What?

Did she manage to revive For and Kon?

I couldn’t distinguish them… this time not because of my inaptness, rather because of her turning them.

It seemed that way: the one singular entity, or rather bunch of those, since they were together, split three ways. Each of them was going a different way.

Which way was he going to go?

Was he able to somehow distinguish them?

Apparently, because he dashed towards the one that went the furthest away from us.

I tried seeing something in the three, to understand why he was so certain that it was the target… but I couldn’t. All looked the same to me, just the amalgamation of mana that definitely belonged to ILMA, all three of them.

But, as we got closer, I realized something.

I have made a mistake.

She was not escaping and barely gaining on him.

It was an optical illusion.

She was a lot faster than that: it was that just her mana was rising.

Quite strange, right?

For someone trying to escape and using who knows how much mana, her signature should be getting smaller.

Instead, it was getting bigger, and while escaping away from us it gave us, or rather just me, a false image of her barely gaining on him.

Truth was, she was already hundreds of meters away and still going.

I guess Mike noticed that and it was because of that he chose that one as his target.

The hardest one to catch should be her, right?

Speaking of other targets, seeing as I made a mistake looking at that one, I tried turning back and seeing the other two.

Well, I physically couldn’t, but that didn’t stop me from trying using just my magical senses. I already was mostly using them, after all.

Knowing that trick of hers, I sort of expected something similar there… but I couldn’t.

Yeah, literally couldn’t.

There was nothing to perceive. The other two had disappeared from my view.

Did they escape?

Were they that fast that they got away?

Or were we just going fast enough for them to leave my range?

Or combination of both?

Either of those was very possible, that is if they were awake.

After all, Kon knew portal magic. He could just leave, if she was to let him…

What about For, though?

She had to lean on others to travel, so that shouldn’t be possible for her…

But then again, ILMA already proved that she could share magic with those two, so who knows what she was now capable of…

When I was just about to give up and focus on the chase, I suddenly felt a small blip in my view.

It was… well, more than hundreds of meters away from us… and if I was going to guess, somewhere nearby where we started. Where the main island was.

It was small. tiny as some unconscious person. Maybe even less. But it was definitely there.

I wonder if Mike noticed that as well…?

Well it didn’t seem like it, because he was still going at it, chasing ILMA.

Speaking of… I honestly wasn’t sure where we were any more, only surrounded by rock and noise of magic tearing through the rock.

He was like some madman, crazed within the chase, following the target he couldn’t see…

Well, at least with regular senses.

He was gaining, though.

While he was busy, I had nothing to do, and I didn’t even attempt to try and talk to him.

Definitely not a good idea.

Instead, I was monitoring his mana. And well, my own, but that was just out of habit.

I managed to notice a few interesting tidbits of information.

First off, I was gaining power.

And fast.

Sure, I was getting mana from the environment. And him.

But the pace was not matching to what I would expect from a passive effort like that. If you even can call it an effort.

Besides that, I also noticed that my mana was… well, from a lack of a better expression, clearer.

Every time, I’d always seen myself as this strange, dirty flame of mana… But no more.

Hell, they used to call my flame “a sun”, and now it honestly was fitting.

Maybe not with the intensity any more, not yet at least.

On the other hand, there was Mike.

His mana was quite opposite of what I was perceiving myself as.

Hell, he reminded me more of the older me. Maybe that’s why I almost made that mistake earlier.

Beside that strange color, I also noticed that he was not weakening.

Strange. Using that much mana and yet not even changing? Talk about infinite resources.

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What was strange, though, was also the fact that I was not feeling any mana leaving his body, and yet the spell was clear and visible.

Was it really that efficient that I wasn’t able to perceive it…?

Can’t be.

Wait.

Where was it getting the energy from?

Yeah, that’s the answer.

Sure, Mike was the one who cast the spell. But he was not the one who was fueling it any more.

As we were moving past the countless stones, I wasn’t really paying attention, but now I realized that the rock we were passing through behind us was a lot less energized.

Almost completely drained.

Yeah. Just like me, he was getting mana from his surroundings.

But while I had to first get the mana into my own body to then use it, he was just using it straight up when he touched it.

Intriguing…

Well, I said I had to…

It’s just I never really properly utilized that.

Sure, I knew it was possible and I used it now and then, but never was completely reliant on it.

And to control something like that…

What am I even talking about, Control? Who said he had to have great control? For all he cared he could have just been leaving complete destruction in his path and he’d be fine, not like it mattered for anyone. We were in the middle of nowhere.

But, speaking of nowhere. ILMA had changed her path.

So far, she was leading us more and more down, towards… I don’t know what. But now, her destination shifted, or that we just were starting to reach it and she was slowly emerging from under the ground.

Of course that didn’t escape his notice.

With minimum effort he manipulated the spell and we were now climbing.

With that much time, I honestly was surprised that we didn’t yet manage to catch her.

Or, for that matter, for her to escape completely.

