There was no safe place in the trial rainforest; a magical beast could strike at any moment. Hearing Dawn's words, everyone scrambled to their feet, roused their mana, and stared warily into the darkness—only to find it completely empty. Furious, they turned on Dawn and spoke their last words in this life: "Dawn, what the hell are you playing at?"
Then a gray ripple swelled soundlessly around them. They slumped limply to the ground, and their souls flowed along the gray waves into the hand of a black-robed figure.
That black-robed figure was none other than Peter Om. His flying speed had already neared the limit of the apprentice stage, yet he found he could only close the distance to the death mark very slowly—sometimes it even widened. He could not help reflecting on his own arrogance, and decided that the instant he next met Adam, he would use full-fledged magic to kill him.
Gray mist began to spread from his body. Energy of an unknown attribute was terrifyingly powerful; anything that appeared near him was eroded by it into nothingness.
He had assumed that once he successfully entered the runic barrier, an amusing game of cat and mouse would be waiting for him. Now he found that what he faced was a life-or-death chase.
As a Magefoe, every extra second he lingered under the eyes of the mainstream Mages added another measure of danger. He had even begun to suspect that the mainstream Mages had already found him, and were only toying with him by not moving to capture him.
The reason creatures like Magefoes could barely cling to life under the rule of the mainstream Mages—apart from that one reason they were unwilling to admit—was caution.
Before coming to the Mage Continent, Peter Om had split his soul in two. Only the larger part resided in this body, to sustain combat power at full-fledged Mage level. Losing it would not threaten his life, but it would still cause him considerable trouble.
The thought only deepened the killing intent in his heart. "Just a mere apprentice—you can't escape the palm of my hand."
Adam was fleeing for his life. One thread controlled his body while every other thread poured itself into recovering spiritual power. Peter Om's words had helped him a great deal: he should have realized long ago that the trial grounds had boundaries, and that a runic barrier very likely stood along those boundaries. Shaking that runic barrier would surely draw the overseer's attention.
That was probably the only chance he had left to stay alive.
He knew he could no longer afford to husband his mana, so he gave up dodging the obstacles in his path and instead kept his magic output constant, cutting through everything ahead of him to carve out a route.
He did not know the exact route, but he did not need to. As long as he kept flying in one direction, he would hit the boundary sooner or later; he only hoped that would come sooner than Peter Om catching up to him.
Adam found that his luck really was rotten this time. He had underestimated the magical beasts of the rainforest: the huge-bodied ones could not keep up with his speed, but this time he had carelessly provoked flying beasts.
After he used a wind blade to cut down a giant tree ahead of him, the devil began screaming frantically in his mind: "Master, behind us, behind us!"
The thread controlling his body could only mechanically carry out its assigned task and had no capacity for emergency response. Hearing the devil's voice, Adam took over with his conscious thread—and only then realized he had carelessly kicked up serious trouble.
He had poked a hornet's nest.
It was a colony-dwelling magical beast called the giant stinger bee. Compared with ordinary bees, their bodies were unbelievably huge, and the dark-green venom stinger at their rear was as long as their body. The beasts were short-tempered and fiercely territorial; normally, any creature that entered the range of their hive would be attacked—let alone now that Adam had destroyed that hive.
In a high-magic environment like the Mage Continent, magical beasts were found almost everywhere, but large beasts and solitary beasts were usually not so aggressive. Had the academy not applied the potion, the apprentices in this trial could simply have stayed quietly in one place and passed it safely.
Colony beasts were different. Their intelligence was extremely low; they acted purely on instinct and attacked every living thing that appeared in their sight.
Adam could not count how many giant stinger bees were chasing him. Looking back, his whole field of view was dark-green flying insects, and stingers, venom and air blades came at him in a blinding storm. The buzzing was like an aggressive infrasound, shaking him so badly he could not concentrate.
"Damn it!" Adam cursed viciously aloud. When it rains, it pours. He had to find some way to shake off this swarm.
A single giant stinger bee was only a weak magical beast: decent attack power, but a fragile body and slow flight. Once they gathered into a swarm, however, their special colony trait fused their strength and speed into one, and Adam's flying speed was not enough to escape them.
During the chase Adam ran into two apprentice teams. Those unfortunate people had no ability to resist the bee swarm at all; after the gale swept past, not even their bones remained.
The magical beasts had their own wisdom for survival: they could sense the giant stinger bees coming and had ways to hide themselves in advance, which meant Adam could not even find a target onto which to divert the attack.
