Chapter 4548
Chapter 4537: First Griffon (Part 1)
The assassins inwardly cursed their bad luck, but didn’t let anger affect their focus. They were many against a single old man. Once they took him out, his spells would disappear, and so would the lives of their targets.
***
Black Griffon Academy, at the same time.
Not answering a communication amulet during a session of the Council of the Headmaster was an unwritten rule, but one often overlooked. No Headmaster of one of the six great academies could afford to be unreachable, and some calls couldn’t be ignored.
Like the Royals’ or the Queen’s Corps’ emergency notices.
"Marth." Duke Marth, Headmaster of the White Griffon, stated his name solely for identification protocol and waited for the man on the other side to state his business.
"The tracking devices on your wife and son have become unavailable, and we’ve lost contact with their security detail less than a minute ago." The hologram depicted a young man with brown hair wearing a pale blue military uniform.
𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮
"Reinforcements from the Queen’s Corps have already been dispatched and are en route for a search and rescue operation." The report was short and straight to the point, avoiding formalities and rank for immediate communication.
"What?" Marth snarled. "How? And why are you wasting time talking with me instead of helping?"
"The circumstances are still unknown, sir." The clerk cleared his throat. "As for me, I’m not a mage, just a communication officer. If it’s of any consolation, Professor Zogar Vastor was with your family until their signal disappeared."
"Zogar?" Marth wouldn’t know peace until Ryssa and Dhiral were brought to him safe and sound, but he instinctively sighed in relief at those words.
Only a madman would attack someone under the protection of the god of the battlefield, but only a handful of people among the Royal’s closest aides knew of Vastor’s real prowess. To everyone else, he was just a washed-up, fat old professor.
’I don’t know if Zogar wore his Highmaster armor, but even without it, killing him is no easy feat.’ Marth thought. ’If there’s someone who can save Ryssa and Dhiral, that’s him.’
"Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going back to the White Griffon." He stood up. "It might be too late for me to intervene, but I can’t focus on bureaucracy while my wife and son are in danger."
"I’m coming with you." Ainz Distar, the Headmaster of the Black Griffon, stood up and Blinked to Marth’s side. "If we’re not late, we’ll give whoever is messing with your family hell together."
Marth nodded, turning to look at his colleagues for more volunteers, but they didn’t move from their seats. He didn’t miss how two of the Headmasters faked apprehension for his family’s fate as etiquette required, while the other two were honestly concerned.
Years of politics had tempered the two Headmasters’ poker faces, and Marth would have failed for the act if not for the worried looks they briefly exchanged.
’Am I seeing things, or is it themselves they are worried about?’ He thought as a Warp Steps led him and Distar to the nearest Gate, and he ordered the clerk to set the dimensional coordinates for the White Griffon Academy.
***
Meanwhile, in the White Griffon Forest, the assassins unleashed a barrage of tier five spells against the Master.
’Too many and too strong.’ He projected the Mage Knight spell, Full Guard, to gain full spatial awareness and detect the incoming spells as soon as they entered his bright violet aura. ’I can’t win, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to lose.’
Ice smothered flames, flames thawed the ice, while pillars of rock erupted from the ground, breaking the streams of lightning bolts like a shore breaks the tide. Darkness met darkness, and when that wasn’t enough, Vastor’s black eye flared.
He hadn’t discovered Domination, but survival was a powerful motivator, and instinct did the rest. The darkness-based tier five spells crumbled, or at least lost too much power to be a threat.
Vastor’s mana core and body reacted to the other elements as well, but they were still sealed along with the rest of his eyes. He released weak energy fluctuations that only Dhiral could detect. Despite his mother’s best efforts to push him to the ground, the young boy twisted like a snake to watch the old professor fight.
The assassins conjured mostly tier five spells, and the Master barely had the time to conjure tier three spells. The gap in raw strength between the spells was as big as the difference in finesse between their casters.
Vastor always struck at the core of the enemy’s spells, so that their form and cohesion crumbled. The murders of elemental crows stopped whatever energy was left after his tier three spells detonated.
Ever since the Master returned to the Spirit Barrier, not a single spell had reached it. He kept moving around the emerald dome with Glide, performing sharp, unpredictable cuts that put him in the right place at the right moment.
He conjured his spells with impeccable timing, always in the perfect position to stop the charge of an assassin or disrupt a deadly combination of spells. The people in camouflage clothes released single, powerful bursts of mana, whereas Vastor wove many weak pulses into a structured symphony.
He darted across the battlefield, never staying in one place for more than a second as he circled the barrier, neutralizing the greatest threat to his friends before moving on to the next enemy.
’He’s... everywhere!’ The Master was alone and dimensional magic was sealed, yet the assassins kept clashing with him as if he could Blink.
Zogar Vastor wasn’t handsome by any metric, and most of his peers compared his ungainly body to a giant egg. Yet to Dhiral’s eyes, the old professor was the most dazzling being he had ever seen.
Vastor’s spells intercepted anything aimed at the boy and his mother. The barrier he had left behind was an impregnable bastion, and every one of the dozens of elemental crows moved like an extension of the Master’s being.
The old professor used only water and darkness magic to attack to avoid bloodshed and not traumatize the boy. When he struck, an assassin either turned to dust or froze into a statue.
Only his own blood was shed when a blade or spell reached him, but neither Vastor nor Dhiral cared. The red spurts only made the old professor look more heroic. He was a small, tenacious dam that stopped a raging river, pitting timed and precise strikes against his enemies’ raw power and superior numbers.
No matter how an assassin died, a twirl of Vastor’s fingers and a flight of two air or water crows would turn the corpse into a deadly projectile. The Master used the self-destruction enchantment of their equipment like an extra spell, often killing another assassin in the process and triggering a chain reaction.
Dhiral watched the Master fight with an admiration that matched the horror the assassins felt as the old man whittled their numbers down with increasing speed the fewer opponents he had left.
"Retreat!" Since the leader was still gasping for air on the ground, the second-in-command took charge.
’I can’t believe I had to break communication silence, nor that the fatso can keep up with us despite the best body-enhancing potions gold can buy.’ He thought. ’He shouldn’t have the time-’