The Golem Mage

As of this moment, the Southern fans outside had all gone quiet and were unable to say a thing. To them, everything happening right now seemed more like a dream than reality; as they could hardly believe their eyes.

They couldn’t believe that the Ashmaw Academy was getting laid out by an academy they had called a no-name academy.

In fact, everything felt like too much for them to process, and it wasn’t only them who were having a hard time understanding what was happening.

Even some of the Northerners were staring at the screen and rubbing their eyes to make sure that what they were witnessing was truly happening, it wasn’t entirely their fault either; as they still believed the War God Mage Academy team would be a one-man team like the last competition.

However, they were now realising that even without Alec showing up, the rest of the team seemed to have become quite good, only the die-hard fans of the War God Mage Academy, who had been cheering from the start, continued shouting with every member of Ashmaw Academy that was defeated, making sure to rub it in the Southerners’ faces.

The Southern fans tried to defend the Ashmaw team, saying that as long as Afolayan and Sefu were still on the stage, the battle could still be turned around.

But Sefu hadn’t really done anything since the battle started, she was just staring at the coffin before her and at Beatrice, who was holding it.

She had a very dangerous feeling as she stared at the coffin, like whatever was inside it wasn’t going to be good news.

Meanwhile, Afolayan who was still locked in battle with Lucas and hadn’t been able to gain the upper hand, which was quite a surprise to him, he had even summoned his Ash Lion to help his team gain an advantage, but all that happened was the lion getting killed, sending him into a weakened state for a full minute.

Now he could no longer overpower Lucas, and they were fighting on equal footing, which was bad for him.

As Lucas was better than him in weapon mastery, and in that one minute of weakness, before he could reassess his lion’s additional stats he was beaten into a terrible state.

But while he was busy trying to survive, there finally seemed to be some type of good news for his team, as Nuru Sefu, who just so happened to be Imara Sefu’s elder brother and Zuberi Makeda, who also happened to be his elder sister, seemed to be on the edge of eliminating both Knight and Agnes.

Funny how the siblings of the captain and vice-captain were couples and fought together, and it just so happened that the two people who drew to fight against them were Knight and Agnes.

However, things hadn’t really gone that perfectly for them as the battle continued, and that was because those two couples were literally synced even better than they were.

As the battle began, Nuru dashed forward with his staff, the ends of it wrapped with an extra stone-like pillar, seeing him come at them without any visible protection made Knight and Agnes think they could take him out first before going for the other.

Agnes had sent a water bomb at him, with the water compressed into a very small ball and shot through the air at high speed, but before it reached him, his staff started to light up a red hue, and he gripped it with both hands and swayed it before him in a martial-like technique as flaming hair-like wisps spread around him, forming a flaming aura.

When the water ball made impact, instead of exploding it was swallowed up, almost like a ball falling into very soft foam.

The next moment, what they saw shocked them, Nuru swung one end of his staff, slamming into the ball and sending it flying back to where it had come from, without exploding which seemed to confuse them as that went beyond whatever they knew about the Water bomb spell.

This time no one had to tell them before they realised that Nuru rushing straight at them wasn’t because he was arrogant, he was just that confident in his strength.

Knight, who wasn’t ready to have the return of the water bomb meet them, grabbed Agnes and jumped, but by the time his feet touched the ground again, the area had already been swallowed by a small shadow pool.

He was sinking into it, and he was dragging Agnes down with him.

This was Knight showing just how proficient he was at casting the Shadow Travel spell.

However, before Agnes’ body could even make contact with the small shadow portal on the ground, Nuru twisted his staff before himself and brought it down in a clean arc, slamming it straight into the earth.

The impact shook the ground as a low boom rang out and a ripple of force shot out from where his staff had landed, racing toward the shadow pool.

The moment the ripple touched the shadow portal, it interfered with the spell.

Knight’s hand was forced to let go of Agnes as his body was dragged fully into the portal, and the shadow gate in the ground snapped shut instantly, leaving Agnes alone to face the charging Nuru, who closed the distance and swept his staff forward.

“Come out!” Agnes shouted as she threw a compact ball forward and forced herself to cancel her water bomb spell which made her suffer a small backlash due to the rush she used in recalling it.

The compact ball flashed slightly before a huge golem with a stone shield materialised in front of her, Nuru’s staff slammed hard into the golem’s shield, cracking it and forcing the golem down to one knee.

Agnes then summoned her own staff and slammed it on the ground four times as she skidded backward, using the Water Step spell.

Nuru looked around and realised the entire area around him had been covered in water, and four golems appeared in a loose ring around him, two ice golems, two mud golems and the one whose shield he had just shattered was the only stone golem.

On the other side, Knight had already re-emerged and tried to sneak-attack Makeda.

However, she parried the attack with her dagger and instantly cast a Sun Blast spell, forcing Knight to dodge away again with Shadow Travel.

As he was getting back up from the ground, he realised too late—that a staff was already coming down on his head, though he moved fast to block, but was immediately met with a flurry of staff strikes.

One blow smashed into his knee, forcing him down, and the next cracked across his face, drawing blood from his mouth.

The attacks just kept coming, and by the time he realised what was happening, he was already being smashed up into the air.

“Nice,” Nuru said.

Knight, who was supposed to be slammed into the ground, instead found himself falling into a pool of water which Agnes had conjured to help him cushion his landing, as he tried to understand how things had gone wrong, he realised that the woman he had tried to attack was the reason for it.

Being a shadow elemental mage meant he always had to look out for shadow spots before using Shadow Travel, but the moment he dove into the portal, Makeda had already cast a Radiant Ball spell into the air.

Though the spell didn’t do much against normal mages besides blinding them for a moment, but it worked wonders against evil creatures and undead—and right now, it lit up every shadow around them, cutting off Knight’s exit points.

However, the Shadow Travel spell had a loophole for those who knew how to exploit it, once a mage entered the shadow travel state and their chosen exit was blocked, they would be forced out through the nearest available shadow.

And that just so happened to be where Nuru was standing, along with the shadows cast by the five golems surrounding him.

So Knight, who emerged from a spot he hadn’t planned for, was left at the mercy of Nuru’s brutal staff techniques.