novelraw Chapter 522: Trap and Completion
Chapter 522: Trap and Completion
Chapter 522: Trap and Completion
Time rewound to a short while ago.
The instant the lava and rock beneath his feet were seized by an invisible force, condensed into sky-blotting giant fists, and brazenly closed in from all directions, alarm bells had already exploded in the black-robed wizard’s heart.
This was a trap!
But what he referred to was not the trap right before him, but a deeper, more profound one.
The key lay in this: the battlefields chosen by wizard civilization for this ultra-large-scale planar war were all “wastelands” where resources had long been drained dry, leaving only inert gray-white rock layers.
In this land, let alone metal deposits, even decent organic matter was nearly extinct.
For the opponent to use magnetic fields to manipulate these non-metallic lava and rocks, this was by no means simple “magnetic control”!
It meant that this fifth-ring female wizard known as the “War God” had already reached a qualitative threshold in her understanding and application of magnetic fields. She had achieved what was usually only possible for sixth-ring magnetic field specialists—directly interfering with and manipulating the structure and movement of non-metallic matter using pure magnetic fields!
This was not merely an expansion of the manipulation range.
The even more terrifying implication behind it was that if magnetic fields could influence non-metallic matter with such precision, then in theory, they could also directly act on the interior of living organisms, interfering with neural currents, affecting biological magnetic fields, and even tearing apart cellular structures at the microscopic level!
“Interference… has it already begun?”
The black-robed wizard’s thoughts raced. The extreme sensitivity to “reality variables” granted by the [Imaginary] Law immediately fed information back to him.
He clearly “sensed” that the biological magnetic field around his body and the externally released spiritual power field used for perception had developed extremely subtle yet undeniably present turbulence and lag.
Although due to the absolute gap in strength between the two sides this interference was still very weak—far from enough to directly affect his movements or defenses—it was like a thin layer of mist, causing slight “ghosting” and “dislocation” in parts of his perception.
“Not only that… she also reversed the process, amplifying and distorting certain characteristic wavebands of her own magnetic field to create a false signal similar to ‘enhanced attraction’… the combination of the two successfully caused my main attention to subconsciously lock more onto her and the material torrents she controlled in that instant!”
In a flash of lightning and spark, the black-robed wizard completely understood the full picture of the opponent’s tactics.
The outwardly majestic and endless metal giant, drill bit barrages, and even the seemingly trapping suppression force field and lava giant fists… were all feints and cover!
The true killing move was the silent magnetic field interference and guidance targeting his perceptual system that had permeated the battlefield!
And the fact that the opponent had gone to such great lengths to interfere with his attention made her purpose glaringly obvious…
It was naturally to make him temporarily “overlook” or “underestimate” the other person!
That little wizard who had been troublesome from the very beginning and had been constantly evolving during the battle—Jie Ming!
“Distracting from the east while striking from the west… she is buying time!” A sharp glint flashed in the black-robed wizard’s dark red pupils. He no longer hesitated.
His figure vanished directly from the area of strongest magnetic interference in the final instant before the sky-filling lava giant fists closed in, like writing erased from paper.
In the next moment, he appeared in the high sky, extending his spiritual power and sending out his message: “Well done. Found you!”
After that, relying on the [Imaginary] Law, he smoothly captured the faint spiritual fluctuation that appeared on the battlefield because of his words. However, he did not appear beside the metal drill bit where Augusta was hiding. Instead, using her position as the origin point, he followed the [Imaginary] Law’s tracing of the “root of attention deviation” and the reverse analysis of the cleverly distorted and amplified “attraction” signal, instantly locking onto a seemingly calm void region in the distance that had actually been deliberately “smeared” over by layer upon layer of faint magnetic fields.
His gaze pierced through that layer of magnetic camouflage and saw the target that Augusta had desperately been shielding…
Jie Ming!
At this moment, Jie Ming’s state was completely different from before.
He floated quietly in the low sky several thousand meters away, eyes tightly shut. There was no longer any violent energy fluctuation leaking from his body. Instead, he presented a strange kind of “restraint.”
His entire body seemed to have transformed into a “humanoid” figure composed of pure light.
But this light was extremely unstable, fluctuating violently, flickering, collapsing and expanding as if it were the core of a supernova that could erupt at any moment! Every flicker of the light caused subtle folds and tremors in the surrounding space, and faint, fragmented spatial cracks even appeared and vanished on the surface of his body.
The moment the black-robed wizard’s gaze landed on Jie Ming, a crisis premonition powerful enough to threaten him surged up violently!!
“You will not be allowed to complete it!”
Killing intent boiled in his heart. He was about to disregard everything, mobilize his remaining quota, and directly “define” the result of “Jie Ming’s energy structure collapsing” or “the space he occupies being completely annihilated”!
However…
Buzz!!!!!
A deep hum, as if coming from the depths of the ancient starry vault, suddenly resounded across heaven and earth!
Accompanying this hum was a terrifying magnetic field that seemed intent on twisting and crushing the entire sky!
The instant Augusta sensed the faint spiritual fluctuation triggered by those words, she knew things had gone wrong.
The moment she realized her core tactic had been seen through and the black-robed wizard had relocked his target onto Jie Ming, she unhesitatingly activated the ultimate attack she had reserved for this pinning battle.
