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“Elves,” I muttered, though my shock was not particularly intense after facing another race that was supposed to be a part of the stories and legends. After all, after angels and true dragons that could transform, the existence of elves was not particularly ground-breaking.

Though my lack of impression was more about the unimpressive battle performance they had been displaying. There were almost fifty of them, trying to put a ranged resistance against the horde of undead that was trying to pass through the river, while about thirty necromancers — in various states of rotting — were sieging them with a number of spells, increasing the speed of the corruption.

Maybe I was being unfair, as lately I was used to fights of much higher caliber even by the standards of the System-empowered people, but still, I expected a better performance from one of the races that were supposed to be mythical.

They were barely good enough to be compared to an average level five warrior, with no apparent casting capability — though whether it was an actual lack of capability or strategic concern, I didn’t know. The only reason they were able to resist the necromancers was the constant life energy emission of the guardian trees, battling against the necrotic mana invasion.

Their luck was that the necromancers didn’t have a significantly higher display of ability, limited to galvanizing and empowering the horde of zombies — a mixture of animals and humanoids, mixed with various skeletal monstrosities impossible to identify — occasionally mixed with sending poorly crafted but overpowered bolts of necrotic energy.

However, it wasn’t their skills that looked like it would determine the victory and defeat, but the difference in intensity between the energy carried by the river, and the amount of mana generated by the trees. Each second, the central tree lost more of its vitality, and it didn’t take much to guess it would go down.

Elves had barely an hour, maybe even less.

I wanted to go and save them, even though their language represented a difficulty in communication. All I needed was to use create an offensive ward slowly from my battle position and take down the necromancers in one spell, before they could react.

Pity that it represented a great risk to me. I had already seen the lich that had responded to the dimensional breach, who was leagues stronger than anything I could see in this battle.

And, since the undead was sending a disposable army and set up a complicated mana delivery system to do so rather than just sending the lich to get rid of the threats, it was only reasonable to assume that what I was seeing wasn’t the peak combat capability of the elves.

Intervening directly in a complicated conflict was not a good idea, especially since I might end up being hunted by both sides.

“Luckily, intervening directly is not the only way,” I murmured with satisfaction. I might have lost my access to the Subterfuge skill, but at this point, I didn’t need it to have dozens of plans competing in my mind, giving me different ideas to interrupt the battle to the favor of elves.

The decision to help elves was not a huge overreach. I wasn’t certain that elves had the potential to be allies, but there was little doubt about the stance of the undead. Though, that didn’t mean I would reveal that particular assistance to the elves.

First, I had created several wards on top of the hill, enough to hide my presence, as well as moving a few stones to create something that would keep me from being noticed. An illusion spell on top of it, and I was confident that it would keep me from the attention of anything but the most determined seeker.

Only then, I moved toward the river once again, staying quite a bit away from the battle, and started creating a ward. Essentially, it was a more complicated version of the purifying water bottle, but one that took almost half of the reserves I had collected, as well as some of the mana I had collected.

The real difference came from the last layer, which was not a ward but twin storage. Onee storage was filled with light mana, slowly adding some light mana into the water, converted by using the fake Chosen node I had created to trick the headmistress. The other was filled with proto-life energy I had managed to create.

The results were worthy of potentially revealing my hand. Not only the ward suddenly stopped the flow of the necrotic energy, depriving the necromancers of their fuel to cast spells, but the particles of light also hampered the necromancers. Not particularly efficiently, as the amount was not enough to significantly damage the undead.

But enough to make it useless for necromancers to use — unlike pure mana, which I expected them to weaponize. And, the light mana made it much harder for them to focus destroying the proto-life energy I had slipped into the mixture, which was even more fragile than the energy the trees were radiating.

I retreated back to the hill as fast as I could manage once I activated the ward, not wanting to be on the range of detonation — a little gift I had added to the mixture, ready to go off at the first touch of an undead, both to get rid of any necromancer that might come to understand the sudden change in their battle, and to get rid of any evidence of my intervention.

If no one touched it, it would disperse on its own in five minutes, which I hoped to be enough for the elves to counterattack. Five minutes might as well be an eternity as far as a battle was concerned, and there was little hope for them if they couldn’t convert such a great advantage into victory.

I preferred to keep my presence hidden as much as possible, especially since there was a risk that the explosion could get the attention of the higher rank combatants of the elves and undead, which was something I was reluctant to face until I could get more information and get used to the magic more.

Maybe even craft something more useful than a wooden spear.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to play absolutely safely. I didn’t know how far the next defensive line of the elves was, but the undead forces looked determined to continue — why wouldn’t they, when they had no concern for their lives, nor had any logistic concerns.

And, the deeper we went into the elven territory, the higher the chances of stronger combatants joining the fray, making the situation much more challenging to face.

Luckily, when I reached my hiding spot, the battle had already shown signs of turning. The sudden lack of necrotic energy had hampered the necromancers’ attempts significantly, their magical bombardment ceasing immediately, their full attention to keeping their zombie horde intact.

The amount of life energy I managed to add into the water wasn’t enough to demolish the zombies — limited both by the amount, and the purity I could manage without the assistance of the system, which was handling the conversion part.

The more I stayed away, the more I understood the true challenge of magic outside lay in having access to the correct type of mana.

And, with the ability of Divine Spark to forcibly convert mana, no doubt the gods ruled anywhere but the material plane under the System.

That left an interesting question, I thought as I ignored the elves’ developing counter-attack, instead looking at the guardian trees, each drinking the mana I provided almost instantly. And the largest one, right at the edge, took the most mana, its leaves showing signs of recovery, even as it radiated a great amount of its own unique brand of plant-like life energy.

The trees could convert my own mixture of diluted life energy and pure mana with much greater efficiency than necrotic energy, it seemed.

Enough to actually arouse my attention, tempting me to take another risky action. I moved toward the river, though rather than the center, I targeted the edges that were far from the battle, where I could see the tree with little battle that was going around it.

A few measly zombies were hardly a problem, especially since the attention of the elves was grabbed by the breach they achieved at the center, necromancers falling one by one.

While they were distracted by their assault, I quickly dashed through the zombies. I didn’t like wielding necrotic energy, but pulling enough around me on top of my shield to temporarily trick the zombies was still within acceptable limits.

I passed through them, putting my hand on the tree, sending a trickle of pure mana, doing as detailed of a diagnostic as I could manage, compressed in a few seconds.

Not the most detailed one, but enough to be a treasure trove. The first discovery was simple, yet expected. The tree was a magical entity, though the way the mana infused their nature greatly differed from the nature of the monsters. aLooser and more delicate, but it might be about the lack of an entity dedicated to recycle every single scrap of magical energy from the environment.

Yet, the limited reaction to the mana that was penetrating its trunk was enough to confirm that it was not sapient — or even if it was, it was alien enough for me to catch immediately. Though, I still sensed a certain … awareness, it wasn’t enough to be called sentience.

Interesting, but not as interesting as my next discovery. At the center of the tree, there was Divine Spark.

Used to treating Divine Spark as the highest level of treasure, I had expected the guardian trees to be something similar to the river, a relay to transfer their transformed mana. The fact that the trees had Divine Spark was a surprise.

Enough to force me to redraw my plans completely.

[Level: 36 Experience: 631374 / 666000]