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Having come back to the sky above Frost City, Abel checked the ground below him. he had a mischievous smile on his face.
This time, he switched to his new powerful weapon. He wanted to see if it was possible to break the city’s large circle with it. This wasn’t the original plan, by the way. The circle at Silan City was actually a lot stronger than the one here at Frost City, but as things had it, even twenty of his super explosive balls were not enough to break through the tough defense set up here.
Nevertheless, he was much more confident today because of the new tool he brought. That was until something strange happened before he even started.
From what he could see, all the giant ballistas on Frost City’s wall had people maneuvering them. There were also troops of wizards standing next to them in line. It didn’t look like they were preparing for just one person. No, it looked like they were preparing to defend against an entire army. His heart shook a bit when he saw this. After telling White Cloud to make a landing at a hill slope that was not so far away, he jumped down from White Cloud’s back and summoned a dire wolf. From there, he rode the dire wolf towards the top of the hill slope.
A middle-aged advanced wizard smiled and greeted Abel, “Greetings, druid! Are you also here because you’ve heard about what happened.”
A talkative advanced wizard. It was not very common these days because it’s very hard to become an advanced wizard if one couldn’t be alone for a long period of time.
Abel smiled and replied, “Greetings! My name is Bennett. I’m only here because I saw some wizards gathering here. Mind if you tell me what’s happened?
With a very good reputation on the central continent, the elves were regarded well on the central continent. It’s not all that strange that an advanced wizard would want to come to Abel to have a conversation.
“Druid Bennett, Aha!” the advanced wizard replied, “Greetings, greetings! It sounds like you’ve stumbled into a great opportunity today, Druid Bennett! The name’s Jevons, by the way.”
Abel began pointing towards Frost City, “So what happened, Wizard Jevons? Correct me if I’m wrong, but it kind of looks like Frost City’s trying to hold against an invasion or something.”
Wizard Jevons laughed out loudly in response to that, “Can’t blame you for thinking that, haha! The Blizzard clan just put up a bounty on a wizard from the Lightning clan. In retaliation, the Lightning clan declared a wizard’s war on the Blizzard clan. You’re in for the show if you’re interested in looking at how wizards fight each other. It’s been quite a while since the last wizard’s war took place.”
It wasn’t all that simple for Abel to hear that. While he felt a great sense of belonging when he heard that the Lightning clan would go so far for him to start a war, he was also shocked to hear how fast the Blizzard clan’s intelligence agency could be. No, he had no idea how much trouble he inflicted on the Blizzard clan. For “just” killing one rank seventeen and three rank seventeen wizards, he’s also dragged one rank eighteen wizard and one rank nineteen wizard to be involved in this incident. Those were two elite wizards that became living test subjects because of him. Also, the Blizzard clan just wasted forty top-level gemstones because of him, and that was no small amount to be recovered on short notice. The Blizzard clan did manage to retrieve ten by stealing or buying from everywhere they could think of. However, as one could probably imagine for themselves, it was not a very profitable business for them.
What made this worse was the bounty on Abel. It didn’t seem like such a big deal to them until they saw the lightning clan’s reaction. As of now, the lightning clan’s actual strength had been greatly reduced since one of its senior members went to do shutdown training. Just when the Lightning clan’s rivals thought it was a good time for a surprise attack, that same elder was reported to pass his training in just five days. If that wasn’t surprising enough, those five days were when Abel arrived on the central continent.
So what did it all mean for the lightning clan? Well, they were just reminded how important it was to have battle-ready members at their disposal at all times. Since a wizard prodigy, one that was completely new to the central continent, came to them, they would do everything in their power to ensure that he would follow them. As a matter of fact, they already considered Abel as a potential key member before he officially joined.
Back to the present. Now that Abel’s had a bounty on him, there was no way that the lightning clan would tolerate the Blizzard clan any longer. A while ago, when the Blizzard clan had a problem with Abel back on the Holy Continent, Wizard Dunn was the one who came out to resolve everything. Wizard Dunn wasn’t here now, and although the Blizzard clan never managed to inflict any sort of serious injuries on him, their repeated offense really crossed the lines that the lightning clan.
Wizard Godwin would’ve made things a lot smoother for the Blizzard clan if he wasn’t turned into a living test subject so early. If he survived the wrath of his superiors just a bit longer, then the Blizzard clan would’ve known all there was regarding Abel’s special status as a member of the subcontinent lightning clan. As for why he didn’t say it out loud a long time ago, it was mainly because he wanted to secretly settle things with Wizard Dunn without causing another major conflict between his group and the lightning clan. That thought was ruined as soon as Abel became a wanted man.
Elder Langland twitched his eyes when he spoke, “Marz, the lightning clan just declared a wizard’s war on us because of Wizard Abel. How could you not have told us about Wizard Abel this whole time?”
Elder Marz only shook his head, “I don’t know about him! I don’t know! I don’t know Wizard Abel’s connected to the Lightning clan. All the information I got came from Emir! Damn Emir! He kept the most important information hidden from us!”
Bunch was starting to get worried, “There’s only an hour left before the wizard’s war begins. I don’t know if the city’s large circle can hold on for much longer if we don’t go out now.”
