Supreme Magus novel Chapter 1519

Chapter 1519 United They Stand Part 1

What looked like mist was actually comprised of minuscule living beings that, despite each having their own body and a bright violet mana core, all shared the same energy signature.

The countless creature formed a single entity that had a hive mind and core.

'Those are the Fae equivalent of fungi, the Horde. I never believed that one day I would have met them. According to Raagu, not only are they incredibly rare, but they also hold the secret of the white core!' Athung thought.

The Horde was the next evolutionary step of the fungal creature that Lith had fought back in Kulah. They had access to all elements, not just water and earth, and possessed much more powerful cores.

The Horde's rarity was due to their inability to give birth to offspring. Once Awakened, a mold could reproduce, but the newborn would be part of the hive mind and body of their progenitors, not a new being.

On the one hand, the phenomenon made the fungi nigh-immortal since a single spore could rebuild the colony from scratch as long as they had enough nutrients. Age didn't matter because new beings would replace the old ones the moment they died.

On the other hand, it made their race incapable of growing in number over time. The chances for a fungal colony to manage to Awaken was night zero because the process was individual, and the mycetes had to find a way to share the technique before their demise.

Fungi had a very short life span and even Awakening didn't extend it by much. It made the Horde incredibly rare, to the point that only a handful of them existed on the entirety of Mogar.

The Council had invited them under the pretext of helping with the test and creating an opportunity for the Hordes to spar with their fellow Awakened, but the Council's real goal was to exploit the test to thoroughly study such a unique race.

Even though the Fungi lacked the white core, their eternally youthful bodies and their ability to coordinate the countless small violet cores that comprised each colony to weave spells of untold power made them into the next best thing.

"Did you see that?" Raagu pointed at the Hordes that were rebuilding themselves and casting a Spirit Magic spell to destroy Athung's arrays.

"If mastering the vortexes and turning them into auxiliary cores is the secret of the violet core, then maybe turning the auxiliary cores into violet and making them capable of independent thought is the secret of the white core.

"It would explain why people like Baba Yaga survive even with their head and heart destroyed. It's because they are akin to a Horde."

"If your theory is correct, then why don't the fungi have a white core?" Feela the Behemoth was skeptical, but she had shared with the Council her best scanning techniques in the hope to learn something new.

"Because their greatest strength is also their weakness." Raagu replied. "To go beyond the bright violet, a Horde should merge into a single body and pool up their mana. Being split into countless small beings makes them hard to kill, but at the same time limits their mana flow."

To prove her point, the human representative zoomed on the Horde that was casting Spirit Magic. The magical strength of a single mycetes was irrelevant, forcing them to assemble in order to conjure any form of magic.

To do that, the mist had to converge into a single point, making themselves vulnerable to a lethal attack.

The now packed minuscule violet cores amplified each other's mana flow, increasing their individual magical prowess by several folds. On top of that, each spell they unleashed was actually comprised of several small spells, making them hard to defend against.

The Horde in front of Athung unleashed the tier five Spirit Magic spell, Starpath. An emerald stream of light caught her by surprise. It seeped through the defenses that her companions had conjured as if they weren't there, hitting her full on.