The altar on the high platform was no simple structure. It had been meticulously crafted by the witch Circe over several decades. Her intention was to use this altar to attempt communication with other planes and summon more terrifying entities to serve her.
Therefore, Circe paid great attention to the security measures for the altar, even deploying gargoyles to guard it. Little did she expect them to be truly useful today!
"Heh heh, the two of you shall die here today!"
Circe watched her masterpiece with delight. However, her brow soon furrowed. She realized that while Ling Tian and Ah Li could not defeat the gargoyles, it was also difficult for the gargoyles to harm them.
Ah Li and Ling Tian moved with feline agility, their every dodge effortlessly evading the gargoyles' attacks without taking any damage. On the contrary, they used the brief moments of stillness after the gargoyles' attacks to launch counterattacks.
With this thought, Circe raised her staff, chanting incantations. Suddenly, two shadow arrows shot out, aimed at Ling Tian and Ah Li respectively.
Her plan was cunning. She believed that even if these surprise attacks didn't directly hit Ling Tian and Ah Li, they would at least throw them into disarray, perhaps leading to them being finished off by the gargoyles.
The shadow arrow flying towards Ah Li arrived in an instant. However, Circe watched in disbelief as the shadow arrow was about to strike Ah Li, only for Ah Li to vanish the next moment!
Deprived of its target, the shadow arrow, propelled by inertia, struck the gargoyle and dissipated.
Meanwhile, Ah Li reappeared behind the gargoyle and began to pummel it with her ram's horn hammer.
"Whoa, so fast!"
The old witch assumed Ah Li had dodged the shadow arrow with sheer speed. She knew that the shadow arrow's attack wasn't just about inertia; it was locked onto by the witch's mental power.
If Ah Li could dodge a magical attack with her own speed, just how fast must she be!
However, Circe had not anticipated that things were far more complicated. Ah Li hadn't dodged the magic with speed, but rather with her spatial abilities.
Despite fighting the gargoyles, Ah Li and Ling Tian never stopped monitoring the old witch. They both understood that the old witch posed a far greater threat than the gargoyles.
When the shadow arrow was shot, Ah Li directly opened a spatial rift, slipped into it, and emerged from behind the gargoyle.
The old witch could never have imagined that such a delicate young girl would possess such heaven-defying spatial abilities!
On the other side, the shadow arrow that had been ambushing Ling Tian was intercepted by a fireball casually thrown by Ling Tian when it was only two or three meters away. The power of the flames erupted, completely neutralizing the shadow arrow's force.
Ling Tian was also growing angry. The old witch dared to ambush him from behind; this was an offense that could not be tolerated. Ling Tian retreated, dodging a meteor hammer swing from the gargoyle. He then raised his hand and tossed out a talisman.
The explosive fire talisman flew dozens of meters before suddenly scattering into over a dozen fireballs, which then rained down on Circe.
The old witch was instantly struck with terror. She knew that being hit by these fireballs would at best leave her half-dead.
Thus, the old witch quickly raised her staff, disregarding everything else. She desperately chanted incantations, and in an instant, the gems on her staff flashed consecutively, forming several layers of wind shields before her. The fireballs struck these wind shields squarely and exploded.
"Impossible, this is impossible..."
"Fireball spell, how is this possible!"
Circe, in her panic, cast spells consecutively, draining all the energy contained within her staff, thereby resisting the barrage of explosive fire talismans.
At this moment, the old witch was filled with lingering fear. If she had cast even one less wind shield, the exploding flames would likely have engulfed her.
Earlier, when Ling Tian had used the fire talisman to knock away the shadow arrow, the old witch had not yet grasped the power of the explosive fire talisman. It was only when it exploded a few meters in front of her that she truly felt its might.
Simultaneously, she mistook the fireballs formed by the explosive fire talisman for a spell, the Fireball spell.
In Europe over 1,000 years ago, during that dark era, among the sorcerer community, there were sorcerers known as Elemental Sorcerers. These sorcerers possessed immense elemental affinity and could cast various spells.
Among them, those with fire elemental affinity could cast spells like the Fireball spell.
The Fireball spell was incredibly powerful. If a person was hit, even a knight clad in full plate armor would be severely wounded, as the high temperatures and explosive force of the flames were terrifying.
However, such Fireball spells were not easily cast by Elemental Sorcerers. They required a considerable amount of time for incantation and a vast amount of mana.
Most Elemental Sorcerers needed up to ten seconds of chanting and had to drain nearly all their mana to cast a single Fireball spell.
In that era, the most powerful Elemental Sorcerers Circe had ever seen could only cast three Fireball spells at most, and they also required some time for preparation.
Yet, Ling Tian's feat of throwing out over a dozen fireballs instantly, and with no casting time, was akin to seeing a ghost in the old witch's eyes.
Little did she know that in the distant East, there existed magical items called talismans. Although, in essence, both talismans and Fireball spells were a form of magic, talismans used inscribed paper and formations as carriers, storing energy, or spiritual energy from heaven and earth, on the paper.
While activating a talisman also required true essence or mana from within the body, this consumption was merely to activate the formation, making it far more energy-efficient than sorcerers who relied entirely on their own bodies as vessels to provide mana when casting spells!
Circe looked down at her staff, her heart filled with despair. In the preceding battle, seven of its gems had dimmed, their stored energy completely depleted.
Moreover, it would take a full day for the staff to recover the magic within a single gem.
Earlier, to resist the attack of these fireballs, the old witch had been forced to release all the remaining energy within her staff. Now, there was not a single trace of energy left in it!