The assassin vanished from his spot to avoid the firestorm, but the light from the fire allowed anyone who was looking for it to see a dark silhouette.
The two siblings instantly reacted and used their spells to barrage the assassin with attacks.
The assassin raised his daggers in front of him and crossed them, creating a circle of darkness in front of them as he ran forward to engage the three in close combat.
The circle of darkness devoured all the spells that landed in it, making them disappear completely.
The problem with fighting Darkness Mages was that most people didn't spar against them often and didn't know how to deal with them when they faced one.
Kisuke took out his sword enthusiastically. Ever since he got it, he never had a chance to actually use it, and now the chance was finally there. He even knew how to use it!
His body was far superior to the assassin's, so he had nothing to worry about. With his perception and speed, the assassin would never be able to harm him. Although his connection to mana was limited, his body was still strengthened to the fifth stage.
"Kisuke, be careful. We will back you up!"
Hanako shouted nervously when she saw Kisuke charging forward with his sword. Kisuke channeled his mana into the sword, generating powerful lightning.
The sword met the daggers, and the lightning was swallowed by the dark hole. However, it was easy to see that the assassin was strained by that hit; he even stepped back right away after sensing the hit.
A spear thrust was sent right next to Kisuke's head, passing by, and trying to pierce through the assassin's head. Taeko was a spear user, and he tried to use Kisuke's body to hide his attack.
The assassin dodged the spear by retreating and a dragon made of water was sent from the spear to chase him. The dark hole in front of the assassin's daggers ignited and turned into a dark fire.
The fire ate the dragon in a second, making it evaporate almost instantly. Before the assassin could use the fire to attack, a sword swing came from below to hit his leg, coated in a layer of water.
This time it was Hanako who used a katana like Kisuke's. All four of them were using sixth-grade weapons. The prince and the princess couldn't handle a seventh-grade weapon, it was impossible without enough mental strength.
The assassin directly sent the fire to meet with the sword strike, defending himself again.
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇt'It seems that although this assassin isn't an Elite Human, he is still a genius mage on the same level as the mages from the academy.'
It made sense as, unlike an empire, which has people from all walks of life, the Assassin Order was a professional organization for assassinating people. All the members were professionals, or else nobody would fear them.
No matter how talented he was, the assassin was pressured by the three geniuses attacking him. Kisuke was holding back his power to the same level as Hanako and Taeko, so they won't feel he was stronger than them.
Every time the assassin defended himself, he had to quickly defend a different place to avoid getting cut, burned, trapped, or blasted. He had no time to attack, and slowly as the fight continued, the synchronization between the three improved drastically.
The assassin found himself being pushed back and being on the losing side very quickly when his opponents improved their teamwork. He had to expand a huge amount of mana to defend himself from the unending barrage of attacks.
Even worse, his mental power was under a lot of strain. He had to keep up his concentration to the maximum to block in time the attacks that came from different directions and sense Kisuke's tricky attacks when he covered them with Darkness Mana.
He also had to concentrate on combining the Fire Mana with the Darkness Mana, and it was also straining his mind.
He was getting sweaty after a minute of intense fighting. He had to block more than 3 attacks per second on average during this exchange.
*Slash*
He reacted one millisecond too slow and Hanako's sword cut through his thigh, sending a stream of water into his bloodstream.
"Argh!"
The assassin groaned with pain as he did his best to disengage the three to get a second of rest to purge the water from his blood.
He jumped away from the three, trying to run away. Earlier he attacked them thinking he could kill three enemy true mages, yet the joke was on him.
Before he could even land, a powerful sword strike was coming at his waist, and he had to block Kisuke's attack to avoid being cut in half.
He wanted to attack after defending since Kisuke's spell diminished while his spell was still fine, but a spear came at him from below, trying to impale him.
He ignored the pain in his thigh and defended himself from Taeko's attack, and then again, he had to dodge and deflect Hanako's sword.
But in the next round, he sensed Kisuke's attack, but when he tried to turn around and block it, the water in his blood vessels blasted, ripping off the arteries in his leg.
The pain made him slightly slower, and it was all that Kisuke needed to leave another superficial cut on the assassin's body, hitting his arm.
The stream of lightning numbed the feeling of his arm, making it feel heavier. In a moment of disaster, the dagger slipped from his hand and fell to the ground.
"No!"
He shouted in despair as he saw Taeko's spear about to pierce his chest. He defended it with his remaining hand, but he could only watch the sword strike that followed.
Hanako's sword swiftly claimed the assassin's head, and the three took a step back and breathed heavily while looking at the assassin's corpse.
"Good job guys, it was a tough fight."
Hanako raised a thumb at the two men who smiled in response. Although they didn't take any hits and were completely safe, it was still an intense fight that required them to use their full strength. At least that's what Hanako and Taeko thought.
*BOOM!*
While they were catching their breath, a huge explosion came from the center part of the base.
The three looked at each other and nodded.
"Let's head back there and see what's going on. Kisuke, cover us with Darkness Mana. We will approach the place carefully and make sure what's going on from a distance."
They were already 7 kilometers away from the battle zone and had no idea what was going on there.
Kisuke nodded and covered them with darkness, making it hard for others to perceive them.
"I will lead the way; I will avoid enemies until we're sure our side won this battle."
Kisuke said and started jogging in the direction of the explosion. The other two jogged right behind him while being careful not to step outside the zone affected by his camouflage spell.
Although Kisuke called it jogging, it was only a term meant to describe the intensity of the activity; they were running at a speed higher than 50 kph (A/N: 31 mph).
When they got closer, they slowed down their speed to be careful until they started walking.
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏm"Look, the fight is over. Those are our soldiers; I can recognize some of them. But there are much fewer soldiers than I thought there will be."
Taeko was socializing with some of the troops while Hanako and Kisuke were busy fooling around in their room, so he knew some of the best soldiers. They were all elite soldiers of the dynasty and were worth knowing.
----------
Five minutes ago:
"Squads, strike again!"
The squads that were in charge of destroying the magic circle charged their attacks again. They've been at it for 4 minutes now and their attacks consumed over a million of the enemy's coins.
They charged their squad spells again and bombarded the magic circle. Overall, around 50% of the assassins were killed, but the soldiers took worse hits, especially the ones at the Advanced Mage Stage.
*BOOM!*
After this round of squad spells the result was different, and the whole plateau suddenly exploded with a huge fire spell.
The soldiers defended themselves with mini-team spells. Normally they needed less than half a second to cast a powerful team spell, but now they didn't have half a second. The explosion was too sudden.
They weren't elite soldiers for nothing; they instantly cast the defensive spells as cells of three mages.
The explosion passed a few seconds later and everyone reduced their defenses. Tragically, not everyone managed to survive the explosion.
The explosion came from a third magic circle that was intertwined with the defensive magic circle and the darkness magic circle.
As soon as the defensive magic circle crumbled, it used 100,000 charged coins to explode with Fire magic.
The ones to take the full burn of the explosion were none other than Platoon 1 who worked together to destroy the magic circles and were the closest to its center. 3 squads were attacking the magic circle and couldn't defend themselves in time.
Luckily for them, the other two squads were maintaining defensive squad spells. Although those defenses crumbled under the explosion, they saved half of the platoon while the other half got killed or suffered from serious injuries.
"Damn assassins!"
The assassins who were still left behind weren't protected from the explosion. In fact, they had to defend themselves, and none of the advanced mages survived.