Traps and Completion

Time rewound to not long ago.

At the instant the lava and rocks beneath his feet were seized by an invisible force, condensing into colossal fists that blotted out the sky and closed in fiercely from all directions, alarm bells exploded in the black-robed wizard's heart.

This was a trap!

But he was not referring to the trap before him, but to something far deeper.

The key was this: the battlefields Wizard Civilization had chosen for this massive planar war were all "wastelands," places whose resources had long been drained away, leaving behind nothing but inert gray-white rock strata.

On this land, let alone metal deposits, even decent organic matter had nearly vanished.

For the enemy to manipulate this nonmetallic lava and rock through magnetic fields was absolutely not mere "magnetic control"!

This meant that the fifth-level witch known as the "Martial God" had reached the threshold of some qualitative transformation in her understanding and application of magnetic fields.

She had accomplished what normally only sixth-level wizards specializing in magnetic fields could achieve—using pure magnetic fields to directly interfere with and manipulate the structure and movement of nonmetallic matter!

This was far more than simply expanding the range of control.

The even more terrifying implication was that if magnetic fields could influence nonmetallic matter with such precision, then in theory, they could likewise act directly upon the insides of living beings, disrupt neural currents, affect biological magnetic fields, and even tear apart cellular structures on a microscopic level!

"Had the interference... already begun?"

The black-robed wizard's thoughts raced. The Fantasy law granted him extreme sensitivity toward "variables of reality," and information immediately came flooding back.

He clearly "sensed" extremely subtle yet undeniable disorder and delay in both the biological magnetic field around his body and the spiritual force field he