The momentum that Eon had built, the calculated, high-speed aggression of a High Elf, didn't just stall; it was extinguished with a finality that felt like the closing of a heavy, stone tomb. In the world of high-level magic, there is a threshold where speed and strength are rendered moot by the fundamental laws of the arcane. Eon had just crossed that line, and the realization hit him with the force of a physical blow.
The Shadow Mage moved. It wasn't a sprint, and it certainly wasn't a dash. To Eon's heightened, elven senses, it looked as if the man simply folded the space between them like a piece of parchment. One moment he was ten meters away, observing the chaos with the clinical detachment of a surgeon watching a minor procedure; the next, he was a monolithic presence of charcoal-grey silk and encroaching darkness. As he stepped forward, the very light of the afternoon seemed to warp and bend around him, drawn into the invisible gravitational well of the void he carried within his mana core. The air grew cold, not the refreshing chill of a mountain breeze, but a stagnant, airless frost that made the moisture in Eon's lungs feel like needles.
Eon opened his mouth to chant. His mind raced through a dozen high-level commands, Disperse, Shatter, Earth Bullte, but the syllables died in his throat, choked by a sudden, oily pressure that coated his tongue. He tried to leap back, to put distance between himself and this predator, but his boots felt as if they had been fused to the bedrock of the earth itself. He looked down, and his blood ran colder than the deepest winter of the northern wastes.
The shadows cast by the afternoon sun, usually thin, flickering things that danced with the wind, had become thick, viscous, and sentient. They had risen from the dirt like obsidian tar, wrapping around his ankles and knees with a terrifying, cold strength. They snaked up his thighs in tight, constricting coils that felt like frozen iron. Every time he tried to flex a muscle, the shadows tightened, as if they were feeding on his effort.
It wasn't just a physical binding. This was Shadow Magic in its purest, most oppressive form: the SHADOW BINDING. It felt like the weight of a mountain was being funneled through a needle and injected directly into his joints, locking his muscles into a state of rigid, agonizing paralysis. The mana in the air around him, which he usually manipulated with the ease of breathing, was being violently pushed away. It was replaced by a vacuum of cold, stagnant energy. Eon might be a master of matter manipulation, but the Shadow Mage was a master of the absence of it. Eon's Level 9 Matter Manipulation surged in a desperate, silent scream, trying to command the ground to erupt or the air to solidify, but the shadows acted as a magical lead casket. They smothered his intent before it could even manifest into a spark of light.
The Mage stopped exactly one meter from Eon. Up close, the man didn't smell of sweat or blood like the mercenaries. He smelled of old parchment, ozone, and the dry, dead air of a crypt. His eyes were not pupils and irises, but flat discs of matte black that reflected nothing. He raised a pale, slender hand toward Eon's forehead, his fingers twitching in a rhythmic, hypnotic pattern, as if he were preparing to weave a spell directly into the folds of Eon's brain.
'Move. Move, damn it!' Eon screamed internally. His human soul, the remnants of Jin-ho, was screaming loudly at, telling him, something is going to happen, he has to move. He could feel his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped, panicked bird, but his body was no longer his own. He was a statue, a monument to his own failure.
Suddenly, a violent, whistling gust of air tore through the clearing. It lacked the refined structure of the human mages' spells, but it possessed the raw, desperate power of someone protecting their last hope. The Shadow Mage, caught in the middle of a delicate casting, was slammed by the pressurized wind. He didn't fall, he was too grounded for that, but he was forced to skid back several meters, his boots carving deep, ugly furrows in the mud.
"Get away from him!"
Elsa leaped from the thicket, her silver hair a chaotic halo of defiance around her face. She stood between Eon and the Shadow Mage, her wand held in a trembling but white-knuckled grip. Behind her, Hans and Carla emerged. Their faces were the color of ash, but their eyes burned with a resolve that bordered on suicidal. They stood in a jagged, pathetic line, each with a wand leveled and a hand on the hilt of a dagger. They were terrified, Eon could see the visible tremors in Hans's knees and the way Carla's lip bled where she had bitten it, but they were there, standing between him and that Shadow mage.
"Stay back, Elsa!" Eon tried to shout, but it came out as a wet gurgle. The shadows were now crawling up his chest, pressing the air out of his lungs.
To his left, the second Shadow Mage, the one who had been hit by the Fear Potion, was finally clawing his way back to reality. It was a gruesome sight. The man was on his hands and knees, retching violently into the dirt, coughing up bile and thin, grey foam. His entire body was drenched in a cold, oily sweat that made his ceremonial robes cling to his frame like a second, sickly skin. His eyes were no longer human; they were twin orbs of shattered crimson, the capillaries having burst from the sheer, psychic intensity of the nightmare Eon had projected into his mind. He looked like a man who had seen the bottom of hell and found it too crowded.
