"Thanks for the delivery," Layn muttered, suddenly all calm. Without even a shred of hesitation, he threw his mana-covered hands away, straight towards the attacking monsters.
Slit.
By the time the claws and teeth of the invading horde could reach the archmage's skin, he had already sucked most of the energy out of the monsters' bodies. With nowhere else to go, the energy amassed in his flesh, reinforcing it.
As such, he was left without even the slightest scratch.
"Now, that feels good," Layn raised his head, looking at the monsters around him. The time seemed to slow down, but it wasn't the case at all. It was Layn's battle instinct kicking in, a product of one of the many reinforcing spells he was craving to use.
Layn rushed ahead. With his hands acting as his swords, he managed to streamline the process of obtaining more stones to suck the energy from. He would make a cut, recall the mana from his hand to grab the stone, and then coat it all back with the same mana from before.
By leaving a small channel in his palm free from the influx of energy, he would then suck all the mana from the stone, unleashing a flood of fresh power all around his body.
'Now that I think about it,' Layn raised his eyes as he jumped from one monster to another, turning the hunter and the pray situation around all on his own. 'Wasn't it a bit too long since I last allowed myself to let some steam off?' he thought arrogantly, fealing how the heat of the battle shrouded his mind a little.
'No, that's not the case,' Layn thought a few moments later, already several tens of meters deep within the belly of the horde. 'That's not what I was thinking about,' he realized, though unable to picture just what he was thinking about. So then, to abate his hunger for power, he continued his culling, decreasing the number of the enemies simultaneously as he continued to grow in strenght.
'That's right,' Layn managed to crack the lock over his recent memory soon after, using a flood of energy from seven more monsters to create the necessary momentum. 'Isn't it nice to combine cultivation with real magic, after all,' Layn asked himself, smiling gently.
The method of dual-circulating mana within one's own body was possible for him only thanks to cultivation. While sucking so many stones in a quick succession strained his ability to absorb energy pretty quickly, this rampant energy in his core instantly rushed to heal the injuries.
For the next several minutes, Layn was locked in the struggle of two powers. One was the energy from the stones, constantly fueling his cultivation core and injuring the pathways all over his flesh. The other was the energy already in his core, one that he properly purified in the process of cultivation. Pushed out by the incoming energy from the stones, it had no other choice but to mend Layn's inner injuries, keeping the stable balance between the two seemingly opposing forces.
Layn had to spend the entire seven minutes, constantly on the verge of burning his cultivation out, to finally overcome this struggle.
It felt as if the mana found a new path towards his core, a path that was completely unexplored and deprived of energy. With the influx of energy now split between more outflows, the burden on Layn's inner part of the body greatly lessened.
But it was this new part of himself that he finally noticed that made all the difference.
For every bit of mana that Layn consumed, the world around him appeared to slow down. This time, not only as an effect of Layn's reinforcing ability. It was as if his mind unlocked its latent power, capable of processing the information at a much greater pace than before.
And the process of growth of this side of his was insane.
With the energy flocking into this newly opened area of cultivation, it almost instantly all sank in the path itself, reinforcing it. But while this process was strangely similar to how Layn treated Irea in the recent past, the archmage didn't feel even a tingle of pain.
It was as if instead of ripping apart his cells and rebuilding them anew, this mana provided those cells with so much energy that they simply morphed into the state, allowing them to accommodate more of it.
And with each instance of this happening, Layn's movements turned faster and faster while the world continued to revolve slower and slower.
'So that's what all those stars mean!' Layn suddenly had a moment of enlightenment.
He didn't really bother with what he still considered an inferior way of using the mana one had access to. But now that the power of his brain seemed to multiply by at least tenfold, he could no longer claim the cultivation to be so ridiculously weak as he believed it to be.
With no other choice, he had to acknowledge that, after all, there was some potential in this manner of using mana.
And he did all of that while running around the thinning formation of the enemies, killing anything that dared to stand in its path.
At this point, Layn no longer saw the monsters as the enemies he had to eradicate to save everyone at the camp. They now turned into a feed, one that could unlock the absolutely latent power of his body and soul for him to use.
'The first star is about one's physical realm,' Layn thought, detaching his aware self from the part focused on serving the monsters a taste of genocide. 'Then what I'm going through right now should be about one's mind, possibly heart,' Layn thought.
"Layn!" A voice somehow made its way through the archmage's ear, entering his brain. Shaken off from his happy daze, he looked towards the source of the call.
"What's wrong?" Layn shouted back, looking at Markus while moving between the next three of his targets.
"The right flank!" Layn's friend shouted, pointing his hand in the direction he was speaking about. "It's faltering!" he added before rushing back into the fight himself.
Layn looked around to scan the picture of the situation. He was currently near the left flank of the camp's defensive formation. It was the place where most of Al's clansmen took a stand, giving a reason why they had the least trouble holding the line.
At the center, Markus and Yelna reaped the monsters as if they were monsters themselves.
'Right, this is a battlefield that most suits Markus,' Layn thought after observing something uncommon.
Markus fought like a madman. It was his sole effort that lessened the burden of the center of their formation, allowing them to hold the line as well.
But what was surprising was Markus overperforming Yelna.
Between the two of them, it was hard not to say who was stronger. Despite not wielding any magic whatsoever, Yelna was hailed as a hero for a reason. Even if she didn't like to appear as one, her skills with her daggers were something that even Layn himself feared.
But on this particular battlefield, she couldn't even hold a candle to Markus.
And speaking about candles...
The weapon that Markus used when he really got serious was truly weird. Rather than a sword, staff, or at least a club, he liked to fight with a street light. In situations where he couldn't procure one, he would craft a similar item himself, always refusing to give any sort of explanation for this weird behavior.
But now, Layn finally learned the truth. The reason why Markus was so adamant at using this uncommon weapon.
Right now, the former saint danced around his opponents. He swung his stick with a candle at the top around.
But he wasn't striking the monsters at all. Rather than that, he seemed to charm them. And after just a short moment, the magic stone of the monster would burst out of its body, rushing towards the light of the shake.
Before the impact could destroy Markus's weapon, the one spell of the weapon would absorb the mana, further reinforcing its attractive force.
'At this rate, he alone will be able to kill all those monsters,' Layn thought, already calculating how long it would actually take for the influence of Markus's weapon to cover the entire battlefield.
'Still, that's too wasteful,' he added in his thoughts a moment later, grinding his teeth against each other. 'This spell alone steals all the power of those stones, leaving nothing for the user to gain after the fight,' Layn thought, rushing towards his designed position.
On the right flank, the situation was the worst. Despite initial success, the cultivators from the warcamp didn't manage to hold their ground. By the time Layn appeared in front of them, a massive gap had already appeared.
At any moment, monsters would be sure to fill it up, breaking the only thing that gave humans the advantage in the fight.
At any moment, the monsters would break their formation.
And that's why Layn jumped right in the middle of it.
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