"This is not good news," Ophelia said to Cristel. With numbers like this, if they all commanded magic like that water arrow, then even if the apprentices mastered Fireball in short order, they would never be able to hold them off. "What do the Mages actually want? To have us all die here? No—if they wanted us dead, with a Mage's power they wouldn't need a trick like this..."

In the face of hopelessness, Cristel showed a willpower that made people look at her with new eyes; her body was trembling with fear, but that didn't stop her gaze from fixing intently on the Fireball runes. She was so focused that she had no time to answer Ophelia.

Adam had picked useful information out of her words. "Right. There are two possibilities: one, the beasts' attacks won't be endless; two, not every magical beast can use magic."

Ophelia dragged Cristel to a spot near the center of the deck. William had already begun organizing people to build cover. They had no idea how much good it would do, but at least it was some psychological comfort.

"Get lost, traitor." There wasn't much on the deck that could serve as cover; a southern apprentice and Ophelia reached a large crate at the same moment, and the southern apprentice snarled at her with a savage look on his face.

Normally nobody would dare talk to Ophelia that way, but standing before the fear of life and death, the pressure she carried had become negligible. In this spoiled young noble's eyes, the crate in front of him was one more chance at survival.

Bang.

Ophelia's response was simplicity itself: a whip of a kick sent him flying. She then used much the same method to seize a great many large objects and pile them to one side, but she realized that alone she was too slow—there was, after all, only so much on the deck.

"Cristel, you..."

"Don't interrupt me, I'm almost there, very soon now..." Cristel cut Ophelia off without even turning her head. She had gone mad with it.

Ophelia pressed her lips together, then turned her eyes to Adam again.

"Actually, this isn't much use—it's downright stupid. You're a Grand Knight; you need open space to dodge magic attacks. Huddling behind cover just makes you a target."

Adam was busy, and he didn't think much of this behavior either.

For an ordinary person the Fireball rune array had to be traced out over and over, but Adam had no need of that. Though he had only one soul, Adam could run multithreaded computation, and with spiritual power far beyond the ordinary, he could replicate the rune array on every thread, switching the instant one thread was used up—and in that way keep casting without pause.

It wasn't unlimited, though. Given the computational load and the recovery rate of his spiritual power, he could sustain roughly twelve Fireball activations in a row. After that he would need some time to cool down.

"Then what am I supposed to do? I feel like I won't be able to cast a spell successfully anytime soon." Ophelia felt utterly powerless. Mage Blake had clearly said that the path of the body-refining Mage held the advantage at the apprentice stage, and yet now she was the burden.

"The essence of the breathing method is the secondary energy produced when spiritual power interacts with ether-like matter. The soul can't carry ether and mana, but that doesn't mean the body can't. Try channeling mana into your body. If I'm right, and if you're lucky enough, it might work."

At that very moment, inside the ship's cabin, the Mages were enjoying luxurious food. Mage Irene swirled the crimson wine in her glass and said softly, "Guess how many of these little ones will survive?"

Mage Robert elegantly parted the bloody steak with knife and fork, put it in his mouth, gave a hum of admiration, and answered unhurriedly, "Who knows? That depends on how much wisdom they have."

Mage Blake and Mage Jerome were not eating; they were watching the dense mass of aquatic magical beasts outside through the porthole. Mage Jerome was somewhat dissatisfied: "There aren't many this time. Is the bait's content too low?"

"Mm. This time we didn't mix in bait with too high an ether crystal content. The academy has just suffered a defeat and needs a batch of fresh blood to face the battle thirty years from now. And the number of apprentices is too small besides," Mage Blake answered.

No one cared whether the apprentices lived or died. The Mage World was a world of severe polarization: the Mages stood high above, and the knowledge and power in their grasp were enough to transcend life and death, to transcend the limits of productive forces. The knowledge and physical strength of ordinary people weren't even enough to operate the "black box of technology," so that ordinary people served no purpose at all beyond supplying the Mages with new qualified seeds.

But seeds were many, many, and the value of a human life was very low. The Mage World was boundless; beyond the high-magic main continent, on the endless islands, there were countless people. Losing one batch of apprentices or two didn't matter in the least—at most ten years later, there would be newborn children grown up.

"Duke Alfred clearly hasn't learned his lesson. He didn't tell William that only knowledge held in one's own hands is valuable power, and that numbers of ordinary people mean nothing against magic. Perhaps he thinks magic items can protect his son?" Mage Irene, who was in charge of the south, commented coldly.