He looked at Eon, and a sound escaped him, a jagged, wet growl of pure, animalistic hatred. He didn't reach for a wand; his mind was too fractured for the complex mathematics and linguistics of high-level magic. Instead, he drew a short sword from his belt. The steel was dark, notched, and looked hungry for life. He began to limp toward the paralyzed Eon, his breath coming in ragged, wet gasps that sounded like a saw through bone.
"GIOJOISD UWHFUH IHIFWHJIH, Fireball!" Hans roared, his voice cracking with the strain. He poured every drop of his remaining mana into the spell, pushing himself toward a mana-collapse. A sphere of orange-white flame, the size of a wagon wheel, screamed toward the limping, maddened mage. It was the strongest spell Hans had ever cast, a testament to his growth.
The first Shadow Mage didn't even turn his head toward Hans. Before the fireball could reach to the second mage, from his side, He simply flicked his wrist, a gesture of profound boredom. A wave of darkness rose from the ground like a predatory jaw and swallowed the fireball whole. There was no explosion, no hiss of steam, no dissipating heat. The fire simply ceased to exist, its energy eaten by the void. Hans fell to one knee, his nose beginning to bleed from the sudden drain on his mana core.
"FSGUIGHE IOHFOH IHFIHIH, Water Bullet!" Elsa cried, firing a volley of high-velocity spheres, her face contorted in a mask of desperation. She wasn't aiming for the main mage; she was trying to intercept the one with the sword.
The first Shadow Mage's sneer deepened, revealing teeth that seemed too sharp for a human. He raised his left hand, and the moisture in the air itself seemed to shudder and obey him. He didn't just block her bullets; he seized them in mid-air. With a flick of his fingers, he merged her spells into a single, massive sphere of dark, pressurized water and hurled it back at her with triple the initial velocity.
The impact was sickening. Elsa didn't have time to scream. The water bullet slammed into her chest with the sound of a heavy branch snapping in a storm. She was lifted off her feet and thrown back five meters, hitting the stone wall of the behind her with a dull, heavy thud. She slumped to the ground, coughing up a mixture of water and bright, arterial blood, her wand rolling uselessly into the dirt.
"Elsa!" Carla shrieked, slamming her wand down toward the earth. "DUHHA IUHODH OHODH, Swamp!"
The ground beneath the mage turned into a swirling, sucking morass of black mud, but he simply tapped his foot. A pulse of grey energy rippled outward, and the mud turned back into solid stone instantly. The spell was canceled so violently that Carla was thrown back by the magical backlash, her nose bleeding profusely as she collapsed into the grass, her eyes rolling back in her head.
Eon watched it all, his eyes darting frantically. The world was narrowing. He saw Verra sitting in the dirt, her hands clutching at the iron slave collar that bound her. She was trembling, her eyes vacant and glazed. The collar was humming with a low-frequency vibration designed to suppress the elven nervous system, making it impossible for her to even form a coherent thought of magic. She was a passenger in her own body, forced to watch her friends be dismantled one by one. She let out a small, broken whimper, a sound that cut deeper than any blade.
The limping, fear-maddened mage was now only two meters from Eon, the short sword raised high. "I'll... I'll carve the skin... from your... elven face... and wear it... as a mask..." he wheezed, a string of bloody saliva trailing from his chin.
Then, a blur of movement erupted from the shadows behind the forge. It was Loreth.
She wasn't a mage. She had no mana, no high-level manipulation, no ancient lineage. She was a woman who had found a home in Eon's estate, a place where she was respected, fed, and safe, and she refused to let it be taken. She moved with a silent, rusted fury, a notched longsword held in a white-knuckled grip. She didn't aim for the Shadow Mages; she was a veteran of enough skirmishes to know she couldn't touch them. Instead, she lunged at the four "White Mages" guarding the bound elves. They were distracted, smugly watching their leader toy with the Elves.
Loreth's sword hissed through the air. Squelch.
The rusted tip buried itself deep into the belly of the first mage, who was gripping Verra's hair. He looked down, shock written on his face, as the jagged metal tore through his silk robes and into his intestines.
Loreth didn't stop. She didn't have the luxury of mercy. She twisted the blade and ripped it sideways, her scream of rage tearing through the clearing like a war horn. Before the second mage could raise his wand, she swung the heavy blade in a horizontal arc, catching him in the center of his chest. The rusted steel sawed through the bone, and a fountain of hot, crimson blood sprayed across Loreth's face, painting her like a demon of vengeance.
