Konrad's nose was bleeding hard, even though nothing hit him. Yet.
But his blurred sight was also an obvious symptom of him using too much mana too fast.
Not that he had a choice.
As old and fragile as the Green Mage looked, he showed no signs of slowing down.
He left no openings; his saturation strikes were brutal.
Lightnings, firebolts, wind so sharp it cut skin.
All Konrad could do was erect a barrier, encasing his entire body with the opposing elements. It wasn't elegant or efficient, but he couldn't risk a spell slipping through.
Sometimes he didn't even have the time to transform his mana.
He surrounded himself with raw essence, wasting energy on every attack.
There was no time to think or optimize his spells. He gritted his teeth to hold on for dear life.
Konrad was always proud of his casting speed. But the Demon Lord? He was on another level.
He wasn't even facing him alone, Maple flying circles above them.
While he cast protection on himself, Maou Midori launched an attack against each of them. He also deflected the dragon's breath without ever getting caught up in it.
It wasn't hard to imagine that he could have struck the king, too, if he so desired.
But he had no reason to. Ronald was ready to surrender once Konrad fell.
Which seemed inevitable.
How the hell could he have won against someone like this?
Because he did it, somehow—according to the visions. How did he win five out of ten duels?
No, wait, some of them weren't actually against the Green Mage but his army.
Yeah, well, defeating tens of thousands of nomads still seemed more believable.
Maou Midori was unbeatable.
His haremettes said he had a nifty spell to counter them, but he wasn't that strong of a sorcerer otherwise. What an absolute and utter bullshit. He couldn't keep up, and his mana depleted fast.
Stone melted at his feet, the smell of burnt fabric sharp in his nose.
One strike after the other, and they were never the same.
No matter how much he focused—and he did his best to keep his head in the game—he was always on the back foot. Meanwhile, the Demon Lord never moved an inch.
He didn't have to, even with the road scorched black around him.
Nothing the dragon could throw at him worked.
"This is somewhat of a disappointment," the old mage said, having ample time for taunts.
He finally paused his attacks, but if Konrad thought it was the perfect moment to strike—
He fell to his knees, his breathing shallow, arms and legs trembling too much to stand back up.
The adrenaline that somehow kept him functioning until now faded away in a split second.
How long had they been fighting? Five minutes? An hour?
It was impossible to keep track of all the attacks, and his reserves were almost gone.
From the smoke of all those firebolts, he couldn't even see the sun.
"I have seen visions warning about you, but I worried for nothing," Maou Midori said, taking a few steps forward. To Konrad's greatest surprise, he was not engulfed in flames for it.
'Maple?' he reached out, finding only chaos in the airwaves.
'Need a breather. I can't. He scorched my scales. MY SCALES. I should be immune to fire.'
The dragoness was the last person Konrad ever expected to hear panicking.
But well, he would have, too, if he had any strength left to do it.
Instead, he looked at the unschathed sorcerer with apathy and exhaustion.
He was on his own, and he had about two hundred mana left. He already burned ten times as much—though half of it was to break out of Gabrielle's prison. What a great start.
All the essence he had banked away in his adamantite gear was long gone.
Sure, he didn't come prepared—he failed to remember the last time he had a good rest.
But was it even possible to prepare for this destructive power?!
"Ah, what an exquisite agony," Maou Midori noted as if he were taking in the smell of his victory. "I'll have to give you that, the pain you emanate is no ordinary essence."
What a weird thing to say—although it felt like this wasn't the first time he had heard it.
With the last of his strength, Konrad raised his head to face the old wizard, and—
He didn't look half as ancient as he seemed at the start of their duel.
There was no hiding his surprise, and the Demon Lord laughed. He must have made quite the face—but the one his enemy wore now looked no older than a sixty-year-old human.
Yeah, sure, he still wasn't a kindergartener, but compared to how he was?
"Indeed, boy," the Green Mage said once he finished laughing. "Your fear and suffering are a stronger medicine to me than the essence of this world. That shady angel didn't lie after all."
Konrad's first reaction was to scramble his thoughts.
The Demon Lord was reading them with ease, but all the methods he had learned to stop such a thing flooded back to him. Sing a song. Count rocks. Let his thoughts be fickle.
Weave an intricate web around his mind out of his mana.
Not that he had much to spare, nor did it do favours to his concentration, but—
"Get out of my head," he gritted out, squeezing his hands into fists.
Another laugh, this one even louder.
The drawback of employing all his tricks to protect the privacy of his thoughts was—
He lost contact with everyone. No more telepathy for him, no more syncing up their moves with Maple—wherever she was right now. And thinking itself got much harder as well.
Didn't he say something about angels?
That made zero sense.
"It's adorable that you think there is anything in your little head I haven't already seen," the Mage taunted. "I don't need to read your thoughts—I have seen everything in the future."
"And I did, too," Konrad snapped back, finally able to get on his feet. "But it's a fickle thing."
Apart from thinking, mana was also more difficult to gather while he shielded his mind.
He still found a tiny crack between the different planes that he could have exploited.
It was a mere trickle compared to what he was capable of on a better day. But with the mana fatigue washing over him, any more than that would've killed him anyway.
His nose kept bleeding, the coppery taste filling his senses.
Maou Midori showed no signs of noticing it. He was laughing again.
"Indeed, it is. This is why I don't rely on visions alone," he claimed. "They're good to get you prepared—and I might've overdone it, 'coz look at you. But I much prefer real-time insight."
Whatever that meant.
Konrad wasn't paying too much attention, syphoning mana from another world as fast as he could. Thirty, forty, fifty; it was a snail's pace—he spent more on the shield around his mind.
"Anyway, I promised your guardian that I won't kill you outright," the Demon Lord said.
Was he looking ten years younger again?
Hold on. Guardian?
That word struck him even through the haze of exhaustion and countermeasures.
"And it seems like he's already arrived, so I let Lucifer take it from here."
Konrad followed his gaze in shock, spinning around to see a portal open.