WorldCrafter - Building My Underground Kingdom-Chapter 158 - Magus Trapped

158: Magus Trapped

158: Magus Trapped

Above them, the clouds roared.

Lightning rained down, striking around them in a violent storm as the Magus unleashed his wrath.

Bolts turned the ground to glass, forcing Ben to weave through the inferno.

But he never stopped moving.

He deflected two more strikes mid-air, flipped forward, and came crashing down with a meteor-like strike.

The Magus roared.

With a pulse of aether, he reversed gravity around them, the world flipping sideways in an instant.

Ben twisted in the air, adjusting mid-fall, and hurled himself back with brute force.

The pickaxe spun like a wheel, crashing against a jagged arc of black lightning, shattering it.

Sparks burst between them as their weapons clashed again.

Ben bled from shallow cuts, his armor cracked in places, but his grin never faded.

The Magus’s face was no longer calm.

Sweat lined his brow.

Blood ran down his side.

Ben’s pickaxe caught his next blow and turned it aside with a loud crack.

“Running out of tricks?” Ben growled, voice low and steady.

The Magus’s eyes narrowed.

“I haven’t even started.”

The Magus’s eyes burned with fury.

With a flick of his wrist, the wind shifted slicing horizontally as hundreds of mana blades erupted from thin air.

Each was forged from a different element, fire, lightning, earth, even pure gravity, and they spun toward Ben.

Ben didn’t flinch.

With a stomp, he vaulted into the air, twisting mid-spin.

His pickaxe flared with brilliant light, drinking the ambient mana as it pulsed with Magic Destroyer’s.

He roared—and swung.

BOOOOM!

The arc of his strike didn’t just cut through the blades, Ben could feel it now, it’s eating them.

A vacuum of silvery light erupted from the impact, pulling the nearest mana toward the pickaxe like a black hole in reverse.

The remaining blades crumbled before reaching him.

The Magus blinked in disbelief.

But Ben wasn’t done.

He threw the pickaxe.

It spun like a comet, trailing threads of silver fire.

The Magus raised both arms, a dozen layers of lightning barriers snapping into place in front of him.

The pickaxe hit.

CRASH!

One layer gone.

Then two.

Then five.

The seventh cracked.

The eighth shattered.

The ninth held barely, forcing the weapon to bounce off and embed itself into the stone behind the Magus, quivering with contained energy.

Ben landed with a thud, blood dripping from his lips.

His eyes never left the Magus.

“Didn’t break the last one,” he muttered, wiping his mouth.

“Guess I’ll try harder.”

The Magus was already retaliating.

With a roar, he stabbed his hand into the ground.

A pulse of violet lightning surged outward, cracking the cavern floor.

From the ruins rose a serpent, a colossal elemental wyrm of lightning and obsidian, its body ten meters long, eyes glowing with hunger.

Ben’s lips twitched.

“Bring it, ugly.”

The wyrm leaped, jaws wide.

Ben sprinted forward, diving under the arc of its bite.

He retrieved his pickaxe mid-roll, came up swinging, and slammed it into the wyrm’s underbelly.

BOOOOM!

Stone and lightning exploded outward as the serpent’s body split in half.

Electricity arced madly in all directions, and Ben emerged through the storm, eyes gleaming, pickaxe humming with stolen mana.

The Magus scowled.

“Enough.” He raised his hand.

The three rings on his finger flared,fire, lightning, and shadow igniting in unison.

“Oblivion Surge.”

A beam of pure aether burst from his palm, wide enough to vaporize a mountain.

Ben met it head-on.

With a yell, he surged forward, planting his feet, dragging his pickaxe through the air.

The weapon howled with absorbed power.

Runes along its shaft lit up in blinding white.

He struck.

CRAAAAAACK!!!

The pickaxe clashed with the beam, and for a moment, the world went white, soundless, breathless.

Then, The beam split, sheared down the middle, roaring past Ben on either side like a parted sea.

And Ben stood at the center.

Still breathing.

Still standing.

Still grinning.

“So this’s all you got?

Seem I overestimate you.” freeωebnovēl.c૦m

The Magus’s glare darkened.

His pride cracked.

“You dare mock me?

You!?” he hissed, hands raised once more.

Ben dashed forward without answering, his pickaxe carving through the charged air like a thunderclap.

Their weapons clashed lightning coated fists against mana devouring artifact.

Sparks erupted with each blow.

The ground shook beneath their feet.

Clang!

Ben spun low, sweeping for the legs.

The Magus jumped, countered with a bolt of red lightning, but Ben raised the pickaxe just in time

SNAP!

The bolt fizzled against its edge, mana unraveling mid-flight.

Ben used the momentum to spin, shoulder-slamming the Magus back a step.

The moment the Magus’s boot scraped across the edge of the outer glyph circle, the runes ignited one after another, like wildfire catching oil.

Man surged upward around the Magus, locking him inside a dome of spiraling mana threads.

Walls of light snapped shut, each one laced with suppressive glyphs, energy anchors, and disruption fields.

The Magus’s eyes went wide.

“What—”

CLANG!

Ben didn’t give him time to finish.

The pickaxe slammed down on the barrier from outside, just as dozens of embedded balista lit up along the castle walls.

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

Mana bolt roared toward the dome like shooting stars, detonating on impact.

The shield held, compressing every blast inward.

Inside, the Magus howled in frustration, lightning crashing against the walls of his prison.

Then the second layer activated.

CRACK!

Chains of glowing aether erupted from the glyphs beneath him, wrapping around his limbs, anchoring him in place.

His body jerked, lightning sputtering from his arms.

Ben landed in front of the dome.

His pickaxe rested against his shoulder, eyes cold.

“Now let’s see how you like being trapped.”

The Magus threw back his head and screamed.

His aura detonated outward in all directions, the sheer force cracking the earth underfoot.

The dome wavered, but held.

From the castle wall, more spells activated.

Spheres of mana formed in the sky above, condensing from the residual energy left in Elvira’s Cataclysm Requiem.

They aligned, then dropped.

BAMMMM!

A rain of condensed elemental fury pelted the dome.

Flame.

Ice.

Lightning.

Wind.

Each bolt honed to target a different elemental weakness.

Inside the prison, the Magus writhed, struggling against the suppressive weight.