The magic did not form a floating sphere like a standard fireball. A blinding beam of solid white light erupted from her staff, lasering directly toward the upper chest of the Miasma-Titan.
The enormous Aura Tail required to push that dense beam created a terrifying backward thrust. The recoil hit Lumina instantly, pushing her body violently backward. Nia watched the deafening blast of white energy shoot toward the beast, and the very next second, she saw Lumina get thrown hard across the forest.
The spell Lumina cast on her boots to enforce heavy friction against the ground did not help much, but it was never meant to fully stop her momentum. It was only designed to scrape against the ground and slightly decrease the speed of her backward slide. If Lumina had cast a rigid barrier behind her back to completely stop herself from moving, it would have been a fatal mistake. The crushing G-force caused by the Aura Tail pushing her backward would collide directly with the immovable magical wall behind her. Her fragile body would be caught right in the middle, and the competing forces would instantly fracture her ribcage.
Mages who use "Radictus" always allow themselves to be thrown backward to bleed off the kinetic energy. Cheap storybooks often show a wizard firing a massive blast while standing perfectly still on the ground or floating in the air without feeling a single ounce of recoil. That is a complete lie because it violates the basic Law of Action and Reaction. If a Mage is ejecting a high-mass, high-energy beam forward at extreme velocity, the exact same amount of recoil force pushes the Mage backward.
Driven by sheer curiosity, Chris instinctively turned his head to see what happened to the young Mage. He watched Lumina slide hard through the soil until she crashed roughly into the distant tree line.
Thorne winced, knowing Radictus was a devastating spell restricted to the true elite, and it was rarely used specifically because the brutal recoil often left the caster severely bruised or broken.
The white beam slammed into the upper body of the Miasma-Titan. Chris whipped his head back around to witness the impact.
The spell did not explode when it hit the petrified bark. It drilled forward, carving a deep, smoking hole directly into the Titan's chest. It was an incredibly deep crater, but it did not punch completely through the back of the monster.
Over the last thirteen days, the raid team had attacked relentlessly, and they only ever managed to shatter the outer layers of the hard shells. They had never dug a hole this deep.
Chris already knew they were going to lose this battle of attrition because their Mana would run dry long before the beast emptied its own tank. Their entire strategy relied on forcing the monster to heal its surface wounds until its fuel ran out, eventually exposing the hidden Monster Core.
But Chris realized a completely different way to win the exact moment he saw that deep, smoldering hole. He stood his ground and thought calmly while waiting for the timber to hit them.
If we cannot empty its fuel tank to break the shell, we can just dig a tunnel straight through the armor to reach the Monster Core.
Vance noticed a different tactical shift at that very moment. When the white beam struck the Titan's upper torso, the sheer kinetic force shoved the giant's chest backward. The monster's heavy roots remained firmly planted in the soil, so its spine was forced to tilt diagonally.
His Thief eyes tracked the mechanics of the movement. He instantly realized the downward momentum of the enlarged arm logs was drastically reduced. The arms were accelerating toward the ground, but the sudden backward shift of the monster's shoulder violently pulled the mechanical leverage away from the swing. It robbed the falling timber of its gravitational momentum right before impact.
Vance remembered the first day of the raid. When Kaelen and the vanguard were trapped, the Mages fired directly at the massive arm logs to weaken the downward force. Hitting the arms directly was effective, but the black-haired Mage had just executed a much smarter move. Ruining the Titan's posture by blasting its upper body backward crippled the crushing impact far more efficiently than just shooting the logs themselves.
We might actually survive this, Vance thought, bracing his daggers.
Then the timber reached them.
The massive logs slammed into the magical barrier cast by Thorne, and the dome shattered with a deafening crack of breaking glass.
The timber continued its descent without pausing. The heavy wood crashed directly into the four Tankers' raised shields, producing a thunderous, metallic boom that shook the earth.
A standing Light Swordsman crossed his arms and coated them heavily with his yellow Aura. The logs bypassed the slipping iron shields and slammed hard into his guard, so his arm bones fractured with a loud, sickening snap. The Thieves dropped low over the ducking veteran Mage and Healers, coating their own bodies with dense Aura to shield the unconscious fighters bleeding on the ground.
From her spot on the ground, Nia looked straight up. The rough, petrified bark of the massive logs entirely eclipsed the sky, plunging her vision into total darkness. Then, a crushing weight pressed down, and she lost consciousness.
When Nia opened her eyes, she saw people standing, sitting, and lying down completely unconscious on the ground. Kaelen, Thorne, Chris, Vance, Korinn, Team B's Healer, and a Light Swordsman stood nearby. Team A's Healer and Lumina sat quietly on the dry ground. The rest of the raid team remained unconscious, but they all seemed to be breathing and alive.
Nia sat up slowly, and she looked at the Healer beside her. "How long?"
The woman breathed heavily, and thick sweat rolled down her pale face. "Ten minutes," the Healer answered.
"Boss Kaelen and the others had just woken up," she added.
A cold chill ran down Nia's back. "And the Titan?"
"It left," the sitting Healer replied.
It was a terrifying reality, because the Healer had been the only person conscious while everyone else lost their senses. Nia quickly understood the full situation. The woman saved their lives after the monster's devastating attack. She stayed awake, so she healed their broken bodies and cast a Flush spell to clean the toxic gas from their lungs.
A few meters away, Thorne looked down at Lumina. The black-haired Mage sat silently on the dry soil. The old veteran thought about her incredible display of power earlier.
That Radictus spell was highly destructive but even that massive blast was not enough to kill the beast, so it just created a huge hole in the monster's body. A one-hit kill? As far as I can remember, there is absolutely no record in the entire Association documenting a Calamity-class monster dying in just a single strike. Two hundred years ago, a legendary Adventurer killed a Calamity with eight consecutive hits. That remains the undisputed world record in the Association data today.
Thorne placed his right thumb and index finger below his chin.
A one-hit kill simply does not exist. If that Radictus spell pushed just three times deeper, it might actually hit the Monster Core hidden deep inside the Titan, so that specific depth could make it a real one-hit spell. But seeing the magic in person confirmed the harsh truth. Radictus is a powerful trump card for any elite Mage, yet it will never be enough to slay a Calamity instantly.
Chris also stared at the young Mage. He felt a deep respect for her raw talent.
This girl has a promising future, Chris thought. She can achieve so much more in the years to come, so she absolutely cannot die here.
Kaelen finally broke the heavy silence. "Listen up. We are going to chase after the Titan."
He tightened the straps on his iron armor. "It is going towards the capital of Voragale, so we will buy the citizens time."
The phrase hit Nia incredibly hard. She knew exactly what those words meant. Their primary mission had shifted completely from killing the beast to just buying time. It meant they had to sacrifice their own lives to give the Voragale citizens precious minutes to escape into the mountains.
Kaelen looked at Korinn standing nearby. He shifted his gaze to Nia, and then he looked directly at Lumina.
"Vanishing Embrace, Crimson Weaver, and Calamity Child," Kaelen said. "You did well."
He looked at the three young Adventurers with deep, genuine appreciation.
"You contributed a huge amount of effort for this raid team," Kaelen continued. "But it is time for you to save yourselves. Thorne and I, and them..."
He pointed toward the rest of the conscious veteran Adventurers. "We will go. We are already old, and we already experienced a lot in this life. But you three are still young. You have a long future waiting for you."
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the dark forest.
"As you know, at this point, we already lost," Kaelen stated flatly.