Published at 3rd of January 2026 11:37 am

Chapter 977: Echo & Reigns.

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Immediately after Alec cast the spell, a massive flaming fist shot forward toward Roderic, with Alec trailing just a little behind it, Roderic in response to this attack on him instantly raised his left hand which was covered by a magic gauntlet and fired controlled mana burst balls into the air to meet the Enhanced Flaming Fist.

His reaction had been really swift.

Bang!

A small explosion went off mid-air as both attacks met mid air, and smoke spread out, covering Alec’s figure who was still dropping down, which caused many of the War God Mage Academy supporters in the stands to gasp in shock.

While most of them thought Alec must have been injured for being caught in the blast range, Roderic on the ground had his doubts and retreated a few steps back, confusing many of the low-rank mages watching and didn’t understand what was going on.

Roderic could have sworn he’d seen Alec bend his body and push himself further into the blast the moment it happened, and he couldn’t understand why anyone would be that eager to do such a thing, entering a blast.

But as a safety measure, he chose to fall back.

From within the smoke, a long Qi slash suddenly flew out toward him, as it slashed the smoke into 2, the moment it appeared, Roderic could already see Alec dashing forward to him with a smile on his face, pulling off the upper part of his uniform and revealing his bare chest.

On Alec’s left hand was a tattoo of a wolf that seems to have been inked by both pure shadow and light, so vivid it looked alive to him, like he was being locked on by the wolf tattoo, but Roderic had no time to think about that.

What mattered most to him at the moment was the fact that Alec was clearly still alive and unharmed even in the littlest form, he quickly tucked in his stance and swung his sword, aiming to deflect the incoming Qi slash.

Though the force of it pushed him back, he still managed to stop it after going back three steps, he braced the blade body with his left hand and redirected the Qi slash toward Knight, who wasn’t too far away.

This move caught Knight off guard; as he hadn’t expected Roderic, who should have his hands full with Alec, to divert an attack toward him, that moment of surprise cost him, creating a fatal delay in his judgment as he struggled to decide which attack he was supposed to block.

Coming straight at him was a barrage of bullets, and from another angle the residual Qi slash was closing in.

Normally, there would be no debate on which attack to focus on, as common knowledge was that a residual attack could be ignored since it was always weaker than a direct one.

But the problem here was that the person who sent that residual attack was Alec, and there was no way Knight would ever believe Alec’s attack was “weak,” even if it was just the leftover force.

After hesitating for a split second, he finally made his choice, that he would be blocking Alec’s attack instead, but even though it was only a moment of delay, it was more than enough time for Cassian to seize the opening he’d been waiting for.

The moment Cassian realised Roderic had helped occupy Knight, he sent mana surging straight into both his guns, Echo and Reign.

[> Mid Tier Skill – Compressed Energy Bullets <]

The runes on the guns lit up, this time with a brown glow, as Cassian lifted his pistols to shoot again. But now his posture was different, Echo was in his left hand, with his arm fully extended, while Reign sat in his right hand, held close to his chest like a professional hitman hiding his true intent.

Bang!

Echo fired, releasing a compressed earth-element bullet that tore through the air, as it left the barrel, it produced a lingering, echoing ring that followed the bullet as it flew toward its intended target.

Knight clearly heard the shot and tensed up, bracing himself for the pain, but before anything hit him, he heard another sound.

Cassian didn’t know why Knight was so fixated on protecting Sophia, but knowing she could give their captain(Alec) an extra life (when her spell redirected Roderic strike) only made Cassian more determined to get her out.

He made it his mission to get her eliminated from the battle, and he committed to that goal fully, and eventually he had seen an easy way to take her out, but Knight had shadowed her and was acting like some exclusive bodyguard for her.

Cassian would have loved some help to eliminate her, since he felt she was really that important, but his other four teammates were all busy, so he could only rely on himself.

With Knight’s interference, he was forced to keep firing bullets, it wasn’t that he didn’t have any more powerful skills, but he knew that the moment he stopped, Knight would take advantage of the opening to jump into the shadows with a spell and then defeat him easily, he had seen Knight previous fight from a mana viewing crystal that they used to understand the War God Mage Team.

And since he didn’t want that, he decided it was best to stall the both of them like this until he had reinforcements.

That was until Roderic helped him, giving Cassian the chance to power up his guns and use a more lethal move.

At first, he fired straight at Knight with Echo to make it look like that was his only target, but something else happened when he was sure Knight wasn’t planning to defend against the bullet, he took another shot, and this time with his gun called Reign.

The way he shot, the angle of his arm and the slight raise of his hand as his finger squeezed the trigger, looked way too beautiful to those watching, as the bullet flew even faster than Echo’s, meeting it midway with an unnatural curve and colliding into it.

Peng!

Knight wasn’t looking back, but at that moment he didn’t need to see what was happening to know that Cassian had changed the trajectory of the bullet, the bullet from Reign had knocked the bullet from Echo off its original path and redirected it toward Sophia’s position, and now it was too late for him to turn around in time to defend her.

Bang! Boom!

Knight, who had set up his defence, was finally struck by the residual Qi slash, and the resulting explosion sent him flying into the air and away from Sophia.

She, on the other hand, managed to gather her wits at the last moment after recovering a little from the backlash, by raising her right hand to cast a shadow portal spell, as a small portal appeared in front of her, and the bullet was absorbed into it.

“Ehhn!” Sophia exclaimed in surprise as she saw Cassian sliding toward her, now that Knight was out of the way, Cassian felt no threat closing in. With his guns pulsing, he activated a spell.

[> Mid Tier Skill - Gunslinger Array <]

This time he wasn’t firing a single bullet, but multiple rounds, and the reason for her surprise was that he was shooting at different locations and not even close to her, the sound of bullets gatling into the hard ground echoed as they began to ricochet, clashing against each other and forming a spinning circle of bullets around them.

Knight tried to rush back despite his disoriented state, but all the bullets seemed to be coated in a repelling Qi, making it difficult for him to force his way through at full speed, and he could shadow travel into it as it was repelling such spells activation, his only option was to manually break the gun array.

While this was happening, Cassian finally slid to a stop right in front of Sophia and pushed Echo forward, aiming at her.

Sophia, acting on instinct, thrust her left hand out and created another shadow portal before casting:

[> Mid Tier Spell - Shadow Counter <]

Bang!

The moment Cassian fired, she released the bullet she’d previously absorbed into the first shadow portal, sending it out from the second one she had just formed, directly toward the mouth of his gun.

As both bullets collided, a sharp spark of light burst out, as Sophia twisted her face away from the blinding flash, clearly unused to this kind of exchange, Cassian, however, had anticipated it.

The moment the explosion’s shockwave faded, he leaned in from his sliding stance and slammed the back of her head with the butt of his gun.

Even though the clash of bullets wasn’t strong enough to seriously injure him, being that close had still left him with a few cuts and bruises.

“One down, four more to go,” Cassian said as he stood, blood slightly dripping from his mouth. By now, the bullet array had dispersed and all the bullets clattered to the ground, he then kicked Sophia’s unconscious body off the stage.

As he turned, all he saw was Knight’s dead stare fixed on him from the edge of where the bullet array had just stopped him from passing.

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