The battlefield didn’t change much despite the increasing mortality on both sides. It’s as though the more people died, the more intense they fought. Everywhere on that place, there are raging fights, shrieks from monsters, battle roar from the fighters, and inevitably, the death throes and sound of bodies. .h.i.tting the ground…
On the side of the treasure hunting group, all the ones below tier 5 are practically dead, and those few tier 5 that pulled through with their relatively meager strength are starting to hit the bottom of their morale.
Excluding the tier 7 d.i.c.ks standing there and watching them die, the tier 6 themselves treat them like disposable p.a.w.ns. Under these kind of hostile situation, who would fight for them if not because their lives are literally on the line here.
The magicians on the other hand are doing much better. They are in the back on support role unlike the warriors that takes most of the risk. Some of the more unfortunate ones got hit by projectiles and died but they are all mostly still in tact.
However, the situation is not cheering Hinagiku and Mikoto up.
Even for their comrades who fought for their sake, the magicians still kept their head high up like hot s.h.i.ts. Not giving the dead warriors the basic grat.i.tude they deserve. The way they’re acting, it’s like they will get tainted by the lowliness of those dead warriors if they even look at the bodies.
According to Silvaria’s hierarchy, magicians are high up on the social ladder, way higher than the warriors. This is due to the fact that a magician needs first, the talent to practice magic, and then the background to support the magician’s development. Basically, the magician is a job that can burn through the wallet.
A warrior needs only one or two skills to fight. In actual battles, they would only need to add a little dou qi here and there while swinging their weapons around to achieve devastating effect.
A magician plays by a different playbook, their battle revolves around spells and to them a spell is equivalent to a skill. They can’t go around swinging their canes like warriors can. Any self respecting magician would need to be able to cast a certain amount of spells.
Turns out, each of the aforementioned spells cost about the same as a battle skill! (Tl:well, if we a.s.sume the market efficiency theory works here then magic spells and battle skills are essentially of the same value so…)
Furthermore, to become a warrior, one only needs to achieve a certain standard of body condition as well as the ability to cultivate qi. Pretty much anyone can become a good warrior with enough training. So, even if warriors and magicians differ not much in terms of strength, these magicians would still treat the warriors like commoners.
In other words, richy rich background + good talents makes the magicians all c.o.c.ky as h.e.l.l. They have a mindset fixed into their heads that goes something like this: magicians is master race, warriors lowly race.
There is an exception to this generalization. Those warriors who can develop themselves to a certain level like say, tier 7. It is only at this kind of level that the one could call themselves a legitimate super. At least one needs to be at this level for the magicians to rein in their haughty att.i.tude so they would interact with them as they would themselves.
Again, this is only a part of the crop, there are still some good magicians that wouldn’t look down on anybody…
But, Wu Yan is sure there’s no such persons on this battlefield. Every magician here is so stuck up they probably need a lube to p.o.o.p.
He never expected to find this lack of good guy magicians here. This might very well be the law of attraction at work here…
He shook his head at the humans that are on trend to victory. When he glanced over the ones present, he raised his eyebrows.
“Ikaros, could you please scan the surroundings?”
He invited the curious gaze of Hinagiku and Mikoto as well as a s.p.a.cey Ikaros.
He gestured to Ikaros, incapable of defying her master, her eyes turned red.
Ikaros surveyed the surroundings and stopped suddenly.
“You have found somebody in the surrounding haven’t you?”
With a face that says ‘I knew it’, he grinned. He could guess the result of her scan.
“Yes, master…”
Ikaros changed her eyes back to normal and lightly continued.
“Life signatures detected not far to the other side of this tunnel…”
He confirmed his suspicions with this and cursed at the f.u.c.kers silently.
“What an insidious group, hiding intentionally. G.o.d, this would have been troubling if Ikaros’ scanning were a bit lacking…”
He didn’t stop to think how he and the other girls fit the description of “an insidious group”. If the girls weren’t too busy twitching their lips and eyebrows, itching to jump into the fray, they might have threw him a judging glare.
Hinagiku and Mikoto are surprised at Ikaros’ confirmation. When they saw his smug grin, the two girls can’t hold in their intrigue.
“How did you know they are people hdiing here?”
“You girls haven’t noticed?”
He turned serious and spelled it out for them a word at a time.
“The auctioneer group is missing from action!”
“Wha-”
They instantly turned to look over the battlefield. After a brief while the two exchange glance and turned back to him.
“So you’re saying the lurking group is the auctioneer group?”
Seeing him nod, Mikoto asked again.
“How did you notice this?”
He didn’t bother reminding them that he has ‘Impeccable Memory’ so he could notice that the faces that should be here, aren’t. He nonchalantly chuckled.
“The people from the auction firm, looks like they have some hidden agenda this time, it’s lucky that we hid before coming here.”
The two girls frowned their lovely little foreheads and kept watching the progress of the battle. This time however, they raised their guards against the lurkers. Their instinct is telling them that the true motives of the flashy charades the auction firm put up are about to be revealed soon.
All of this is going on behind the backs of the ones fighting on the battlefield. They are completely unaware of how they are made into white mouse by others. They also didn’t know that there are two group of lurkers just waiting for them to take the meat out.
The Anarchy spiders are thinning out under their formation, there are already countless spiders dead on the ground, wasted and not coming back anytime soon. The remaining 30-40 spiders look like they might be dispersed any moment now.
When the human side saw the conditions, the front liners raised their spirit and quickened their hands. Heck, even the magicians are firing off more concentrated salvos. All in the hopes of ending this fight quicker.
Just when the formation of the spiders seem to be on the verge of being penetrated, the struggling spiders suddenly stopped all at once. They immediately started retreating.
“master, a new signature is encroaching…”
Said Ikaros who spared no expense in opening her scanning function after having failed to detect another possibly hostile group so close to them. She reported this at the same time the spiders started retreating, much to the surprise of the three.
The ones fighting didn’t notice anything strange. They thought the spiders are retreating because they’re afraid. They frantically went after the spiders with weapons held high, the magicians weren’t any different either.
A tier 6 is currently running at the front of the pack, laughing out loud as he ran. When he caught up to a spider and is about to slay it to display his heroic, he didnt notice that a slim black spear shot out like lightning. It pierced him before he even noticed.
And then, a black spider, at least twice as big as an Anarchy spider slowly crawled out from the darkness…