**Chapter 115: Unyielding Spirit**
Earlier, in another region of the Elosia plane, at the edge of a swampy terrain, Berta Vera Augusta led a small team trudging through the mire.
Besides her, the team included two other talented apprentices from Noren Academy 13, each a genius in their field.
Years ago, Augusta’s team would not have been so modest.
But during her years of dedicated study, Horn had poached most of her followers. The two remaining were only loyal due to their shared Augusta family ties.
Yet, Augusta no longer dwelled on this.
Upon arriving in the Elosia plane, she discreetly gathered intelligence and successfully advanced to a first-level wizard en route to the camp.
Unlike Jie Ming’s team, Augusta, with her sharp judgment and family background, swiftly adopted a more efficient strategy.
As the most gifted scion of the Augusta family, she easily connected with a clan relative in the camp—her aunt, a seasoned third-level wizard stationed there.
Leveraging this connection, she quickly built a network of contacts and intelligence in the unfamiliar camp.Her current mission was to clear the “Corrupted Swamp Fortress” deep in the marsh, a core stronghold of a powerful evil god’s faith in Elosia.
The fortress housed a formidable “Fallen Priest”—a second-level being—along with hundreds of swamp creatures and fanatical devotees corrupted by the evil god’s power.
In the past, these evil gods and their cultists were suppressed in the dark depths by Elosia’s gods. But with the planar war’s onset, they resurfaced, even forming pacts with the gods to jointly oppose the wizards.
Compared to the orthodox gods’ followers, these unscrupulous, fanatical heretics posed a greater headache for the wizards.
The rare instances of second-level wizards falling in Elosia’s war all involved these heretics.
To wizards, these cultists were like venomous insects, striking unpredictably.
Thus, tasks to deal with them abounded in the wizard camp.
With detailed intelligence, Augusta easily pinpointed the fortress.
But as her team approached, she frowned. “Be alert!”
The fortress’s thick, corrosive aura, like an invisible toxin, began sapping the wizards’ vitality.
As the fortress’s defenses activated, corrupted creatures emerged from the swamp’s depths, fearless and numerous, surging toward the wizards like a tidal wave.
The heretics summoned toxic mists and corrosive acid rain, drawing divine power from the fortress’s core to rapidly heal their wounds.
Though Augusta’s teammates were strong, they struggled against the relentless enemy tide and the priest’s eerie regenerative ability.
Their mental energy drained rapidly, and their attacks fell far below expectations.
The swamp’s mire and the air’s foul, corrosive stench made each spellcast arduous.
“We can’t keep this up—we’ll be worn down!” a teammate shouted.
Augusta, expressionless, glanced at the fortress and slowly raised her hand.
As she acted, the sky shifted.
Clouds above the fortress gathered rapidly under her mental energy, forming a massive, dark vortex.
Lightning flickered within, thunder growing louder, as if a thunder god had been roused by her call.
“Heaven’s Wrath Thunder Prison!”
Augusta raised both hands, like a deity commanding lightning.
Her vast mental energy surged like a breached dam, resonating with the thunderclouds above.
The next second, dozens of purple lightning bolts, thick as tree trunks, tore through the clouds, descending with earth-shattering might!
Each bolt carried devastating power, striking the swamp fortress with precision.
The first wave obliterated the corrupted creatures at the fortress’s perimeter, vaporizing them and leaving smoldering pits, the swamp’s stench burned away.
The second wave targeted the Fallen Priest, surrounded by heretics.
The priest let out a shrill scream as its toxic mist and acid rain evaporated instantly. Its divine shield shattered like glass under the relentless lightning barrage!
Augusta’s body became a conduit for lightning, channeling bolts through herself and releasing them with greater force.
Her hair danced, arcs of electricity crackling around her, her skin glowing translucent under the lightning’s reflection, as if she might transform into pure lightning.
Her wizard staff grew scalding hot, its runes flickering unstably, unable to withstand such immense energy as an apprentice-crafted tool.
But Augusta ignored it, fully immersed in a transcendent state of resonance with the thunder.
Vast swathes of lightning effortlessly eradicated the corrupted enemies, dispersed the corrosive black mist, and pierced the fortress’s sturdy outer defenses.
When the fortress’s interior lay exposed due to the collapsed defenses, Augusta and her teammates gasped!
Before them stood not only the gravely wounded second-level Fallen Priest but also a dozen other second-level extraordinary beings!
There were bone-armored necromancers, totem-wielding barbarian leaders, holy light-bearing zealot knights, and even a few hidden native mages.
“Damn it! It’s a trap!” Augusta realized instantly.
The situation plunged into unprecedented crisis.
The dozen second-level beings attacked simultaneously, unleashing a torrent of divine techniques, battle aura, spells, and curses.
Though the trio activated high-level defensive artifacts to block the first wave, the enemies deployed anti-flight barriers and energy suppression fields, trapping them.
Even as the Augusta family’s prodigy, Berta Vera Augusta lacked Jie Ming’s wealth to casually wield high-level artifacts.
Her high-level defensive artifact was already her family’s trump card!
If this stalemate persisted, her death was certain.
Facing the cautious yet predatory enemies circling like wolves, Augusta closed her eyes.
Jie Ming’s proud figure from the academy trial flashed in her mind.
She knew she had worked hard enough, her talent surpassing most.
But since that trial, Jie Ming had been a shadow ahead of her, advancing in ways she couldn’t fathom.
No matter how hard she tried, he always stood at an unreachable height.
“I… haven’t lost yet!”
Augusta’s eyes snapped open, blazing with piercing electric light, like thunder exploding in her pupils.
She halted her conventional lightning wizardry, her aura shifting dramatically.
“Come… witness my years of effort!” she murmured, her voice crackling like electricity.
Since witnessing Jie Ming’s strength in the trial years ago, Augusta had shed her arrogance, studying like an ascetic monk.
She was no longer content with pre-made wizardry models.
Over the years, she dismantled all her purchased models, relying on her deep understanding of lightning to independently craft three new lightning-based spells.
Upon advancing to a first-level wizard, she fused these three into a fourth, her core wizardry model—Electromagnetic Control!
As Augusta unleashed her full power, the ground trembled, as if answering her call.
The swamp’s mud revealed hidden fine grains.
Countless black metallic sand particles, under her powerful electromagnetic control, rose from the soil, gathering around her like iron filings to a magnet.
The enemies tried to disperse the sand or burn it with divine flames.
But mere physical disruption couldn’t counter Augusta’s control—as long as the metal remained, she could manipulate it.
The metallic sand amassed behind her, rustling like a black tide.
Seeing this, the ambushing second-level beings swallowed hard.
Augusta raised a finger coldly, and the metallic sand surged toward the enemies like a tsunami!
Under her assault, the enemies scrambled desperately.
To her stunned teammates, the battle became Augusta’s solo performance.
The iron sand formed whips, lashing enemies with sharp whistles, shattering their bones.
It condensed into spikes, piercing from all angles.
As time passed, the metal around her grew.
At its peak, Augusta controlled over a hundred shuttles—each over ten meters long, two to three meters wide—formed from metallic sand!
These shuttles orbited her, flying at blinding speeds, leaving trails too fast to follow, delivering high-speed impacts to her foes.