Fighting for Treasure

However, it doesn't mean the sprites are free to do whatever they want, such as mindlessly causing disasters and killing innocent people. According to the established rules set forth by the Heavenly Tree Sprite 800,000 years ago, sprites were:

1. To have their own semi-private domain; meaning, other beings may visit, pass through, or gather materials within their property, and as long as they do not proceed to do a large disturbance to the property such as destruction of property, sprites cannot harm them. In turn, these sprites cannot be harmed by other beings as well.

2. Sprites can retaliate if another being is being aggressive to the point it is turning into a fight. The sprites can now then decide to kill or maim these beings. However, if the sprite initiates the fight, other beings in the vicinity would be free to reciprocate in action, however, they can only maim or disable the sprite, not kill it. They may capture it especially if the sanity of the sprite is long gone.

3. Sprites must help the people in their jurisdiction when a natural calamity has struck unconditionally, but still, of course, ensuring its own safety.

Of course, the second one is the one least followed, for when in combat, one's weapons and attacks have no eyes, legs, or arms to itself. Even the Heavenly Tree silently acquiesce to this situation.

Xander quickly scanned the list of poison sprites in Eta's database and saw one that matches: it was a 50,000-year-old natural poison sprite named Ehlena. It seems to live deep under the largest marshland in the area, where the target material, Moonshine Clover, grows. He wouldn't have any problems dealing with a sprite, but it was a hassle to make a fuss since he was just there to collect plants.

After moving around the marshlands, he was surprised that he was able to meet a group of 4 mercenaries in the marshlands. He approached their location since it was on the way towards the largest marshland, and he saw them fighting off against a pack of magic beast direwolves, roughly around Master-7. It seemed to be no problem for the mercenaries since it seems that they were all in the legendary class.

When he saw them, and they saw him, they merely nodded at one another, before Xander continued to towards the place where the Moonshine Clover grows.

With the same pace, he had entered the marshlands, in a few minutes, Xander had already reached the area where Ehlena lives in, and from afar, he could see several plants growing by the side of the marsh. Upon closer inspection, they were Moonshine Clovers, and there were several tens of them growing at the bank. Rather than collect them all, he only picked 5 stalks, at was going to head out when something caught his eye.

He was about to approach it when he detected an attack approaching him. Using [Absolute Time], he reversed the spell's existence, causing it to vanish into nothing several meters away from him. Almost by reflex, he launched a total of 4 attacks under the 5-elements series, with each attack comprising of 16 magic spells. This was after he activated [Heavenly Divination] and ensured all his strikes hit the weak points of his targets. Although his current cultivation was Elite-8, he could handle anyone below Mythic class easily.

Before his spells could reach their targets though, a barrier appeared on the targets, taking the brunt of the spells before breaking apart. However, this was enough time for Xander to get the item that caught his eye.

Briefly looking at it, he immediately identified it as an Alexandrite Cat Eye, a type of crystal that is formed from compression of certain elements at a specific ratio. The value of this item is considered priceless, because such a crystal is classified under flawless category, and there is a large market for it but no supply.

People in the past have attempted to compress elements into crystal form, which successfully took off and created many products, from jewelry to magic accessories, to even raw materials for weapons as well as used as weapons themselves. Imagine, compressing fire element particles into a crystal; what if you could sequence them to rapidly expand when their physical structure receives a shock? Immediately, elemental bombs became a trend, to the point that you actually need to have a license to use or even carry them in public spaces.

The Alexandrite Cat Eye involves 6 different elements, naturally complementing one another and formed this crystal. The raw Cat eye could actually improve affinity and control of elements, and if it was processed, more functions could be added.

Looking at the greedy eyes of the mercenaries in front of him, he knew they planned to rob and kill him so he couldn't report them, as technically, mercenaries aren't allowed to harm other mercenaries. Xander eyes turned cold. Since they wanted to kill him, he can't be blamed for reciprocating the gesture to them.

No talks were done. Both groups had their objectives, and they were magicians, meaning they were smart and they think very fast in situations like this. Xander immediately launched his own attacks, causing multiple rays of spells to target the mercenaries.

