Nero exhaled, slow. Steady.
His body softened. His eyes closed.
And the battlefield began to fade.
The wind no longer screamed.
The shadows no longer hissed.
The world itself quieted.
Layer by layer, heartbeat by heartbeat.
The pressure on his chest lifted.
His limbs lost their weight.
His mind reached outward, away from fear, away from form.
There was no rage. No urgency.
Only quiet breathing.
He was slipping into Muga.
But not instantly. Little by little.
He needed time to adjust his mindset.
Each step into the state of absolute instinct required him to shed thought after thought.
Gradually, his perception expanded.
He could feel them all.
The whirling chaos, the circling Shadow Hunters, the cold malice behind every spear of shadow.
At the edge of the storm, Malrik's eyes narrowed.
The Dark Sorcerer watched Nero still himself, and his cruel smile deepened.
"Well now…" Malrik's voice cut across the frost.
"What's the matter? Have you finally realized how hopeless this is?"
The cursed energy flaring around Malrik pulsed with mockery.
"Or are you just too scared to move?"
Shadows cracked around him as he raised both hands.
"Let's fix that."
A barrage of cursed bolts, javelins of sharpened darkness, spiraling with twisted force, erupted from his fingers.
They struck Protego Nivalis like a black rain.
Each impact chipped at the orbiting snow, bursting flakes into ice dust, the shield bending under pressure.
Still, Nero remained silent. Breathing slowly.
Malrik's voice turned venomous.
"Is that it? All that defiance, and now silence?"
He clenched his fist.
"Let me remind you what despair sounds like."
A volley of jagged shadow chains burst from the ground, snapping toward Nero's legs, his chest, his arms, designed to bind and humiliate him.
The snowflakes spun faster, deflecting and freezing each chain in mid-air.
But the cracks were expanding.
Nero's silence and stillness became unbearable.
Malrik sneered. "Cowardice cloaked in calm. I expected more."
A low chuckle rippled through the ranks of Black Talons.
Some straightened, steadier now, emboldened by their master's dominance.
Their laughter rose, cruel and expectant.
To them, the boy who had stood so tall, so terrifying, now looked like prey beneath the butcher's gaze.
Another pulse of energy.
A shockwave rolled out, Malrik's aura flaring violently, his intent crashing into the barrier with brute force.
The snow ring shook. The pressure spiked.
And then, Nero's Raven Eyes opened.
They burned silver. Serene, and sharp as moonlit steel.
The world shifted.
Under his gaze, the battlefield reshaped itself.
What was once chaos unraveled into delicate strands of magic, spiraling in graceful, predictable arcs.
Everything slowed.
Malrik's shadow spears shimmered in midair like distorted blades trapped between ticks of time.
The Shadow Hunters hovered, flickering, awaiting their master's next order.
The valley breathed around him, and he felt it all.
He perceived the shape behind every spell, its origin, the timing of release, the weight of magic release.
The hidden structure beneath the storm.
His pulse slowed.
His breath aligned with the world.
Nero was no longer slipping into Muga.
He had crossed the threshold, into absolute instinct.
His Raven Eyes flared brighter, light pulsing like moonlit flame.
He could see every cursed line in Malrik's spellwork.
Every pulse in the Shatterveil's distortion.
Every thread of intent, before it could manifest.
He felt the next attack before it took shape, his body already in motion, guided by something deeper than thought.
Nero instinctively lowered his wand.
The last of Protego Nivalis unraveled, dissolving into motes of glimmering frost.
Malrik's expression twisted. "What is this?"
His fingers curled, darkness rising again.
"After closing your eyes, now you drop your shield?
Truly pathetic. I have no need for cowards."
Nero said nothing.
His mind was still. His body, weightless.
His awareness, absolute.
Malrik's eyes gleamed with malice. "Very well... Die."
The next strike came fast.
Shadow tendrils lashing forward in synchronized arcs, aimed directly at Nero's vitals.
But Nero was already in motion.
There was no tension in his limbs.
No hesitation in his step.
His form blurred, his body slipping through the gaps, gliding between the attacks with effortless grace.
To the onlooker, it felt as if the darkness parted, reluctant to touch him, slashing empty air.
Malrik's eyes widened. "What...?"
He unleashed a second wave, blades of shadows lunged at Nero, closing in from all directions.
But Nero was beyond thought. Beyond fear.
He moved with the storm, not against it.
The rhythm of the shadows became the rhythm of his stride.
His form alternatively blurred, vanished, reappeared, without sound, without pause.
Malrik snarled. His fingers curled, frustration twisting his expression. "Hold still!"
Power surged.
The darkness spiraled violently, vibrating with cursed magic.
"Shatter!"
The ground detonated.
Spikes of shadow burst from the earth, closing around Nero like the jaws of a beast.
Still, he did not flinch.
He did not dodge.
His fingers moved, a flick. The air distorted.
A barrier unfolded around him, shimmering with void-infused energy.
It looked like a transparent mirage, distorting the air like ripples across glass.
The first spike touched it, and vanished.
The cursed energy was swallowed whole, erased without trace, devoured by the emptiness at the barrier's core.
The next few spikes followed, and dissolved the same way.
The air quivered where they had been, as if reality had forgotten they ever existed.
Then the barrier pulsed, softly.
Its shimmer deepened, shifting from near-invisible haze to a faint, iridescent glow.
The remaining spikes struck the barrier, and rebounded.