High in the sky, the cloud layers were brutally torn apart and pushed aside by an invisible force!
A gigantic ring with a diameter reaching several thousand meters and edges incomparably neat and smooth slowly emerged completely from the gray clouds!
The ring glowed with a dazzling, pure azure blue that seemed to contain endless energy.
But this blue was not a physical color. It was a magnificent luminous phenomenon caused by an extremely powerful magnetic field itself interacting with the material world!
It was a gorgeous halo produced when the magnetic field intensity was high enough to deflect visible light and excite air ionization!
Through the dense blue magnetic glow, one could faintly see that the interior of the ring was not hollow.
It was filled with metal fluid heated to a complete plasma state!
These scorching plasma metals were being madly accelerated, layer after layer and ring after ring, within the exceedingly complex multi-layered magnetic orbital paths inside the ring!
Accelerate! Accelerate! Accelerate again!
With every cycle, the speed of these plasma metals surged higher, and the intensity of the magnetic confinement field inside the ring rose geometrically as well!
To restrain the extremely violent energy and speed within, the structure of the entire magnetic ring had been reinforced to an unimaginable degree. The blue radiance it emitted grew increasingly fierce, as if a condensed stellar surface had been forged into a ring!
This was Augusta’s hidden trump card, the secret art that combined her ultimate understanding of magnetic fields: [Celestial Dome Magnetic Rail · Annihilation Ring]!
In theory, given enough acceleration time and energy, the speed of the hundreds of tons of high-temperature plasma metal inside the magnetic ring could be pushed infinitely higher, approaching sub-light speed!
At that point, what would be ejected would no longer be a metal jet, but a destructive torrent capable of evaporating and piercing through a star’s core!
At this moment, with time being short, Augusta had only managed to accelerate it to a “mere” ten thousand times the speed of sound.
But it was enough!
“Annihilation… fire!”
Augusta’s mental roar echoed across the battlefield!
Following her will, the gigantic magnetic ring suspended in the sky, emitting a blue light that dimmed heaven and earth, trembled violently!
From the inner side of the ring, a beam condensed to the extreme—only as thick as an arm yet blazing with a blue-white light that seemed capable of burning through space itself—shot out silently!
This beam was too fast!
Its speed surpassed the dynamic visual capture limit of the vast majority of wizards!
Wherever the beam passed, its extreme kinetic energy and high temperature directly evaporated and annihilated the air, dust, and even the finest spatial structures along its path.
It left behind a straight, dark void trajectory that could not close for a long time!
It was as if the sky had been gouged out with a scar by this beam of judgment!
The expression beneath the black-robed wizard’s hood turned extremely grave, even carrying a rare trace of shock and fury.
The power, speed, and the pure, ultimate will of physical destruction contained within this strike had already reached a level capable of genuinely threatening the life of a sixth-ring wizard!
More importantly… it could not be dodged!
Because just moments ago, he had once again been interfered with by Augusta’s magnetic field.
The opponent had guided him according to his own thoughts, causing most of his attention to focus even more heavily on Jie Ming.
And at this moment, when his attention had been excessively drawn to Jie Ming, there was no longer time to evade.
“Damn it!”
He cursed inwardly. He had no choice but to abandon the immediate strike against Jie Ming and forcibly channel the majority of his already limited remaining “quota” to deal with this annihilation descending from the sky!
BOOM!!!
The blue-white beam slammed solidly into the position where the black-robed wizard stood!
There was no earth-shattering explosion, because the propagation of sound could not keep up with the speed of energy release at all.
Only an extreme glare so intense that even Augusta watching from afar had to squint burst forth, accompanied by a destructive shockwave that once again scraped dozens of meters of rock layers off the ground below!
A huge crater with a diameter exceeding one thousand meters appeared at the point of impact, everything inside instantly vaporized.
The rocks at the edge of the crater had crystallized into a glassy state, with twisting heat waves rising from them.
When the intense light and dust gradually dispersed,
The black-robed wizard’s figure still floated in its original position, seemingly completely unharmed.
But his face was so gloomy it looked as though water could drip from it.
And almost at the same moment the annihilation beam strike ended, both Augusta’s and the black-robed wizard’s gazes turned in unison toward the distant Jie Ming!
The attack from the Annihilation Ring had perhaps only bought her a fleeting instant.
But that instant was already enough!!
In the distance, the originally violently fluctuating and extremely unstable blazing light around Jie Ming had, at some point, completely calmed and stabilized. The color of the light had also settled into a deep, restrained dark gold that seemed to contain endless destruction and vitality.
Moreover, this dark golden light was no longer merely an energy-emitting halo. It was like the finest forging master had used light itself as material, hammering and refining it thousands of times to cast a solid entity!!
From afar, Jie Ming’s entire person looked as though he had transformed into a perfect humanoid statue cast from pure dark golden unknown metal!
A fatal sense of threat so intense that even the muscles at the corners of the black-robed wizard’s eyes twitched uncontrollably coiled around his soul like an icy viper! His intuition, the combat instinct forged through countless life-and-death battles, was screaming wildly…
Danger!
Extreme danger!
Jie Ming in this state… could kill him!
This was the first time since the battle began that the black-robed wizard had truly, uncontrollably felt the shadow of death.