A few of them attempted to dodge as well as cast their counter-spells, targeting the spells that Xander released, hoping to cancel out the attack. As Legendary mercenaries, they had a certain level of combat prowess and power, so their reactions were quick, but not as quick as Xander's.

They didn't realize that the attack was more than 1 magic spell, and only when they saw the attack continuing towards them did they notice something was wrong. immediately, one of the mercenaries brought out a rolled up banner, unfurled it, and a voice no human was capable of saying were heard,

"Fa14V^434&32!@A F6*((@$))VDFD"

Immediately, the winds began howling in the marshlands, with several dark clouds covering the sun, as if a storm was approaching. On the banner, there were multiple runic writings squirming and forming a blurry image. The man holding the scroll was considered the leader, having the strongest magic level of Legendary-6.

From the fluctuations, Xander was quite surprised for a bit before casting two spells, [Void Rejection] and [Space Crush] in the area where the scroll was.

Immediately, the runic writings in the scroll stopped moving, before disappearing, evaporating from the scroll. At the same time, the space where the one holding the scroll was visibly compressing, and the man was slowly crushed into meat patty, in the horror of the other colleagues, they could see the meat being compressed, all the blood and innards compressing into speck of ruby red sphere.

Even the scroll wasn't left unscathed. The scroll was ripped apart causing an elemental explosion due to the runes rapidly collapsing and interacting wildly, but it was quickly contained by the spatial spell. It was compressed in such a way an elemental crystal was formed in its place.

For a few seconds, the mercenaries couldn't react. All their control over their spells suddenly collapsed, as if there was a force that removed the elemental essences in the area, robbing them of power to command.

This short time gap was enough for Xander to launch another set of attacks, this time, due to the effects of [Void Rejection] he could only use physical attacks enhanced by magic. With his hands infused with [Absolute Time - Slow], he began to strike towards the mercenaries.

Instantly, the mercenaries began to react quickly. They began dodging Xander's attacks, after a while, they realized the elements stored inside their bodies were still usable and began to infuse their elements to their physical bodies.

After a few rounds,

However, their faces changed; they realized that the elements' movement in their bodies was slowing down. If before they could easily cause the elements to cycle in their body with a second, right now, the speed was 50 times slower. If they wanted to cycle the elements in their body in one complete round, they needed roughly 5.9x10^15 seconds, or roughly 1 billion years. This effect doesn't last long, however, merely 10 minutes. However, they soon realized another horrifying thing: their bodies were also slowing down!

Even their physical bodies were beginning to slow down with every hit from Xander. With [Absolute Time - Slow], it was beginning to slow down the characteristics of the targets, starting from the extraneous to the intrinsic characteristics.

Theoretically, Xander could cause them to move so slowly to the point that in the eyes of others, they weren't moving. In fact, he can bestow some sort of pseudo-immortality to them, with the downside that every second for us is perceived by their mind and body as hundreds to billions of years.

However, right now, with his abilities and comprehension of space-time, [Absolute Time- Slow] Could easily slow down extraneous characteristics such as magic control, flow, and cycle up to 100x slower, while intrinsic characteristics such as biological functions are only up to 5x slower.

If he improved his understanding of space-time, he could probably derive a new use for the spell: [Absolute Time - Stop], where he can literally stop the time of every function, characteristics of a target for a period of time.

He also believes that in the future, he could extend the use of this spell from physical contact to an area, allowing him to affect the time of everyone beside him indefinitely as long as they are in the area of effect, quite similar to a domain a Mythic magician would have.

After another few seconds of fighting, the 3 remaining mercenaries collapsed, all of them couldn't be more dead. Xander exhaled before deactivating [Absolute Time]. Although he could use it indefinitely and without repercussions, it would be quite problem if he accidentally slowed someone's time.

He quickly checked for their identifications by hacking into their electronics, and checking their owned properties and money in their bank accounts. Upon seeing the money not even cumulatively surpassing 7 digits, he distastefully shook his head and began to transfer the money into different charities all over the world under anonymous donations, ranging from 100,000 to 800,000 Etas worth of donations.