Lando cautiously descended the stairs, prepared for a potential confrontation. Based on the information he had received, there would be two mages awaiting him. However, Lando's strategy involved stealthily eliminating both of them, rather than engaging in an open fight.

As he made his way down, Lando readied a powerful projectile, similar to the one he had used to kill the first mage. This proved to be a wise decision, as he immediately got spotted as he walked right into the view of what appeared to be a mage in the gaseous stage, indicated by his badge.

Without hesitation, Lando unleashed the projectile, aiming directly for the mage's chest. The attack caught the mage off guard, ensuring a quick and successful strike.

Perhaps Lando should have considered disguising himself with one of the guard's uniforms to avoid looking like an intruder immediately. He made a mental note to learn from this experience in the future.

The projectile struck the mage's chest with force, taking him by surprise. Seizing the moment, Lando swiftly charged at the mage, following his instinct. However, the mage utilized wind magic to narrowly evade a deadly dagger stab.

Engaged in combat, Lando and the wind mage exchanged blows. Despite the mage's enhanced body and agility, his swordplay proved slower compared to Lando's swift skills with his dagger. The guard accumulated wounds rapidly during their skirmish. Lando positioned himself for a final strike, aimed at the mage's eye, when he spotted an inferno approaching from his peripheral vision.

The liquid stage mage, presumed to be the leader, had finally detected the intruder and launched a lance of flames toward Lando. Recognizing that he was ill-equipped to face two formidable mages simultaneously, especially if the second mage was at a higher stage, Lando activated the pendant he had received from his father. Almost instantaneously, the pendant conjured a shield of flames. Though capable of withstanding even a solid stage attack, Lando knew that the pendant would temporarily lose its powers and function solely as a mere piece of jewelry after this encounter, as it required mana from the surrounding environment to recharge.

Taking advantage of his opponent's distractions, Lando capitalized on the opportunity and continued his fatal stab to the mage's eye. Pushing forward, he aimed to incapacitate the mage by destroying his brain, ending at least one threat once and for all.

Just in the nick of time, Lando successfully dispatched his current adversary, all while the next opponent prepared to unleash a barrage of five fire lances. Waiting for the flaming shield to dissipate, Lando quickly gathered mana within a bubble of time magic that encased his body, providing protection against the imminent onslaught and hastening his movement.

Aware of his disadvantage in long-range combat against the headguard, Lando strategized to close the gap between them while evading the incoming attacks. From his perspective, his opponent seemed to move in slow motion, yet his projectiles still possessed enough speed to singe a few of Lando's hairs while he was evading them. As his opponent realized Lando's intentions, a wall of flames was suddenly unleashed in his direction as his opponent seemed to have exploded in a raging inferno.

Adjusting his plan, Lando swiftly darted into another corridor, successfully evading the fiery assault. Taking a moment to breathe a sigh of relief, he conjured three spatial bullets before cautiously peering around the corner. To his surprise, his opponent now wielded a burning whip, indicating that he had a high mastery over his element.

Undeterred by the development, Lando unleashed the bullets one after another towards the mage down the corridor. Anticipating Lando's movements, the guard swung his whip with incredible speed, sending deadly fire sickles hurtling toward Lando.

The first bullet caught the mage off guard, striking his left arm. However, the other two bullets unfortunately missed their mark as the guard instinctively evaded them. The mage's left arm contorted in unnatural directions as a result of the impact, looking as if it had been twisted multiple times in each direction.

While the guard's arm was momentarily incapacitated, Lando had to contend with the onslaught of flaming sickles aimed at him. Evading most of the projectiles, he was unfortunate to be struck by two. Attempting to defend himself, Lando hastily created a spatial shield with his hand that soon proved to be insufficient against the powerful attacks. His hand took a burn as he instinctively used his dagger to protect himself as well as his left shoulder that took the blow directly.

***

A while back, when Lando was still an apprentice at the academy, he made an intriguing discovery while experimenting in his isolated dorm room. Playing around with his time magic, he created a bubble of time magic around his body, accelerating time within it. This allowed him to observe the outside world in what seemed like slow motion from his perspective.

Curiosity led Lando to test the effects of his bubble on different interactions with the outside world. He held his hand over the flame of a candle to observe its behavior when it traversed his bubble of time magic. Surprisingly, he noticed that the flame was not as hot as it should be. When the heat emitted by the candle came into contact with his bubble, it seemed to lose some of its power before it touched his skin, resulting in a slightly cooler temperature. However, when Lando imagined the flame to be inside his bubble, it returned to its normal temperature as it became accelerated by his magic, just like everything else within the bubble.

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Lando also observed a similar phenomenon with projectiles shot at him. When passing through his bubble, they would lose some of their momentum. He deduced that his bubble acted as a barrier that, while easy to traverse, caused the accelerated particles within it to experience a different flow of time. Consequently, they lost speed and kinetic energy, which manifested as a decrease in their heat and momentum upon passing through the barrier.

