Judging by the scene, the two were evenly matched; there was no telling which was stronger.
During this championship, the last thing anyone wanted was to encounter an evenly matched opponent and get bogged down in a prolonged battle. Even the strongest wizard apprentice could be overwhelmed by the competing wizards who arrived afterward.
Killing a powerful opponent was the most likely way to obtain a huge pile of academy badges!
It was the fastest way to accumulate academy badges!
At some point, Leo emerged from the shadow of a large tree, watching the battlefield only out of the corner of his eye.
Leo did not dare look directly at Alice or Adelaide. At their level of strength, they could easily sense someone's gaze.
If Leo looked straight at them, there was a very high chance he would expose himself!
After watching for a while, Leo discovered that Adelaide's defenses were far more outrageous than he had imagined.
Seven three-meter Stone Golems guarded the outer perimeter. Their massive bodies could withstand three rounds of Alice's attacks head-on. If her attacks slowed, these Stone Golems could even absorb energy from the earth to restore themselves.
As expected of earth-attribute Stone Golems, their defense was their most praiseworthy trait!
Adelaide himself had at least two layers of protective barriers around him. Alice's attacks had struck them countless times without breaking through, producing at most rings of ripples.
Their estimated defensive power was over 450 points!
Not only that, Leo also sensed the auras of three wizard artifacts on Adelaide. Although he did not know their specific functions, being cautious certainly could not hurt.
He could even prepare for the worst: all three wizard artifacts might be defensive.
Looked at this way, Adelaide had seven massive Stone Golems outside, two protective barriers around himself, and three wizard artifacts of unknown nature on him.
He practically had his fear of death engraved on his soul.
With so many defenses, he could stand still and let the apprentices attack him, and most would never break through!
To kill him in a single strike, my attack power needs to exceed 500 points to break the outer barrier. The inner barrier probably has about the same defensive power, so I'll need to consistently deliver over 500 points of attack power.
Holding his greatsword, Leo silently pondered. His current strength was 48.5. Because of the modification to his tonsils, his strength had permanently dropped by 3%. At present, he could leverage tenfold attack power, or 485 points.
That was still not enough to kill Adelaide in a single strike!
Looks like this is my only option.
Leo took an energy crystal out of his shadow space and fitted it into the greatsword's hilt, then ran his palm over the blade.
Mana surged forth, and dense arcs of electricity instantly flickered across the entire blade.
A closer look would reveal that these seemingly random arcs were actually arranged in a particular pattern.
It was a rune array that activated the lightning attribute!
Leo looked at the array on the blade. This was the fruit of his final year and more of work, discussing the theoretical knowledge of elemental wizards with Samatchi and focusing on learning lightning-attribute spells.
In the end, Leo had successfully inscribed the Electric Shock Rune Array on his body onto his greatsword!
This was a secret no one else knew, Leo's ultimate trump card!
Leo vanished once again.
"Alice, the fight over there is over. Your companion is gone. Are you ready for the death that awaits you?" Adelaide wore a savage grin. Taking down Alice today would definitely make his name resound. Once the championship ended, becoming a level one formal wizard would be guaranteed.
Alice said nothing. Her staff swung, her chanting continued without pause, and countless ice cannon blasts bombarded a charging Stone Golem, soon blasting it to pieces.
She, too, sensed that the nearby battle had ended, but she could not sense any auras, as though all seven wizards, including Leo, had vanished.
Alice was very familiar with this feeling. If her senses were not mistaken, she already knew the outcome of the battle.
Adelaide kept taunting her, trying to rattle Alice with his words, but her expression remained icy and unmoved.
For some reason, Alice even suddenly intensified her attacks. Within a few breaths, she blasted apart two Stone Golems in succession and sent a large number of attacks crashing into Adelaide's protective barrier.
Seeing Alice like this, Adelaide laughed even harder. Clearly, she was getting desperate and had begun spending mana without restraint in an attempt to escape.
Once his six companions arrived, Alice would undoubtedly die!
Although Alice's rapid attacks left him unable to summon more Stone Golems for the moment, forcing him to hurriedly shore up his defenses,
Adelaide already had victory in his grasp.
But at the very instant Adelaide's smile was widest,
the shadow behind him suddenly writhed, and a figure emerged from it.
A muscular body so powerfully built that it stretched his wizard robe taut, and a greatsword accompanied by a distinctive rumble of thunder.
And that surging aura of physical vitality that could not be concealed.
Adelaide truly deserved his standing as a Top-Tier Wizard Apprentice. Even while fully focused on defending against Alice's attacks, he sensed danger the instant Leo appeared behind him.
Almost the very next instant after Leo appeared, three Stone Golems raised their fists and hammered them toward him.
Although Stone Golems moved slowly, that was the price of their unimaginably heavy bodies. In return, their strength could reach 50 points.
Each punch from a Stone Golem had 300 points of attack power. Who could ignore that? Who would dare?
Leo acted as though he had not seen the three Stone Golems attacking him. The mana within his body circulated to its limit, and every cell desperately squeezed out its strength.