Adam fled in a blind panic, long since unable to hold to his original route. After bursting out of a stretch of dense forest, a jade-green lake appeared before him.
With no way to worry about whether terrible aquatic magical beasts lurked in the lake, Adam plunged headfirst into the water. The giant stinger swarm circled above the lake and would not disperse.
Fortunately, the water was unexpectedly calm—only ordinary aquatic life, no magical beasts at all. The stingers shot into the water from the surface like machine-gun fire, and the occasional one that struck Adam raised ripples on his psychokinetic barrier.
"At this intensity, I can't take a single volley." Adam calculated silently and found that he had no way to withstand the giant stinger swarm.
The devil said anxiously, "Master, I sense a tremendous malice approaching fast."
Adam's heart sank to the bottom. His thoughts raced: his body's injuries had already reached their limit and could not bear the burden of another Teleportation. In this state he could not fight head-on—not a Magefoe, not even the giant stinger bees—and Peter Om was coming to kill him. He could no longer see any way out of this dead end.
The devil urged him again, "Master, you have to think of something—the malice is very close now!"
Adam cut off every stray thought. Waiting to die was not in his nature; however slim the hope, he would try to grasp a thread of survival. He asked the devil in his mind, "Can you sense the direction?"
"Southeast. Very fast!"
Adam steeled himself, traveled a good distance along the lakebed, then charged head-on toward the Magefoe.
The devil was dumbfounded. It howled, "Master, you've got the wrong direction…"
Adam paid it no mind. He used psychokinesis to churn the water, churning up huge waves as he went along the lakebed.
"Master, what are you doing! Turn around—you're asking to die!"
With a great splash, Adam whipped up a water dragon and burst out of the lake.
Peter Om raced through the rainforest, leaving behind a corridor corroded out by the aura of his negative energy.
He barreled along in the direction of the death mark, killing everything he met on the way. Suddenly he noticed that the death mark had stopped moving. Peter Om exploded into his fastest speed, a feral grin pulling at the corner of his mouth—he guessed that Adam must be held up.
"Unlucky little mouse, I won't give you another chance. I'm tired of this game."
A few minutes later he burst out of the dense forest, saw the lake—and saw Adam, just then bursting out of the water.
In that instant he unleashed all of his mana. An obscure incantation resounded between heaven and earth, and gray waves gathered around him as their origin into a beam of energy that came at Adam with a terrifying aura.
"Soul Rend!"
"Savor despair, endure agony, and then be utterly annihilated!"
Peter Om had absolute confidence in his magic. This energy blast, coalesced from countless human souls, could easily destroy any apprentice's soul; there was no way Adam could survive it.
Gray filled Adam's eyes. The energy made his soul tremble against his will. The devil could no longer make a sound, and waited for death in despair.
Just then the giant stinger swarm behind him loosed a volley of stingers at him as well. Without hesitation Adam turned his body and flew straight into the rain of stingers.
It was the last effort he could make, however faint the hope.
He simply withdrew his psychokinetic barrier and let the stingers pierce his body. The venom and the energy pierced through his body first, then met Peter Om's magic. Yet the effect was negligible: the energy column of the Soul Rend spell rippled only slightly and passed straight through the rain of stingers.
But it had at least bought him a few seconds.
"Found you!"
Inside the mobile house, two full-fledged Mages of Moldo Tower rose to their feet at the same time, stepped forward and vanished from where they stood; the next second they appeared in the sky above the lake.
"That apprentice!?" One of them shot toward Adam at top speed. Ordinarily he would not have cared whether an apprentice lived or died, but now duty bound him—the tower's rules would not let him stand by and do nothing.
The second instantly understood why the Magefoe had infiltrated the trial grounds. He asked in disbelief, "You paid such a big price, all to kill one Mage apprentice? Is your brain broken?"
Tower Mages needed no incantation to cast. As the second full-fledged Mage spoke, intricate magic runes surfaced before him; where the runes converged, a colossal crimson fire pillar hammered toward Peter Om. A vast quantity of lake water vaporized in an instant, great numbers of giant stinger bees were scorched to charcoal, mist and cloud wreathed the sky above the lake, and bodies fell like rain.
Peter Om's expression changed drastically. He had not expected two full-fledged Mages to arrive at once. He hurriedly produced a teleportation scroll and tore it, trying to teleport away, but the immense energy distorted space; his body was ripped in two, with one half left behind on the spot.