CHAPTER 224: THE OBSIDIAN ARCANA

Leaving the subterranean training arenas, Caius ascended the dark basalt stairwells to the highest wing of Castle Precipice, the Spire of Arcana. Inside the cavernous, rune-inscribed Mage Hall, the ambient atmosphere buzzed with high-frequency mana. More than a hundred spellcasters resided within the fortress walls, drawn from conquered lands, dark elf academies, and renegade circles. To them, Caius was not merely a terrifying sovereign, he was the ultimate master of lost magic, an entity who manipulated spatial threads and black flames with absolute mastery. To study under him was the highest honor any scholar of the arcane could conceive.

Archmage Orven stepped forward the moment Caius crossed the threshold. Dressed in deep violet robes, the elderly scholar lowered his head in a deep, sweeping bow, declaring that the halls were at Caius's complete disposal and that the scholars had completed the translation of the ancient Vel'drin scrolls.

"Set the scrolls aside for now, Orven," Caius replied flatly, his violet-gold eyes sweeping over the rows of scribes, elementalists, and ward-masters standing at attention across the grand hall. "I require war mages. Fifty spellcasters willing to march directly behind my frontline phalanx. Ask for volunteers."

Orven let out a dry, knowing chuckle, remarking that asking for volunteers was almost an insult to their devotion. Before Orven could even raise his staff, all one hundred and twenty mages in the hall dropped to one knee in unison. Not a single voice hesitated, and the air vibrated as a hundred voices pledged their lives, eager to step onto the battlefield if it meant receiving even a fraction of Caius's personal guidance.

Caius offered a faint, satisfied smirk, noting that while their eagerness was welcome, enthusiasm alone would not maintain wards under heavy artillery fire. Stepping down the central aisle, Caius raised his right hand, shooting microscopic, gossamer-thin Arachne threads from his fingertips. The threads fanned out across the room, gently attaching to the crown points of every kneeling mage. Through these diagnostic lines, Caius probed their inner mana pathways in less than a second, evaluating their core density, casting speed, and affinity alignment with cold, mathematical precision.

With a subtle flick of his fingers, twenty-five mages were pulled slightly to the left by the invisible threads, while another twenty-five were guided to the right. The remaining seventy mages remained kneeling, gently dismissed with a soft pulse of kinetic feedback. Severing the diagnostic threads, Caius declared that the chosen fifty would be split into two distinct operational wings.

Addressing the twenty-five mages on his left, whose pathways showed exceptional stability, high mana capacity, and restorative affinity, Caius designated them as the restoration and barrier wing. He instructed them that their sole purpose on the battlefield was preservation, requiring them to cast overlapping kinetic domes, elemental wards, and rapid mid-combat cellular restoration over the frontline phalanx. Turning to the twenty-five mages on his right, whose meridians crackled with volatile, high-velocity mana channels, Caius named them the assault wing. He established them as his magic artillery, commanding them not to waste mana on petty duels, but rather to deliver synchronized, concentrated elemental bombardments that would obliterate enemy strongpoints, shatter opposing spell circles, and rain destruction across opposing formations.

Stolen from NovelPhoenix, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Dozens of multi-legged Arachne drones filed into the hall shortly after in silent, rhythmic steps, bearing heavy racks of custom equipment personally designed by Caius and forged in the Calamity Forge. Caius reminded them that a mage was useless if dead, and that no army could win a war of attrition if its spellcasters suffered internal meridian exhaustion after only three incantations.

To ensure their survival and sustained output, Caius outfitted them in obsidian-bead light armor. Forged from a flexible weave of high-density spatial silk and mithril thread, the armor offered total freedom of movement while providing high-grade physical protection. Embedded along the collar, spine, and wrists were polished obsidian mana beads that served as external mana reservoirs. Pre-charged with concentrated dark mana, these beads allowed the mages to siphon external energy during prolonged battles without draining their personal reserves.

Complementing their armor were the war mage staffs, shafted from high-density black iron and crowned with a multifaceted dark-spatial crystal core. Personally engineered by Caius, the internal runes of each staff functioned as a spell-accelerator, cutting incantation times by half while drastically magnifying the velocity and destructive impact of incoming and outgoing magic. The fifty mages stepped forward with awe-struck hands, donning the obsidian-beaded armor and gripping the heavy black staffs. As they channeled their mana through the dark crystals, the staffs hummed with an intoxicating, resonant power that made their eyes flare with violet light.

Caius raised his gauntleted hand once more, extending fifty micro-thin threads straight into the crown points of the newly equipped war mages. In an instant, he imprinted a synchronized spell-array codex directly into their minds, establishing a collective casting system that linked their individual mana networks into a single, unified mind-bridge.

"You will not fight as fifty individuals," Caius instructed, his voice echoing directly within their minds as the thread transfer completed. "When the barrier wing casts, you will merge your mana to raise an unbreakable, city-grade defensive dome. When the assault wing fires, your spells will merge into a single catastrophic volley."

Caius stepped toward the high arched window of the Mage Hall, looking down at the vast courtyard below where the entire physical army was coming together. He explained that their position would be at the protected core of the army, standing safely behind the one thousand heavy orcs while flanked by the barbarian and dark elf wings. As the beating heart of his ground machine, their duty was to protect the phalanx, annihilate enemy lines, and demonstrate the absolute power of true arcana.

Archmage Orven and the fifty war mages slammed the butts of their new staffs against the stone floor in a deafening, unified thud. The fifty mages shouted their allegiance in unison, their obsidian beads glowing brightly as dark mana circulated through their enhanced pathways.