New Life As A Max Level Archmage 147 – Barrage

The mont Vivi finished [Blinking] out of range of the First Grove, Embralyne attacked, teleporting next to her with her sword already descending.

“[Titanic Might].”

The strength buff settled over Vivi, and she caught the falling weapon with her staff. Gnarled wood t dragonfire-infused tal, and the blow stopped dead. A percussive blast of wind sent Vivi’s hair and robes flapping wildly.

“[Perfect Form],” she incanted next.

Embralyne leveraged her sword into Vivi’s staff, but the length of wood didn’t budge. She was strong, very strong, but not enough to overco [Titanic Might] on a level twenty-one hundred. The air warped with heat as the dragon tried to bear down, but her trembling arms made no progress. Her eyes burned bright orange as fury boiled in them—outrage at being matched in brute force, what should have been her domain.

Vivi, anwhile, finished pulling together her last preparatory spell. One that actually needed a breath or two to cast. She voiced it in her mind, since even the na might give away who she was beyond any doubt, and she wanted to avoid that.

[Elethelea’s Saving Grace].

There. Now I don’t have to worry about killing her.

“[Thunderclap].”

A boom shook the air, half the burst of lightning Vivi had summoned, and half the cacophonous shockwave of the spell eting Embralyne. The dragon went hurtling off at what Vivi assud approached the speed of sound.

She [Blinked] above the dragon-turned-projectile and slowed her senses down—but even she could only sharpen her perception of ti so much. Carefully tracking the figure ripping through the sky in a blurred line, Vivi pointed her staff, ran a quick calculation, and adjusted for the delay.

“[Frostmaul].”

A gigantic block of ice manifested along Embralyne’s flight path, then slamd down with perfect timing and exploded as it t its target. Ice shards pattered against Vivi’s spherical shields as a thunderous detonation echoed through the air for miles, and Embralyne’s trajectory altered violently once more: in the blink of an eye, she was earthbound.

Several hundred feet below, Embralyne struck the ground like a teor, forming a crater to match. Vivi [Blinked] amidst the massive dust storm and watched Embralyne drag herself to her feet, stunned but not injured.

Yep, dragons are tough. Who would’ve guessed?

“You’re not going to transform?” Vivi asked. “I expected you would.”

Embralyne spun toward the sound of Vivi's voice, smoldering eyes locking on. She pointed her sword. The dust continued to clear for several seconds before the dragon finally lowered her weapon an inch and snorted.

“While still in the human lands? I may have disobeyed my father once, but I adhere to his laws.”

“Nobody’s around. You’re free to, if you want.”

“This form will more than suffice.”

“Your choice,” Vivi said, shrugging, though she found herself mildly disappointed.

And at finding herself disappointed, she faltered. This was supposed to be a waste of ti, especially since she was anxious about how the eting with the Dragon King would go. Or whether she would secure an audience at all.

But… if she was being honest with herself… maybe she wasn’t that upset about having to fight a dragon.

Embralyne folded space and appeared behind Vivi. Without turning her head, Vivi slamd the butt of her weapon into the dragon’s stomach, having sensed where she would materialize. Embralyne wheezed as the air left her in a rush, and she went rocketing back to crash into the side of the crater with enough force to shake the ground all around them.

Before the debris settled, a wall of dragonfire struck Vivi’s shields. Gray and orange flas washed across the barrier in all directions. She tilted her head in interest, unable to stop herself from scrutinizing the molten heirloom energy of the de Caldaros family.

Dragonfire really is fascinating. Not just powerful, but versatile. I wonder if it’s possible to imitate. No spell in her current grimoire allowed it, but as she’d recently finished explaining to Saffra, nothing was truly impossible. Probably not worth adding to my research backlog, unfortunately.

Embralyne’s sword followed on the coattails of her dragonfire, splitting the last of the flas, and Vivi let the blade pass through her shield and strike her staff. They exchanged several blows that tore up huge swaths of ground to their left and right as kinetic forces t and blasted sideways.

“You’re not impressing ,” Embralyne growled. “My father hits harder.”

That’s a concerning sentence, taken out of context, Vivi thought with vague amusent.

“Perhaps when we et, I’ll ask for pointers.”

She [Blinked] far up into the air, and Embralyne stumbled as their weapons stopped holding each other in place. Vivi felt a section of space warble to her side—the dragon focusing her will to follow—but in the fraction of a second before the spell resolved, she pointed her staff and cast [Crucible Beam].

