About ten minutes later, a dense swarm of black dots flew in from the northeast of Mero City, finally stopping in the sky more than three kilometers northeast of the city and advancing no farther.
Captain Hart grabbed a telescope and looked through it, seeing mages in robes hovering in midair.
"Heh, have those fellows from the Candel Empire finally made a real move? Do they think these guys alone will be enough?" Captain Hart sneered, then turned to Nuenes. "Have our brothers give these distinguished mages a greeting."
"Right away!" Nuenes answered cheerfully, turning to pass on the order.
A moment later, more than a dozen bright, pale blue-green beams suddenly shot from Mero City's walls, streaking toward the mages in the northeastern sky.
The mages had only just stopped when they suddenly saw those beams right in front of them, startling them badly.
They all spread their hands, and Magic Shields shimmering in various colors appeared before them.
In the blink of an eye, the dozen or so beams struck those Magic Shields and burst apart.
Unlike the violent blasts and dazzling fireballs produced by the Xinfei Merchant Guild's ordinary mana cannon shells in the past, these pale blue-green beams burst with considerable force but formed visible pale blue-green ripples that spread through the air, instantly enveloping a vast stretch of the surrounding space.
Under the influence of those ripples, the entire space seemed to churn continuously like disturbed water.
The mages in midair suddenly discovered, to their horror, that they seemed to have instantly lost control over the magic elements. They could not even maintain their flight magic, and many plunged straight out of the sky.
Fortunately, when they had fallen halfway and were about to hit the ground, they discovered that their control over the magic