Leo said nothing, stubbornly waving his staff again and again, sending out scattered bolts of lightning. But against six wizard apprentices, all of them at least advanced, these attacks only made his resistance seem more powerless.
With attack power below 200, they were stopped by the protective barriers around the six wizard apprentices before even reaching their bodies.
Alice was nowhere to be seen. Only the blasts of energy from her battle with Adelaide could be heard, and judging by the sounds, both were struggling.
There was even less chance of getting Alice to save him.
"Since you refuse to hand over your academy badge, die."
There was no toying with the weak and waiting for them to find a chance to turn the tables. Once the range was right and an opening appeared, they instantly unleashed lethal spells.
"Villains die from talking too much" did not apply in the Wizard World, because wizards like that had long since died out.
Four fire serpents opened their jaws and lunged at Leo. An attack like this could tear him apart outright.
Leo seemed frozen with fear, his stiff body utterly motionless.
Only the shadow beneath his feet twisted into different shapes in the firelight.
But the instant those four fire serpents were about to bite him, Leo's body suddenly became three, and the three Leos ran in different directions.
"Trying to run?"
The four fire serpents braked sharply, changed direction, and instantly pierced through one Leo.
There was not the slightest resistance.
The illusion vanished.
That one was fake.
At the same time, all six wizard apprentices unleashed spells.
Before the remaining two Leos could run more than a few steps, two spells struck them, instantly blasting deep craters into the ground.
The six Black Skull wizard apprentices looked at those two Leos. The previous one had been an illusion, so one of these two had to be Leo's real body.
But after the two spells struck, both Leos vanished as well.
Neither of these was Leo's real body either!
The six wizard apprentices' expressions instantly changed, and they quickly sensed their surroundings. Leo could not possibly have escaped their perception range.
But they did not know when he had escaped.
Just then, a figure had already emerged from the shadows behind the two wizard apprentices standing closest together.
With a terrifying shriek through the air, the greatsword met only slight resistance before easily severing two necks...
Before the other wizard apprentices could react, Leo vanished into the shadows again, leaving behind only two headless corpses spurting blood.
Traces of their magical barriers still lingered on their bodies, but those barriers had done nothing when Leo ambushed them.
"Jialuolin and Keniyasi are dead."
"Careful, he can ambush us at close range. His attack power exceeds 400."
The deaths of the two wizard apprentices let the remaining apprentices gauge Leo's attack power. A close-range ambush exceeding 400 points was simply a nightmare for anyone at the apprentice level.
And just as the remaining four apprentices watched one another to guard against Leo's ambushes, he instantly leaped out of the shadow behind one of them.
"Xinima, behind you!"
The other three wizard apprentices saw Leo suddenly leap out of the shadows and shouted a warning.
But when they saw the terrifying three-meter greatsword in Leo's hands, all of them looked as though they had seen a ghost.
This little elemental wizard apprentice they had been toying with was actually a body refinement wizard apprentice!
The consequences of letting a body refinement wizard get close...
Their academy courses had covered that long ago.
With a simple upward slash of the greatsword, the wizard apprentice Leo had closed in on was cleaved in two.
Likewise, when he was attacked, his wizard robe automatically activated its protection, but under Leo's greatsword, the barrier was as flimsy as kraft paper and broke instantly.
At that moment, they understood how Jialuolin and Keniyasi had died. This was a powerful body refinement wizard apprentice, and their defenses could not withstand his heavy blows at all!
Most importantly, he could ambush them too!
"You're next. Be careful."
Leo looked at the remaining three wizard apprentices and smiled, revealing his chilling white teeth. With a light flick of his greatsword, he scattered the fresh blood on its blade into the sky.
He pivoted.
Leo vanished into the shadows.
"He can jump through shadows to ambush us. Watch the shadows around you."
Leo had only used shadow jump twice before they saw through it. Not a single wizard apprentice was simple.
Unfortunately, in the face of absolute power, intelligence and wisdom were sometimes not so useful.
Leo did not hide. He leaped straight out of one wizard apprentice's shadow. That one had talked the most just now.
Lamanlade, a peak wizard apprentice of Black Skull Academy.
The instant Leo leaped out of the shadow behind him, he smiled in triumph.
He lightly tapped his staff with his palm, and a thick layer of rock rose behind him, blocking Leo's greatsword perfectly.
Lamanlade turned, pouring mana into his wizard robe. The robe's built-in vine entanglement spell was about to blast toward Leo.
He was confident that as long as Leo was struck by his vine entanglement, an endless barrage of spells would follow.
A restrained body refinement wizard apprentice would not survive two breaths in their hands.
But the instant he turned and saw Leo, Leo's greatsword cleaved through both the rocky defense and him.
The vine entanglement spell he had wanted to unleash failed.
