Solo Against the Lizard Horde

"Lightning Seal!"

Furious thunder lashed from Mo Fan's hands in every direction — arcs of electricity shaped like rampaging pythons exploding outward across the surrounding area.

A fourth-level Lightning Seal commanded far more lightning marks than its lower-tier counterparts, and those marks could even conduct along the surface of the ground. Mo Fan slammed the seal down at his feet, and every arc shot outward in a starburst pattern, covering the full twenty-meter circle around him.

Within the lightning field, arcs leaped and transferred between targets. Every Lizard-Skull Giant Demon that stepped into the zone found its limbs seized by paralysis — as though countless serpents had wound around their legs and arms. They could not move, capable only of furious, helpless roaring.

They had been close enough that one more step would have let them swallow this human whole, yet here they stood trembling uselessly in the paralytic field, their fist-sized eyes glaring with impotent rage.

"What a Lightning Seal..." Jiang Yi had not stopped watching Mo Fan, and a trace of genuine surprise crossed her face.

Even a Spirit Seed-grade Lightning Seal shouldn't achieve this kind of area-wide muscular paralysis. This Lightning Seal had clearly been enhanced through some technique — its raw power was approaching that of a Common Seed intermediate-tier spell.

Lightning Seal was a basic-tier spell, but in Mo Fan's hands it moved like a natural extension of his will. The moment one paralytic field faded, he could conjure the next without pause. No matter how many Lizard-Skull Giant Demons pressed in, none came within twenty meters. Against this swarming horde of Servant-class creatures, it left him all but unassailable.

Jiang Yi couldn't help but reassess him. Someone who could amplify a basic-tier spell to this degree had a magical foundation that was anything but ordinary.

Their own side wasn't faring badly, either. The officers had formed up in a tight formation, using Ice Element — Freeze and Earth Wave — Slow to conjure a field that kept the Lizard-Skull Giant Demons at bay. Their only real concern was the Battle-General-class creatures.

A sweep of the eye revealed nothing but writhing lizards in every direction — a tide of scaled bodies rolling forward without end. The more impatient Lizard-Skull Giant Demons had taken to climbing over their own kind, the road itself no longer wide enough to accommodate the flood. Buildings on all sides groaned under the weight of the heavy, cumbersome creatures crawling up their walls. Beyond five hundred meters, the mass showed no sign of thinning.

At Mo Fan's feet, a dozen Lizard-Skull Giant Demon corpses had already piled up. Servant-class Lizard-Skull Giant Demons weren't terribly hard to kill, but a dozen counted for nothing against this ocean of them — like plucking a single hair from nine oxen. Burning through every last scrap of Magical Energy wouldn't be enough to wipe them out.

He glanced at Jiang Yi and her officers. These soldiers were disciplined; not one of them would squander an intermediate-tier spell carelessly.

Field Expedition students so often couldn't resist hurling an intermediate-tier blast to obliterate every Servant-class Demon-Beast in their path — which was, in practice, deeply stupid. Out in the wild, Magical Energy was life itself. Every point spent was a sliver of survival eroded. Demon-Beasts could not be hunted to extinction; knowing how to manage one's Magical Energy was what kept a person alive.

These officers were doing exactly that — conserving. Unless forced, they would not use intermediate-tier spells. They understood this enormous horde of Lizard-Skull Giant Demons wasn't going to recede anytime soon. After all, this place was barely over a kilometer from their Nest.

"Swift Star Wolf!" Mo Fan called out, directing the wolf's attention to a Colossal Death Lizard lurking three hundred meters to the left.

The Lizard-Skull Giant Demons were manageable for now, but Colossal Death Lizards were a different matter entirely — each one a lumbering tank crashing through streets and bringing down buildings simply by brushing past them.

The Swift Star Wolf bared its fangs, predator's eyes locking onto the towering creature standing head and shoulders above the surrounding mass.

