Layn rushed forward. He knew that if he stalled even for a moment, Irea would use her cuteness and charm to stop him from going.

But in the current situation, there was no way for Layn to hold back on fighting.

'They are bleeding for me,' he thought, squeezing between the mercenaries and Markus' sourced people alike. Even those that knew who he was were too busy fighting for their dear life to even notice the small disturbance, even less the Archmage himself.

'How do I deal with all those monsters in a quick fashion?' Layn asked himself, analyzing his options as he moved forward.

The magic from the artifacts he had on himself wasn't anywhere near sufficient for him to fight with the classical magic he was best versed with.

While it was only a rough estimate, for every spell Layn would cast in this fight, there would be one more person dying while the Archmage could do nothing but wait for his mana to regenerate.

'Maybe I should burn the powder again?' Layn thought, touching a small patch of specially prepared cloth of his robe, located right above his heart. Given how little stone-dust he managed to procure in the initial deal with the neighboring Overlord, there was only so much enchanted cloth that he could create.

Extracting the stone dust from the artifacts was out of the question. Keeping in mind how he used the very first artifact he created in this timeline to wreak havoc by manipulating others to try prying it open, Layn, this time, set his mind to make his new items safe in use as possible.

And while their rate of failure was nearing zero, it also meant that dismantling them to access the properly valuable parts would be a pain in the ass in a normal situation, not to say in the middle of a damned battle.

'No, the dust won't do,' Layn thought as he finally reached the front of the battle. He had to push his hand forward in an instant, using his small knife to parry a slashing attack of one of the monsters.

CLING!

The sound of the metal bending under pressure could be heard. With one look, Layn realized that his handy weapon could last a few hits at most.

"I should take better care of it,' Layn thought, using the little mana he had to cover the weapon with a small layer of magic. While on its own, it had no purpose at all, it was capable of absorbing the energy of the attacks rather than putting that burden on the metallic structure of the knife itself.

'I should've thought about getting some kind of weapon in advance,' Layn thought, sliding underneath the monster and pushing his knife straight into its guts.

A river of black blood gushed out of the monster's wound, instantly turning Layn's robes so dirty that they were unlikely to be ever fully cleaned again.

'The blood spell...' Layn thought when the hot liquid covered his face. But the potential way to solve the problem quickly evaporated from his brain when he felt a sting on his face.

And then another.

And then his entire head started to burn as if someone set it alight.

'Was that blood acidic or something?' Layn thought, crawling out of the corpse of the monster he slew. But just as he was about to make his way back to the open battlefield, something hard cut the skin on his back open.

'A magic stone?' Layn almost voiced his thoughts out loud. Only the repulsive stench of that black blood stopped him from opening his mouth in a fear that it could also turn poisonous.

As repulsive as it was to move his hands around in the still-warm flesh of the corpse with all that smelly and acidic blood around, Layn didn't hesitate to do so even for a second. Feeling the burn on his back and face alike where most of the monster's blood fell, Layn continued to move his hands around until he finally caught hold of the sharp element that prickled his back a moment ago.

'What's with this weird stone?' he thought once he brought the small item to his eyes. While it appeared like any other stone one could find across the entire wast continent, it also had one inherent trait that set it apart from others.

Its entire surface wasn't perfectly smooth like it was the case for the other stones. Rather than that, it was rough, as if its surface was made from millions of ditches, each of them way too small to be noticeable with one's naked eye.

'Could it be...' Layn thought, feeling how the panic slowly started to settle in his soul.

Not because of anything that was happening on the battlefield. But because of what this stone meant in regards to the Overlord that created it.

Just like Layn dusted off any stone he could find to bring forth its ability to suck the mana out of the air in quantities noticeable by humans, the stone in his hand filled the role in a similar although inferior manner.

Thanks to its uneven feel, its actual surface was many times greater than one would claim from inspecting it. And while it still limited the effective area that the stone could use to suck the magic out of the air, it was also far better at it than any of the other stones Layn encountered in his past.

For the battlefield, it didn't change much. With greater mana production in their hearts, the monsters were stronger than any of the ones Layn or others could encounter on the desert or other areas like it. But that fact was already well known by everyone who exchanged attacks with those monsters.

What truly made Layn worry was how the Overlord behind the attack appeared to know the trick to using the full potential of the stones in this magic-conductor-deprived world!

"Well, it doesn't change anything for the ongoing battle,

" Layn spoke under his nose, casting aside all his long-reaching worries. In the middle of the battle, there was no time to ponder about the next move of their opponents. Right now, Layn had to focus on actually winning the battle.

Because if the monsters were to come out victorious, then it wouldn't matter whether another Overlord figured the trick to the stones or not. Or rather, Layn would be too dead to ever bother with this matter again!

"Make way!

" Layn shouted, holding tightly to the newly acquired stone as he rushed forward. Thankfully, his shout was completely meaningless, given how during the time when he struggled to crawl out from underneath the monster's corpse, its living compatriots managed to push the line of Layn's men by several steps already.

'Suck all the energy from the stone,' Layn dictated what he was doing to himself, using this kind of mantra to fully focus his attention on the battle. And as soon as his voice sounded in his thoughts, he would follow up with the action.

'Use the energy to sharpen your hand,' Tom thought, covering his hand with a thick layer of pure mana that he then shaped into a simple spike.

'Find a monster to suck the energy away from,' Layn thought, frantically scanning the battlefield around him.

Thankfully, it was so full of monsters that he didn't need to look for long. Layn took two steps forward. By this time, the monsters noticed the appearance of their enemy behind their line, instantly throwing three soldiers at him.

Layn lowered his head, dodging a wide slash of the monster's claws. He then jumped to the back, happily accepting another monster as the pillow that softened his fall. But even despite this kind of favor the monster did to him, Layn stabbed it with his mana-covered hand nevertheless.

'Once you penetrate the target, suck its energy,' he spoke in his thoughts, instantly using the opening to rid all the monster's flesh out of the magical reinforcement that made it so powerful.

'A monster with a real, physical flesh?' Layn distracted himself for a moment when he realized that no matter how much mana he sucked out of his target, its body didn't appear to vanish at all!

'Well, that's another thing to bother with once the battle will be over,' the Archmage took note of this strange occurrence before using the freshly stolen energy to kick the monster's carcass away.

Layn once again covered his hands with dense mana, this time adding another layer all over his body. While this kind of shield wouldn't shield him from more than just a few attacks, it was still better than going into the battle as he initially did, with just the cloth robes and no armor whatsoever!

"Out of my way!

" Layn screamed, taking the two incoming attacks with nothing but hopes that his mana shield would hold on. But as the monsters pressed on with their feverish attacks, they entered Layn's range.

And it was the one thing that monsters like them, with mana roaming freely in their veins, shouldn't do.