She probably could teleport away if she was to do it quickly…

But then again, she probably was lacking some needed components. Maybe an anchor or something.

Before I finished that thought, though, suddenly the environment changed.

Instead of inside the rock, we suddenly found ourselves under the water.

The shift was so sudden and so swift that I almost didn’t notice, still focused on mana.

That is, if not for the sudden spike in mana that I was absorbing.

Yeah, the water was infused. Nothing new.

Maybe a bit more than I remembered last time when I was swimming, but still.

The moment we broke through the surface of the rock, Mike’s spell vanished, and he found himself standing on a flat bedrock underwater surface.

Not for long.

I think he knew we were about to surface, at least from the rock, because he almost immediately pushed himself away and shot up towards where her signature still was, like a torpedo.

He didn’t use magic, yet he was faster than what I thought was possible.

Yet again, how was he doing that? It’s not like it was some hidden spell or something, I never felt any mana leave his body…

Before I managed to finish my train of thought, we were already out of the water.

In mid air, he cast a small spell and froze the surface.

I say “small” but that was hardly it. It was only small in comparison to his mana reserves, to be honest.

In reality, he just made a massive island of ice for him to stand on.

I would say it was a bit of an overkill, but since we were in the middle of an ocean, it was kind of needed, the waves and all…

The main question was though: where was ILMA?

Sure, we chased her out of the rock and water, but she was nowhere near. I could tell her mana was still going away from us, yet it felt like she was slowing down…?

Was she near her destination? Was there any destination even?

Or… well, maybe something else.

She was just running out of juice.

I guess I should've expected that.

To dig through the rock and then fly on top of that, you need a lot of energy. And I don’t need to mention you need to have a good, working spell.

That reminded me… the flight spell.

Did she use the same one as I did?

If so, she was really grasping at straws here. That was very risky. It would also explain the mana fluctuations…

But, she managed to escape. Mike was not that stupid to try and chase her, right? Especially with that kind of spell.

I was about to say something, seeing as he was just standing there, contemplating, but before I managed to even say a word, he jumped again.

It was so immediate and overwhelmingly powerful that the iceberg under his feet crumbled and fell into the ocean, while he leaped into the sky, in an effort to chase her, I guess?

Was he insane? Did he really want to fly?

Fuck. Right. It wasn’t risky for him. He had a very good material for him to use.

My own head.

Sure, I wasn’t that energized yet, but my flesh would be enough for him to get a nice boost towards her. Even if he was using my own spell, it would be good enough. And who’s going to say he didn’t make it more efficient? He had time here, so…

But, I was not going to find out about that.

And not because of me getting vaporized, as I expected.

He straight up was doing something else.

Maybe still unbelievable, but…

The moment I realized what, or at least I thought that I realized what he was planning to do with me, I decided to not go lying down. I was going to retaliate.

In preparation for being used as a component to his spell, I focused on my own magic, trying to make it as volatile as possible.

To be honest, it was something I never tried nor ever expected to do. Hell, that was the literal opposite of what I was used to doing.

But, even if it was the opposite, I still had some success.

More than some.

And very unpleasant. To me.

Of course I expected that. I mean, you won’t make someone hurt without getting hurt yourself.

The feeling I created… I want to say it was like having a feeling of your blood being replaced by boiling water.

Unpleasant. To say the least.

At least that’s how I imagined it, because I was not feeling pain, only slight discomfort from mana buzzing within my own body… er, head.

But, he didn’t use me.

I was surprised.

For a moment I thought that he noticed my plan and was about to retaliate towards me for breaking his pursuit, but nope. He was, straight up, ignoring me.

Was his flight spell so advanced that he didn’t need me at all?

Or did he plan to use himself? Or maybe he brought some tools with him or something? Other materials?

The answer to all of the above was no.

He was just not going to fly. I realized that the moment we started falling down towards the water.

He was just… waiting. Waiting for us to hit the water?

No. Waiting for us to be a bit closer to the water. That’s when he released a spell, the same one, or at least a similar one to the one he used to make that frozen island.

It was more powerful, I think. But very short-lived.

It actually managed to survive his impact. Although the hit managed to sink it a good meter below the surface, before he sprung up once more and leaped into the air and the ice sank into the sea, shattering into small pieces.

That’s one way to chase someone that is flying above the sea…

How far was he even going to chase her?

The answer was: however far it was needed.

Luckily for us, or maybe just him, the pursuit was going to end sooner rather than later.

I think it took him twenty-three leaps. I counted each and every one, from the lack of anything productive to do. That is, besides regenerating my mana, but that was hardly a task that needed much of my concentration.

At the jump twenty-four, we finally managed to get a glimpse of our target, this time physically.

And… it was not something either of us had expected.

It was not her.

Honestly, at that point, I kind of learned to expect the unexpected, but I never thought that instead of ILMA, we’d be following a literal rock.

Yeah. A piece of stone.

Not even an Origin Crystal. Just a rock that probably originated back at the island where we met.

I don’t need to say that he didn’t take that very well.