The other Magi chose a rather different approach than the one raising a stone fortress out of the ground.

All of them choose more bizarre ways to prepare themselves for the imminent monster horde.

Although the most interesting and mysterious defending preparations lied within the four Magi who choose to defend the front of the entrance, the other preparation methods were still a sight to behold.

One Magus chose to turn his territory into a swamp and flooded everything with water. Naturally, the water didn’t swap over the shining line which indicated the territory.

Another one began to release humongous fireballs and turned his territory into a sea of flames. Fraser could even see some silhouettes moving in the sea of lava.

Three of the Magi even seemed to work together and cast a spell that summoned a dark mist that engulfed their three territories and their inner circle members.

Although the six defensive preparations looked powerful and seemingly mighty, they were only stronger versions of the spells that apprentices could cast.

So Fraser could see that the Magus that created a stone fortress commanded his inner circle members to strengthen the castle by building more walls and siege objects.

The major four Magi, Fraser named them on the whim, consisted of Magus Sept, the white handsome youth, the only female Magus who looked like a grandmother and the middle-aged man with the white-haired female standing beside him, had way more interesting defensives measures.

The old female Magus simply cast a similar mist, but with the difference that the colorful mist in the shade of pink quickly disappeared as if the mist was never there.

The handsome white-robed youth and the middle-aged man that got taunted by the former summoned a few creatures to help them.

While the middle-aged man stabbed a sword into the ground and thus raised a group of 10 foot or three meter high knights that consisted of stones clad in full armor with different weapons like swords, maces, shields or spears, the body of the white-robed youth expanded and ballooned as if something tried to break out of his body.

A sound of flesh tearing appeared and Fraser could see how the ballooned body of the white-robed youth started to tear in some places.

Beasts of different sizes started to crawl out of the ballooned body. The entire sight looked gory as the beasts were drenched in blood and were transfigured into a gruesome sight.

With a single glance one could see that the beast was not alive, neither were they left in their whole state.

Stitches and other methods to hold two things together could be seen on the body of every beast.

When the summoning of the creatures ended, the former white-robed youth transformed into something that resembled a monster.

His height grew and only stopped when he was bigger than the earth knights the middle ages man summoned. While the earth knights already looked imposing, they only reached the ribs of the monster that the youth transformed into.

The left arm transformed into countless long tentacles, the right arm transformed into a huge grotesque looking hand with countless veins showing on top.

The whole body bulked up into the gigantic size and below the waist, two feet with hoofs could be seen.

‘So this is a Magus that transplants the body parts of powerful creatures into his own. Since he also has chimeras as his meat shields, he probably is someone to be feared.’

When Fraser pondered about the Magus that transformed, some of the younger apprentices that were not part of an inner circle and stood at the entrance started to shriek and retreat at the sight of the Magus that transformed into a monster.

At first most of the apprentices got mesmerized by the powerful spells of the other Magi, but when one of the Magus transformed into a monster, unknowingly to them, all of them retreated more than a couple of long steps.

The last one to make defensive measurements was Magus Sept, but as his preparations were way simpler than Fraser thought.

With a single toss, Magus Sept threw an egg-sized something in front of him, followed by pouring a potion onto it.

Green vines started to grow in visible eye speed, even if it was still rather slow.

A few moments later, when Magus Sept finished to build his place to relax, a comfortable chair with cushions and a small table next to it. The plant finished to grow and one could see a huge flytrap with a couple of dozen gigantic mouths.

Then, when Magus Sept lied on his chair, he turned towards Fraser and the group of inner circle members and spoke:

“The plant will only attack the beasts, so feel free to kill a couple of monsters. The older members of the inner circle will have to lead a couple of normal apprentices in order to give them combat experience. The new inner circle members are free to do whatever they want.”

With that command, Magus Sept closed his eyes and started to visibly relax.

Since almost all of the inner circle members of Magus Sept were already gathered in front of the gigantic flytrap and could hear and see Magus Sept, some of them started to move.

Viras group and Emium were naturally the first and they immediately shouted towards the entrance:

“Apprentices of Magus Sept, gather! You all need to gather combat experience, so come out right now. Whoever doesn’t come out will be faced with severe consequences.”

With military strictness, Emium and Vira handed out different duties to every single inner circle member.

The exception being the so-called “newcomers”, meaning Elise, Nicholas, Adrian, Elizabeth and naturally Fraser.

However as the other four already joined the group of Vira, Fraser was the only one to feel free to do whatever he wanted.

Without waiting for anyone to do the first step, Fraser stepped into the area where the humongous flytrap grew, his eight servants followed him.

Wherever Fraser and his eight servants stepped, no vines obstructed the path. It was as if the vines would automatically know where the group walked and immediately retreat if the group neared.

Even though Fraser didn’t like the feeling the gigantic flytrap gave him, he couldn’t do anything. After all, it is a plant that Magus Sept, a Magus, carried around him and even deemed it worthy to be a defensive measurement at the front of a horde.

Fraser didn’t actually experience a horde himself and expected a small swarm of monsters like the gigantic cave bear. He didn’t expect the Magi would personally confront the horde.

He heard of a few rumors from the bits and bits of conversations that the normal apprentices would do whenever he walked by.

Something about it being a colossal event that happens every century and would be extremely dangerous.

That dying would be common, even for apprentices.

However, for the survivors, there would be a huge combat increase. Apparently, a survivor of a horde would rarely lose against something that didn’t experience a horde.

Something about a treasure being left in the horde, maybe even walking treasure chests that were filled with tons of magic crystals.

Although the last rumor was probably caused by some apprentice that desperately needed magic crystals, most of them sounded right.