Chapter 874 - 851: Mage and Warrior
Chapter 874 -851: Mage and Warrior
In any battle, the side with a mage will undoubtedly have a huge advantage, and the current situation proves this point beyond a doubt. Although people always associate mages with various highly destructive spells, the real strength of mages lies in their ability to alter reality in supernatural ways.
After casting the web spell, Kalalin, like a street vendor peddling his wares, pulled out one scroll after another. Here, he summoned a slippery pool of oil, there, he made the ground as soft as cheese, and then he threw out a large bunch of colorful bubbles, making the targets hit by the bubbles run around blindly as if suddenly stricken blind, creating further chaos among the attacking enemies.
To be fair, ordinary mages could not, like scholars, throw out so many different spells in the course of a single battle—a typical mage spends an hour or two every morning (or after a sufficient rest) memorizing the spells they plan to cast for the day. Even the top spellcasters, who have thousands of spells mastered and collected in their libraries, can remember no more than thirty spells at a time.
But Kalalin is different. As a scroll caster, he can prepare a large number of magic scrolls in advance and choose which one to pull out depending on the specific need, just like a student using cheat sheets in an exam. However, this approach has obvious drawbacks: creating scrolls is both time-consuming and labor-intensive, and the cost is extremely high.
For instance, creating a Second Circle spell scroll (like an invisibility scroll, which a mage would definitely make if they are short on money) requires at least 250 gold coins in materials and a full three days of work. Of course, as a scholar of the Dark Cult, Kalalin has become proficient enough to complete this task in just an hour or two, but the material cost is unavoidable, and it is well-known that everything in the Abyss is exorbitantly priced, except for the money itself.
Luckily for Kalalin, this is not a problem at all—Lancelot directly categorized the scholar’s expenses for making scrolls as team expenses, so Kalalin didn’t need to spend his own money, even though he had little other use for money himself.
Moreover, Kalalin was not the only spellcaster in the team. Alamir was an obvious mention, and Tanya, as a cursed swordmaster, was also a spellcaster (even though her combat style often made people forget this point). Unlike scholars and priests, cursed swordmasters, as a branch of sorcerers, have extremely limited spell slots, just as priests have ‘guidance of divine power’ and warriors have ‘actions like a tide’, making them precious and rarely used. However, cantrips, which do not consume spell slots, have no such limitations.
The half-elf swung her arms and twisted her waist like a snake, making her movements look like a graceful dance, if one ignored the inhuman language she was shrieking her spell in. Suddenly, she pushed forward with both hands, firing three beams of black-purple magical energy, spiraling toward different enemies. The enemies, already affected by various terrain spells from Kalalin, were unable to dodge and were all hit squarely by Tanya’s spells. Each hit emitted a thunderous boom, flinging the targets backward as if struck by a siege hammer.
“Oh wow, never seen that before.” Alamir praised his distant relative’s performance, “A new specialty?”
The half-elf, busy casting another spell, had no time to respond, and the elf priest paid it no mind since it probably involved some kind of professional secret, which he had no pressing need to know. Besides, they had a much bigger problem right now.