Chapter 71 Mage VS. Sage

            Susan was two hundred and fifty-one years old, although she didn’t look a day over nineteen. She was one of four tier-two mages making their way to the Great Black Tree Labyrinth. Every one of these mages had every tier-two core, and they were coming to the Great  Black Tree Labyrinth to prepare for the Labyrinth of Force because the Great Black Tree Layrinth was considered the most dangerous tier-two labyrinth among the moons. For the last several hundred years, this was the last stop for every mage before they attempted to become tier three. In fact, this labyrinth was responsible for a fifty percent increase in the number of mages that made it to tier three, as this labyrinth taught tier two mages how to be far more cautious.

            Susan was a mind talking mage. She was well aware that mind talking mages originated from this labyrinth, and that they called themselves radio humans. That said, the mage tower did not allow mind talking humans or mages onto this moon because they did not want the radio humans to corrupt them with their strange ideas. The reality was that when a mage was very young it was easy for them to think that everyone is equal, and those feelings are far more intense with mind talkers, but once a mage is a hundred years old, and every non-mage they know is dead then they understand the immortals' view on things. The only people who are important are the people who can become immortals. If someone cannot become an immortal, then the only use they have in life is to become a stepping stone for those who may become an immortal in the future. When Susan was a child she mind talked with everyone she could, but now, as a centuries-old mage, she only mind-talked with other mages; it was too painful otherwise.

            That said, ten percent of mind talkers became mages, and nearly sixty percent of mind talker children with mind talker mage parents became mages. That percentage was so high that the immortals were openly creating a program to make all humans on the moons mind talkers within ten thousand years. They had to be careful, as not every child with mind talker parents became mind talkers. Susan had nine children, and four of them didn’t have the gift. That said one of them still became a mage, as did three of her mind talker children. The two mind talker children that didn’t become mages were long ago sent out to the villages across the moons to put mind talker blood in those villages. The only moon lagging behind was the one with the Great Black Tree Labyrinth, but with the labyrinth helping so many mages prepare to overcome the Labyrinth of Force, the immortals were hesitant to break the dungeon core.

            With all that said, it had been centuries since the Great Black Tree Labyrinth had produced anything new. Or at least anything new that was useful for the immortals. It just kept growing taller and deeper, and creating strange material creations that produced lightning at ridiculous rates. Perhaps her little group would be lucky and find something new and useful made by the dungeon core of the labyrinth.

            The team's goal was to capture another one of the mind talking humans, which was a job that was growing harder and harder as the mind talking humans lived near the top of the ever-growing Great Black Tree Labyrinth. Unfortunately for the team, it was far too dangerous to attempt to fly up to the branches, as the void dolphins could move through the air far better than they could. They couldn’t even go through the trunk of the labyrinth due to the dangers of a void dolphin picking one of them off with its incredibly fast projectile, and the reality that the trunk of the labyrinth had very fast-moving metal balls going through it at all times, which could potentially injure a mage. They had no choice but to dig down into the ‘roots’ of the labyrinth and find their way to the top. It would take at least a week, but it would teach them caution, which was supposedly a lesson every mage needed to learn before going to the Labyrinth of Force.

            Before they entered the dungeon’s area of influence, they cast haste times ten, soul sight, heat immunity, and lightning immunity. From there, the team began individually casting spells to protect the team as a whole. These included water bubble, bend light, vacuum bubble, illusion, warp gravity, rain, and swirling ice crystals. Once the team had all their defenses up, one of Susan’s team members opened the ground up with slurry, and they began walking toward the dungeon through their self-made tunnel. The slurry user was careful to close the hole behind them, as they did not need a surprise from their rear.

            One of Susan’s teammates used a variation of the earth spell tremor to map their way through the underground. As they made their way underground, they killed every creature their soul sight exposed. Shadow magic was the preferred option as they were able to weaponize a creature’s own shadow against them, but for some of the larger creatures they were able to remotely open up the ground before crushing them with it, raise the heat high enough to start fires, create enough rain to drown creatures, super impose gravity, and even caste a type of haste spell that amplified speed without taking away any of the inertia.

