“See?” Edris took another step forward. “It’s fine.”

Ives snapped out of her daze and instinctively withdrawn from his approach, panic filling her gaze.

“Stop.” Her lips quivered. “Stop coming to me.”

The black mana around her hissed in response, releasing another potent burst of energy. The next instant, the trees encircling them began to wither, crumbling onto the ground like ashes.

Ace lunged forward, combatting the bolt of black mana. Different from last time, his mana sword struck the substance with a thrilling gong. The black mana, learning from their last exchange, had strengthened its surface to emulate the structure of Ace’s sword.

A crevice appeared on both ends of the conflict simultaneously, and the two sides drew back for the next attack. Ace gripped the mana sword in his hand, its blade was already showing signs of erosion from the black mana.

The exchanges continued, with the black mana on offense and Ace positioned in defense. The two forces traversed all over the jungle, their locations only recognisable from the whips of storm and the dents on the ground.

The black substance’s attacks were reckless and impulsive, just like a barbarous child. Ace blocked one move after another, refuelling his mana sword everytime a crack had been made to put it at risk for erosion.

His combative instincts were urging him to aim for the source of the power, to look at the greater image and eliminate the one behind all this.

Ace’s eyes narrowed. He slapped another glob of black mana onto the side with his sword, watching the substance sink into the tree and burning it hollow.

He pushed the thought away, reminding himself that his enemy was not a foe he must eliminate but a seven-year-old on the same side.

No child was going to die tonight.

Across the field, Ives crumpled onto the floor, her hand gripped tightly to the fabric near her chest. The black mana running rampant at her sides, noticing her abnormality, flinched slightly.

All its attacks halted at once. Under the two’s gaze, the black mana collectively retreated from the battlefield back to Ives.

Starting from its core, the pool of black beneath her feet then grew larger by the second, expanding like a massive shadow. Black, gooey liquid crawled up from her feet, surpassed her neck and up to her face. It didn’t take long before Ives was buried entirely in a sea of darkness.

She was yielding to the black mana.

“Stop running,” Ace said, coldly stoic. “And listen to your heartbeat.”

His deep voice reverberated across the field, and the black ocean, now covering over half of the field, came to a momentary halt in its expansion.

Situated in the centre of all this was Ives, completely enshrouded in darkness.

“You said that your Touch is life.” Ace lowered the sword to his side. “It’s ‘life’ for a reason.”

Behind him, Edris stepped forth. He gave the white-haired man a small nod, then headed for the direction of the black ocean’s core.

Ives’s entire body was enveloped in black mana, shielding her appearance from head to toe. It reminded Edris of those mannequins on the display windows of clothing boutiques, except rather than the neutral beige, this one was in pure black and eroding the ground below her.

“You think too highly of yourself,” he said, though the situation made it appear as if he was speaking to a wall. “A mere seven-year-old can’t hurt anyone here.”

The small figure flinched, and although Edris couldn’t tell, her eyes had peered up from her feet and towards his location.

With every step, the black mana residue rushed to climb up Edris’s boots, only to slip off back onto the ground.

He glimpsed down at his feet; although leather in appearance, his boots were modified from the Calvest that Dolan Zacriya gave him, which was said to withstand almost all types of attack for at last five minutes—including black mana.

He inched towards the centre of the black ocean, his shoes sinking into the softened ground.

The seven-year-old remained in the epicentre of the erosion, as if turned into stone.

However, Edris knew. He could tell that Ives was currently enduring unthinkable pain.

Ives was a child too mature for her age.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Knowing her, she’d probably wanted to escape as far into the jungle as possible to prevent the black mana from reaching civilization. She had no ways of wielding this power once it’s out of control, so the only way to prevent it from attacking others was to keep it condensed around her.

The black mana seemed to be discontent at the restriction of its movements as it crawlled all over her, threatening to devour her whole.

Although Edris managed to keep a composed poker face as he steadily closed the distance between them, he was sweating profusely from within.

Black mana was destructive in nature, and hence rejected from the world as a whole. To survive, it needed to satisfy its feedings by leeching onto a target, a vessel, who held an affinity to black mana and won’t reject its existence. Ives was supposed to be the vessel. Except, right now, she was trying to suppress the black mana’s ravenous instincts. The imminent consequence of her action was a shift in role, from vessel to prey.

Her own mana was trying to eat her alive.

Splatters of black mana fizzed in protest as it hit against the modified boots. He’d been walking three minutes in the black ocean, just to reach the halfway mark between him and the seven-year-old. At this point, either the Calvest would break apart first or the seven-year-old would become the black mana’s new nourishment.

Edris swallowed.

He just needed one slight moment of hesitation.

He needed a chance.

