The red blade collided with the green chains, sending violent tremors rippling through the air.
Crack! Crack!
The red longsword shattered outright, and the chain armor on Shier's chest partially crumbled too—several green iron links were sliced clean through, falling lifelessly to the ground.
"You… you're definitely not an ordinary newly-promoted wizard!"
Shier staggered backward, regret flooding his face.
Leilin's expression didn't change as he pressed forward.
"Wait—wait! We can talk! I still have plenty of… AARGH!!!"
Shier tried to say more, but Leilin gave him no chance.
He lunged forward again, his right hand clenched into a fist that seemed to be covered in a layer of fine black scales, radiating a ring of dark luminance.
First punch! A massive hole was blasted straight through Shier's chest, and countless green iron links exploded outward.
Second punch! Shier's innate defensive spellcraft was completely destroyed. He staggered back and collapsed, his chest caved inward, blood foaming continuously from his mouth.
"Any last words?" Leilin walked up, his expression indifferent.
"My… my mentor will avenge me!" Shier gasped, panting heavily like a tattered bellows.
"Boring!" Leilin threw the third punch without hesitation!
Bang! Shier's head shattered like a watermelon, red and white fluids spreading across the ground in a mess.
The apprentice whose face had been branded with the mark earlier sat there in a daze, staring at the headless corpse that had completely lost any trace of life—he hadn't even bothered to wipe the blood splattered on his own face.
"I… I… I…"
George stood with his mouth agape, tugging at Xirui's arm beside him. "That wizard! Was he really a semi-elementalized powerhouse? Could he be some apprentice in disguise?"
"Truthfully! Just now, he could have killed us all with a single look!" Xirui said with a bitter smile.
"Then… how powerful has Lord Leilin become, to have defeated and even killed someone like that so easily?"
George stared at Leilin, who was now rummaging through Shier's corpse, his expression deeply conflicted…
"M-My lord…"
Only then did the surrounding apprentices come to their senses.
That seemingly invincible semi-elementalized dark wizard had just died at this Lord Leilin's hands?
"What about Leihart?"
The apprentice who had defected earlier now sat on the ground like an idiot, mumbling meaningless words. Most strikingly, the arcane mark branded on his face by Shier still gleamed conspicuously.
"Handle him as a deserter! There should be a uniform regulation in the Alliance for this, right? Do I really need to teach you?"
Leilin glanced coolly at the apprentice who had spoken.
Though it was just a single look, the apprentice stumbled back several steps, his calves trembling.
"Y-Yes! My lord!"
Immediately, the defected apprentice was seized by several others and marched off toward the castle. The faces of every apprentice present were drained of color with fear.
"Leihart is finished!" one apprentice muttered in a low voice.
Under the White Wizard Alliance's laws and regulations, the punishment for apprentices and wizards who defected to the enemy during wartime was the harshest of all.
And Leihart had defected right in front of Leilin and so many other apprentices, with the enemy wizard's arcane mark branded on his body to boot—the evidence was ironclad and irrefutable.
In such a situation, death would be getting off easy.
If they ran into a strict enforcer, his soul would at minimum be extracted and tortured for a hundred years, and the fallout would extend to his family and his mentor as well.
"What are you all standing around for? Get back to work! Do you want to stay here forever?"
Leilin swept his gaze across the stunned apprentices and spoke coldly.
"Oh! Understood, my lord!"
Only then did the apprentices snap back to reality and resume their harvesting—even George and Xirui were no exception.
Unless this entire patch of dark mandala was harvested, the wizard headquarters would never allow them to return. No matter how powerful Leilin was, eventually the dark wizard army would crush them.
They didn't even need to wait that long. As long as the enemy's pressure eased even slightly, and they directed even one percent or one-thousandth of their attention here, there would be no good outcome for them.
So the apprentices worked with everything they had, wishing they could finish all their tasks today and leave this godforsaken place.
"Restore!"
On the other side, Leilin stood amid the sea of flowers, pulled a black scepter from inside his coat, and uttered a single syllable.
Hum…