Since Idore could finally see his true opponent standing clearly in front of him, the Grand Magus decided that there was absolutely no need for him to hold back any longer. The ti for parlor tricks and spatial gas was over.
Drawing upon his imnse, seemingly bottomless mana reserves, he created a swirling vortex of high-tier fire magic in his right hand, rapidly forming a blinding, miniature sun. Simultaneously, chaotic, crackling blue lightning gathered in his left. With a vicious thrust of his arms, he fused the elents and shot the devastating projectile directly at Raze.
Seeing this apocalyptic attack barreling toward him, Raze didn't flinch. He lifted his dark sword high into the air, aggressively gathering the ambient dark mana around him, and then swung the blade down with devastating force.
As the dense wave of dark magic collided directly with the incoming fireball, it didn't just block the attack—it ruthlessly consud it. The darkness acted like a black hole, devouring all of the elental magic surrounding the projectile, completely neutralizing the spell and reducing the catastrophic attack to next to nothing but harmless sparks.
The remnants of Raze's dark attack continued past the dying fireball, hurtling straight toward where Idore was hovering. But, as usual, the mont the dark energy got close to the Grand Magus, it simply phased right through his invisible spatial barrier, harmlessly exiting out the other end without touching a single hair on his head.
"Raze! Use the Twelfth Formation!" Liam shouted desperately from his vantage point across the battlefield, quickly moving his feet and relocating, knowing full well that an irritated Idore might target him next for speaking up.
Liam didn't need to warn him, though. It was exactly what Raze was already intending to use anyway.
"Eternal Night Formation!" Raze roared.
The dark magic activated, exploding outward from the blackened blade of his sword. It spread like a suffocating tide of ink, rapidly expanding and completely covering the nearby area in an absolute, impenetrable blanket of Dark Magic. The dense, shadowy domain violently disrupted the ambient mana in the air, forcefully short-circuiting Idore's localized spatial loop.
Right after the domain was set, two large, terrifying wings made of pure, condensed shadows erupted from Raze's back as he fully activated the Abyssal Formation. With a deafening boom that shattered the platform beneath him, he charged straight ahead, aggressively channeling his refined Qi and his Dark Magic directly into the back of his sword.
'I won't stop. I have to use absolutely everything I have right here, right now!' Raze thought, his eyes burning with a lethal focus. 'I'm not holding back for a single second. Nothing else matters other than taking this monster down today!'
When Raze was finally close enough to strike, he unleashed the Void Pulse strike. But as he executed the technique, he had consciously adjusted its fundantal chanics slightly.
There was always sothing that Raze inherently never liked about his current martial arts repertoire, and that was the frustrating fact that the specific moves combining Dark Magic and Qi weren't entirely creations of his own making. They were inherited, adapted from others.
They had served him incredibly well so far in his brutal fights, because the seamless, unheard-of combination of the two distinct power systems allowed him to easily overwhelm his opponents. However, as a master researcher and innovator, he had recently started to actively adjust the powers to make them truly his own. And he was pushing that innovation even further right now.
As he swung his blade, he simultaneously channeled the dense energy down into his legs. Out from the back of his foot, right when he kicked off the empty air, it almost looked like a second, miniature Void Pulse was being intentionally created. It acted as a magical thruster—a violent burst of localized power that pushed his whole body forward at a supersonic speed, adding exponential kinetic weight to the sword strike.
Just as Raze's lethal blade was about to cleave Idore in half, a giant, glowing tallic shield seemingly appeared out of thin air, materializing right in front of the Grand Magus.
The Eternal Night Formation, with its heavy, oppressive particles of dark magic floating in the air, was successfully stopping Idore from using his strange spatial barrier. But that certainly didn't an the ancient mage was defenseless. Idore had a , hoarded armory of legendary artifact items he had kept safely hidden just for extre ergencies like this.
When the overpowered Void Pulse hit the tallic shield, Raze could instantly feel the terrifying power of the ancient enchantnt layered behind the steel. He could feel the shield actively searching and trying to repel his blade, but Raze had poured absolutely everything into his forward montum.
The legendary shield shuddered, started to crack under the impossible pressure, and right after, it was completely shattered into a thousand glowing shards.
As the artifact broke, Raze didn't stop his assault for a microsecond. He channeled volatile lightning magic directly into his legs. Combining it with his Abyssal Formation wings, he moved with god-like speed, blurring to the exposed side of where Idore was floating, and viciously drove his dark sword straight through the Grand Magus's chest.
But as the blade pierced the robes, the body instantly vanished, dispersing into nothing but a cluster of fading light particles. It was a perfect optical illusion.
"Haha! I'm finally starting to see exactly how you managed to defeat the other Grand Magus!" Idore's voice echoed mockingly from high above the battlefield.
Raze snapped his head up. Idore was floating high above the dark domain, his hand raised toward the heavens. Suddenly, blinding, pure Light magic erupted from his palm, spreading out like a rising sun through the entirety of the area.
The holy light aggressively swept downward, violently clashing with and pushing all of the suffocating Dark magic away. The Eternal Night Formation was physically burned away, utterly destroyed by the sheer output of the spell.
In the fundantal laws of Alterian elental affinity, Light magic was the natural, absolute weakness to Dark magic. So, even if the two mages possessed an exactly equal affinity and raw output, the Light magic would always co out the definitive winner in a direct clash. It was the one crippling disadvantage Raze had to face when fighting soone like Idore.
"I can clearly see it even now. You possess the terrifying ability to constantly improve, adapt, and innovate on the fly!" Idore praised, though his tone was laced with venom.
As the Light magic cleared the field, a brilliant, glowing bow ford directly in Idore's hand. He raised his opposite hand to the bowstring, and through his five outstretched fingers, five entirely different, highly condensed elents of magic appeared—Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, and Lightning.
He pulled the bowstring back and fired. The five distinct elents braided themselves together as they twirled violently through the air, all of them tracking directly toward Raze like a homing missile.
Seeing the overwhelming, multi-elental magic bearing down on him, Raze simply stood his ground. He lifted both of his dark swords in his hands, crossing them over his chest, and swung them down simultaneously, performing a devastating dual Abyssal Strike.
The crossed wave of absolute darkness cleaved through the air, completely consuming and neutralizing all five elental attacks that were thrown at him. But while his defense was perfect, his subsequent counter-attacks completely missed Idore. The Grand Magus had effortlessly sidestepped the dark waves, able to easily read and predict exactly what Raze was going to do before he even swung his blades.
"You have certainly grown imnsely, even from the days when you fought Trubin," Idore declared, looking down with an air of absolute, divine superiority. "But you have never been able to truly beat the Grand Magus, and it will be the exact sa outco now. Those four empty positions on the council will be filled just like before, and you will be nothing but a forgotten footnote in my history!"
As Idore confidently said those chilling words, his eyes started to physically change. The pupils dilated, and the irises lit up with a blinding, absolute golden color.
Down on the platform, Raze's breath hitched. He knew exactly what that terrifying phenonon was. It was the ultimate, divine optical ability. It was the precise reason why this specific genetic trait had beco so infamous and hunted throughout history in the first place.
It was the God Eyes.
The exact sa mythical, world-breaking trait that Safa possessed, now fully awakened and mastered within the Grand Magus.
*****
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