CHAPTER 58: MANA CORE

’I was fated to be the chimera monster. Was Jack also fated to be captured by them?’ He wondered.

’Moreover, the fact that there existed people outside the fog means bad news for me. The backup I thought I had from the viscounty will not arrive. For all I know, they could have all died.’

While thinking that, Zephyr still had a tiny bit of hope that the Storm Tower would send help. After all, mages were very thorough while doing everything. They will not risk anything by leaving it to chance or luck.

’Until they see what happened to the lighthouse with their eyes, they will not be satisfied. I am hopeful...’

He looked at the necromancer gloomily.

Anyways, it was time for their battle to begin. It was time to see the result of all the preparations he had made.

Zephyr stopped speaking and stood there without moving.

Watching it, the necromancer smiled.

"Are you ready to give up?" He asked.

"Not really." Zephyr shrugged.

"Then, what are you doing?"

"Duh! I am obviously wasting time."

"Well, you are an honest one." The necromancer raised his hand. "But it’s time for me to end this. I will sacrifice you to the altar first." He decided and channelled his mana.

Zephyr could sense the mana around them tremble ever so slightly as the man raised his hand.

"HEY!" He shouted. "Wait a second. Are you planning to use your undead to capture me?" He asked.

The mana pulse released by the spell was something familiar. Zephyr had sensed a thousand times by now and knew the necromancer was sending commands to the undeads nearby.

The ghouls, zombies, and burly undead knights near the altar suddenly paused.

"What if I am?" The necromancer asked, raising an eyebrow.

"That won’t work against me," Zephyr said, tapping on a pouch secured to his waist.

"It won’t! Why?"

The necromancer’s curiosity stopped him for a moment. Making use of the time, Zephyr pulled out the pouch and raised it in front of him.

"Ta Da..." He said if he was doing some fake magic.

The black crystal in the pouch clattered as he shook it.

"Do you know what this is?"

The necromancer frowned.

"What is it?" He asked.

Zephyr gave a bright smile and opened the pouch. From inside it, he took out a black mana core he collected from the undeads he slayed with great difficulty.

"It’s a mana core you might be familiar with."

The necromancer’s frown deepened.

"Why did you bring that out right now?" He asked, squinting his eyes.

A kind of ominous feeling was slowly clutching at his mind. The necromancer felt his heart beat increase slightly as he watched Zephyr take out the mana core.

Why was his heart thumping? The man didn’t know. But he was sure something bad was going to happen.

"See...For the past two days, I have been carefully examining what I have gone through and learning from my mistakes. At that time, I made a few discoveries and found some exploits."

Zephyr shook the pouch once more.

"One of them pertains to the way mana is used."

Zephyr tightened his grip on the mana core-filled pouch and drove his consciousness in. Instantly, he felt the boundless mana within. There were about 146 mana cores within the pouch, each having a mana density of 400 to 600 Zephyr cores’ worth of mana.

Therefore, the pouch in total contained about seventy to eighty thousand-ish dark mana.

"Initially, I thought there was no use for the mana cores. However, later, I discovered an excellent use for them. Let me show you why I was once called the top genius of the Storm Tower," Zephyr said, while melting the mana cores into pure mana.

Immediately, a dark mana stream of great volume flew out of the pouch, sending shivers down the spines of those watching. Even Zephyr trembled slightly, but he tamed in emotions quickly.

The necromancer was watched in shock as mana condensed into a giant circular stream above Zephyr’s head.

The mana that Zephyr used was his own, which he lost control over when the undead died. It was the reason for his exhaustion.

Clenching his teeth, he watched it flow steadily without even a tremble or a flicker of instability.

"How?" He muttered unknowingly.

"How did you do that?" He asked.

Controlling that much mana, without any formation or other assistance, should have been impossible. And yet, Zephyr was doing it just fine.

There wasn’t even a change in his complexion.

"I can’t explain it, old necromancer. This is how I am built."

Zephyr’s trait, absolute mana control, was a broken ability that allowed him to sense, control, and use mana in crazy ways. So, even while he was of a lesser rank, he could perfectly control the dark mana.

Giving a ridiculous smile, Zephyr slowly controlled the mana stream above him and made it flow faster around him.

Watching it, the necromancer finally realised what he was doing. His smile faded from his face and was replaced with a nervous grin.

Lifting his head while staring right into Zephyr’s eyes, he asked.

"You want to create a mana disturbance to block me."

Zephyr nodded.

"You are exhausted. You barely have forty to fifty percent of your mana. The cores I have used would be about 50 percent of your mana. So, technically, I have an equal amount of mana. Therefore, the mana disturbance I create will be strong enough to block any command you send."

Zephyr chuckled.

The necromancer and his undeads have a master-slave-server-client relationship. Each time a command needed to be issued, the necromancer had to send it through mana pulses to the target undead.

If the undead were out of direct reach, he would use nearby undeads like cell towers and increase the reach of the command signal.

Zephyr had noticed this when he was hunting down the undeads. Thus, he exploited the weakness of the way the command was being sent to block it.

The mana stream above his head was acting like a signal jammer, creating a dead zone where he couldn’t command the undead.

If the necromancer wanted to control the nearby undead, he could by sending large amounts of mana through the open area, wasting a lot in the process while connecting with individual undeads.

However, it was not really feasible because he had no mana to waste.

Zephyr grinned as he initiated his plan.

’This is just the start.’ He thought and waited to see how the necromancer was going to react.