Mage Blake suddenly laughed. "Looking at them is like looking at ourselves back then. Weren't we part of an organization too? What was the leader called again? It's been so long."

Mage Robert finished off his steak. "Look at those kids," he said, pointing at Adam and the other two. "Remember Wollaston? Don't they look alike?"

"Wollaston, the Superdimensional Archmage." The other three spoke the name with somewhat complicated expressions. How could they not remember? He had been a different creature from them even before they set foot on the apprentice path, and now he was already a Superdimensional Archmage—even they had to address him respectfully as "my lord" if they met.

Mage Blake waved his hand lightly; the wine glasses and bottles began to fly about, then hung suspended before the four of them. He took hold of his glass, raised it a little, and said, "It begins. Good luck to the little ones."

"It begins!" Adam murmured on the deck.

The magical beasts in the sea began to move. The water was churned up and hurled against the hull, raising waves more than ten meters high, and some beasts rode the surge skyward, coming before the deck to bite down viciously at the apprentices, who were scared out of their wits.

"Ahhh!!!"

The screams of apprentices who had just watched a companion's head part from his body announced the start of this bloody battle. The magical beasts poured madly onto the deck, using every part of their bodies to destroy everything they touched.

They were creatures of disorder; their whole purpose in existing was destruction.

"Save me! Save me! I don't want to die!" A male apprentice fell to the ground, a grotesque marine creature behind him, and howled miserably as he tried to grab hold of a companion's ankle.

"Get off me!" The companion kicked him away viciously. That kick hastened the apprentice's death, while he himself scrambled and crawled toward the organization.

Just then another wave surged up at his side; a magical beast flew into the air, then condensed a spell in midair. The air temperature dropped at a furious rate, a block of ice took shape, and it smashed down hard on the deck.

The ice flattened the apprentice into a meat patty in an instant, and after colliding with the special alloy of the deck it burst into countless fragments, each shard carrying several times the force of a crossbow bolt.

This was a disaster.

The few apprentices who hadn't found cover were wiped out in an instant; their corpses, frozen stiff by the cold, thudded onto the deck and were then devoured by the beasts behind them. The cover was all but blasted to pieces by a single spell's spreading strike, and everyone knew they had no chance of surviving a second one.

The fortunate thing was that not many beasts seemed able to use magic; luckier still, the beasts could not cast spells in succession.

William kicked a beast that had come too close, sending it flying, and shouted sternly, "Ordinary beasts aren't that strong! The real threat is the one that can use magic—we have to kill it!"

At William's words the apprentices with no magic items retreated even faster, while the few who had them wore shifting, uncertain expressions. These were life-saving measures, and no one wanted to lose them so soon.

The beast that used ice magic rampaged across the deck, eating even its own kind as it went. The energy fluctuations around its body were visibly thickening to the naked eye: the more it ate, the thicker they grew. It would soon be able to use magic a second time.

Another wave rose higher than the deck. This time it was Adam's old acquaintance the fish, its mouth smeared with bloodstains of no discernible color and its huge, hideous maw packed with close-set teeth. It leaped onto the deck and came racing straight at Adam.

How a fish could move about on a deck was beside the point—as magical beasts, they could move freely anywhere there was water.

Clearly this fish held a grudge. It had fixed on Adam; or rather, it judged the energy within Adam's body to be the most valuable.

William saw it and shouted, "Make way! Make way, don't block it! That's not our problem—come back, let's kill this animal together!" William and the others had already surrounded the earlier beast from several directions; seeing the big fish, Randy hesitated, unsure whether he ought to step in and block it.

But William considered this a good chance to take some pressure off himself. Magical beasts didn't care about the lives of their own kind, and this fish had already killed a good many ordinary beasts. As for Adam—ever since Adam refused to join him, whether Adam and his two companions lived or died had nothing to do with William.

Ophelia's face was deathly pale. She looked at Adam, still utterly composed, and at Cristel, still absorbed, then gritted her teeth hard. Her blood energy surged skyward, and she charged at the big fish without a backward glance.

She didn't know whether she could block the big fish, but the way of the knight would not let her cower behind the "weak." The moment she charged out, life and death were cast behind her; she even felt a trace of regret: "If only my knight's sword were in my hand..."

Bang.

Awoo.

Three sounds rang out in quick succession. Ophelia was blown away by the shock wave of billowing heat, while the big fish took two Fireballs head-on; howling miserably, it collapsed onto the deck, giving off a powerful smell of roast meat.

"I did it! I've learned magic!" Cristel's voice rang out, overjoyed beyond measure.