Chapter 288: The Improvement of the Mages
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
To be honest it has been some time since Benjamin paid attention to everyone’s ability level.
By drawing lots to determine everyone’s opponent, Benjamin managed to arrange the entire flow of the competition and the mages in the field hastily started to battle each other. Benjamin as an organizer, did not participate, but instead stood on the side and spectated.
He remembered very clearly, in the beginning, the mages had an average magic level of three and below, they simply casted a lot of skills and focused on quantity rather than quality. However, through Benjamin's guidance, they improved their meditation, after which, those who did not have a solid foundation slowly became decent and gained apprentice-leveled magic fighting ability.
Attack, defense, healing, which were the basic skill sets for a fighting mage, Benjamin had also tried to train the mages using these three methods. Since control and dodge were slightly more complicated, he did not expect them to learn it too soon; he was glad that at least now everyone was trying their best.
However, he only learnt today that there were actually some very mature fighting mages in his team.
"Lara is quite good. Dark magic huh… I have been trying to learn it for a long time, how does she use it so skillfully?" Frank watched the two of them fight in the battlefield, and exclaimed.
Benjamin nodded his head in agreement.
He looked toward the battlefield, a girl with black hair and closed eyes was muttering incantations. On her side there was a dark but solid-like shadow. It looked like a strange bird, hovering back and forth, blocking the fireballs fired by the old blacksmith who was her opponent.
Shadow cloak, it was originally used as low-levelled control magic, but she could use it for defense, which showed that her ability to control this magic was very good.
Benjamin was surprised.
"I remember her. She only knew one spell at first, is it... ... turning off the lights?"
"Yes, even now she’s still very fond of that particular spell." Frank replied, "Once I was in the toilet and she suddenly frightened me by turning off all the lights in the toilet. Needless to say, I was quite hard to aim, and I had to clean up the mess after."
Hearing this, Benjamin shook his head with a smile.
On the field, there was already a winner for the bout. Lara used her shadow cloak, found an opening and suddenly launched a counter-attack. She backhanded the old blacksmith, trapped him and won the fight.
The other mages who were watching the battle looked fired up. It seems that watching others fight had inspired them.
Turns out that this magic battle that Benjamin hosted was meaningful after all!
As battle followed battle, twenty-two mages took turns to participate. It was quite time consuming as they only ended in the evening.
Throughout the competition, Benjamin felt that everyone had improved. At least, now all of them are fighting with low-level magic, and occasionally with intermediate-level magic. They were good in fighting response, but their average magic level was still slightly below that of the mages at the mage gathering.
However, Benjamin was already satisfied with the result.
He was not a science education mage, he had learnt magic slowly by himself - being able to lead all these mages without a solid foundation and to get this point was already quite a feat.
As the sun was starting to set, the championship battle fell between Joanna and Varys.
All the way through the competition, the two of them performed stunningly, and showed very consistent strength. Joanna was competitive and hardworking, coupled with an excellent talent in fire magic which represented her aggressive combat style. Benjamin recalled the process of her becoming a mage was completely under accidental circumstance when she suddenly realized that she had summoned a small flame.
As for Varys, he had outstanding spiritual energy, with an extremely lasting combat stamina. He was very familiar with all types of magic and was very good with people, which was why he got all the way to the final battle.
There are really some talented mages in this team.
"Joanna, I’ll let you have the crystal, after all, you are specializing in fire magic. I also do not want to fight you... ..." Varys stood on the field and said with a creepy smile, like pedophile who was offering a lollipop to a child.
"No." Joanna immediately shook her head and said, "You must fight me. You always look for excuses saying that you are busy and will not battle with me. Now is the only chance, I’m not going to pass it up."
Hearing this, Varys had no choice.
The last battle finally began. The two of them stood on opposite ends of the field, looked at each other, nodded, and started chanting spells.
According to a mage’s usual fighting pattern, Varys made a defensive shield—— when facing an attack with fire magic, he chose a very useful water shield and protected himself from any blind spot.
For Joanna, there was no need for defense - she immediately casted a difficult intermediate-level magic: Phoenix Flame, which summoned a group of white flames in front of her.
Benjamin was not surprised.
Fire magic had always been weaker in defense, having a physical shield was not very effective and Joanna's fighting style was also very direct. This caused her to usually forgo defense totally for a much more kamikaze-style attack.
Her spell - Phoenix Flame, it was a very interesting choice. The flame was named after the phoenix, not because it has anything to do about the legend of the Phoenix, but because the fire possessed regenerative characteristics like a Phoenix. if summoned, it will spontaneously generate new flames; without needing any instructions, it can continuously attack with small fireballs.
To master such complex magic in such a short time… Joanna must have practiced for a long time in private to get to this stage.
After the flame was initially summoned, countless small fireballs were also summoned. Like an infinitely fueled flamethrower, it completely boiled Varys’ water shield into a thick mist. Seeing this, Varys could only use other defense magic to block the fireballs.
The situation forced him to stay on defensive. Joanna flew to the air, and started to wield flames to her heart’s content. Balls of fire, bursting fireballs, pillars of fire… all kinds of fire magic were casted – like some kind of glorious flame show.
"How did Joanna suddenly become so powerful? She didn’t tell us about this at all!"
"No… she has said it before but we all thought she was bragging and even thought that she was being delusional. But this…. this is …."
"...…"
There was no doubt who was going to win.
This was probably the reason why Varys did not want to battle with her.
Joanna's way of fighting was very interesting. Through the crazy continuous attack, she suppressed his casting. Varys’s foundation may have been better than hers, but in this case, his full strength could not be fully expressed.
It seems that by continuously completing mercenary task, her combat skills had increased greatly!
Benjamin could not help but to think, should he figure out an idea to encourage those who do not want to participate in mercenary missions, so that they will get involved and improve themselves?
He gradually started to form an idea —being happy every day was very good, but, they also needed a functional reward system to encourage everyone to pursue higher level magic.