Chapter 94: Debilitation

Evin was god amongst humans in this dark room, but unfortunately, his opponents were not simple humans. But the darkness still let Evin know what was real and what was an illusion.

The mage running towards the boy was engulfed by the Shadow zone and Evin could tell that this one was the real deal. He first thought that it was an illusion, but apparently the man was going for a double con. Evin decided that it was his best chance to take care of the man now, since he knew nothing about the Shadow Zone's capabilities.

"Ssatsko! Help Rith!" he shouted before storing the nearby Arza into his shadows. The boy was breathing, thankfully.

"Good thing it's cloudy today," Evin muttered as he glanced at the sky.

…

After Hor'rak was engulfed by the Dark spell, almost immediately, his instincts screamed at him that there was something wrong with this area. It wasn't actually completely dark inside, since he could still see the gloomy grey sky towering over him. But at a certain point, the grey sky would turn into complete darkness.

It was a surreal sight, to say the least.

Hor'rak started a fire inside the space to create some light, but the shadows on the wall and the ground would stay unperturbed. The man looked down and had a feeling like he was falling down into an abyss, since it looked like he was standing on nothing.

"Fucking hell," Hor'rak muttered in his native Northern tone. The man was also feeling out of breath and confused. He used his methods to check if all of this was an illusion, but everything told him that the things that were happening around him were real.

His strongest Worlds were the World of Thoughts, Storm and Fire, and he specialized in big spells. He would be called a Heavy Mage if he was born in the Kingdom.

'If that fucking Cosmic allowed me to cast my spell once, this fight would be over already… But with my limited mana-core, it takes too much time to properly construct something. Maybe I should've just focused on suppressing fire,' Hor'rak thought.

If he was allowed to cast one of his powerful spells, the power would rival the output of a Lesser-imposer. The quarter-core children and the twin-horn would instantly die, while the Cosmic would not come out unscathed.

He could probably cast it in a matter of seconds, if he was a Lesser-imposer, but his maximum output was only 50 kgs. A slightly below average half-core.

Irrelevant thoughts started appearing in the man's head. He was also beginning to feel slightly dizzy in the head.

'Something's definitely wrong here,' he thought before he decided to just burn this whole place down. He considered shining light on his surroundings, using the Luminous World, but considering his sad proficiency at the World and the mysteriousness of the dark space, he felt like it would not do much to help him.

It was better to just do what he did best, to burn down things to cinders.

'And to burn down this whole entire World, eventually'

Hor'rak was surrounded with a spiral of fire, getting stronger and stronger with the help of the wind. Eventually, the spiral became a sort of flaming tornado, wreaking havoc inside the Dark room.

But impressive as the flaming tornado was, Hor'rak knew that it was much weaker than usual. With the amount of mana he used, the flames should be at least twice as hot and much larger than it currently was.

'Is it because of this Dark zone?' Hor'rak wondered. The ability seemed much too strong for a quarter-core to use. From what Hor'rak could tell, the spell weakened anyone inside it, and on top of that, it also weakened their spells?

'Perhaps it was a scroll, or magical device?'

There was also another thing that worried him greatly. As his crimson tornado raged, he couldn't feel anything burning inside the dark room. Since the flames were made out of his own mana, he could kind of feel the things that it touched, or burned. Just like how Evin could sense that this Hor'rak was the real one when he entered the Dark space.

Either the dark room was much bigger than Hor'rak imagined, or it was empty.

But he could definitely feel that there was someone else in the Dark. Constantly watching him, waiting for the best moment to strike him.

This mess of instincts, reasonings and judgements made an even greater chaos inside Hor'rak's confused mind.

The man cancelled his fiery storm for the moment as it was just wasting mana at this point. He decided to leave this area and check out what was happening outside.

'Our victory is basically decided, after the "Revolutionary" is finished with the lockdown, but I wouldn't really want to waste a life before then,' Hor'rak reasoned.

But when he tried to walk out of the Darkness, he found himself unable to, as the room was seemingly following him around.

Panicking, he tried dashing away at top speed, but unexpectedly, he staggered at his feet and fell down to the ground. As his hands touched the thick shadow on the ground, a chill went through his back and he hurriedly pulled his hands back.

"What the fuck is happening here?" Hor'rak muttered, before trying to get up.

Suddenly a claw materialized out of nowhere and swiped at the mage. Hor'rak blocked the attack, but immediately, a dozen other tentacles and claw started to appear from the shadows, mercilessly assaulting the mage.

Hor'rak had enough, and with the entirety of his mana-core he recreated a Flaming Tornado. But the expected burning of the claws and tentacles did not sound in his ears and only the weak burning of air was heard.

Out of frustration, Hor'rak started directing his flames towards the ground and the walls, hoping it will destroy the weird area.

…

Evin stared at the mage wreaking havoc inside his Shadow Zone from below. He was sitting in his shadow alongside his World Sprites and the Blood's will, waiting for the mage to get tired. The heat from the mage's spells pervaded the inside of his shadow, giving him an anxious feeling, but it wasn't enough to actually hurt Evin. 

Since he could persist through it, Evin opted to wait and weaken the mage before committing to a fight, since if he started attacking the mage the instant he came inside the Dark Zone, the mage would easily repel the attacks and might deduct some things about Evin's ability.

A few seconds later, the mage ran out of energy to keep up his flaming tornado, left barely able to stand. The mage's decision making got worse and worse as he stayed inside two of Evin's area-of-effect spells. The darkness would confuse him, while also instilling fear in the man, and the Storm spell would continuously deprive him of his energies.

'The effects of oxygen deprivation is quite good… I supposed it's time to mount an all out attack. A few moments later his fingertips would start paling, and he would understand what's happening. Good thing he thought that it was the effect of the Dark room and not a different spell,' Evin thought.

Evin ordered the World Sprites and the Blood's will to kill the man, as the latter had just burned through a substantial amount of mana. It was the perfect time to attack.

Just as Evin predicted, the mage died almost instantly. The tentacles wrapped around him and pulled him to the ground, while the claws and the Maw made quick work of him. The man's shouts and screams filled Evin's Shadow Zone, before it completely died out.

"Is this the difference between a normal mage and one with a specialty?" Evin thought.

He glanced beyond the shadowy walls, and saw that Rith and Ssatsko were pretty much done with the World of Storms mage. The mage would float around the battlefield, showing much better skill at flying than Evin could ever hope to, but it still wasn't enough to save him from Rith's portals.

Add Ssatsko on top of it, and the mage's death was all but assured.

It was an expected outcome, as Rith was an above-average half-core, while her opponent was average at best.

The boy, on the other hand, watched his teammates get slaughtered, but did not show any reactions.

Evin canceled the Shadow Zone and flew towards the Cosmic and the old man.

Ssatsko was pleasantly surprised to see Evin come out of the fight, without a single scratch, as he was quite worried when a giant flaming tornado appeared inside the Dark spell.

"Rith?" Evin asked.

"I couldn't affect him in any way. The portals that I try to create around him do not appear and physical attacks just disappear when it gets close enough to him," the Cosmic replied.

"Why can't we just leave?"

"It's because there's a barrier around us, preventing us from leaving. The only way to make it disappear is to distract the caster, but…" Rith stopped talking, as there was a sudden change to the boy.