"Maybe if he were a bit stronger and didn't come off as some top level genius, we wouldn't have overestimated his capabilities and he might have survived. Haha."
Noah's face turned red in anger as he prepared to lunge at Guan and attack him, however, Owen cut him off.
"Stop."
Owen said.
"Look closer."
Upon hearing those words, Noah calmed down and glanced towards the spot. Even he other attackers all halted their actions resulting in a temporary ceasefire.
"Huh? Do you doubt my words?" Guan frowned.
If Asher was still conscious, common sense dictated that he would have exited the massive cloud of dust and smoke or forcefully cleared it by now. For there to be no reaction from the smog till his very moment, more or less implied that something detrimental had befallen Asher.
"Stop talking." The young girl spoke up.
Unlike Guan, she didn't rush to celebrate Asher's defeat. The girl wasn't one to underestimate her enemy especially as this enemy was a member of the top 10 rankings of their division. Whereas Guan had been celebrating and was already taunting Asher's teammates, she kept her eyes on the site of the explosion all this while.
The two groups didn't have to wait for long as the dust and smoke soon cleared.
"What the...?" Guan widened his eyes in shock.
"As expected." Owen smirked once he caught sight of that familiar silhouette but soon froze in shock.
Even the young girl was not left unmoved by the sight.
At the centre of the explosion site, Asher stood still with with his palm no longer coated in ice; a result of the explosion of the spells from before. Apart from that, there were three orbs of light floating around him. A closer look at those lights revealed them to be concentrated mana particles. Those were the essences of the spells fired at him a while ago.
"Incredible..." Luna couldn't help but exclaim.
"How, how are you still standing?!" Guan roared.
"Although you wield the title of geniuses, your mana usage is too reckless." Asher spoke up, ignoring Guan's question.
"You might think that these floating balls of mana are comprised of the essences of the spells from earlier, but actually, they're just the leftover mana from your attacks."
"Leftover mana? Impossible. The purity of those mana orbs is already on a different level." Guan retorted.
"Two words; mana compression." Asher smiled before flicking his right hand as if swatting a fly away.
The three orbs of mana flew away from him and struck different trees in the forest.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Three loud explosions sounded as the targeted trees got struck by the mana orbs. Although they didn't fall to the ground, these trees with trunks large enough for an adult's arms to barely go round it, had huge holes on them. While the trees on this region of the Manchurian forest weren't exaggeratedly old like the ones at the centre, they were still solid and thick, making it difficult to damage them greatly.
Despite the small size of the orbs, the power they wielded was on an entirely different level in Asher's hands; much more powerful than the spells the attackers used on him.
"You.." Guan widened his eyes in shock.
The close combatants took a step back in fear as they kept their eyes glued to Asher with nervous expression on their faces.
"You've made the first move. It's my turn now."
Asher suddenly charged towards the first attacker.
Due to the distance between them as well as the fact the student was on guard, he was able to catch sight of Asher and display a move.
"Hmph."
Asher moved his head to the side and dodged the first swing of the blade. The attacker, who happened to be the second-in-command of the young teen's squad, panicked and wanted to produce a follow-up attack. However, Asher prevented him from doing so by sending a palm right at his chest.
"You're open."
Bam.
The palm connected with the chest as the young teen was shoved back. In the very next second, he felt his legs weaken, his body become heavy and his breathing lowly being cut short.
Although Asher's palm looked normal, it was infused with his ice element mana. The closeup strike just then enabled Asher to send this mana into the boy's body forcefully lowering his internal temperature with just one hit. Normally, this technique would prove useless against professionals or experienced mages, but against a fourteen year old one stage lower than him, this was a one-hit KO technique.
"What are you waiting for? Attack!"
The young girl screamed following which the remaining four close combatants charged towards Asher. However, it was too late, or rather, they were too slow.
In next to no time at all, Asher had made his move and attacked the small group, either with a punch of a palm. It took just less than ten seconds for the four students to be on the floor barely holding on to their breath.
The students who acted as ranged fighters finally reacted and began casting their spells, but Asher didn't let them finish.
Asher waved his hand in mid-air to the group after which ice crystals formed ahead of him and darted towards them.
"Arghhh!"
Screams of pain broke out from the small gathering as the spells of the students were cut off right away with some of them falling to the ground while others grabbed at their arm or injured regions.
The ice crystals Asher had fired struck each and everyone of them, including Guan, limiting their ability to cast magic and take part in the battle.
"I guess that settles it." Asher said as he glanced at the girl.
"It would be inappropriate for me to have my hands roam through the body of a girl even if it's for the tokens, so I decided to leave you fine."
"You…" Embarrassed, the girl immediately entered a defensive stance.
"Hand it over, and you won't get hurt." Asher stretched out his hands.
"You bastard, let her be."
One of the students who was previously facing off against Melissa, incensed, rushed to protect the young girl.
"Move away." Asher sent a short glance at the interrupter while letting out a bit of his mental pressure onto the boy.
The boy felt his brain overload as some mysterious pressure came upon it. He barely had enough time to let out a roar before collapsing to the ground, knocked out.
For 17 months, apart from overseeing the White Maple chamber of commerce's growth and making potions, Asher had simply been cultivating his magic and skills. In truth, Asher should have been well above the third stage of the Guardian realm by now, after all, right after awakening his constitution seventeen months ago, Asher's strength was pushed to the peak of the first stage of the Guardian realm straight from the Mid Human stage. However, because he favoured stability over speed, as well as the limits of his physique, Asher had taken his mana cultivation slowly, well, in the terms of a genius.
Nonetheless, that didn't mean that he slacked on training.
Due to the fact that he was too weak in terms of mana cultivation, Asher couldn't utilise most of the techniques from his past life so he decided to focus on a different category of techniques; mental spells. Whereas his true level was third stage Guardian realm while what he could only show was the peak of the second stage, Asher's mental prowess was roughly on par with that of a fourth stage Guardian mage. Simply put, the mental spells he could cast with his mental energy was almost on the same level as the magic spells of a fourth stage Guardian.
By merely just realising a bit of this aura to form a mental attack, Asher could take down an average second stage Guardian mage with a glance, much less one of fourteen years of age; a very young age with next to zero experience in the mental faculty.
As for why Asher used this skill instead, it was to instil fear into the students to prevent any of them from making such a reckless move and delaying his progress. At the same time, it was to get his name known a bit more.
In this exercise, defeating other teams was the key to success. Due to the doubt on Asher's strength as well as the fact that he was identified as a null, it was safe to say that Asher was on the hit list of a large majority of the students, except a certain group; the true geniuses. Teams like that of the twin princesses, the young lord and so on, didn't consider him an opponent but Asher did so for them, after all, their tokens had more weight than his in terms of points.
Simply looking for them was stressful especially as the area of the exercise was really large and Asher was quite interested in hunting down beast he could use and make potions. Hence, Asher decided to have them look for him instead. As long as, in some way, rumours of his strength spreads, those teams would be interested in him and might want to confirm this themselves, hence drawing them towards him.
'One side doing the job is never enough; let both sides work for a common goal.' Asher smiled in his head.
"Now," Asher turned towards the girl but spoke out loud signifying that his words were meant for all to hear.
"are you going to make me ask again or will you hand over your tokens?"