Unbeknownst to Lando at the time, heat is generated by the movement of particles. The faster a particle moves, the more kinetic energy it possesses. As particles move faster, they collide more frequently with other particles in their surroundings, transferring their energy and resulting in a transfer of heat.

Lando's bubble effectively acted as a barrier that caused the particles passing through it to experience a shift in time flow, consequently losing speed and kinetic energy on the way to be able to traverse the barrier as they would not be accelerated by his magic, which manifested as a decrease in heat. This ability allowed him to soften impacts, slow down incoming attacks, and make them less lethal. However, it only provided minimal assistance against cutting attacks and specific elements.

***

The flames that reached Lando had initially been hot enough to cause slight burns even after passing through his time bubble, but they were not a major concern yet.

The guard was taken aback to encounter a space mage, as they were rare and few in number. In response, he heightened the temperature around him, causing distortions in the air to see the spatial attacks better and react faster to the threat as a consequence. Although this drained his mana constantly, it was preferable to being struck by nearly invisible attacks like the one before.

Thanks to his time magic, Lando was not greatly affected by the high temperatures in the chamber. However, he knew he had to end the fight quickly as his mana reserves were no match for his opponent's. The use of his time and space magic consumed more mana compared to other elements, even worse, his enemy had a larger mana pool due to being at a higher stage.

Recognizing this disparity, Lando abandoned any plans of leaving the fight unscathed and instead lunged forward, willing to endure some injuries in order to bring the fight to a swift conclusion. As he made his way towards his opponent, he faced a barrage of attacks from the burning whip. The whip's chaotic blows moved too quickly for Lando to evade them all.

He had already been struck by close to a dozen blows by the time he reached his opponent. His clothes were charred to remnants, and his wounds continued to accumulate as the burns were reignited time and again.

The guard, still perplexed by the ineffectiveness of his blows against the young space mage, relinquished his whip, realizing it would be of no use at such close proximity. Instead, he unsheathed his short sword that was hanging at his hips.

He managed to block the first strike from Lando's dagger, but the young mage's speed seemed unreal to him. It was as if he was facing a mage who wielded both space and time elements simultaneously, which was clearly impossible.

A bit perplexed by his opponent's unconventional use of elements, the guard found himself sliced by the dagger, further restricting his movements. Trading a few more blows, his situation grew worse with each passing second. In a state of panic, he gathered all the mana he could and created an explosion centered around himself, similar to what he had done before.

The resulting explosion was even bigger than the first, shaking the corridors of the prison. To his astonishment, as the flames passed by his opponent, he was greeted by a young man with killing intend emanating from his purple eyes. At that moment, all he could see was a demon-like figure with a disfigured face, surrounded by hellfire that seemed to stare right into his soul with his radiating purple irises.

Lando resembled a human torch at this point, his body badly burned despite his bubble of time magic. The flames had penetrated through, even into his face, where he desperately tried to shield himself with his hands and create barriers of space. However, these barriers quickly broke under his opponent's relentless attack.

His face bore severe burns, and he noticed the shocked expression on his opponent's face as he recognized the damage inflicted. Without delay, Lando seized the opportunity and tried to stab at his opponent's face, a mix of panic and fear evident on his adversary. The close proximity allowed him to use his space magic to restrict his opponent's movements, although he knew it wouldn't be as effective since his opponent could easily disrupt the lockup with his own mana if he tried hard enough. Nevertheless, Lando believed every bit would help, as this would be his final blow. He was nearly drained of mana and badly injured, risking defeat if he didn't end the fight here and now.

Paralyzed by shock and fear, the guard was unable to defend himself. Unaware that his movements were restricted, he didn't even realize as Lando's dagger pierced his forehead.

With his opponent finally dead, Lando extinguished the last burning flames on his body and surveyed the area before he discovered the burned corpses of the mage he had initially fought and what he assumed to be a low-level assistant. The floor he was on consisted of around 20 cells, and once he confirmed he was the sole survivor, he retrieved a healing potion from his spatial ring, that his parents put in there for dire situations, and consumed it to aid in his recovery.

Feeling somewhat refreshed yet still experiencing itchiness and pain all over his body, Lando limped towards the first cell, calling out loudly, "Mom, in which cell are you? It's Lando, I'm here to get you out!"

Voices from numerous cells responded, pleading to be freed as well. However, Lando couldn't hear the voice he was searching for. Growing worried, he opened the sliding window of the first cell to peer inside.

Inside, he found an old man dressed in rags, praying for his release. Disheartened, Lando closed the window and repeated the process with the next cells.

With every window he opened that did not display his mother, his panic and anxiety grew. He reached the last cell, visibly nervous, and opened the window to take a look inside.

To his disappointment, he found not his mother but a man in his thirties sitting on the floor, staring at him with his blue eyes. Realization struck, and Lando slumped down to the floor in a mix of disappointment, frustration and fear for his mother’s wellbeing. With his knees on the ground and his forehead pressed against the door in front of him, his thoughts raced.

"Where is she? She should be here, right? Why the FUCK isn't she here?!" he thought out loud, hammering his fist against the steel door.