The shadow overlapping Adelaide's instantly threw itself onto Leo, strengthening every cell once more with shadow power.
Leo's aura soared, and his muscular body grew larger still. Had his wizard robe not been of such good quality, it would have burst apart.
His somewhat short stature instantly rose until he stood half a head taller than Adelaide, allowing him to look down on this wizard apprentice who had developed defensive spells to their utmost.
"Thunder Plow Sweep!"
The greatsword in his hands no longer felt as heavy as it once had. Despite weighing over 300 kilograms, it moved like an extension of his arm.
All the mana in his body surged forth. Thunder exploded from the blade, and the entire sword turned blue with lightning in an instant.
By the time Adelaide took a second look at Leo, Leo's lightning-wreathed greatsword had already swept in front of him.
Boom!
The first protective barrier, which Alice's countless attacks had shaken but never broken, was instantly torn apart by Leo's lightning-wreathed greatsword.
It was too fast, so fast that Adelaide had no time even to activate his defenses!
So fast that the Stone Golems' fists were still on their way!
Amid the explosive power of lightning, Adelaide could even feel the might of the thunder coming from the greatsword. His entire body tingled, his pores violently contracted, and every hair on his body stood on end uncontrollably.
Adelaide's face twisted savagely as he desperately tried to move faster. His mind was working at full capacity, yet the staff in his hand seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. No matter what he did, he could not lift it.
His thoughts could keep pace with the lightning-wreathed greatsword, and his eyes could see it, but his body could not keep up. He could only watch helplessly as it cleaved through the first barrier and continued its sweeping assault.
The second layer of defense was something Alice had never even reached.
It also left Adelaide's eyes stretched wide with fury, for never before had he been forced into such a desperate predicament.
Boom!
Another thunderclap rang out. A huge dent was instantly carved into the invisible protective barrier, reaching all the way to the wizard robe on Adelaide's body, yet the barrier simply would not break.
The lightning-wreathed greatsword had actually been stopped!
Looking at the barrier, dented to its limit, Adelaide nearly felt his heart leap out of his chest. He had even pictured himself being cut apart by that sword.
He had never imagined it would be blocked!
Only when he saw his protective barrier stop the lightning-wreathed greatsword did he instinctively breathe a sigh of relief, allowing his heart, so tense it had nearly stopped, to start beating again.
It had been blocked. Now it was his turn to counterattack.
As for Leo, he showed no panic at all when he saw the greatsword stopped. He abruptly slammed his palm onto its hilt.
An energy crystal was embedded right there!
The mana in Leo's hand struck the energy crystal like a heavy cannon blast. Instantly, faint cracking sounds came from the crystal.
The energy crystal shattered!
Boom!
The shattered energy crystal instantly unleashed terrifying energy, which surged uncontrollably in every direction.
Only a small portion flowed along the inscribed array into the Electric Shock Rune Array on the blade.
That small portion of energy was exactly what Leo wanted!
Thunder instantly roared from the blade like the cries of ten thousand birds. Blue lightning blazed dazzlingly, and a meter-long blade of lightning sword qi erupted from the sword.
An intense aura of lightning poured out without restraint. With Leo at the center, the entire ground slowly began to sink.
The greatsword swung back,
then slashed upward.
Boom!
Blue sword light flashed past, cutting through the second protective barrier as easily as slicing tofu.
Now, with his protective barriers gone, Adelaide stood one meter in front of Leo. It was an extremely dangerous distance!
Without the two protective barriers between them, Leo stared straight at Adelaide, and Adelaide stared back at him, astonishment in his eyes.
It was a fleeting instant, yet it seemed as long as ten thousand years.
Without the slightest hesitation, the upward-slashing lightning-wreathed greatsword struck Adelaide's body.
The instant the greatsword struck, Adelaide's wizard robe flashed with different lights as the attack activated its protective mechanisms.
One of the wizard artifacts Leo had been watching all along also shattered with a sharp crack: a ring Adelaide wore on his hand.
As the ring shattered, a spatial fluctuation actually emanated from Adelaide's body.
This was not a defensive wizard artifact, but a single-use wizard artifact teleportation array that could teleport Adelaide away when he faced mortal danger.
"Die!"
Leo had already paid so much, going so far as to expose his true identity and even detonate an energy crystal that had cost him two hundred thousand wizard coins.
If he did not kill Adelaide, he would suffer a huge loss!
His intense determination to kill made Leo unconsciously let out a low, beastlike growl. His heart raced like an engine at full speed, desperately squeezing every last bit of strength from his body.
His powerful physique seemed to blur. Although Leo stood there, whether it was an illusion or not, his entire body was actually trembling minutely at high frequency.
His heart suddenly thundered like a drum, his aura compressed to the extreme, and his entire body abruptly sank. His feet shattered the ground beneath them. With strength from some unknown source, Leo's already enlarged frame grew taller once again.
The meter-long lightning sword qi on the greatsword in his hands suddenly surged longer.
Lightning blazed, and furious thunder resounded.