Crack!
As the Witch snapped the neck of the fourth White Velociprey, she looked back to find that not a single living knowledge creature remained in the quarry.
Personality Fission—Mask Switch—Mode: Red Apostle unloaded, Mode: White Queen loaded!
"It's over already?"
Watching the corpse of the White Velociprey dissolve into motes of light and sink into the earth, Diya still couldn't quite process it—could battles in the Void Realm really be this easy?
This resource point was a stone quarry garrisoned by a total of eight White Velocipreys. In the past, Diya would have turned on her heels and bolted without a second thought. The resource point she had attacked last time was guarded by only four cynocephalic dragons. She had barely managed to kill two, ending up battered and bloody with most of her sorcery power drained. Had it not been for her time sorcery spirit, Fast-Forward, she might not have even managed to retreat.
Yet now, having conquered a resource point held by eight White Velocipreys, Diya hadn't sustained a single scratch. Granted, the three of them had seized the quarry's terrain advantage from the outset, blockading the narrowest passage to wage an interception battle, but the outcome was still overwhelmingly gratifying.
The Watcher was responsible for ranged attacks and support; his Sword Body Barrier had twice protected Diya from sudden ambushes by the White Velocipreys. The Sword Princess handled burst melee damage; her wide-area Wave Sword miracles kept the White Velocipreys from daring to charge their line. Diya followed behind the Sword Princess to follow up on damage and watch for openings. The moment a White Velociprey showed a weakness, she unleashed her miracles, Water-Born Line and Entangle, looping dead lines around its vitals before violently twisting to finish the reap.
Though their coordination was rudimentary, Diya had still vastly underestimated the lethal potential of three sorcerers working in tandem, just as she had overestimated the combat prowess of pack-dwelling creatures. In truth, compared to solitary large creatures, the individual fighting capability of pack creatures was pitifully weak. The gap between them was like that between a voluptuous older woman and a gaggle of flat-chested little girls.
However, the strength of pack creatures never lay in individual power, but in their formidable coordination when swarming their prey.
Whenever pack creatures ganged up on a sorcerer, they inevitably assigned roles for baiting, ambushing, and pinning down, switching responsibilities on the fly. When a sorcerer tried to unleash a burst of attacks on one monster, that beast would immediately pull back to lure them forward while the others pounced. Even if the monsters' damage wasn't high, sorcerers not of the ascetic faction almost never possessed super armor to steady themselves. It was remarkably easy to be knocked off balance by an attack, and once knocked flat on the ground, a sorcerer could only await being mauled to death by the pack.
Diya had been worn down by those cynocephalic dragons last time until she had no fight left in her. Pack creatures were so cunning that one couldn't help but wonder if the Void Realm itself was micromanaging them to toy with sorcerers.
A sorcerer's tactical approach when facing large solitary creatures versus pack-dwelling creatures was completely different, carrying entirely distinct risks. Many sorcerers who reigned supreme across the Sea of Knowledge found themselves repeatedly crushed by pack creatures upon arriving at the Time Continent.
Yet once three sorcerers formed a squad, the tables turned completely.
With three people covering one another, Diya only needed to handle the monsters directly in front of her. Furthermore, with the Watcher backing her up, she didn't have to constantly reserve stamina or momentum to retreat; she could unleash her full burst of power. By holding key terrain, they could even gang up three-on-one against a single monster within a confined space.
Under such circumstances, the weaknesses of pack-dwelling creatures—low defense, meager health, weak damage, and predictable attack patterns—were laid bare. It didn't take long for the trio to find their rhythm, butchering them cleanly one by one.
A battle this effortless and comfortable felt straight out of a fairy tale.
While Diya marveled at how all her past battles had been horror stories by comparison, the other two were quietly assessing their new teammate's strength.
Formidable!
Ferocious!
Sinister, ruthless, and bizarre!
Upon entering combat, the Witch had abruptly changed her attire, donning a form-fitting crimson combat skirt and armor while her hair shifted to streaks of red and white, pulling three transparent threads taut between her hands.
Yaxiu understood—this had to be the Witch activating her innate talent, switching to a persona far more suited for combat.
When she lashed out at a White Velociprey, the threads cracked like steel whips, leaving distinct bloody welts across the beast's flesh. Moreover, she appeared to have infused the threads with her Water Therapy sorcery spirit. Water Therapy was originally meant for healing, but treating severe injuries with it usually required pairing it with an anesthetic or sleep-inducing sorcery spirit, as the regeneration of flesh and blood was intensely itchy and agonizing.
Back in Shattered Lake Prison, there was a reason Yaxiu had always woken up only after his treatments were finished: [222] had never allowed him to feel a single speck of pain.
When Water Therapy was applied to combat, it turned into an agonizing amplification of sensory damage. The White Velocipreys lashed by the Witch often let out strange shrieks or leaped into the air, drastically disrupting their fighting rhythm.
