Chapter 156: Bitter Struggle

The wizard duel between Greem and Anderson was intensely difficult.

It had to be said that, compared to a veteran wizard like Anderson, he—a newly advanced wizard—held a massive gap in both combat experience and spellcasting capability. If the support and auxiliary enhancements provided to Anderson by the Swamp Tower were factored in, this battle took on an even more one-sided trend.

In a mere five minutes, Anderson had secured his tactical advantage. The raging wind tornado, carrying countless wind blades and slash-forms, continually broke through Greem’s spell interceptions and brought the fires of battle right to his side.

The towering and majestic physique granted to Greem by the Flame Fiend Transformation provided him with a formidable physical body and seemingly endless fire-type energy during wizardry duels. However, once the battle turned unfavorable, his defensive vulnerabilities became much more apparent than usual.

Greem was inherently not a speed-type wizard specializing in agility. On the contrary, among all his physical attributes, agility was his greatest weakness.

Therefore, the towering fiery giant transformed by Greem stood firmly in place. The ground beneath his feet had melted into semi-fluid magma, and a fifty-meter radius around his body was wreathed in churning, rolling void flames. Anyone attempting close quarters combat had to endure endless fire damage.

Perhaps this point could help him establish certain advantages when fighting against agility-type wizards. Yet when he faced another elemental wizard who did not need to consider defense and only needed to attack with full force, his weakness appeared glaringly obvious.

Wizard Anderson’s elemental affinities lay in dark particles and wind particles, which also caused the spells he cast to be primarily wind-based while carrying intensely corrosive dark elements. The wounds cut across Greem’s body by the wind blades were perpetually wreathed in faint black smoke; without using massive amounts of fire energy to scour and annihilate these dark elements, it was difficult for even his physique to heal rapidly.

This made his battle increasingly arduous!

Continuing to develop along the current situation, even if Greem went all out, it would still be difficult to withstand Anderson’s attacks. And once he suffered defeat—this being a sealed pocket dimension—there was simply no route available for escape.

Greem lowered his upper body, plunging his left hand into the melting magma floor beneath his feet. When he pulled his left hand back out, an entire chunk of ground nearly five meters across was brought up with it, transforming into a blazing, roaring lava shield that blocked in front of him.

The rapid, popping sounds of wind blades cutting continued endlessly. The front of the lava shield blocked a horizontal sweeping tornado, and the terrifying wind blades wrapped inside the wind vortex were like countless rotating steel blades, instantly carving over a hundred crisscrossing deep trenches into the shield's surface.

Roaring, Greem lifted the lava shield as his feet sank deeply into the magma below. Driven by his will, the scorching lava wound its way upward along his body, replenishing the shield in his hands. Unfortunately, before he could repair the previous damage, an exceptionally sharp wind spear crashed into the surface of the lava shield, instantly shattering into countless scattered minor wind blades and miniature wind vortexes.

With this blow, the thickness of the lava shield was directly halved, and the remaining thin layer was no longer sufficient to withstand the next attack.

Greem waved his flame scepter continuously, and aided by the Voodoo Secret Tome, three large-scale fire-type spells burst open successively around Anderson. Unfortunately, attacks of this magnitude could only shatter the opponent's upcoming spell, yet struggled to pierce the elemental protections to harm his true body.

Under such circumstances, close-quarters combat was actually easier to inflict damage upon the enemy. However, with Greem’s heavy and sluggish pace, trying to catch up to Anderson—who mastered the endless winds—was nothing short of wishful thinking!

Greem turned his head and roared angrily, "Entik, I know you are here. You don't intend to wait until I fail before fawning on that ugly freak, do you? If you still want to attain freedom, then get out here. I need your help right now!"

Naturally, the target of Greem’s shouting was not Entik, who hovered around his flame barrier awaiting a chance to launch a sneak attack, but rather the primary consciousness of the evil insect that had formed a strategic alliance with him.

At this moment within the sealed pocket dimension, the situation of the entire battlefield was clear at a glance.

The number of living beings remaining inside the space could now be counted on one's fingers. Aside from Anderson floating mid-air, there remained only Greem who had advanced to a fire wizard, Mary who had broken free of the execution chair and remained entangled with the flame giant, Entik who had become Anderson's loyal servant, and the goblin Cappy hiding invisibly at the furthest edge.

At this juncture, the only thing that could possibly bring him assistance was likely the hidden primary consciousness of the evil insect. If it did not wish to see the overall battle trend head toward failure and lose its own hope of reclaiming its body, then it had to come out and do something!

Greem shouted a couple of times, and just as he was about to give up this hope, a sudden anomaly finally occurred within the arena!

A strange, squeaking friction sound of bones echoed out.

One by one, the corpses of apprentices who had died long ago began to struggle to their feet, dragging their twisted, crooked bodies and limbs as they shambled toward Anderson’s location. Initially, their movements were extremely sluggish and stiff, but within the span of just three or five heartbeats, their movements abruptly turned fluid. Some ran, some crawled, some leapt... their forms agile and nimble like apes, they climbed ceaselessly upward from the base of the altar, surging frantically toward the slightly grim-faced Anderson.