Boom!
A burst fireball roared toward them like a heavy cannon, mercilessly blasting Lamanlade's corpse to pieces along with everything else.
Another burst fireball followed right behind it. The remaining two wizard apprentices paid no heed to their companion at all, attacking the moment they spotted Leo. At that point, Lamanlade had not yet been cut in half by Leo.
Seeing the explosive flame fireballs hit, the two wizard apprentices relaxed their taut nerves slightly. Few apprentices could take an explosive flame fireball head-on. As for the trivial matter of Lamanlade still being alive before they attacked, that was irrelevant.
One dead companion meant one more academy badge. That was not a bad thing either!
"How cold-blooded."
But a contemptuous voice suddenly rang out from the flames, instantly making the last two wizard apprentices pale with shock.
The next second, a man wreathed in flames shot toward one of the wizard apprentices, greatsword in hand, and instantly reached him.
An afterimage trailed by flames still lingered in the air.
Two cold eyes stared out from his blackened face.
His powerful physique exuded an overwhelming sense of pressure.
The simplest downward slash of a greatsword.
But it was so fast that the wizard apprentice's thought of acting vanished along with his shattered body.
Boom!
Another burst fireball blasted out, timed so perfectly that Leo could not dodge.
Only this time did the last wizard apprentice see how Leo had survived the previous attacks.
Leo did not dodge at all, nor did he use any defensive spell.
He simply took the burst fireball with his body.
Flames instantly engulfed his entire body, and crackling sounds could be heard as a black human figure burned within them.
But something that terrified this last surviving Black Skull apprentice happened.
Within the human torch, the terrifying figure merely swayed slightly, then let the flames burn as though it were not his own body burning.
That was a spell attack of nearly 400 points.
It had struck Leo squarely in the chest, yet only made his body sway slightly.
Were body refinement wizard apprentices really this strong?
The next second, this last surviving wizard apprentice saw only a sharp flash of sword light. Then the world spun, and he knew nothing more.
Moving almost as fast as teleportation, Leo shattered him and the barrier around him with a single slash.
"Cough, cough, cough."
Leo coughed quietly and immediately activated the healing rune array on his body, rapidly healing his injuries.
He had been struck by three burst fireballs in succession. The first two had not hit him head-on, with part of their attacks blocked by that defensive layer of rock, but some of the explosive flames had still reached his body.
But the final burst fireball had struck him squarely.
The burst fireball truly deserved its place among the most popular apprentice-level spells: high attack power, fast casting, and intense heat.
Leo's own defenses could ignore attacks below 100 points, and his wizard robe could reduce attacks by 60 points. Thus, a burst fireball with 400 attack power had only 240 attack power left.
And through years of persistently using the high-temperature rune array to passively evolve his body, Leo had long since become able to withstand high-temperature environments, further reducing the burst fireball's attack power.
Leo estimated that the damage he sustained was around 200 points, of which the shadow fused with his body shared 100 points of attack power.
In the end, the actual damage his flesh endured was only 100 points!
An attack of 100 points truly could not shake a peak body refinement wizard apprentice like Leo!
Exceptional defense and a formidable body-these were the fundamental reasons Leo had taken three burst fireballs head-on!
Not daring to hesitate, Leo instantly concealed his aura and vanished into the shadows.
With so many wizard apprentices fighting together, the chaotic auras would soon draw more wizard apprentices. If he did not want to end up being mobbed, ending the fight early was the key!
Had Adelaide not encountered him and Alice precisely because Adelaide had sensed the aura of Abigail's battle and happened upon them along the way?
On Alice and Adelaide's battlefield.
Alice was practically the image of an elemental wizard in Leo's mind, constantly attacking with all kinds of ice spells, her immense mana seemingly inexhaustible.
Freezing, slowing, weakening Adelaide's mana circulation, fierce critical strikes, an instant kill in one barrage.
Adelaide clearly specialized in cultivating the earth element. Seven immensely sturdy, three-meter-tall stone golems protected him securely, blocking Alice's attacks while allowing Adelaide to launch attacks safely.
These seven stone golems weathered Alice's various attacks head-on. They also wanted to close in and attack Alice, but every time, they were frozen to death midway.
Whenever a gap appeared in the stone golems' numbers, Adelaide quickly replenished them.
His perfect defense allowed Adelaide to ignore Alice's attacks and choose bolder ways to attack.
Their battle was entirely a bombardment between two artillery emplacements, countless spells crisscrossing one another.
Auras roared across the entire battlefield. All the elemental power was drawn toward them, and the circulation of energy stirred up gusts in the air.
Though the sky was clear for miles, fierce winds howled in this place alone. With such strange weather, even those more than a dozen kilometers away knew a battle between wizards had erupted here.