For a heartbeat, there was hope. A flicker of light in the darkness. The bound elves began to struggle against their restraints, their eyes wide with the possibility of escape.
Then the remaining two White Mages turned toward her. They didn't show fear; they showed the clinical efficiency of executioners. They didn't even step back from the blood spraying their robes.
"FHUUH UHHDU UHUDH, Earth Bullet," they intoned in perfect, chilling unison.
These weren't Eon's clay projectiles. These were spheres of high-density basalt, magically sharpened to a monomolecular point and propelled by the force of magic.
The first bullet hit Loreth in the shoulder, vaporizing the joint and sending her arm, still clutching the sword, spinning into the grass in a spray of red. She didn't even have time to register the pain, her mouth opening in a silent gasp of shock. The second bullet arrived a microsecond later. It struck her squarely in the center of her chest.
Eon watched in slow motion, like the strength potion he took was now his curse, as the basalt sphere punched through her sternum. It tore through her heart, shattered her spine, and exited through her back, carrying a fist-sized chunk of her torso with it in a spray of bone fragments and gore. Loreth stood for a heartbeat, her eyes wide and glassy, a look of profound confusion on her face as if she couldn't understand why the world had suddenly gone cold. Then, her body was jerked backward as if by an invisible rope. She hit the ground with a wet, heavy sound, her lifeless eyes staring directly at Verra, her mother, reflecting the sunset she would never see again.
A chorus of screams erupted from the bound elves, a sound of pure, unadulterated horror that seemed to vibrate the very air. The sound was raw, primal, and stripped of all dignity.
Inside Eon, something didn't just break; it shattered into a million jagged shards of ice. The barrier between Jin-ho, the tired man from Earth, and Eon, the High Elf, dissolved into nothingness. The logic of his past life, the desire for peace, the fear of consequences, was burned away by the heat of Loreth's blood staining the grass.
He thrashed against the shadows, his muscles bulging until the fibers began to pop and tear under the skin. He could feel his own tendons snapping like over-tightened violin strings. He ignored the mana exhaustion warnings flashing in his mind like strobe lights. He ignored the physical agony of the Umbral Anchor. He was a High Elf, a survivor of another world, a protector of a people who had nothing left but him. And yet, he was being forced to watch the dirt drink the blood of those he had sworn to keep safe.
The "System" screen infront of his popping up one after another, like they were also screaming now.
[WARNING: CRITICAL MANA DRAIN][WARNING: PHYSICAL INTEGRITY AT 40%]
Eon didn't care. He welcomed the pain. He funneled every ounce of his grief, his rage, and his hatred into his muscles. The air around him began to hum, and the shadows binding him began to smoke away.
The Shadow Mage glanced at Loreth's cooling corpse as if it were nothing more than a fallen branch. He reached out, his cold, dark fingers finally closing around Eon's throat. He leaned in close, his breath smelling of the grave.
"Such a waste of potential," the Mage whispered, his voice like the rustle of dead leaves in a graveyard. "But shadows do not care for potential. They only care for the end. You will be a fine addition to the collection."
Eon felt the darkness beginning to pour into his mouth and nostrils, a suffocating tide that tasted of ash and old bones. His vision began to tunnel, the world fading to a narrow point of red rage and black despair. He was stuck. He was helpless. And the shadow around him was getting more hungry.
But as the mage's hand tightened, Eon's amber eyes didn't dim. They began to glow with a terrifying, white-hot intensity. The dirt beneath his feet began to liquefy, not from a spell, but from the sheer radiance of the mana leaking out of his pores.
"You..." Eon's voice was no longer human, nor was it elven. It was a chorus of a thousand angry souls. "...will... bleed."
The Shadow Mage's eyes widened. For the first time in centuries, the master of the void felt a flicker of something he had long forgotten: fear. The shadows on Eon's legs began to crack like glass, and the ground began to tremble, a low-frequency roar rising from the very bowels of the earth. The forge behind them groaned, its heavy stone walls cracking under the pressure of the mana storm Eon was inadvertently summoning.
The weight of helplessness was being replaced by something far more dangerous: the weight of absolute, unmitigated vengeance.
The system screen popped up once again.
[MATTER MANIPULATION SKILL REACHED LEVEL 10]
-SKILL UNLOCKED- HEAT MANIPULATION LV-1
Author note: Now that Eon unlocked his heat manipulation skill, will he be able to defeat the Shadow mage all on his own? What do you think?