The hunter began his first move while the giant hunchback stood back, chanting in a unknown language that Cades could now half-way understand, at least he could feel how it was supposed to be, or rather how it was supposed to talk to magic itself, he could feel the intent, just as he had previously realized.
In this case the magic was supposed to enhance an already existing spell that resided within the body of the hunchback, probably the strength spell, but Cades was almost certain that he was capable of defeating the hunchback no matter how much of the mana surrounding them he used to power himself up, though it might be wise for Cades to hurry a bit as to not make it easier for the two to fight against him.
But besides that Cades was quite interested in the fact that the hunchback was using the surrounding mana to heal and strengthen himself, that was something Cades had only really seen with long evocations, some rare sorcerers, and most interestingly, also as the basic of many a ancient and modern artifact and relic, as it was used to gather mana through skin contact, or more likely, through the air, causing the artifact to, for example, live off of the faint amount of mana radiated by a powerful monster, or suck off the mana that is required for it to work like a leech, often resulting in a grave loss of mana, especially with more powerful artifacts.
It was interesting to see this kind of a technique in action, especially considering the weird language that the current user was utilizing to control the "wild" mana around him to cause said magic to happen, rather than, as before mentioned, just using his own magic which should've been much more efficient, even in regards to everything that had happened up to now, something that would've exhausted them with all the regeneration, but his mental prowess would've normally long since have been impaired greatly, resulting in him stopping to fight and eventually giving up either way.
But then it hit him, the magic that the hunchback was using was more powerful the more beings there were, beings that all radiated a presence tainted with magic, such as a being of the transcribe rank that just now fully ascended and didn't really know how to hold back its own power, suchas Cades, or even the mages apparitions that Cades could feel faint madness from, or even just the hunter whose sword was oozing with intent, but no aura.
And then another consecutive fact enlightened his tired mind while he was still entertaining the fight with the hunter that had somehow managed to push him back, most likely because he was thinking about all of this while fighting him, something he would never have done in anormal case, but as this wasn't a normal case...
Anyways, he had just thought of a interesting rule in this place, as far as he could see that mage that Manug was fighting right now was using magic outside of her body, causing the mana in the world to from its own circles and simply leading that magic to cause something of her own volition, by now it should be clear that the hunchback was doing something similar, and the hunter was using intent, something that was quite different from mana itself, another good reason as to why Cades hadn't been able to further his own ability while using it as effectively as he was bale to do with normal magical techniques, or even just anormal sword as he had been doing a lot of fighting using those kinds of weapons, just as right now.
And jsut as he was thinking that, he twitched his sword slightly and offset another attack by the crazed hunter who had now began to reek of desperation, a smell that seemed to even cover the faint smell of freshly plucked apples and burnt wood coming from him ,the burning probably still lingering from their first fight, just a few minutes ago, where Cades had maltreated the monster using a few overloads to finally defeat it, back when he was still weakened a lot.
Right now, however, he wanted to think.
He was in a kind of flow, he wanted to ask himself more, to understand more, and soon after he began to think how he could perhaps utilize that knowledge.
What if he used mana from the outside and hardened it ?
Would he have to bring over his own intent ?
Could he even ?
His current idea was to force the mana around him to form a provisional shield, a relatively simple spell, but one that should be difficult with outer mana, requiring a incantation by an evoker, or a sigil by a sorcerer to be formed in a singular instance when utilizing foreign mana, but right now Cades mana was spreading out either way, so he just tried it, using the same method as the hunchback and saying a singular word.
"Shield", or rather "Konrur", the ehetrian word for shield, at least the old word, similarly to how you could also be used as thou in the old English language, or football was called soccer in the very same language, with slight differentiations between cultures that used the same language, such as on ehetria where almost every land used the same language as it had been spread out by the accursed king.
And indeed, something happened, but not because he said something, no, the mana that was already outside of his body but still belonging to him reacted and caused a light violet, glowing, dome-like shield to appear and block the hunters attacks, at least for a short while before the shield began to crack under the second and third attack by the hunter that seemed to grow stronger, perhaps because of the chant spoken by the hunchback that seemed to also be nearing the end of his process, something that Cades was quite looking forward to.