“The child at the underground Slums,” he began, enunciating every word. “That was you, right?”

The second he uttered those words, the world came to a still.

The rustling trees, the eroding ground, the bubble sea of black—everything stopped.

Something in Ives snapped.

All of a sudden, she found it more difficult than ever to breath, even more so than when she was fighting over the control of the monstrous force within her.

He knows.

All of a sudden, she found herself standing at the edge of a cliffside. The road behind her was no more, the only option left was to jump.

He knows he knows he knows he knows he knows—

“Ives!” Edris called out to her again, this time in a holler.

Black mana surged out uncontrollably from the seven-year-old. Her mind had entered a blank, devoid of all rationality and attachment to reality.

Drowning out all within its vicinity, black liquid plunged towards the entire jungle like a shattered dam. Blots of black splattered all over the place, filling the air with an odour akin to burnt flesh. Wherever the black mana contacted bled into itself, eroding on the spot and expelling a gaseous, dark vapour into the atmosphere.

Edris glanced up at the enormous pillar of black mana that towered over him. It sizzled and burnt, hunching over like a lurking beast ready to pound at its prey. He could already foresee his future if the pillar were to fall, the substance seething and tearing through his flesh until all that was left were ashes.

Just as the pillar was about to slam onto him, he spoke again.

“Even if you were, it doesn’t matter."

He was standing in front of the seven-year-old, with less than an arm’s length distance between them. His boots and pants were entirely drenched black, the Calvest barely holding on as it worked laboriously to fend off the extra mana.

His pale pupils peered straight at her, appearing even brighter than the moonlight itself.

"You’ve done well."

Ives was still enclosed entirely in the black substance, which wrapped tightly around her like a tight suit. However, the pillar that was about to crash down above her had halted in its tracks.

Edris could only make out an outline of the trembling seven-year-old, who had curled herself into a ball, inclined against what was left of an eroded tree trunk. Letting out a soft sigh, he lowered himself, too, into a crouching position that was at level to the child before him.

"You’ve done well," he said again.

Then, he reached out.

It was an action so mundane, so habitual, as if there was never any black mana on her in the first place. It was one he’d done many times before.

Ives flinched instinctively, attempting to retreat.

The next second, a gloved hand ruffled her head.

“Didn’t I tell you before?” Edris said. “You’re just a child.”

A tear rolled down her cheek, the wet stain followed by a crack on her mana-covered face.

“There’s no need for a child to try so hard.”

His hand moved downwards, from the top of her head to the side of her face. Through her teary eyes, she saw the dark-haired man remove the glove from his hand.

His hand contacted her skin, and instead of his flesh eroding like it did last time, Edris ended up touching the warm cheeks of a seven-year-old.

The black mana covering Ives’s face had cracked, a piece of it falling right before his touch. It dropped through the air, disintegrating into specks of dust trying before hitting the ground.

The wandering black speckles flickered under the moonlight, ultimately merging into Ives from behind.

Edris remained unfazed. Not too fast, not too slow, he simply continued to wipe the tears of her cheeks with his thumb.

More and more pieces of black mana broke down from her. First clearing the face, then moving on to the rest of her body. Like the others, they first dissipated into miniscule specks of dust, then, as if carried by a gust of wind, became reabsorbed into Ives's body.

Despite all that’s happening around them, it was as though the dark-haired man couldn’t perceive any of those occurrences. His eyes, pale and bright like the moon, were directed towards her and her alone.

Once all the black mana parted and the field finally cleared, Edris leaned forward, signalling to Ives their surroundings with a light shrug of the shoulders. He smiled.

“I told you it would be fine.”

For the first time tonight, Ives’s eyes lit up.

Only to lose focus the next second.

Without warning, the seven-year-old slumped onto Edris, face-planting into his embrace. The final remnants of black mana left her body in a flurry of dust. Edris caught her with both arms, slightly flinching as her body contacted his skin.

“Just in time.”

He glanced up and saw Ace standing before them, a complicated look in his gaze.

"That was reckless," Ace said plainly. "You're a gambler who was going against death."

Just moments before, he had emerged from concealment and, while Edris was talking Ives into lowering her guard, knocked her out and forcibly ended the black mana’s rampage.

It was an unspoken plan between the two of them, one that Ace only reluctantly agreed to after weighing the circumstances at hand.

"I'm not a gambler," Edris said. "But this was a gamble."

Quite the gamble, indeed.

If any of them had been too late, or if Ives had noticed Ace's disappearance or had caught onto Edris’s plan, they would have both been dead by now. He didn't know to what extent the seven-year-old's senses had been heightened by the black mana, nor could he even predict the effectiveness of his attempt at persuasion. However, he still decided to bet on success.

It was a gamble, and they won.