One of those two Fireballs had come from Adam, the second from Cristel. This girl who in most situations had no presence to speak of had shown astonishing adaptability in a moment of crisis.
Aside from Adam, that "cheater," she was the first to master magic.
Once spiritual power had finished tracing out the rune array, mana attached itself to it automatically, and Cristel was frantic to vent this energy she could not yet control. The beast charging at her with such ferocity made the perfect target.
So much so that only after wounding the beast did she notice Ophelia, who had nearly been caught in the blast.
Cristel panicked at once. Only after coming out of that frenzied state did she remember that her own manner a moment ago had been rather awful.
"Miss Ophelia, I'm sorry, just now I..."
Ophelia spun once in the air and landed steadily, then said to Cristel as though nothing had happened, "Think nothing of it. I should be thanking you for saving my life."
That beast displayed astonishing vitality. Roasted seven parts done, it still would not die, and it kept thrashing on the ground. Thanks to the might of magic, the low-level beasts around the three of them fled in terror. Adam walked quickly up to the beast and found, to his regret, that it no longer had any research value.
The power of magic shook the apprentices all over again, and their hearts began to waver. Sheltering under a strongman who could cast spells whenever he liked was plainly not the same as relying on an organization with only "single-use" items—and those single-use items were held by a mere handful of people.
William keenly caught the unrest among the apprentices under him and could not help hating Adam all the more. But right now he had to cut down the beast in front of him as fast as possible and show his own strength, or the fragile organization he had barely pieced together would come apart.
"Buy me a few seconds!"
William showed excellent decisiveness then, no longer agonizing over hiding his life-saving measures. After roaring those words, his spiritual power poured into the magic item at top speed; the air around him churned violently and converged into his palm, and seconds later he swung out a long, narrow, compressed stream of air with all his strength. It struck the beast cleanly and sliced its body smoothly into two halves.
A low-level spell: Wind Blade.
Unlike Fireball, which exploded the instant it struck, Wind Blade was so highly condensed that it did not dissipate after killing its first target; it flew straight on ahead, cutting every beast in its path in two and carving out a bloody road.
In a disaster, overwhelming strength is what steadies people's hearts best—at least for now their lives were still secure. Once William revealed his power, the apprentices put aside their thoughts of leaving; after all, whether Adam would even take them in was still an open question.
"These beasts are not invincible! So long as we stand together, they won't survive a single blow!" William said loudly, seizing the moment. He deliberately glossed over the fact that the precondition for beating the beasts was magic, and stressed unity instead. "We need a clearer division of labor, taking turns to buy the others time to master magic..."
Once the Wind Blade dissipated, Adam stopped paying attention to that side. The principle behind it was obvious at a glance: compress the air to raise the pressure, and lethality follows. That way of turning principle into application—that was the wonder of magic.
"Cristel, how many spells in a row can your spiritual power sustain?" Adam asked, after killing yet another beast that had just climbed onto the deck with a Fireball.
"In a row? I can't cast continuously. My spiritual power can maybe sustain two, and then I have to replenish it," Cristel said cautiously.
Adam nodded. Not everyone could run multiple threads; Cristel's limit was within his expectations. "You and Ophelia are one group, I'm a group of my own. We take turns holding the beasts off, one hour per turn, and during that hour not a single beast may be allowed through. I'll go first."
Now that the three of them had formed a temporary alliance of offense and defense, contribution and benefit within that alliance ought to go hand in hand; Adam being the stronger did not mean he should carry more of the burden as a matter of course. This rotation was rational—it would win his companions rest, especially while Ophelia had yet to find her own path.
The two nodded without objection. Ophelia even let out a breath of relief; the pride in her heart would not permit her to become a burden or a weakling in need of protection, and this arrangement preserved her dignity to some degree.
Ophelia watched the apprentices struggling to stay alive in another direction and thought silently, This is already much better than what they have. If I can't grow stronger even like this, then dying serves me right.
After saying his piece, Adam walked to the front to face the beasts directly—not out of any consideration for the two of them, but because Adam had sensed the danger that was coming.
As the ship drew nearer to the Mage Continent, the ether content between heaven and earth would keep rising, which meant the number of powerful magic-wielding beasts would rise as well. Adam had excellent endurance, but he was no perpetual motion machine; his rate of consumption was still far faster than his rate of replenishment. He could handle this much calmly enough, but if the beasts' numbers kept climbing, he was done for—sooner rather than later, no two ways about it.
