more complex.

Finally, Falael said softly.

”Release.”

The sound that followed was difficult to describe.

All Xander knew was that a thick beam of starlight tore forward. It passed through the magic circle and instantly became even more horrific. The potency was so extreme that space itself warped along its path.

With speeds just short of the speed of light, the beam crossed the blue fields and arrived at the Azure Tree’s massive trunk. Forget defending, the thing most likely didn’t even know the attack had reached it until after.

There was a moment of silence.

Then everything went white.

Xander was genuinely blinded for a moment, and he was unable to make out anything. Or hear anything for that matter.

Then came the Shockwave.

Mary created a wind barrier that shielded them and every unconscious soldier, but even then, Xander felt his ears pop as everything in the vicinity was utterly flattened. The blue vegetation near the edges of the Azure Tree’s territory were flattened while those that were slightly close to the epicenter of the blast were shredded apart from the air pressure alone.

Xander suspected that the Shockwave most likely reached Landor and beyond.

It took a full minute before the blast fully subsided, and when it ended, literally everyone save for Mary and Mia were left agape. And even the former’s eye twitched uncontrollably.

Hell, even Mia had opened her eyes to look at it.

The result was... Wild.

The tree was just gone.

It wasn’t heavily damaged or blown apart. No, the once eerily magnificent tree was simply not there anymore. All that remained was a massive crater where the tree had been, the ground having been melted into glowing lava.

Slowly, they turned to Falael who was pale and trembling, clearly experiencing some very significant mana burnout, but they were grinning like an idiot.

”And that’s... what I call firepower.” Then they fell forward, and Mary caught them with wind before they hit the floor.

’... Okay, when this is over, that thing you had them do with their mana pool, we’re doing it too.’ Aubrey said blankly through the link, and Curtis just nodded dumbly.

Xander didn’t reply as he forced his composure to return and looked forward, his eyes sharp.

That’s because in the depths of the crater Falael had created, new roots began to grow out at a visible rate. Evidently, despite the insane attack, the Azure Tree’s vitality had not yet been expended.

They had expected this, though.

Mia snapped her fingers, and Xander, Keir, Curtis, and Aubrey got teleported into the crater.

The heat washed over them immediately, and they all had to use Mana to protect themselves from it before they landed.

That’s when Curtis did his own part of the plan.

He took out something that almost resembled a snow globe and tossed it to Aubrey who had drawn her bow. She created a string of pure Mana and tied it to the arrow, aimed it up, and fired.

The arrow soared for nearly a hundred meters into the air before the snow globe exploded, and snow particles quickly rained down.

In the meantime, Xander was running around the crater, slicing apart any root that was trying to regenerate.

Soon, though, the first bits of snow touched the ground, and the result?

Wherever they touched, frost exploded and engulfed the area. Moreover, they weren’t random. Rather, they focused on the places with the most vegetation, and in the case of the crater, whenever the roots were growing back. This immediately removed Xander’s workload.

’It’s Keir’s turn now.’ Aubrey said as she and Curtis immediately focused on suppressing the rest of the roots, and Xander looked at Keir who looked excited to do his part, and he nodded.

Seeing this, Keir immediately leapt off his shoulder and flew towards where the highest number of roots were, inhaled, and unleashed a torrent of black flames that did not match his frame.

The instant the flames met the roots, a piercing, inhuman shriek tore from the entire area controlled by the Azure Tree.