Considering how dangerous the Labyrinth of Force was they had no choice but to practice as many spells as they could in real world conditions. The most dangerous thing about the Layrinth of Force was that every core in the elemental circle could be found there, and any creature with a force core had every other elemental core. If it wasn’t for the deadly tricks the cores from the circle of life gave them, none would be able to survive that dungeon.

Eventually, the four mages reached a decent biome, and they killed everything with a soul in the biome before flooding it with rain and finally burning through the biome’s strange wall. Water Bubble on dry land was used to protect mages from most attacks, but underwater it was used to provide air to mages and warriors alike, while allowing them to move through water like it was dry land. Its utility was why it was a univerally learned spell among mages, and one of the most powerful spells used by warriors.

The four mages assumed that once again, the void dolphins would crash into the water, flooding the large biome, and they would simply have to freeze it to trap and then kill the void dolphins, as this was the classical way to deal with void dolphins. Unfortunately for the four mages they would be the first mages in history to confront the sage squirrels.

As soon as the sage squirrels appeared in their soul sight Susan asked, “What is that?”

Their leader said, “I don’t know. It looks like someone stretched and stitched together hundreds of souls.”

Susan wished her three teammates could speak mind to mind, but she was the first mind speaker to get this far as a mage. Instead she asked, “I thought this was an elemental dungeon, how could it affect souls?”

“I don’t know, but this is certainly something the immortals will want to know about.”

“Should we finish our mission?”

“Of course. Stop asking questions and attack that thing, whatever it is.”

With that command, the four mages began casting spells to attack the soul-stitched creature. Although to their surprise, none of the spells did anything. Shadow spear stopped before it reached the soul. Warped gravity caused parts of the soul to tremble, but nothing else. Since the soul-stitched creature was in a tunnel, they attempted to collapse the tunnel on it, but the creature shrugged it off. When they tried burning it, the heat deflected away.

Susan said, “Nothing's working, and it's almost here.”

“Perhaps it will drown once it reaches this flooded biome. If not, then as soon as it enters we will freeze all the water.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“Then we will use other spells. You and I both know that our spells are much stronger when it's within eyeshot of us. Soul sight was always meant to give us an advantage, but it always came with the weakness that our spells are much weaker when we are not within normal visual sight of our targets.”

“But look at that thing, it's gigantic. How will we hurt it? How did a lightning dungeon even make something so big?”

“Don’t panic, these tunnels will restrict its movement, and if we can’t kill it ten, we will just retreat and come back another day, just get ready with the freeze water spell.”

Suson nodded and got ready, alongside the other three mages. They filled this entire biome with water specifically to freeze it, so shifting gears to freeze this new creature instead of the void dolphins should work.

Moments after making this assumption, they noticed that the water began to be electrified and was being warmed up very quickly. In fact, before the stitched-soul creature even reached the water filled biome, massive bolts of lightning was arching through the water and causing it to boil. If the mages did not have heat immunity and lightning immunity on they would have already died.

Despite the water boiling the mages continued to power up their freeze water spell. As they waited, an odd thing happened: all the water and steam in the biome was pushed back, and then a moment later they saw a large blue field push itself into the water of the biome. Everywhere the field touched, electricity arced and surged. The water it touched boiled.

Susan stuttered, “Its using force wall.”

Her leader said, “I don’t think that’s force wall… not really. I think that’s the lightning equivalent. Fortunately, we were preparing for the Labyrinth of Force, so we know the theory behind fighting a force user. Either get around their shield, or keep hitting it with attacks until it falls. Wait until that thing is in the water, freeze the water, and begin hitting it with attacks from all sides.”

And so the four mages continued preparing their attack as the glowing blue field continued entering the biome. To the mage's perception, which was ten times the speed of normal perception, the blue field moved slowly and created gorgeous arcs of lighting through the water. They felt a bit of awe at the beauty but that awe turned to terror when they saw the creature… creatures making the electrical force shield.

