Double casting

'Collecting moonstones like this is much slower, I need to quickly collect at least five moonstones. After that, I won't care about this. I need to find katty fast and meet up with her.'

Thinking about his next course of actions, Aren left the scene.

An hour later, another apprentice appeared on the place where Aren had been. Coincidentally, it was the summoning magic apprentice.

Seeing the charred body of the wolf, she squatted down and touched it as she muttered, "A lightning elemental apprentice. With how even the bones of this wolf are burnt, it was done by someone with a high spirit..."

"...Someone from a major family?" The girl asked herself. She had been following the direction given by the token when she teleported to the forest, hoping to find her teammates. Before reaching here, she had already found a moonspring. It seemed that she was a little late to find this spring though.

As the moonstone was already collected, there was no reason to stay here. Standing up, she prepared to leave. Yet, as she took a step forward, a female voice sounded from above.

"Hehe, look who I found here. How coinciding to meet you here, Beista."

"Who's there!?" The summoning student Beista, immediately went on her guard when she heard this voice.

"Look at you panicking already."

The voice sounded again. Then, a girl wearing dark-green robes jumped down from one of the tree branches above.

The girl was also wearing a green pointed hat. Seeing the girl who had a wooden stick like wand in her hand and her gaze which seemed as if a predator looking at a prey, Beista's face soured. She knew who this girl was.

Natalie from the Grimwood family. This was a family full of ferocious women mages, who all practiced plant elemental magic. Although they were not a major family, their combat poweress was not to be underestimated. Their leader was an old but terrifying rank 4 plant attribute lesser mage. Among minor families, they ranked 4th!

Being in the forest, Natalie had a home ground advantage. If Beista could, she would rather not fight her in this forest. However, before even she could back away, a spellbook had already appeared on Natalie's other hand, it's pages turning in a flurry.

Natalie started to chant quickly as the tip of her wand glowed with a green light.

Whoosh!

There was no time to hesitate! Beista's spellbook automatically itself flowed and landed on her hand. The pages turned and stopped at the third page.

Immediately after, a small summoning magical array formed on the ground.

At this moment, Natalie seemed to have finished her spell already as a green vine dug itself from the ground and approached Beista in a thrusting motion.

"Come forth! Earth elemental." Beista's panicked voice rang out.

Fortunately, the earth elemental was summoned in time to stop the vine in its track.

Though, summoning a fire elemental was better to deal with a plant attribute magic, fire elements were scarce inside the forest which would delay its summoning.

"Impressive! Then how about this!" Natalie's crazed voice was heard. It seemed that she was not bothered that her spell didn't manage to hurt the girl.

Leaf blades! Writhing branches!

Double casting!

Natalie even knew double casting! Beista was now sure that she couldn't defeat her. She immediately commanded the earth elemental to create an earth wall and turned the spellbook to fifth page.

Even though the branches were blocked for sometime, the Leaf blades were already coming towards her. As she ducked to the sides, a leaf blade passed by her cheek, making the collar of her robes flutter.

Miraculously, only a small cut appeared on her cheek. Narrowly dodging the leaf blades, she hurriedly cast a spell.

"Summon Shadow Leopard!"

As she activated the summoning spell model with a swipe of her finger, A dark summoning array formed on the ground and black striped leopard appeared from within. It had black eyes and sharp long claws.

Though this was the strongest creature she could summon, she didn't command it to attack. Instead she ran towards it and hopped on its back.

Yes, she wanted to use its fast speed to run away from Natalie.

Boom!

The earth elemental couldn't hold out the branches any longer and was blasted to pieces.

Beista didn't feel any loss over that fact that her summoned creature was destroyed. It was because the elemental creature didn't have much intelligence. It could only carry out simple commands. She could always summon another elemental like that anytime.

The creatures she had to be concerned over were those that had formed a contract with her. Just like this shadow Leopard she was sitting on.

As the leaf blades were again coming towards her, she immediately ordered the Shadow creature to run and leave this place fast.

"You can't get away from me! Not until I get that moonstone in your token!"

Natalie bellowed as she made wings out of many leaves and glided towards the sprinting Shadow Leopard.

...

After the fight with the wolf, Aren didn't find any other moonsprings. However, he also didn't want to fight another magical beast for a while. At least not until his spiritual power was recovered.

That earlier fight had depleted more than half of his spiritual power. After strolling through for two hours inside the forest, he finally felt that drowsy feeling recede.

He didn't use any spiritual power recovery potions because he felt that it was not worth it if he didn't have to fight. He could just let it recover it naturally, no need to waste the precious potions.

Other than recovering, he was also trying to locate Katty. Aren once again opened his spellbook, turned to the last page and entered his spirit.

Again no response!

It seemed that he and katty were separated far away or there would at least be some signals in her spiritual imprint. Aren sighed and closed the spellbook.

After a while of walking, he saw that there was a large clearing up ahead. He took out his map and realized that he was close to the river. On the other side of the river, after about 50 kilometres of distance was the ogre settlement. That was the place where there were many Ogres. If anything, Aren hoped that Katty wouldn't go to that place.

As he came closer to the glade, he saw that there were two apprentices in grey robes there. One was lying on the ground while the other one was looking gleeful holding his token.

Seeing Aren coming from the woods, he put away his token and took out his spellbook.

"I already have three moonstones collected, lets see if this guy has any on him..." the boy in grey robes muttered as he looked forward to getting another moonstone from Aren.