*** Black Mage’s POV ***

The brat opened his eyes and a chill seized me. Lightning roared forth in a savage display, crackling over his form in wrathful sparks.

My eyes widened at this abomination. One aura was trouble enough, but two?

'Preposterous! Which madman would learn two aura at once and be fine?!'

Yet the madman stood before me, a tempest given flesh. It was absurd to think that such a small boy could do so much. However, that wasn’t the end of his change.

‘What’s with his eyes?’

Unlike his calm appearance before, his eyes were shining indefinitely with a ferocious gaze now. I shuddered as the gaze found me.

It was as if he was a beast about to start his hunt. However, he was the prey instead of the hunter. So how could that be true?

I ignored my instinct to strengthen my defense. Instead, I began an all-out attack to take him down before my domain ran out.

I was expecting him to hole up in place and go on defense. However, he pushed through the bombardment and rushed at me like a madman.

‘Idiot.’

My attack rained down on him. He slashed the fatal one and let himself get hit by the shallow ones.

However, since he didn’t bother to dodge, even those shallow attacks would be enough to take him down in time. After all, there was a reason I put poison in my attack.

‘It was weird that the poison had taken so long to kill him, but with this, it’s over.’

I laughed scornfully as my attacks landed, confident the poison would soon drop him. But when the smoke cleared, the boy still stood uninjured.

Unbelievable! Had my eyes deceived me? I peered closer and saw the truth. His flesh knitting together in real time beneath a sheen of white light.

"Impudent wretch!" I spat. "What fool heals in the chaos of combat?" Yet there he stood, wounds erased as if they'd never been.

My moment of shock cost me dearly - already he lunged anew with a glowing blade, forcing me to cancel my attack and strengthen my shield as he launched a flurry of slashes.

Fortunately, what I feared most didn't happen as his slashes didn't even scratch the shield. However, that didn't stop him from continuing to attack.

A cold dread seized me as I watched him rise once more, wounds closed rapidly. Had the brat unlocked some hidden power in his desperation?

Fighters were known to tap into untold reserves when death loomed near, and I had weakened him to that edge. If I gave him longer to feed on that power, who knew how much fiercer he might become?

My eyes narrowed to furious slits. None would surpass me in this place.

With a flick of my wrist, blades of shadow sprang forth, slicing threads through the air toward him. This would end, one way or another, before he gained more ground.

He sliced those with ease, so I raised my hand and created dozens of magic circles all around him. As I was about to finish the spell and attack--

“[Lightning]”

He glanced at the circle with shining eyes and pierced all of the circle’s weak points at once with his lightning. The circle broke down and the magic got canceled.

Thinking it might be a coincidence, I tried again with even more magic circles this time. However, everywhere he glanced, lightning was shot and broke the magic before they even manifested.

‘Crazy!’

Even I couldn’t identify, let alone attack a circle’s weak points with such accuracy and speed as he did. Just a glance. That’s all it took for this beast to render my domain useless.

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‘Does this mean I would have to directly cast magic myself?’

It would cost me mana and other resources like health and sanity if I did that. It would be costly. And if I were going to do that anyway, what use was this domain?

The boy kept hitting my shield at a flurry pace as he let his lightning destroy more circles. I sneakily created circles from behind him, but he even destroyed that as if he had eyes behind his back.

‘Did he sense the movement of my mana?’

It was absurd. So I couldn’t help but grimace.

‘Is this the same person I had been fighting until now?’

It was almost as if he had become a different person. One that had very high sensitivity and instinctive ability.

‘I have to do something.’

I decided to cast black magic directly. I could feel my health slipping away as I completed the spells.

My magic pulled the darkness deep from the ground. It swarmed the boy from all sides, a roiling storm of shadow.

At first he sliced through them, shadow hands gripped his blade before he turned it to light. However, the shadow multiplied faster than he could cut them.

Dark tentacles wrapped his limbs, constricting with dreadful strength. He struggled wildly, to no avail. Soon, the hands covered every part of his body as they enclosed him in an expanding cocoon.

Only the cocoon's pulsing figure remained at the center of the shadow's enclosement now. I leaned in, savoring a gulp.

"Did I get him?"

At last the darkness melded into a single, shivering globe that continued to expand.

I threw back my head and laughed, certain no trick could save him now from the darkness I'd crafted with full strength.

‘Yes, in the end, he was nothing more than a worm.’

I cast as many restrictive hands as I could, so it would only make sense for him to eventually get caught without being able to do anything. However, it was then.

“[Burst]”

Suddenly, time seemed to stop as I heard his voice. The hands and attack spells that were about to hit him stopped in mid-air. I couldn’t blink, let alone move from my place.

I thought time stopped for a second. However, something ridiculous happened.

In this world where everything stopped moving, a cut appeared on the cocoon. Then another cut. Then another cut. With each cut, a sliver of light could be seen from the cocoon. The cut got faster and faster until eventually, the light spread out so much that it even began to swallow the entirety of the dome.

And when every place had finally been cut by invisible slashes. The frozen time finally moved once more.

‘...!’

What happened next was a disaster. The sky, the earth, and everything in between. Everything inside the dome was slashed by a seemingly infinite number of cuts and got reduced to light all at once.

If not for my shield and domain, I might also have met my end without knowing what killed me in the frozen world. Fortunately, the domain was fine despite the shield getting cracked a little here and there.

‘In the end, without overwhelming strength, he would never be able to destroy this shield and domain.’

I laughed at his useless struggle. However, I forgot something important.

All this time, he had been turning my attacks into light. So what would happen now when the numerous restrictive-movement spell I had given my all to create got transformed to light?

The answer was obvious. The dome would be filled with so much light that there would be no space for darkness and shadow to exist. And that’s exactly what I was seeing now.

“Heok?!”

As the shadow world faded, I beheld a transformed world. A world of black and white that split down the middle at my dark shield.

Where half of my domain had been was now a shining world of light. I grit my teeth at the implication.

None of my magic circle survived in that world beyond the black shield. And no darkness nor shadow exist for me to create new circles. I had lost full control of an entire half of my domain, all to a small boy.

Fury overtook me. How had the brat pulled off such trickery? I cared not for explanations - half the domain remained under my control.

Piece by piece I would dismantle his world of light, and bury him to regain my lost pride.

I stared down the boy across the divide.

The brat appeared from the cocoon unharmed and raised his sword. He sucked in that accursed light like a starving beast. It swirled around his blade and limb in an immense swirl of light vortex!

The light continued to strengthen the sword till it stretched upward, towering as if trying to pierce the cloud and swallow the sky! In fact, that might be what happened if not for the dome.

The sword's width also widened as a fierce energy gathered. Power pulsed as if the sword was about to explode and split the ground in half.

‘This is bad!’

I had to do something. I no longer cared about losing my health or sanity and began to cast spells on spells to stop him. However, my spells got sliced by the mere winds caused by the sucked light and ended up strengthening his sword instead. I stopped as I realized nothing could be done and grimaced.

‘If that attack hit me...’

I laughed at the absurdity.

‘Damn it. If only I could use my full strength.’

No, even if I was at full strength, could I even do something about that attack?

‘I probably couldn’t.’

The only option was to run. But where could I run when I couldn’t even destroy this dome?

‘What a fucked world this is.’

I used everything I had to deal with the incoming attack. Mana, health, sanity. I even sacrificed all the grass knowing full well even that wouldn’t be enough to reinforce my defense. And then, finally. The world was engulfed in pure white.