CHAPTER 127: UTTER UNWILLINGNESS

"You’ve just been slinging spell after spell at me without even thinking deeply," he walked towards the Elder, dodging the slow spatial slashes as he drew closer. "The only time you used your head was with the lightning spell."

The Elder started to switch back to a fire spell in a haste, but just before he wove the spell model again, he was pierced through his abdomen again.

"Arrggh—"

"Even now you still don’t know how I’m attacking you."

"Bastard!!" the Elder roared, weaving another, tighter barrier like an eggshell around himself inside the dome this time, before he started to weave the fire spell model again.

"See... your head’s empty. No thoughts whatsoever." Florian squinted his eyes slightly.

Another blur whizzed inside the dome; it was a beat slower, only grazing the Elder’s hand this time due to his quick evasion.

The Elder snarled, about to make a biting remark, but another blur whizzed again, this time piercing through his thigh, dangerously close to his nether regions.

"Oooh, it was off by a few inches."

A primal chill coursed through the Elder’s body at how close he had come to losing his goods. This... boy was toying with him!

A low chuckle of madness escaped his lips and he stared at Florian with a venomous look. He disregarded the subsequent attacks that were fired at him, waving his hands madly as he wove a spell model in the air outside the barrier.

His barriers dropped one after the other as the spell he weaved took up more of his mana and mental capacity, but he didn’t care. By the time he was done, only one barrier was left and he was riddled with tiny holes leaking blood that soaked his clothes red.

But despite this, he had a wide grin on his face, watching the spell model he’d woven thrum with violent spatial energy. This was the first time he had ever made a spatial spell of this scale successfully.

Maybe it was because of the high tension, he didn’t really care. He’d done it now.

To hell with the boy. If he was going down, the least he could do as an Elder was to take him down along with him!

He cackled maniacally as the spatial spell thrummed violently. "Hey boy! Why aren’t you talking now, huh? You were slick with your words earlier! Why aren’t you talking now?!!" his eyes scanned his surroundings in search of Florian’s figure...

But he was nowhere to be seen.

Not a single trace.

Sometime during the Elder’s mad move, he had slipped away quietly.

"H—Huh...?"

"Boy..."

"Where are you boy...? Where are you?!! Come out!!!" the Elder went mad in anger and disbelief. He’d given his all to create this piece of magical "perfection," putting down all his defenses, willing to sacrifice himself just to actualize this spell that he could use to take down his opponent too...

All this magical power... what use was it for if he had no target to release it on?!

The worst thing was, the Elder knew he could not repeat the same spell again. He was very certain about this.

Everything— from his mental state, to the pain of being pierced repeatedly, to his unwavering grit to see his opponent perish alongside him, and even some traces of inspiration from seeing the Exalted One’s spell on the outside, had worked perfectly to push him over the edge, giving him the epiphany to cast such a destructive spatial spell of his own.

...But now there was no target for him to unleash the spell at.

What was he going to do? Simply release it at nothing? Then what...? His body was already weakened from all the blood he’d lost, and the adrenaline rush would soon be over.

"Wily... You wily thing!" his voice was thick with unwillingness. "Come out and let’s die together!!" he cried out like a wounded animal. "Come out! Come out!!"

His cries echoed through their burning battlefield, spreading across the wreckage of the Crestwood Estate and reaching the ears of Florian in a hidden area where he’d masked his presence totally.

Tears flowed down Florian’s eyes as he listened to the Elder’s voice. "This feeling... ahh," he shuddered in ecstasy at the depth of emotions he could hear from the Elder’s voice. The feeling of being taken to the edge only to be denied right at the end.

The Elder’s cries became even more frantic as he felt his control of the spell slip little by little. The adrenaline rush had begun to mellow drastically, and he started to feel the pain of the holes he was riddled with.

His body began to sag and he fell to his knees, causing the spell to flicker wildly, threatening to consume even him as it ate at the surrounding debris. Unlike some other spell models, spatial spells couldn’t just be dissipated by cutting off mana. Once it was started, it needed to be set loose. He knew the straightforward thing to do was to just release the spell into the distance, but he was very unwilling to do so.

Eventually, panic began to set in as his control slipped even further, causing the spell to become more chaotic, like a violently flickering mass of spatial blades. He had no choice but to let it loose immediately.

It blasted off with a chilling Whomp sound, devouring everything in its path and carving a deep, U-shaped gulley that stretched all the way into the distance.

"Whoa... I guess you actually are an Elder," Florian, who had appeared at the Elder’s side during the chaos, whistled in deep respect.

The Elder snarled like a wild beast, lunging at him with a strength he didn’t know he still had. It was a primal lunge fueled by the raw desire to rip Florian apart.

But as his body sailed towards Florian, it was speared through by a metal spear. Then another. And another. And another...

The Elder choked on his blood, staring at Florian with wide eyes that struggled to on to the life that slowly slipped out of it.

Florian held the Elder’s face, watching intently as the light slowly faded from his eyes up until the point he was dead.

"Hoo..." he sighed, closing the Elder’s eyelids solemnly. He observed a moment of silence for the man. He had died a very quick death, without even having the chance to fight to his full capacity as an Elder.

From the start till the end of the fight, he had been led around by Florian. There had been utter unwillingness in his eyes during his final moments.

Florian let out a soft breath and turned around simply with his usual blank look, walking through the wrecked Crestwood Estate and towards the spatial opening that led outside.

He crossed the spatial barrier to their Estate’s pocket space and stepped foot in the outside world for the very first time that he could remember, looking around at the floating platforms his grandfather had only shown him pictures of.

Seeing them in person, he found that he wasn’t very impressed. They weren’t what drew his attention at all. Rather, it was the chaos. The multitude of people running about for their lives. He’d never seen this many people in his entire life.

He looked up at what seemed to be driving them all into a panic. The humongous mass of chaos that pressed down on the advanced barrier above. The power and mightiness of it.

It was picturesque...

The people running around for their dear lives... They reminded him of ants whenever he stomped on their hills back when he was a kid...

Just like everyone else, the colossal spell above filled him with an existential sense of dread. The way its blackness covered the whole sky and the power with which it violently tore at the barrier was enough to trigger a subconscious fear.

He marveled at the foreign feeling.

Analyzed it.

Savored it carefully.

But rather than acting on the basal urge to survive... to seek shelter... to seek somewhere to run to or somewhere to hide... He thought of the person on the other end of the spell.

Who was the one who could cause everyone to run helter-skelter? Who was the one who could make him feel this... fear?

Who was the one stomping on the ant hill?