She was rewarded with the sight of a dragon manifesting from thin air just in ti for a column of white and purple energy to smash into her. Embralyne went, once more, hurtling backwards.

Vivi kept channeling, not letting up. Impressively, Embralyne regained her footing and fought against the magical bar of liquid arcane energy. Her arms trembled as she held her sword in the path of the blast, then began pushing forward, reclaiming ground.

Not bad, Vivi thought. She was scaling her spells down, but she hadn’t ant for the dragon to be able to resist.

With a growl, then a scream, Embralyne cleaved through the beam with a crescent blade of dense dragonfire. The spell shattered and sputtered out.

“What is this?” Embralyne demanded, panting, in the ensuing quiet as neither of them followed up. “I asked for a fight.”

Vivi paused. Her staff hesitantly lowered. She was pretty sure she’d spent a minute straight using the dragon as a punching bag. Was she misrembering the exchange?

“I’m providing one, aren’t I?”

“You’re holding back. Why?”

“I don’t think your father would appreciate it if I was too rough with you,” Vivi remarked, half sarcastic and half incredulous. What was Embralyne expecting? That Vivi smite her dead in a single spell?

Embralyne scoffed. “You’ve forgotten who I am. I know what twentieth-tier magic looks like. Feels like. You’re using parlor tricks against . I asked you for proof of your identity, did I not? Why are you not providing it?”

Vivi fought a frown. It seed like this woman was hard to impress. I guess her teacher was the Dragon King. She’s seen strong magic before. Even seventeenth-tier sorcery wasn’t anything to drop Embralyne’s jaw. She could probably even tell the gradations of those highest-rank abilities apart.

Which, in retrospect, made all of this much more complicated. She hadn’t been expecting Embralyne to demand stronger spells after that barrage. Vivi wanted to stay within a range of plausible deniability.

“You don’t want to give proof,” Embralyne deduced, her eyes narrowing. Vivi winced. Could everyone read her so easily? What was this blank face even good for? “And why would that be, when you’ve sworn that the gas were over?”

She hadn’t sworn anything, to be fair. She tried to find an excuse and eventually landed on, “Because I don’t want to kill you.”

Orange eyes flashed. “More lies?” she snapped, incensed. She jabbed her sword forward. “How dare you.”

Again, not a lie. She hardly wanted to murder the Dragon King’s daughter. But, yes, in spirit, she supposed she was skirting the truth through omission or deflection.

“I’m not sure whatever strange thing you’ve deluded yourself into, acting as you are,” Embralyne began with a growl—which had Vivi twitching at the sheer hypocrisy of the accusation. “But if you wish for an ally, you will be honest.” The words ca out clipped and terse. “Moreover, let be clear myself: perhaps I am facing a problem that I possibly, perhaps need help with. Considering who I am, who my father is, and what resources my family has access to, there are very few people in this world worth turning to. I ask for proof for a reason.”

Oh. Put so plainly, Vivi understood. Embralyne hadn't been persuaded by the logical case Vivi had pleaded—that of the practical necessity of the Sorceress eting the Dragon King. Instead, Embralyne was considering the request through the lens of her own predicant. Whatever was going on with the Fourfla Amulet, whatever problem she was tangled up in, the Sorceress might be one of the few individuals who could actually help.

And if neither Embralyne herself, her brothers, nor Cinereus had been able to fix it, then she needed a trump card indeed. Soone stronger than the Dragon King.

Still. Once Vivi played her hand, she couldn’t unplay it. Was she overcomplicating everything by trying to keep her convoluted backup plan, or would conceding this request quadruple her headache in the future?

Silence lingered as she mulled her options over. Embralyne’s patience visibly wore thin, and, snarling, she crouched into a combative stance.

“Very well,” Vivi said, interrupting the incoming attack. “If it’s proof you’re asking for, I’ll give it.”

Even if it might be the wrong tactical decision, what Embralyne had said had resonated. If Vivi wanted an ally, wanted to ask a favor, the least she could do was treat the woman with honesty.

So. A display of magic to reassure Embralyne that no matter what the problem was, no matter if the Dragon King himself couldn’t solve it, the Sorceress would be able to help.

Vivi pointed her staff.

“[Greater Telekinesis].”

The spell paused for a millisecond. Grabbing living beings, much less dragons, with sothing as crude and brute-force as [Telekinesis] was, by all conventional wisdom, a waste of mana. But Vivi outclassed her opponent by a few orders of magnitude, and so she managed.

With a flick of her wrist downward, she sent the dragon hurtling into the earth, spawning a second crater to accompany the first.