Although the squirrels were incredibly ugly and cobled together, that isn't what caused the fear, what caused it was that they were so small, and yet as the force field containing the squirrels continued entering the biome, they were able to see a few squirrels, than dozens, and finally hundreds of them controlling the spell. As more and more came out of the tunnel it looked like a gigantic glowing blue worm, with sparks arcing off it, with rings of squirrels acting as rib cages, albeit with squirrels here or there moving in a unique way. Most of the people on the moons would have focused on the giant snake-like blue electrical force shield, but the mages still had soul sight on and could tell that somehow the small squirrels had stitched their souls together, and that was allowing them to cast spells that somehow created this lightning force shield.

The mages were so shocked that they hesitated longer than they should have to cast freeze water. When they cast it, two hundred feet of the lighting force field was already in the room. The mages were well aware that water expands as it freezes so they hoped that freezing the water would destroy the shield, but as they cast the spell and watched the water freeze in just seconds they were disappointed to find that the shield pushed back and not only did the freezing water seem to do nothing to the shield, since the water was boiling when it froze the ice in the frozen biome was riddled with bubbles and thus was much easier to break through than if it were one solid piece of ice.

The giant glowing blue worm easily crushed the ice and made its way toward the mages. The mages were so terrified by this that they didn’t notice the void dolphins were now making their way to the mages, and were in range of their soul sight. Their entire focus was on the giant blue worm.

In a panic, they launched every spell they could at it, but whether it was fire, water, ice, poison, soul, light, steam, darkness, vacuum, magma, slurry, metal, or, oddly enough, even lightning magic, it was simply deflected.

Suason said, “We have to retreat.”

Two of the other mages said, “I second that.”

The leader said, “Everyone cast slurry, create a bubble and we will get out of here.”

The mages cast slurry and created a bubble over themselves, and they began trying to make it back to the hole they had made into the biome. The problem was that the sage squirrels were still moving toward them. Once the blue shield reached the slurry dome several devastating things happened. First of all, all the water in the slurry dome boiled away, turning the slurry into solid rock. The mages were surprised for a moment, but the surprise soon turned into fear as the blue lighting shield pressed down on the rock and crushed it. As the blue lighting shield continued to press down it was obvious that the creature didn’t even see the illusions as it honed in on the bubble the mages were hiding in. The mages had no way to know that the sage squirrels could only see what the lightning touched, and lightning couldn’t touch the illusions. From there the shield made its way through the outer vacuum bubble effortlessly before pressing down on the water bubble, and to the mage’s shock the water bubble had no power to push against the shield. In mere moments in real time, and almost half a minute in the mages sped up time frame, the bubble dissolved.

As the glowing blue bubble reached the heads of the mages, the mages came to terms with death, but were shocked when the electromagnetic shield passed through their heads. They had time enough to realize that it passed through thanks to lightning immunity. Lightning immunity in relation to this particular spell meant that the spell couldn’t touch them, as the lightning in the spell was specifically being used to push back everything. Lightning immunity made them immune to the effect.

Unfortunately for the mages, lightning immunity did not extend to their clothes. Even more unfortunate for the mages is that their clothes were to act as a last line of defense for them, and so was incredibly sturdy clothing, so as the electromagnetic force shield pressed down on the clothes, the mages' bodies began to be crushed, squished, and pulped through the neck and arm holes of their clothing. Despite their magic and sped up time frame, they could not get their reinforced clothes off them in time, and so over the course of nearly twenty seconds of their sped up time, they felt their bodies get pulped through their clothing.

Just after the mages died, the void dolphins made a run through the electromagnetic shield. The dungeon was well aware of lightning immunity's interaction with the shield. In fact, the dungeon only designed the squirrel mages to break through the defense of mages so that the void dolphins could attack the mages directly afterwards.

Once the battle was over, the dungeon could only say, “The sage squirrels are much stronger than I thought they would be. I am glad we have a few batches ready to hatch soon.”