Chapter 208: Sage Aspect

Thorian and his division members, seeing the first division getting pushed back, tried to do something about it by attacking the enemies and their leaders, but that sadly yielded no results. The enemy divisions seem to have prepared lots of temporary defense artifacts just for that scenario alone.

No matter what kind of attacks Thorian and his division members threw at the enemy fortifiers or shock troops, their prepared artifacts defended against them. And the only way to get through this situation is to continuously attack them again, and again, and again. Until their enemy runs out of artifacts. Thorian couldn’t imagine the fortune it must have cost them to get that many such defensive tools.

So, for now, they could only step backward slowly, unless they wanted more and more of their shock troops at the front to be eliminated. Heinz alone was bearing a lot of pressure at the front. Handing the attacks of more than 10 Seekers at once including the enemy division leader. And they were all pretty damn furious at Heinz. The enemy division leader constantly taunted him,

“Where is that awesome power of yours now? Where did all that arrogance go? All that bravado? Where is it? Is that it?”

“Is this all you amount to? Is this the best you can do? Pathetic commoner.”

Though Heinz had now matured enough not to care about that kind of insult, some still could not help but find their way into his mind and enrage him thoroughly. But he had to forcefully calm himself. This could just be another tactic of theirs to make him more and more angry, to break their formation or something.

At this moment, the first siege arrow was fired, and it came straight toward the steel gate of the fortress-like a missile. But everyone could clearly see the protective transparent dome made of countless hexagonal shapes, with a large pointed tip, pointing towards the very siege arrow that was coming. The siege arrow crashed onto the pointed section of the mana shield with a loud metallic sound, and a glass-shattering sound could also be heard in that instant.

All the attackers watched in anxiety as the siege arrow simply deflected off like nothing, while there were indeed some glass-like cracks on the large mana-made shield. They vanished immediately. Another siege arrow fired again, then another and another.

But the large arrows could at best produce some cracks at a certain spot and nothing more. The Valkyrie on the other side deduced from the multiple attacks of the siege arrows that they would not work, even if the arrows exploded. The force of it would not be enough to destroy it whole. Jaden Redmar indeed prepared well.

She relayed that information to Axel, Lucien, Lumina, Heinz, and Thorian.

Axel said to Lucien, “Alright, let’s do this.”

Lucien nodded with a lingering hesitation, “This is going to be unpleasant.”

Axel agreed, “Tell me about it.”

Lumina snorted, “Stop your nonsense and hurry up.”

Both of their eyebrows twitched in response, but they got on to do their thing. What they were about to attempt was quite risky. 1st phase Seekers were quite strong compared to normal humans. They very much crossed the threshold of human limits by a big margin. But there are still obvious limitations to them, for example, a normal Seeker would be killed if they were directly dropped to the ground from the height of a 5-story tall building.

It’s just their capabilities and limits as humans were expanded significantly on the breakthrough, but it wasn’t to an unreasonable degree, and of course, there were exceptions. Special ones who could cross the limit of power for the 1st phase seekers upheld by the world’s will. Heinz, Thorian, and in the future, individuals like Jaden, Conner, and Enrick would be able to do it as well.

Apart from them, were bloodline holders like Axel and Lucien. As for the Valkyrie, only she knows what she truly is, so let’s not talk about that. And it was precisely because of their overwhelming power compared to their peers that Axel and Lucien had to be the ones to do this.

Heinz and his first division were continuously pushed back because of the tricky situation created by the enemy. They were already pushed back 1/5th of the total distance backward onto the bridge.

The constant taunts of his enemies continued, and he was barely holding in his rage to keep the formation of his division stable. Eventually, unable to take it anymore, he sent a message to their commander.

[Commander, I’m using my sage aspect, I’m tired of holding back.]

She responded after a moment,

[Take as many of them out as you can then.]

Heinz grinned. He responded to the few around him to take his spot and shield him for a moment. The enemies became agitated suddenly seeing this shift and that grin of his, they attacked him with more fervor, but the did was done in only a few seconds. Seekers remain vulnerable for the few seconds it takes them to shift their aspect. For that period of time, they need to be protected, especially in a situation like this.

And there was a reason why Heinz didn’t use that 4-star aspect from the start, and he barely ever uses that aspect, because embarrassingly enough, he can’t control or properly utilize the sage force despite training in it a lot. While he did ask Axel if he could make a tool for him that would help him control the sage force with more precision.

But unfortunately, a tool that can increase the basic control of a seeker for a powerful quality magical force like sage force is still something beyond him at the moment. Making something like that would require expertise capable of interfering with the fundamental operations of a 4-star aspect, and a powerful Seeker. He won’t be able to make something like that while still being a mere first-phase Seeker, that’s for sure.

Well, apart from Heinz’s lack of ability to control the Sage Force, his division members would lose the boost given by his battle aura from the warlord aspect, and most of his enemies being in their warrior branch aspects also makes the sage aspect less effective against them.

But…Heinz smiled darkly, if there was all there to the Sage aspect, it would not be a 4-star aspect after all. The moment, his sage aspect activated, his entire being went through a massive shift, the refined mana of his warlord aspect vanished, the nexus core from his sage aspect chamber provided him with an immense flood of Sage Force, and all the mana in the surrounding air vibrated, then came under the control of his Sage force.

As the mana of the entire area came under his command, he signaled his division members and Thorian’s division to move backward slightly. Which they did, but the attacks of his enemies continued non-stop; they didn’t need the control of the natural mana in the atmosphere, the refined energies from their cores were empowering their attacks. That was the advantage of the warrior branch aspects after all.

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{Extra chapter for the 200+ power stones last week.}

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