At the same time, Entik—who had contributed very little since the start of the battle—suddenly experienced violent tremors throughout his body. His entire person shook incessantly like a sifting sieve, as all manner of beetles and scorpions continuously fell from beneath his enveloping black robe. Even more eerie was that these bugs actually divided into two distinct factions, gathering into two insect tides that began frantically biting and tearing at each other.

*Hmph, this fellow has finally started making a move!*

Greem straightened his posture and swept his gaze across the battlefield.

The apprentices transformed into bug-men by the evil insect had already died; the ones currently manipulating their remaining corpses were merely the corpse-eating bugs hidden within. Like fearless warriors, they gathered beneath Wizard Anderson, forming a small mound of corpses, leaping up repeatedly to pounce and bite.

After all, this was a sealed space expanded with the aid of the tower's power, and the internal height was always limited. Therefore, when thirty-some apprentices played human-tower stacking, it genuinely carried the intent of dragging Wizard Anderson down from mid-air.

The elemental protection shielding Wizard Anderson’s exterior defended against spell attacks with near-invincible effectiveness, but against close-quarters physical attacks, it became quite mediocre.

Watching the ugly, distorted, terrifying faces roaring and lunging right in front of him, Wizard Anderson hurled a furious wind tornado directly onto the corpse mound. The violent wind blades and terrifying wind vortex instantly shredded them into fragments.

Yet the next moment, a massive booming roar erupted, and countless terrifying flying insects spewed forth from the remains of the apprentices, forming an airtight dark cloud that instantly swallowed Wizard Anderson’s body.

Attacks of this scale might give Anderson a battered and bruised appearance, but they struggled to kill him. Therefore, seeing this scene, a fierce glint flashed in Greem’s eyes, and he immediately played a trump card he had prepared for a long time.

Golem Self-Destruction!

Under the command of his mental consciousness, the wizard-grade golem magic core that Anderson had stashed inside his robe self-destructed!

This was a golem magic core that he had specifically modified. During his previous battle with Alice, he had exercised restraint and only activated a single Flame Lord, leading Wizard Anderson’s subconscious to believe that Greem possessed only this single wizard-grade golem magic core.

Therefore, during the period when his body was controlled by Greem, after Anderson fished out that magic core, he let down his guard a fraction toward Greem. He never imagined that Greem had long since concealed another magic core on Alice, while the one left on his own body for Anderson to search and find was a completely modified golem magic core.

At this very moment, when Wizard Anderson was enveloped by the evil insect’s subordinates, Greem finally issued the self-destruction command.

The next second, a massive pillar of lava fire abruptly erupted within this sealed pocket dimension. Extreme high temperatures, terrifying scorching heat, a violent and fierce surge of magma, and rampaging terrifying flame torrents combined to form a world of lava capable of eradicating all vitality, instantly sweeping over Wizard Anderson’s location.

The swarm of flying insects that had filled the sky just moments before suffered a fatal blow, with only a handful surviving out of the tens of thousands. Within the insect tide frantically fighting for control inside Entik’s body, a sharp, piercing insect hiss suddenly rang out.

"Greem, you bastard, you—"

Unfortunately, before its shrill curses could finish, they were drowned out by an even more terrifying and horrifying insect hiss.

Clearly, the battle unfolding over there was equally fraught with extreme danger, a matter of life and death in a single instant!

"Serves you right! Who asked you to try and use me as a scapegoat. I despise being utilized the most, so consider this a lesson for you. You'd better focus on your internal war! Don't get careless and let the puppet consciousness swallow you up instead. That would make things even more interesting!" Greem sneered dismissively.

In the distance, Anderson’s figure had been obscured by the violent elemental backfire and turbulence, making it impossible to peer into the inner details. Greem could only turn and walk toward Mary.

Bloodline power could indeed allow an apprentice to grow rapidly, but once the source of the bloodline fell into enemy hands, one would instantly become a helpless puppet at the mercy of others!

At this moment, Mary had transformed into a rampaging phantom assassin, darting and weaving rapidly around the Flame Lord. The blood-red bow in her hands popped in continuous rapid succession, sending blood-red arrows directly into the vital points of her opponent’s body. Yet the Flame Lord clearly excelled only at offense and lacked aptitude for restraint and capture, thus charging frantically several times only for Mary to evade them by relying on her ultra-high agility.

As the master’s "ally," the Flame Lord had sworn not to launch unbridled attacks against Mary. Consequently, while Greem was struggling fiercely against Anderson, the Flame Lord had actually been entangled by Mary to a standstill!

At this point, Greem swayed his towering physique as he arrived at the battlefield. The moment Mary blundered into his flame barrier, the void flames instantly transformed into fiery chains, binding her tightly and dragging her right before him.

Although Greem had only just advanced to a wizard, when he wanted to deal with a quasi-wizard, it still appeared effortless and well within his mastery.