Warlock Ch 69. Unfair
He needed to test this, needed to know for sure.
With a sense of determination, Damian raised his hand, feeling the Mana coil around his palm, gathering like a living fla just waiting to be unleashed. He pointed toward Cassius, who stood behind a barrier, watching with a cool expression as Damian's power surged.
A notification blinked in his vision.
[New Skill Unlocked!]
[Hellfire Spear lv. 1: A concentrated spear of dark fla, capable of breaking through even the most fortified barriers with imnse heat and corrosive energy.]
Damian's eyes widened as he felt the power solidify in his hand—a spear of raw, chaotic energy, swirling with dark flas. The Hellfire Spear pulsed, almost alive, as if feeding off his own excitent and determination.
Without hesitating, he launched it straight toward, destroying the barrier and kept launching toward Cassius, the spear cutting through the air like a cot of black fire. The heat was intense, a swirling mass of fla and chaotic Mana that seed to warp the very air around it.
Cassius' eyes widened ever so slightly, his calm deanor briefly flickering.
But Cassius wasn't just going to stand there and take it. With a sharp movent, he raised his hand, summoning a spear of his own—a twisted, dark fla that mirrored Damian's spell almost perfectly. The two Hellfire Spears collided in mid-air, an explosion erupting between them as their energies clashed.
The impact shook the ground beneath them, sending shockwaves that rippled out in every direction. The sheer force of the collision rattled Damian's bones. He raised his [Shadow Barrier], bracing himself. His protective field shimred to life, an inky black barrier that pulsed like a living shadow around him. But the mont Cassius' attack hit, he knew he'd need more than that.
"Damn…" he muttered under his breath, feeling the raw power pressing against him.
The blast was no joke. The impact slamd into his barrier like a teor, cracks spider-webbing across it, thin at first but quickly spreading. Every nerve in his body scread that this was too much. The [Shadow Barrier] groaned, an eerie sound that seed to echo back into his mind, the cracks widening as it buckled. He could feel it—any second now, his shield would give out, and he'd be done.
Just as the barrier was about to collapse, a second one flared to life in front of him, powerful and steady, a translucent shield with a faint glow to it. Damian's heart skipped a beat. Cassius' work, for sure.
The impact finally finished, the shockwaves settling down, and Damian's [Shadow Barrier] dissipated, leaving him staring at Cassius' intervention. He could hear his ntor's footsteps behind him, calm and steady, like none of this was surprising. Just part of so grand lesson only Cassius understood.
"What are you trying to pull, Damian?" Cassius' voice rang out, low and smooth but with that sharp edge of challenge.
Damian whipped around to face him, his chest still heaving from the adrenaline. "You… What are you playing at?" he shot back, unable to keep the frustration from his voice. Cassius just tilted his head, eyes glinting with a strange light.
"Just who are you to , Cassius?" Damian asked, his voice low but intense, barely hiding the frustration bubbling up inside him. "How do I know what you know?"
Cassius looked back at him, perfectly calm, almost annoyingly so. He raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms in that signature way of his. "Oh?" he echoed with a hint of sarcasm. "How do I know what you know?"
The tone made Damian's fists clench even harder. Cassius was playing coy again, deflecting, hiding whatever truth he clearly knew. It was always like this, these endless little mind gas that left Damian feeling like he was chasing shadows. Still, he forced himself to stay grounded, to push forward.
"Don't just turn my question back at ," Damian said, his voice tight with irritation. "You're the one who's always pushing , challenging . But you don't give answers. Why?"
Cassius let out a soft chuckle, a calm, almost detached sound that grated on Damian's nerves. "Why?" Cassius repeated, as if tasting the word. "Now that's a good question. Yet, I don't have an answer for you."
Damian's brow furrowed, his patience thinning. "What the hell does that even an?"
"It ans exactly what I said, Damian," Cassius replied, his eyes unreadable. "This is your path, not mine. It's you who needs to choose your destiny, not . I can't step in and make those decisions for you. That would be... unfair."
"Unfair?" Damian repeated, almost incredulous. "Unfair how?"
Cassius's gaze didn't waver. "If I were to intervene, if I handed you every answer, you'd only end up blaming when things went wrong. Or maybe worse, you'd lean on so much that you'd never really learn to stand on your own."
Damian grit his teeth. The words made sense on so level, but they also felt like Cassius was sidestepping, like he was using logic as a shield to keep his secrets buried. He forced himself to take a breath, to calm down, and then pressed on, his voice steady but filled with determination.
"I heard your voice," Damian said, looking Cassius dead in the eye. "Inside my head. And another voice, too. He was talking about… teaching you the Hellfire Spear. It sounded like—" He hesitated, rembering the tone of that conversation. "Like best friends," he said again in a much softer tone.
Cassius's expression remained cool, almost as if Damian had said sothing as casual as the weather. "Is that so?" he said, as if it was just mildly interesting, no more than a passing thought.
That did it. Damian's fists clenched at his sides, his frustration boiling over. "Stop playing coy, Cassius. These… these abilities, these spells—they don't just co out of nowhere. You know more than you're letting on, and I'm sick of being kept in the dark."
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