Keep in mind that there were only ten top-level gemstones supplying energy to the city’s large circle. As disappointing as what Bunch was saying sounded, the other two elders became much more alert with the situation that’s going on.
On the central continent, the wizards settled their differences by waging wizard’s war at each other. It was their way of asserting authority without spending too many resources. That being said, the Wizard Union was never supportive of the starting of any wizard’s war. As the biggest enemy of the central continent was now the nation of Evil, it was not the time for the wizards to fight against each other. Still, now that there was one happening right now, they would minimize the damage by setting a time limit of one hour for the war.
To explain the rules, the wizards would be held starting at a time agreed between the two parties. After a duration of one hour, neither side would be allowed to continue their attacks. There would be wizard overseers to ensure that these rules were carried through. Of course, if one party was clearly at a disadvantage, then that party would have all the right to hide inside their own city large circle, while their opponent would vent out their anger by reducing as much energy from that same city large circle as they could. The other wizards would ridicule the ones that hid inside their large circle for a long time, but at least they would survive.
That was exactly how the Blizzard clan worked nowadays, by the way. As powerful as the lightning clan had become, they would’ve never accepted to face them in an hour-long confrontation.
Elder Langland advised, “We should call everyone in the organization and lend them all our top-level gemstones. Once this is settled, we can have the organization pay them back by two or three times more.”
Bunch nodded, “That sounds like a good idea to me.”
Then they all started to look towards Elder Marz. Their intentions were quite apparent. Since all this trouble came from Wizard Marz, he should’ve been the one to lend out the loans.
Elder Marz shook his head as he had no other choice, “Fine, I’ll do it. I’ll apply for a gemstone loan from the wizard organization.”
As few as the top-level gemstones were inside Frost City, Elder Marz had no choice but to apply for a direct loan from the Wizard Organisation. It wasn’t all that easy for him, given his low credit score. Not a lot of people were willing to lend their stones to him at first. Even with the help of Elder Langland and Elder Bunch, he only had a total of about a dozen top-level gemstones at the end. It kind of got him resentful towards the ones that refused to lend to him. As good as the Blizzard clan was at exploiting others, they were not so good at taking care of the trouble that they started.
A rank twenty law enforcer wizard in red appeared outside Frost City, “The wizard war is about to commence! I would like to ask something from both the lightning clan and the Blizzard clan. Is either of you willing to settle this peacefully?”
A wizard in white appeared at a spot that was a kilometer outside the Frost City gate, “Wizard Lucian! Please, let this battle start quickly! The Lightning clan will not back away from this one.”
That was a very bold statement made towards a rank twenty wizard. It was almost like this wizard came to have a picnic and not a war. As soon as he said that, nine streaks of white light appeared right next to him. There were two rank nineteen, four rank eighteen, and three rank seventeen wizards next to him.
A wizard watching on a small hill scratched his head, “Just ten advanced wizards for a wizard’s war? What’s Lightning clan even thinking?”
Wizard Jevos, next to him, shook his head towards the statement, “Well, what do you know? Ten’s a big number against a group like the Blizzard clan, as far as I can see. You know what? I think that’s actually plenty of respect the Lightning clan is giving right there.”
Abel thought that Wizard Jevos knew what he was talking about, “How many advanced wizards are in the Frost City, Wizard Jevos?”
Wizard Jevos gave a detailed reply, “Good question, Druid Bennett. There’s no simple answer to that, but I’ll give my best try:
The Blizzard clan has never made public how many groups they held as victims were commonplace when fending against holy crusaders. The most commonly believed estimate is that they would always have at least ten or above units of troops ready. One troop has about seven to ten advanced wizards that should be at least rank seventeen or above. There would be a supply team behind each troop consisting of rank sixteen or rank seventeen advanced wizards.
After the preparation team, what you’d have is the back-up support team. The number can get a lot higher for the back-up support team members, who will take care of providing service to the main troop and the back-up support team. The number can get very massive if you also count in the families of each wizard, so if you’re trying to calculate the number of wizards living inside Frost City, my answer to that is, well, it’s very hard if you want to get the sum right.”
Abel’s comment to that was quite simple, “Wow, I suppose you should never try to underestimate the Blizzard clan.”
With a rough calculation, Abel discerned that there should be at least a hundred or more advanced wizards in all of the Blizzard clan. Whether in terms of their numbers or their strength, that was already more than the total of the advanced wizards living on the Holy Continent.
Another wizard smiled towards Abel, “I guess you’re new to your quest, Druid Bennett. You know, the Blizzard clan and the Lightning clan aren’t the best ones around here. They are purely human groups who are not very tolerant of other kinds, so you won’t see anyone in another class with them. If you want to, I’m pretty sure you can come across groups that have all sorts of occupation holders as members. Look out for the ones with wizards as their main fighting force. Those are the scariest on the battlefield, I would say.”
Wizard Jevos couldn’t help but argue against that, “Tolerant? What do you mean by that? Having other classes will just hinder the team’s flexibility as a whole. Wizards are the weakest in terms of their defensive capability, so if you’re going to have other occupation holders, that will just increase their likelihood of getting injured!”