The brief distraction caused Angor to miss his chance of blending in with the smoke barrier.
He kept falling, and he was falling faster than he expected.
He was now dangerously close to the lava below.
With quick work, he constructed a cantrip model in his mind space, and a small tornado soon appeared at his feet.
He tried to use the tornado as a stepping stone to reach for another lump of thick smoke not far from him so that he could temporarily confuse the fishes and go on hiding.
But he made a small mistake.
The cantrip was fine. Yet his aim was a little off!
He realized he was going to crash into the magic array restraining the Lord of Tentacles at this rate.
He didn’t know how exactly the array worked, but he already saw the monster’s tentacles getting ripped apart by it.
“Get away from it, Angor!” someone yelled at him in a familiar voice.
Angor glanced back and saw Keely shouting at him at the back of the trapped apprentices.
Quickly, he prepared to cast another tornado. However, he already fell into the pressure unleashed by the Lord of Tentacles; it prevented him from doing anything swiftly. Also, the chaotic energy in the area would disrupt any spells that he could conjure.
The Lord of Tentacles somehow gained the same level of power as a real wizard, but it seemed it had not learned how to control such power, which was why it only used its newly-gained aura to suppress people’s actions rather than doing real harm to them.
Since he could still move slowly, Angor quickly thought about another idea. Once again, he ejected his soul.
Most of the apprentices on the other side were still wondering about the fool that just bumped into the battlefield. They didn’t have to figure out who he was since Keely already revealed his name aloud.
Angor.
This name meant nothing to them just half a month ago. However, since then, people often mentioned this name during their social conversations, albeit with different attitudes.
It was written in human nature that one would envy someone with a powerful background. Angor’s case was made worse when the magazine used lots of flattery words and overstatements. Combined with the fact that Angor tended to stay low and keep everything to himself, people basically knew nothing about his achievement, which gave them more reason to malign the rumored boy.
Someone with an evil nature like Jebra would get his name known and approved by others, even if it was a bad name. But Angor only earned himself the title of a “coward” due to his reclusive lifestyle.
This was why people all frowned in disgust when they heard Keely yelling at Angor.
Still, they felt bad when they saw that he was about to crash into the magic array because they would probably be in the very same fate soon.
As they watched in despair, Angor’s body suddenly gained an unbelievable speed and flashed to somewhere far away within a second.
He moved so fast that human eyes barely saw what just happened.
More importantly, how did he move so fast in the monster’s territory?
Keely sighed in relief when she saw that Angor managed to escape. She planned to tell Angor to get out here first since Angor seemed capable of it.
Suddenly, she saw her kitten, Luna, who had been sitting at the tip of her broomstick, puffed up its fur and meowed loudly toward the sky.
Someone followed Luna’s gaze and were shocked speechless by what they saw.
“S-so many—”
“So many what? What did you see—” When the others all followed suit, they failed to finish their question.
There was a famous painting in the wizarding world called the Calamity of All. An Occultist, “Magic Painter”, a truth-finder wizard who could connect different dimensions using his painting brush, created it.
The Calamity of All was used as an illustration by Expedition into Endless Planes. The picture described the incident when a grand demon, Fallen Sun, invaded the southern wizarding region and brought civilization-ending disaster ten thousand years go.
Inside the painting, the sky was filled with bloodthirsty monsters coveting human flesh while an “individual” with a blurred face stood in front of all monsters. This individual was the main character of the painting, Fallen Sun. People said that each of his moves would bring swarms of monsters that sank the continent.
Almost everyone in the southern wizarding region knew about the painting.
Now, the apprentices trying to bear with the monster’s pressure were terrified to see something similar happening right in front of their eyes.
Countless demon fishes blocked the sky like thunderclouds. There were ones large enough to occupy half of their view, like giant whales and the Ignis Medusozoa, as well as shiny, smaller species that took up much of the space just by their sheer number.
The apprentices felt their nerves slowly breaking apart when the entire sky was replaced by monsters.
It seemed all the fishes were still going after Angor. Their eyes, either tiny or big, were all looking at Angor while showing greed, hunger, and rage.
Of course, it was nothing to compete with what Fallen Sun caused in history. Even so, it was nonetheless terrifying.
“That’s Sunders’ student for you. He provoked so many demon fishes and still managed to survive!”
The others tried to imagine what would become of them if they were in Angor’s shoes. Torn to shreds almost instantly, no doubt.
When most people were commenting on Angor’s actions in awe, some of them slowly looked toward where Angor showed up earlier—the sky.
What was he doing up there?
Both Freud and Hermes frowned as they took their own assumptions.
“Sh*t. Did he go pick their nest or something? What a pain...” They suddenly heard someone complaining. When no one was looking, Keely had climbed onto her broomstick again and began to float toward Angor’s position while completely unaffected by the Lord of Tentacles’ might.
When Angor managed to bounce away from the magic array, he saw the fish army approaching.
And he knew getting rid of the fishes was his most important task right now.
He could keep running by dragging his body with gravity power, but he already felt that he was losing soul energy fast. Soul Orbs couldn’t keep him energized in the long run, and he had consumed three vials of Witch Stew. Each time he returned to his body, he would feel something hollow, which meant the side-effect for spending soul energy was getting to him.
Cillian’s Witch Stew could nurture one’s body, yet it wasn’t its main purpose. Drinking too much of it might cause Angor to have too much energy in his body, and without any bloodline enhancement, he had nothing to spend his energy on.
He had to find a better solution soon; otherwise, he would die from drinking too much nutrient.
The Lord of Tentacles howled again and interrupted his thoughts.
Even in his soul form, the power carried by the howl dazed him a little.
When he could see clearly again, he saw the magic array was almost completely destroyed. Half of the monster’s body already crawled out of it.
Angor stared at the Lord of Tentacles and looked up at the fishes again. An idea suddenly came to his mind.
He had a plan, but he might need a little bit more time.
Keely already arrived at his side and yelled into his ears, “Get up, we’ll get out of here!”
Angor was surprised at how Keely completely ignored the suppressive energy used by the monster.
He wouldn’t refuse the timely help of course. Angor then quickly returned to his body and grabbed onto the broomstick.
But before Keely could ride away, Angor pointed to somewhere on top of the Lord of Tentacles.
“Drop me down over there!”
Keely gave him a puzzled look.
“Twenty seconds. I only need twenty seconds!” Angor replied with a determined look.
Keely decided not to ask and listened to Angor.
What Angor had in mind was to deploy a giant illusion that was enough to cover up the Lord of Tentacles. To do so, he had to deploy a good number of illusion nodes around its body.
He needed his body to deploy illusion, but he also needed to travel to each spot using the sequence of gravity in soul form. If Keely could help him move around, it would save him a lot of time.
Working as fast as he could, he went through four major positions and left a dozen illusion nodes behind.
Since the Lord of Tentacles had its attention on Sinehowze the whole time, it didn’t realize that another “insect” was plotting something.
The fish army was almost onto Angor by the time he was done with his illusion.
“Thanks!”
Under Keely’s surprised gaze, Angor leaped down from her broomstick.
Using his own body as the trigger, he activated all nodes he had created. Immediately, a thick mist began to expand and swallowed the Lord of Tentacles as a whole.
At the exact same time, the fishes all swarmed into Angor’s illusion.
Angor planned to let the fishes and the giant octopus fight it out inside the “arena” he created, which would give him enough time to escape. However, it would only work if he could successfully trick the fishes into going into the mist.
To achieve this, he used his talent to fool their senses.