Marcus and Arnold's battle was even more violent; both were mages who used earth elements, and their fight was grand and imposing.
Arnold stomped his right foot on the ground, and earth magic, like a surging undercurrent, instantly rushed beneath the earth.
In an instant, five dark-red cracks, like the monstrous claw marks of a ferocious beast, rapidly spread forward in a radial pattern.
Marcus was about to jump back to evade, but to his astonishment, he found that his footing had, at some unknown point, turned into a quicksand trap.
Immediately after, thirty-two obsidian spikes erupted from the ground in a circular array, the tip of each one enveloped in high-frequency vibrating brown magic, humming loudly.
"gold sand: Thousand Feather Barrier!" Marcus reacted quickly, crossing his hands over his chest and shouting loudly.
In an instant, gold sand gushed out from his hands like a fountain, rapidly condensing in the air into hundreds of feather-shaped crystals.
These crystals spun at extremely high speeds, like a flock of nimble birds, precisely deflecting the trajectory of each rock spike.
For a moment, clanging collision sounds rose and fell, forming a continuous sharp ringing.
However, an accident still occurred.
Three rock spikes actually broke through the defensive net, striking from below to above, directly at Marcus's throat.
In the nick of time, Marcus's neck muscles instantly turned to sand, and the three rock spikes struck empty air.
"Your methods are just average!" Marcus taunted, while stepping on the continuously growing rock spikes, leaping into mid-air like an agile ape.
At the same time, under his control, gold sand rapidly condensed into six boomerangs in the air.
"I'll help trim your horns!" With his loud shout, the boomerangs shot out like arrows from a bow, cutting through the air and emitting a whistle like a train's siren.
"Then we'll see if you have the ability," Arnold sneered, unhurriedly, and slammed his fist heavily onto the ground.
In an instant, seven layers of granite shields rose from the ground like bamboo shoots, overlapping to firmly protect him within.
However, Marcus's gold sand weapons had another trick up their sleeve.
The boomerangs suddenly disintegrated in mid-air, turning into countless tiny grains of sand that, like ghosts, drilled into the gaps of the shields.
"Explode!" Marcus snapped his fingers, the sound crisp.
The sand grains that had infiltrated the rock structure instantly expanded a thousandfold; the immense force overwhelmed the granite shields.
Arnold's pupils constricted; realizing the danger, he immediately crossed his arms in front of him, and brown magic rapidly formed a tortoise-shell pattern on his skin, attempting to resist the sudden explosion.
With a loud bang, the rock shields exploded, fragments scattering like shrapnel.
Under this powerful impact, Arnold was sent flying backward like a cannonball, breaking several large trees.
Arnold slowly rose from the collapsed pit; his face was grim, and he tore off his tattered upper garment, revealing a body covered in rock-like veins.
At this moment, molten lava-like orange-red light flowed through every one of his blood vessels, emitting a chilling aura.
"Human, you have successfully angered me," Arnold's voice was deep and cold.
Between the Orc Warrior's horns, a fist-sized brown crystal slowly condensed, emitting a mysterious power.
At the same time, the rubble on the battlefield seemed to be summoned, beginning to defy gravity and float upwards.
Seeing this, Marcus dared not be negligent in the slightest, immediately condensing gold sand into two cross-shaped longswords.
Sand chains extended from the sword hilts, coiling around his wrists like nimble snakes.
When all the rocks within three hundred meters of the ground converged on Arnold like birds returning to their nest, he had already undergone an astonishing transformation, becoming a four-meter-tall Lava Giant.
Volcano-like protrusions grew at the giant's joints, and with each breath, he exhaled black smoke with a pungent sulfurous smell.
The giant swung his right fist; the wind howled, carrying a sonic boom cloud, and the power was astonishing.
However, Marcus suddenly turned into scattered sand, disappearing from his original spot, leaving only an afterimage.
"Sand Clone!" Marcus's voice came from all directions, and immediately after, the gold sand remaining from the recent battle on the ground rapidly spun and condensed into human forms; seven materialized Sand Clones attacked from different angles like lightning.
The seven clones, wielding sand swords, struck the rock armor with their gold sand blades, erupting in a series of dazzling sparks.
Arnold roared and stomped his foot fiercely.
The powerful force triggered a fan-shaped earthquake wave; the ground trembled violently, and the five clones in front instantly disintegrated under this force, turning into a sky full of sand grains.
The remaining two clones, however, suddenly merged, reverting to Marcus's main body.
He held two sand swords, ready to charge and strike, but the Lava Giant was a step faster, raising his fist and smashing it down directly.
Marcus crossed his two swords, struggling to parry the giant's descending lava fist; the immense pressure instantly sank his knees half a meter into the ground, creating two deep indentations.
"Got you!" Arnold's arm suddenly split open, revealing a honeycomb-like structure hidden beneath the rock armor. Immediately after, thousands of sharp stone projectiles sprayed out with the density of a shotgun, moving extremely fast.
Marcus was unable to dodge; honeycomb-shaped blood holes instantly appeared on his chest, and blood flowed freely.
However, Arnold's smile suddenly froze on his face. He noticed that the blood droplets in the air had actually turned into gold sand!
"Is it a Sand Substitute?" Arnold looked grimly at the Marcus in front of him, who disintegrated into a pile of gold sand and fell to the ground.
"Sand Time Rain!" The real Marcus emerged like a ghost from the sand behind the giant; gold sand erupted from all his pores, as if he had transformed into the source of gold sand.
These sand grains rapidly converged in the air, forming a ten-meter-diameter gold sand gear, rotating at a terrifying speed of twenty thousand revolutions per minute, cutting through the rock armor.
The volcano on Arnold's back suddenly spewed a pillar of lava, heading directly for the green-haired youth's face with destructive power.
But Marcus was prepared; a sand wall rose from the ground in front of him, cleverly using its upward momentum to guide the lava pillar towards the sky.
The lava traced a brilliant arc in the air, eventually dissipating into the horizon.
However, this strike also interrupted Marcus's sand gear spellcasting.
The gear disintegrated, and Arnold's back rock armor was already covered in dense, spiderweb-like cracks, like a broken work of art.
Rage surged in the Orc Warrior's eyes; he fiercely bit his tongue, raised his hands, and spat out a mouthful of blood, which he quickly smeared onto his horns.
The moment the blood touched the horns, it seemed to activate some ancient power.
A giant phantom with golden horns on his head enveloped Arnold's body.
The entire battlefield began to vibrate violently at a frequency of three times per second, as if it were the heartbeat of the earth.
Marcus felt as if his heart was being tightly gripped by an invisible large hand, almost being shaken out of his chest, and even the magic within his body felt suppressed.
-------------------------------
I've already uploaded 40 chapters of this story on Patreon!
If you enjoy it, come check out the latest chapters in advance.
[patreon.com/TripleCrown07]
Thank you so much for your support!!!
"And If you're enjoying it, drop a Power Stone for me!"