Chapter 145: Chapter 145: Great Sorcerer War (5)
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While all the powerhouses were still fine, the same could not be said of the teams of Sorcerers.
Most teams had missing members, while some teams had simply disappeared. Something had gone terribly wrong.
The spies were to be expected, we had already taken our measures against them. However, that attack was simply catastrophic. Now we knew why we hadn't met any strong demons for the past few days, they were simply in hiding.
Somehow, all of them had managed to band together, and even prepared a joint assault on them. Looking around, Edward could already see the other powerhouses look at Doom with wary eyes. Their first assumption was, of course, there was a spy who knew of their every plan, and trapped them.
Edward refuted such a theory inwardly though, not because of a misplaced feeling of trust toward the egomaniac ruler, but because it didn't make much sense.
As arrogant and egocentric Doom was, Edward had to admit the man was smart, Susan had more than once warned him about it, and he had made his research.
If Doom had really been the one planning for their defeat, those few deaths would have to be increased by a factor of ten, and more than half of the powerhouses would probably have died.
Actually, Edward did not believe any of the powerhouses were spies, they were all capable of magic, it wouldn't be so surprising for one of the demons to possess a kind of scrying magic.
But more importantly, Edward felt there was something amiss with the attack. He knew of the powers of the demons, and although they probably didn't know which teams were assigned to which powerhouse, it was too much of a coincidence each of them were matched up with such a weak demon.
Apart from the three Master Sorcerers, who were a notch under everyone present, everyone dealt with their demons with close to no trouble. Considering some of those demons were supposed to be as strong as Edward, or even stronger, the latter could hardly believe all of them got out fine.
So there was definitely something fishy going on, and Edward believed it was the demons trying to force them to tear themselves apart. Psychological warfare, the forte of hellish demons.
Since no one was saying anything, Stephen eventually talked, "I believe some changes are needed, if we continue in this manner then they can harass us to death."
Giovanni proposed, "We could merge the teams together, so we would only get one team to watch each, and go with them."
Doom, who had his arms crossed, said, "This would result in a loss of efficiency."
Giovanni frowned and countered, "But it would be much safer. Don't you consider their lives? Is it because they are beneath you?"
Doom squinted his eyes at the magician, he had been getting on his nerves since the beginning of the war, always complaining about this and that.
While he would have normally ignored him, Victor decided to humour him as he explained, "I am capable of empathy, but I don't let it turn me into a fool. Forming bigger teams would protect them on the short term, but the loss of efficiency would allow the demons to build up their numbers, killing all of us in the end."
Giovanni opened his mouth, but Doom, clearly annoyed, added, "If having your daughter fighting makes you this incompetent, you might as well take a rest, old man."
Giovanni's eyes widened in anger, and through his Chi Sense, Edward felt he was ready to attack Doom with some nasty spell, so he quickly released his Royal Will.
The outburst was stunning enough to gather everyone's attention, and stop Giovanni from attacking. Now that everyone was paying attention to him, Edward said, "Stop being childish. We are outnumbered and overpowered, we don't need internal strife too."
The silence after that was quite awkward, and after a moment of hesitation Stephen threw a glance at Edward and said, "I could… do that."
The others, oblivious to what he was talking about, looked at him in surprise, while Edward frowned and rejected, "That's a last stand option. Don't even think about it, unless all hope is lost."
Stephen argued, "But it could stop everything before it gets any worse."
Edward still shook his head, "There's a reason everyone failed before. I don't want to see you die and lose our Sorcerer Supreme before the real fights even begin."
Stephen grumbled, "Isn't it only to not fear death?"
That's right, the option Stephen was talking about, was something Edward had been offered a long time ago, back when he was in Camelot.
The power of Death. To get an undying body immune to the energies of the higher being. In essence, a body that allowed a Sorcerer to ignore the cost of their spell, turning them into absolutely terrifying war machines.
With his current mastery over the Mystical Arts, and his knowledge of some 'forbidden' spells, Stephen would turn absolutely monstrous if he were to manage to pull out the Undying Body.