This particular Colossal Death Lizard was covered in deep crimson all over, like a prehistoric crocodilian-lizard that had been roasted alive. As it squeezed between two buildings, both structures groaned and tilted apart. It couldn't have been more conspicuous as it moved through the writhing mass — the slower Lizard-Skull Giant Demons scrambling four or five body-lengths aside to clear a path.

"A Fire-type Colossal Death Lizard..." Jiang Yi spotted it as well. A glimmer of starlight flickered briefly through her eyes.

She couldn't let Mo Fan die — which meant she might have to intervene if it came to that.

Of course, when the moment was right, she could also lock him down with magic and take him in alive. That was the real priority.

"Don't come this way. Don't come this way — damn it, did you inherit pig genes along with that lizard skull?! There are people all over the place and you come straight for me?!" Mo Fan watched the Fire-type Colossal Death Lizard crawling his direction and felt rage spike through him.

Cursing or not, this was no longer easy.

Against any number of Lizard-Skull Giant Demons, the Lightning Seal let him carve out a safe zone and hold it indefinitely. A Colossal Death Lizard was something else entirely. The fourth-level Lightning Seal could affect Battle-General-class creatures, but only in a one-on-one situation — when he could concentrate every serpentine brand onto a single spot.

"Swift Star Wolf, find a way to drag it over toward those officers," Mo Fan muttered.

The Swift Star Wolf shared Mo Fan's instincts to the letter. In a fight like this, the natural move was to make the problem someone else's.

But just as the Swift Star Wolf moved to lure the Fire-type Colossal Death Lizard toward the officers, Jiang Yi acted.

This woman was clearly playing dual roles — guardian and captor — keeping Mo Fan alive while waiting for the right moment to take him in. She had no intention of letting him play dirty tricks.

The Swift Star Wolf didn't dare provoke someone whose strength matched Tang Yue's back when she had served as a Tribunal Agent, and Mo Fan had no room left to scheme. He had no choice but to fall back on their old arrangement: the wolf handles the large target, he handles the smaller ones.

Without the Swift Star Wolf helping to fend off the Lizard-Skull Giant Demons closing in from all sides, Mo Fan found himself struggling.

He needed to fall back against the collapsed building behind him and find higher ground on the rubble.

Moving anywhere else was out of the question. The ground below had become a seamless carpet of lizard flesh — Lizard-Skull Giant Demon bodies packed so densely there wasn't a gap between them, enough to encircle this entire city district twice over.

Mo Fan kept Releasing spell after spell. The empowered Lightning Seal gave him just enough breathing room to hold on.

A Mage fighting mobile and light could take down enemies ten or twenty times their own number — but being completely surrounded was a death sentence. If not for the Lightning Seal's twenty-meter paralytic field, and the fact that these giant lizards were too slow and clumsy to attack at range, Mo Fan would have been gnawed apart long ago.

"You may as well surrender," Jiang Yi called to him across the heaving mass of Lizard-Skull Giant Demons, her gaze never leaving him. "Your Lightning Seal is exceptional — it's given you the ability to hold an entire lizard horde at bay on your own. But once your Magical Energy runs dry, you end up in the belly of a Lizard-Skull Giant Demon. Surrender now, and you still have a chance to live. The Military Commander said you're the ideal test subject. None of the previous subjects in this new system experiment have survived, but your odds of success are far higher than anyone else's."

Jiang Yi kept her distance deliberately. She had to account for the possibility that Mo Fan might do something drastic.

Any sane person, cornered like this, would rather go down fighting than be handed over as a live laboratory specimen. If you were going to die anyway, why give villains the satisfaction?

Jiang Yi wanted Mo Fan to choose surrender on his own.

Right now it was still only a massive swarm of Lizard-Skull Giant Demons. Brutal as it was, carving an escape route was still possible — if she stepped in personally. But Mo Fan kept pressing deeper, keeping himself just beyond the reach of her magic and the officers trying to capture him.

If Mo Fan ended up as lizard food, the mission would fail. She needed him to be rational about this. Keep being reckless, and they would all die together. Better to accept reality — a live experiment wasn't a guaranteed death sentence.

Well...

*Not guaranteed, anyway.*