Beyond that, the Witch possessed another miracle called Entangle. She could whip the threads around a target in an instant before suddenly pulling tight and yanking with all her might. Yaxiu could see the biceps on her arms bulge with power. Accompanied by a White Velociprey's mournful shriek, its neck was sliced clean through by her threads.
The time sorcery spirit Fast-Forward under her command had also proven invaluable on multiple occasions, disrupting the White Velocipreys' desperate retaliations and even causing one beast to throw itself directly into the Sword Princess's Killing Ripping Wave Slash.
What was more, the Witch kept pace with the Sword Princess flawlessly. Far from being a burden, she provided excellent tactical synergy with her. Throughout the entire fight, Yaxiu felt as though he were merely along for the ride, carried by two powerhouses.
"Pack creatures don't drop sorcery spirits?" Yaxiu glanced around. "Isn't that a massive rip-off?"
"Pack creatures generally channel their sorcery spirits into powering the production of the resource point. Unless an overlord creature emerges among them, sorcery spirits rarely stay on their bodies," Sonia explained, glancing toward the depths of the quarry. "Once the pack creatures die, any sorcery spirits will definitely take the chance to flee, so we virtually never harvest any sorcery spirits here."
"The only gain from conquering a resource point is the resources already produced inside." Diya was also eager to inspect their haul. "I hope there are Fist Stones in there."
Yaxiu didn't quite grasp the value of resource points yet, but the moment he picked up a glowing deep-blue stone from the quarry, he understood what they meant to sorcerers:
Weak Water Stone: Catalyzes the spontaneous evolution of a sorcery spirit when consumed by one of the water sorcery faction.
Fist Stone: Catalyzes the spontaneous evolution of a sorcery spirit when consumed by one of the fist and claw faction.
Sorcery spirit evolution!
Yaxiu hadn't expected that sorcery spirits could evolve through external materials. While staying at the Veela's home, he had naturally researched ways to obtain higher-ranked sorcery spirits besides slaying monsters for drops, arriving at two answers: summoning new ones or advancing existing ones.
Summoning a new one went without saying—it was like finding a new girlfriend, where dating, dinners, movies, and hand-holding were indispensable steps. Advancing an existing one was akin to giving your wife a makeover to make her even classier and more beautiful. While simpler, the prerequisite was that you actually had a wife to begin with.
Generally speaking, an ordinary sorcerer would have a natal sorcery spirit—the very first sorcery spirit they had ever summoned.
Once a sorcerer raised their faction mastery to Gold rank, they most commonly advanced their natal sorcery spirit to Two Wings, thereby stepping onto the Time Continent.
Evidently, the sorcery spirits eligible for advancement were almost always natal sorcery spirits. In a sense, sorcery spirits were like daughters married off by the Void Realm. Seeing that its daughter was living an increasingly prosperous life with the sorcerer, the maternal family would provide an additional dowry, allowing the daughter to upgrade from a Level 1 little girl into a Level 2 maiden.
Any other sorcery spirits not summoned directly by the sorcerer's own hands—no matter how diligently the sorcerer cultivated them—were essentially mistresses without a marriage certificate, never gaining the acknowledgment of their Void Realm maternal family.
Yet if they could consume higher-grade Void Realm resources, such as the factional ores from this resource point, even a mistress could continue to level up.
"So as long as you have thoroughly mastered a sorcery spirit, having it feed on ores of its corresponding faction gives a high probability of catalyzing its spontaneous evolution," Sonia said. "Actually, consuming ores of other factions works as well, but the conversion efficiency drops to a mere three percent compared to the matching faction."
In other words, by feeding medicine to a sorcery spirit that had been developed close to its limit, one could trigger its complete evolution into an even more remarkable form... Yaxiu nodded. Looking at the heap of glittering ores in the minecart, he considered for a moment and said, "Then let's divide them by faction first. Time and fist-and-claw go to the Witch; swordsmanship and water sorcery go to the Sword Princess."
"What about you?" Sonia asked. "Aren't you a swordsmanship practitioner like me?"
"I'm in no rush. I don't have any stubborn attachment to specific sorcery spirits. If I obtain better two-winged ones down the road, I can just swap them out. Both of you have primary factions you specialize in, and you need to grow alongside your sorcery spirits..."
"What about Heart Sword, then?" Sonia shook her head. "That's one of the Five Matchless Secret Sword Spirits, and a relic left to you by that elf... I might be able to obtain items in the Void Realm for trading sorcery spirits in the future. Until then, you need to nurture Heart Sword properly!"
Sonia shoved several Sword Heart Stones straight into Yaxiu's chest. Yaxiu blinked, speaking with heartfelt gratification, "Sword Princess, you've grown up..."
"Don't use that tone like a father whose daughter just showed him filial piety!" Sonia fumed, thoroughly exasperated.
Chapter 215