But as Edward said, the problem was that despite many wishing to possess such power in the past, none of them ever managed to attain it. Death had told Edward the secret of obtaining her power, to not fear death, but it wasn't this simple.
Not only was it counter instinctive for a human to not fear death, Death was most probably aware that Edward told Stephen about the condition to please her and get her power, so who was he to say her trial would remain the same?
With so many unknowns, the chances of Stephen failing and dying were too high, and him dying now would not only make them lose a very capable fighter, Edward didn't want to lose his friend either.
The others were curious about what Stephen was talking about, but they tactfully decided not to ask, since Edward had already refused.
Instead, one of the three Master Sorcerers, the one from the London Sanctum, said, "We could…"
However, his words were cut off by a shrill cry coming from the sky, followed by many others. Looking up, the powerhouses and the rest of the magicians saw what looked like hundreds, if not thousands of flying demons in the sky.
With the series of cries, they started diving from the sky, only to crash into the magical barrier around Kamar-Taj. However, it didn't seem to deter them as they smashed themselves to death against the magical barrier, washing it with their acidic blood.
At the same time, tremors came from the ground as other demons attacked from the ground. Everyone quickly spread out in different directions, to stop the demons before they could breach the barrier.
Edward headed north, toward the largest entrance to Kamar-Taj, and there he saw a swarm of demons clawing and biting at the magical barrier.
Weaving his hands in circles, the snow beneath the demons' feet started trembling as it grew in size. By the time the demons noticed something was wrong, the snow had already reached the upper half of their bodies, and was rising even faster.
The snow that engulfed the demons looked quite eery too as it was blood red, the reason being that Edward had been using his Water Concept to manipulate the blood of the dead demons and grow the snow.
Finally, all the demons were more or less swallowed by the snow, and at that moment, Edward solidified it.
The massive red chunk of ice trembled for some time, the demons inside doing their best to struggle out of it, but quickly the shaking stopped, and so Edward brought both of his hands together.
With his gesture, the chunk of ice was quickly compressed into a circular sphere with a radius of five meters. Inside that sphere, the corpses of hundreds of demons and compressed ice were forced to share such a tiny space, and was only held together by his magic.
Meanwhile, the demons behind the first wave rushed forward seeing the first wave had been killed, completely forgetting about their personal safety as they seemed intent on destroying the barrier.
However, before they could even reach the barrier, the blood red sphere in the sky exploded, sending deadly projectiles all around.
The foot army was showered with those projectiles, tearing them apart as they did on the spot. At the same time, those in the sky were not spared as they too had entire waves of demons obliterated by the powerful attack.
As for Edward, he smiled contently at the spectacle, not because he took pleasure in killing demons, but in satisfaction of his own power. Reality Bending was really great to deal with hordes of enemies.
Unfortunately, while Edward's attack covered a large area and affected many demons, Kamar-Taj was a large place, and only a portion of the demons were stopped.
On other parts of the barrier, the different powerhouses worked either alone or with the teams of Sorcerers to stop the demons from getting any closer.
At first, things seemed to be going well, the magicians were killing wave after wave of demon, but as the minutes passed, the magicians started getting tired, while the demons seemed endless in numbers.
This astonished the magicians quite a lot as they couldn't understand how there could be so many demons. The reason they had been swiping the world was exactly to regulate the number of demons.
And it wasn't like they had failed. Edward had basically emptied the seas from demons, and Doom did the same for Central Europe. The rest of the powerhouses, while not as efficient as the two, still killed many demons, and sometimes struggled to find any demons to fight.
So that begged the question, where did those countless demons come from? It was as if they had simply spawned out of nowhere.
So with the minutes, it wasn't just the magicians' stamina that withered away, but also the integrity of the barrier.
Each of the powerhouses knew this was bad, but they didn't really have many solutions other than fighting back, and hoping they would exhaust the enemy forces before the barrier broke.
And after an entire hour of constant fighting, while the powerhouses were tired for most and the barrier had grown much weaker, the tide of demons… started retreating.
Many of the Sorcerers sighed in relief at this, but the powerhouses' faces only turned worse.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone