Chapter 655 - Mana Manipulation

Although a few days passed since the time Isis warned Ryan about the fact that Poseidon attacked and destroyed a domain, he didn't notice anything weird happening. That was good since he had time to prepare for the fight, arm his skeletons and then help Femradiel as well. However, Ryan could recognize very well the calm before the storm.

"Ryan, we need your help, now!" Gustavo suddenly said via Telepathy.

Ryan, who still was preparing for an eventual battle, suddenly stopped his preparations and then left his domain without thinking twice. He felt the urgency coming from Gustavo's message, and he had a debt to pay. In case something happens, Ryan had thought of a way to move around as fast as possible without being noticed. The trick was simple. He only had to fly so high in the sky where the gravity was weak, and his body wouldn't be seen, even if he used Draconic Transformation. Alongside with that, he would use Mana-Eater and Fast Conjuration to drain the mana of a magic item and then recover his mana as fast as possible. Thanks to that, he arrived at Gustavo's camp in just five minutes… just on time to see what seemed to be a lake floating in the sky. Gustavo and the others were attacking the floating lake.

"The heck is that?" Ryan frowned.

In the distance, Ryan saw a group of humans running away from the fight. Then suddenly, Ryan saw what Poseidon was planning to do. Several Sea Storms were casting, and everything around was decimated by it. Gustavo and his allies formed a line to prevent the massive spell from advancing and heading toward their allies. While they succeeded, it came with a price: the spell damaged their bodies to the point where even some of their scales were pulled, and they started to breed from noses and ears. Even so far away from the ocean, that spell was that powerful.

Ryan approached the battlefield, and then he noticed dozens of Hydras bosses inside the floating sphere of water. No wonder the spell was so powerful. They were combining that strength. Some of them were controlling the water in order to create a fake domain where they had total advantage, and others attacked.

Ryan used Ice Breath, and then he froze some of the Sea Storm, but the movement of the waters made the ice break and become liquid again. Without much of choice, Ryan summoned several copies of his gigantic Hydra Bow and then fired. Still, the projectiles stopped amidst the floating sphere of water before hitting any Hydra.

"They are doing the same thing Rhodos did," Ryan furrowed his eyebrows.

"Ryan, we can't let that thing reach our allies," Gustavo said.

"I already know that. What is your plan?" Ryan asked.

"Resist until they give up," Gustavo replied. "We can't get closer to the Hydras because they will be able to advance. We can't attack, so we can only focus on defense."

It looked like Gustavo and the others tried that before and failed miserably. That was what Ryan understood when he saw the massive area that had been destroyed. That is why they were only focusing on using their mana to heal themselves. Still, that wouldn't solve anything. However, things could change now that Ryan was there.

"Let's retreat for a while and then use mana potions," Ryan said using the Telepathic channel. "I have an idea."

"… You are a guy who favors risky plans," Bianca frowned. "Are you sure this is a good idea? What are the chances of success of this plan?"

"It will depend on how much mana you can use in a single instant," Ryan replied. "I will teleport all of us to the center of the sphere, and after that, we will unleash our best attacks and destroy their whole domain."

Gustavo and the others looked at each other and then nodded. It seemed like a decent plan. The success rate will depend solely on themselves, after all. Besides, none of them had any better ideas. As they retreated, they began to use potions. However, the sphere of water chased them at an incredible speed. Ryan thought that such a thing wouldn't move that fast, so they will have a lot less time than he had imagined.

In the end, Ryan just teleported all of them when they recovered half of their mana; he had no other choice. The very moment they felt the pressure around them changing, Gustavo and his friends used their best elemental toward the Hydras. Breaking their spell was the goal there, but if they fail, decreasing the number of enemies will make things less deadly afterward. For some odd reason, all of them used lightning magic, even though they didn't agree to it previously.

As for Ryan, he used Ice Breath with all his might. Focusing all his mana on that spell, he succeeded in increasing the scope and the power of the attack. That had been strangely easy considering that he never tried it before. Probably because he had Hydromancy and Cryomancy… Regardless, in the blink of an eye, his Ice Breath froze a massive area in front of him, turning ten or so Hydras into ice statues. He got lucky. Even without all their mana, Gustavo and the others were also shocked to death by fifteen other enemies. The massive sphere of water began to fall.

Congratulations! You learned the skill Mana Manipulation!

Effect: it increases the power of all of your magic attacks by three percent per level. It also grants you the power to increase the amount of mana used when using all types of skills to make them more powerful.

You obtained 01 status points.

Only one-third of the enemies were killed, but the other Hydras lost the ability to move freely when the sphere of water fell on the ground. As if that wasn't enough, the huge chunk of ice that Ryan also created almost smashed them to death.