The Golem Mage

Chapter 957: Foreign Battle Styles.

While all this was happening in a faraway city in the northern kingdom, Alec decided it was time to return to his team, as he’d realized the Battle Mage Academy was up against the Arcanis Dominion Academy currently.

Four academies from the Northern Kingdom had already lost and been disqualified in the opening bouts, but Alec wasn’t worried about the Battle Mage Academy.

Because he didn’t believe the Arcanis Dominion Academy could topple the Battle Mage Academy.

Strong as Arcanis was, to him it didn’t change the fact that, unlike most Northern academies, the Battle Mage Academy excelled both individually and as a unit.

They practically lived for team battles, and in the last tournament, their overall team battle power had ranked just below the Bloodline Academy.

And also next on the schedule to battle was the War God Mage Academy versus the Ashmaw Academy, and Alec intended to be there no matter how uneasy he was feeling at the moment.

As he stepped out from the corridor into the stadium stands, the muffled roar he’d heard swelled into a crashing wave of sound, as cheers for the remaining mages standing from both the Battle Mage Academy and Arcanis Dominion Academy went wild.

Onstage, the Arcanis Dominion Academy still had four mages standing, all in good condition, while the Battle Mage Academy had five left, but two were critically injured and were being sheltered by their other three teammates which forced them to stay at the rear while the remaining three formed a vanguard, fighting hard to keep their teammates from being eliminated so they could recover enough to sling a spell or two.

The scene surprised Alec, he’d expected a few eliminations on the Battle Mage Academy side, but not five eliminated, two critically injured mages and one bleeding out onstage.

Only Vincent and Vladimir looked relatively intact.

Meanwhile, all four Arcanis Dominion mages stood unscathed, and as Alec was still gauging the standoff between both teams, his own team mates reached him.

“We were looking for you, it’s time to change and prep for our own battle,” Beatrice said.

He turned to the team; and the pumped-up look on a few mages like Pale, assured him he wouldn’t need to push hard before this fight was won.

“Okay, then let’s go,” Alec said, walking with them toward another tunnel, it was the route contesting teams used to reach the changing rooms and, from there, to the stage.

As they walked, he leaned toward Agnes.

“Tell me everything, from the beginning how Arcanis Dominion managed to push the Battle Mage Academy this far.” Alec asked as Agnes began to recount what happened while he’d been searching for a little peace from the unease gnawing at him earlier.

–

On the stage, Vincent glanced at Vladimir, who still kept his hands behind his back; the third mage with them, the one bleeding—was Igor.

On the opposite stood four mages: Elise Valorian, the captain of the Arcanis Dominion , who is wielding an energy blade that had runes on it while six spell-rings orbited around her like small planets circling a sun, which is her.

The second was Jared Hoth, Arcanis’s vice-captain and the one largely responsible for the Battle Mage Academy’s condition; from the opening bell, Battle Mage deployed their usual probing formation, trying to test each of their opponents to calibrate responses and coordination to know who is meant to face who.

But the moment the fight began, Jared linked with three teammates (now eliminated) who acted as his shield and went all-out, aiming to carve away a huge chunk of Battle Mage’s strength early.

His main weapon was a cannon gauntlet mounted on his left arm, but that wasn’t the scariest part, Jared is a spell-engineer, with a suite of innovations cached in mana-cell storage cores.

A device from the Western Kingdom, built to mimic space rings, but designed to store specialized weapons capable of devastating mages.

The mana cell storage was triangular in shape and iron-bodied, which activates the moment they touch the ground, drawing ambient mana to summon their payloads.

They require almost nothing to trigger; a single spark of mana sets them off, like a grenade on impact.

At the opening clash, unaware of Arcanis Dominion’s tactics of battling moves, the Battle Mage Academy team had scattered when they saw Jared toss something suspicious their way.

Northern mages usually ignore foreign weapons before, but after witnessing the effectiveness of Legion who is Alec’s golem, their first instinct was to get out of range.

However that was a terrible mistake, as the instant the first two mana cells’ storage hit the ground, metal unfolded and assembled itself; and within three seconds, advanced turrets, etched with dense arrays of runes and inscriptions rose from the ground, and the next second chaos followed.

“Fire!” Jared commanded, while spreading both hands as if puppeteering the twin turrets, the mounted arcane machine guns roared to life, spitting mana-piercing rounds at blistering speed.

Ting! Ting! Ting!

He continued firing and didn’t let up until the turrets overheated and powered down, however by then, the damage was done, and when the dust cleared, more than seven frontliners from the Battle Mage team lay seriously injured.

Even though they had reacted quickly, and threw up defensive spells it still wasn’t enough against the mana-piercing rounds, only Vladimir’s and Vincent’s barriers held, while Igor was just injured because he was far back.

The rest of the team could do so little against a seemingly never ending round of mana piercing bullets.

And like that the Arcanis Dominion team had seized the advantage and the momentum early into the battle due to Jared, as they were aiming to take down a Northern Kingdom academy in record time just like the two eastern academies had done.

Even so, eliminating five seriously injured Battle Mage members cost them six mages, which left a sharp reminder in their mind that bringing down Battle Mage was never going to be easy.

Now, alongside their captain and vice-captain, the other two threats that remained on Arcanis’s side is Marek Solis, titled the “Ley Knight,” and he wields a radiant sword and shield wreathed in divine blue flames; and Lucius Kael, Titled the “Aether Engineer,” a battlefield-shaper as troublesome as Jared on his own profession, who had been hammering the terrain itself to favour Arcanis Dominion.