They were redirected with surgical precision, as if the barrier had anticipated their trajectories and angled them toward optimal impact.
Dozens of cursed lances spiraled outward, and tore through the ranks of the Black Talons.
Limbs fell. Armor split.
Some screamed, their bodies convulsing as the darkness tore through them.
Others, dozens collapsed without understanding what had hit them, pierced by the very force meant to destroy Nero.
Malrik's eyes widened, disbelief rippling through his gaze.
"You... you turned them back on my own soldiers?"
Nero did not respond.
He could not.
Muga had no space for gloating. No space for ego.
Malrik's expression twisted into fury.
"You dare... mock me!?"
He raised both arms, cursed shadows coiling up to his shoulders, screaming for release.
"Begone!"
A wave of condensed despair erupted from his palms, spiraling toward Nero like a collapsing star.
Nero's body moved without hesitation.
Nero's wand carved through the air, a trail of void-infused magic following its arc.
"Diffindo."
A thin, curved line of silver-grey swept forward, sharp and silent as death.
Where it passed, the world seemed to hold its breath.
It moved with impossible speed, and carved through the shadows like it wasn't there.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then, Malrik's scream shattered the valley.
His arm dropped to the ground, severed at the shoulder, shadows spilling from the wound, writhing like smoke.
His body convulsed, darkness spiraling around him as he staggered, his face twisted in agony, his eyes wide with pain.
Shadows reached for the fallen limb, trying to reconnect it, but failed.
The severed limb unraveled, flesh, bone, silently consumed by the lingering trace of Void.
Malrik gasped, his remaining hand clutching at empty air, grasping for what was no longer there.
He stumbled, eyes wild, choking on his own disbelief.
Nero's body slowed.
His form steadied, as his mind drifted out of Muga.
He returned to himself, and pain followed.
His knees nearly buckled. His chest heaved. His hands trembled.
His breath turned ragged, his vision flickering as the strain crashed in.
The backlash struck like a collapsing tide.
He couldn't maintain Muga for long, nor slip into it instantly.
He forced his voice to sound steady, as he said.
"You talk too much, Malrik."
The Black Talons froze, hollow eyes wide, bodies shivering.
They hesitated.
The Shadow Hunters flickered, mask twitching, their form wavering.
Their connection with Malrik shuddered like glass under pressure.
Nero inhaled.
'Now.'
Ignoring the protests of his body, he raised his wand to the sky, as he shouted.
"Mana Storm!"
Lightning cracked through the sky, thunder rumbling through the valley, shaking the very earth beneath them.
High above, his hidden formation triggered.
Ten shikigami eagles ignited in the sky.
Their paper bodies shimmering with silver ink, crackling with electricity as they absorbed the storm's fury, acting as magical beacons.
They burned with fierce light, twisting as raw energy surged through them.
For an instant, they were radiant, majestic.
Living conduits of destruction.
Then, with a flash of light, they disintegrated, consumed by the lightning they had harnessed.
And from the points where they once soared, the sky broke open.
Bolts descended like judgment, massive columns of light and force raining down across the valley.
The air vibrated.
The force rippled through the atmosphere as the lightning struck the ground with explosive power.
The earth convulsed as the storm made landfall.
Shadows spiraled through the air as the lightning carved through the battlefield.
Black Talons screamed.
Armor melted.
Bones vaporized in flashes of divine energy.
The air reeked of scorched flesh.
Smoke curled upward, smoke rising from the scorched remains.
Monsters erupted, driven by madness, drawn by chaos.
They poured in, clawing at anything that moved.
As screams echoed, the valley dissolved into pure anarchy.
And amidst it all, Nero moved.
His body flickered, space folding around him as he vanished, then reappeared a hundred meters away.
His chest heaved. His breath was ragged. His legs threatened to give out.
But his eyes stayed sharp.
This was the card he had kept hidden.
All for this moment.
Apparition in the Shatterveil was a feat considered as a death sentence, suicidal, impossible to control.
Yet, Nero had spent weeks studying the way the Shatterveil distorted space, refining his understanding meter by meter.
To the enemy, he'd shown only twenty-five meters.
But in reality, he could cross a hundred with each apparition.
He moved again, his form flickering, slipping away from the chaos.
Each movement cost him, his ribs ached, vision blurred, but he pressed on
Malrik's roar ripped through the carnage.
"I WILL SKIN YOU ALIVE!!!"
Nero didn't look back.
He vanished again.
And again.
And again.
Each apparition more taxing than the last.
Every breath scorched his lungs.
Every reappearance slammed his joints like stone.
But he kept moving.
Around him, the world was coming apart.
Shadows howled.
Monsters shrieked.
Every time he landed, he found a new pocket of chaos.
Reavers.
Roaming beasts.
And above it all, a storm of fury was chasing him.
Distant, yet unrelenting.
Malrik.
Nero pushed forward.
He moved again.
And again.
Slipping through the cursed labyrinth.
Until finally…
The portal loomed before him.
Its silver surface rippled, as shadows spiraled around its edges.
Nero stumbled to a stop.
Blood ran down his forearm. His legs shook.
But he stood.
He turned once.
Behind him, the valley burned.
A storm of his making.
Far beyond the haze, the Hollow Tree still stood.
He looked toward it, something unspoken behind his gaze, as he whispered.
"I will be back."
Then he stepped through the portal.
And the Shatterveil closed behind him.
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50 chapters ahead on Patreon (Suiijin): Chapter 215: 4th Year Student