“[Final Tomb],” Vivi incanted.

Earth and stone slithered upward to surround the stunned woman, and though Embralyne jolted back to awareness and struggled as rock engulfed her, she stopped moving entirely as the spell settled and confined her with absolute authority. No matter how she pulled and how the ground around her splintered and trembled in response, she remained locked in place, her limbs pinned down with her body half exposed to the air. Her face stayed unobstructed, pointed up at the sky.

To give her a proper viewing angle.

“[Indestructible Vitality].”

The constitution buff settled into the dragon. She already had [Elethelea’s Saving Grace] on her, but Vivi would rather it didn’t co to that. The defensive ability would only activate upon what would otherwise have been a killing blow and would leave the princess in exceedingly poor shape afterward.

Vivi rarely had an excuse to cut loose. This ti, no city was in danger, no allies were threatened, and doing so actually benefited the world, rather than being a simple indulgence.

A guilt-free reason to cast one of the more destructive spells in her grimoire. Despite all the irritation the dragon had caused her, maybe Vivi ought to say thank you.

She closed her eyes and began to channel. The fundantal weakness of any mage was casting ti. Spells took too long to form and manifest, relegating most casters to the role of artillery. She herself seldom faced that limitation, since few spells required enough mana to slow her down in any aningful way.

Few, but not none. If she was casting in a level-appropriate range, she needed to focus and take her ti, the sa as any mage.

Thousands of runes filled the air, glowing with power. When at last that satisfying, grueling process completed, she opened her eyes to a sky teeming with a sprawling, monstrously complex lattice of mana. The air thrumd with overflow enough to tingle through her veins.

She studied her work, and nodded in approval.

Then leveled her staff at the dragon pinned in the crater below.

“[Celestial Barrage].”

An enormous rift split the cloudless sky, edges ragged and burning with residual mana, opening into a yawning void splattered with galaxies and dotted with a billion pinprick stars—a window torn through the atmosphere and into the depthless expanse of the cosmos.

What fell through was no simple teor, but a shining white ball of energy that burned like a miniature sun. Other dots grew in size as they approached before slipping behind the first. A handful, then dozens, and hundreds. A gathering rainfall, each brilliant sphere descending with ponderous, ruinous inevitability.

Vivi watched as the leading projectile impacted the ground next to Embralyne and detonated. The world flashed white. Barely a breath passed before the second star hit, and then it was a constant drumroll of booms and explosions that seed to rattle the entire earth. She squinted against the blinding radiance, yet also couldn't tear her eyes from the srizing display.

Despite her fixation on seeing grassy plains lt under the cataclysmic blasts happening so fast she couldn’t register any individual impact, her more anxious half hod in on Embralyne, the tiny speck in the middle of what had to seem to the dragon like a world-ending bombardnt.

But she was safe. [Celestial Barrage] was an area-of-effect spell, ant for wide-range destruction, not single-target damage. A high-level dragon with a constitution boost should be able to weather it, if with so aches and bruises.

The woman had demanded no more pulled punches, hadn’t she?

Eventually, the firmant stopped weeping stars onto a ruined landscape. There wasn’t much left afterward. Miles of terrain turned to slag. The giant rift into the cosmos slowly sealed, revealing the ordinary blue beyond. Gone as if nothing had happened.

Coming down from her magical high, Vivi surveyed the devastation. Satisfaction glowed through her for a mont, then she paused as a thought caught up to her.

Er. I didn’t go too far, did I?

She [Blinked] into the middle of the hellscape of molten rock to where Embralyne was restrained by [Final Tomb]. She seed unconscious. Alive, undoubtedly—Saving Grace hadn’t triggered. But also out cold.

It was pretty hard to knock out a dragon.

“Uh,” Vivi said. “Embralyne?”

She poked the woman with her staff. No reaction.

She released the restraining spell, picked Embralyne up, and [Blinked] them both away. She set the woman on soft grass miles distant and peered down at her.

Another poke. Still nothing.

Embralyne’s armor seed to have held up well, at least. None of it had broken—Cinereus probably would’ve been mad at that. The gem-adorned tal looked expensive.

All the soot covering the draconic princess likely made her look worse off than she really was. She was breathing steadily. The concussive impact of the first star, which had all but landed atop her, had simply been… a bit much, even for a dragon with boosted constitution.

“Maybe don’t tell your dad I did that,” Vivi mumbled.

“[Greater Restoration].”

“[Greater Restoration].”

“[Awaken].”

The dragon gasped and shot up.