Cristel and Ophelia understood this too. One worked doggedly at tracing her spiritual-power solidification rune, the other fought desperately to master Fireball; every minute and every second wasted might well be the cause of death.
Ophelia was finding it beyond her. Talent was an absolutely accurate thing: she truly did not have good elemental affinity, and even this simplest elemental magic rune array cost her enormous effort to grasp.
Adam killed the beasts rushing in this direction with ease. Fewer people and a smaller target meant the pressure on him was not great; the fact that the "organization" outnumbered them drew a good deal of the fire their way.
The hour passed quickly. Adam fell back and said, "You're up."
Unfortunately, just then a wave surged up beside them and a mass of beasts poured onto the deck. Cristel stood up tensely; the first impulse gone, she began to feel fear, and the fear kept deepening. Ophelia patted her shoulder reassuringly and said, "Leave the ordinary beasts to me. You step in if a high-grade magical beast gets onto the deck."
With that, blood energy flickered around her and she accelerated hard into the horde. An ordinary beast's body was about the equal of a Knight's; without martial techniques and without any understanding of a breathing method, they were not hard for a Grand Knight to handle—but their numbers were practically endless. Ophelia kept adjusting her breathing, shifting from her initial fierce, head-on style to a holding, delaying game, and even so she was gradually worn ragged.
Just after Ophelia smashed one beast's head open with a full-force punch, its body suddenly burst apart, and the spray of blood and flesh blinded her and blurred her sight. Then, in that instant, everything changed.
Out of that burst of blood and flesh shot a small, dainty beast. It looked like a land-dwelling creature, with a full set of limbs, and the aura of high-grade energy clung to its sharp claws and fangs. Its foreclaw swept out, breaking the sound barrier in an instant, and slashed viciously at Ophelia's throat.
Cristel's eyes nearly split with horror, and she screamed herself hoarse: "No! Watch out!" There was nothing she could do. Ophelia's body was shielding the beast, and if she cast Fireball, the first thing it would strike was certain to be Ophelia.
Adam was jolted out of his cultivation and watched this in amazement. By Mage Blake's classification, this beast was walking the road of a human body-refining Mage, with speed and strength far beyond the physical limits of a Grand Knight. To the likes of them, this kind of beast was a greater threat than its kin that could use magic but moved clumsily.
Is this the advantage of the body-refining road at the apprentice stage? If this is the difference between Mages and warriors, then by what means is a formal Mage supposed to guard against a close-range surprise attack like this?
What are magical beasts, really? Why do they have so many peculiar traits? If power comes from knowledge, then how do these chaotic creatures with no intellect grasp knowledge?
No, no, no, I've got the concept wrong. Knowledge is not created by humans; humans are merely its discoverers. The instincts of magical beasts count as knowledge to humans as well.
Adam stood to one side, lost in thought, while Ophelia had sunk into a heavy shadow of death.
The instant the sonic boom sounded, she almost felt she was already dead. At the most critical moment, the bodily instinct forged by her knight's training saved her: her arm reacted a step ahead of her brain and barred her throat with not a hairbreadth to spare.
Just as Wind Blade had cut through the beasts' bodies, the claws seemed to meet no resistance at all as they passed across Ophelia's arm, nearly splitting the whole limb in two; the blood vessels, muscle and bone inside were severed clean through.
The searing pain jolted her back to herself. Ophelia flung herself backward, and the grievous wound to her arm seemed not to affect her in the least: "Cris!"
The beast clung to her like a shadow, launching one lethal attack after another at Ophelia. Like the other beasts, it had no notion of its own kind whatsoever; anything that stood before it was casually sliced apart.
Ophelia was run ragged. Her eyes could not track the beast's movements; she could only rely on her instinct for danger to keep its strikes off her vitals, and within a short span she was covered in wounds.
Cristel was drenched in sweat, but the beast moved too fast—she had no way to take aim at all. On the verge of tears, she cried, "Miss Ophelia, I'm sorry, I can't..." Not daring to turn her head, she could only plead with Adam: "Adam, please, help Miss Ophelia."
Adam knew this was no time to agonize. The beast was too great a threat; if Ophelia died, then with nothing left to tie the creature down, Adam was not confident he could hit it either.
"Focus and get your spell ready. We get one chance," Adam said to Cristel.