The coordination between the three was unexpectedly seamless, but…
"As expected, what can be replicated still has its limits! You're too slow!"
Ash naturally knew exactly what magic he himself possessed. Without the slightest hesitation, he acted first, suddenly reaching out to grab the replica by the head and brutally slam it down onto the ground.
With a thunderous "BOOM!", the ground, normally impervious to ordinary attack magic yet lacking physical defense and already compacted by gravity, was smashed into a deep crater by the replica's head.
But at that exact moment, the Destructive Lightning and the drill-like hair crashed into his body.
However… when Ash wasn't suppressing his mana, normal magic already struggled to affect him. Now, surrounded by extremely dense mana, his very mana formed an iron wall of defense.
The roaring Destructive Lightning, and the bizarre long hair sweeping in from all directions, could not advance even an inch before him.
Still… unlike ordinary spells, both attacks were clearly pushing inward little by little, which made him slightly surprised.
The replica he had pinned to the ground suddenly released a powerful repulsive force.
The earth was violently lifted. Ash himself was forced to step back a couple of steps, while the replica raised its hand and unleashed invisible claws that tore through the ground as they surged toward him.
Yet he simply stood there and waved a hand, sending out an even stronger shock to counter it.
Large chunks of rubble nearby gathered in midair, forming spheres of rock. They were compressed repeatedly, turning into highly dense projectiles that could hardly even be called rock anymore.
During the brief time he spent creating these shells, the replica blocked his tearing shockwave with defensive magic. More than a dozen purple spheres, each wider than a human, appeared beside it, firing thick beams of deadly magic toward him in concentrated bursts.
He merely stood there, letting his mana cancel them out.
But Sense's hair had already gathered into a massive scythe, while at the tip of Frieren's staff, alongside the replica's barrage of killing spells, a gigantic magic circle more than ten meters in diameter formed. A huge black beam surged out like floodwaters bursting through a dam.
All kinds of energy impacts erupted one after another, creating violent shockwaves. Even the aftershocks alone tore up broken bricks from the ground and gradually began ripping apart the defensive barrier before Ash.
The giant scythe made of hair finished charging at that moment, as if timing it perfectly, and slashed through the air wrapped in eerie black light.
Facing the barrage of spells, Ash simply endured them with his overflowing mana. Amid the torrent of energy and the swirling dust, he raised his hand, intending to grab the massive hair-scythe formed from countless strands of magic.
But the scythe displayed astonishing flexibility. Just before contact, its center suddenly caved inward.
At the moment his frontal mana barrier weakened, Fern fired a compressed attack spell from long range without warning, striking his face first.
The scythe followed immediately after, slashing toward his face in the next instant, clearly intending to split his head in two.
Amid the interweaving flashes of light, the iron wall of mana was finally torn open.
BANG!
A massive explosion erupted a moment later. The scythe cut through his skin, sending a spray of blood into the air.
Ash's body was pushed back more than ten meters across the ground by the accumulated magical impacts.
A wound appeared across his cheek.
It wasn't deep, yet red blood continued flowing down his face.
It could be said that aside from the wounds inflicted during training by those terrifying master-level teachers, in the past century no matter how many people attacked him, no one had managed to leave even a scratch on his body.
And since truly becoming demonized, this was the first time in nearly a hundred years that he had bled.
Though it had only happened because he was passively defending with a barrier woven from nothing more than his overflowing mana.
The instant the mana wall was broken, Ash immediately deployed several layers of defensive magic around himself.
As for him, he simply wiped the blood from his cheek with his fingertip. Then, after a brief moment of reflection, he raised his hand and threw several compressed rock spheres toward each enemy.
At that moment, his own replica suddenly shattered the stone floor without warning and crashed straight into the supersonic rock projectiles.
In the blink of an eye, its wildly dancing blade cut them into multiple pieces one by one.
The other replicas once again prepared to charge their signature spells.
But Ash finally began his real counterattack.
The blade scraped across the rocky ground, sparks exploding like flames in his wake.
Before the sparks could even catch up, his body, already moving faster than sound, had arrived in front of Frieren.
A single instant slash cut through the defensive barrier formed by Sense's hair, along with several layers of defensive magic.
"You're far too much of a pure mage!"
Seeing Frieren's body lifted off the ground and sent flying backward at incredible speed, completely unable to dodge the strike as she was split into two, Ash couldn't help feeling regret for her fragile body.
Yet Frieren merely looked at him coldly.
Without warning, a powerful shockwave burst from her widened eyes and rushed toward him.
But—
"An attack at this level can barely kill a mage. Using it on me… what exactly are you thinking?"
Despite the tremendous impact that sent nearby bricks flying, Ash himself didn't move even slightly.
The violent wind stirred his clothing, but he only raised his hand and looked at the girl whose body had been cut in half yet still continued flying backward.
Then he clenched his hand in the air.
"Enough playing. Disappear."
Normally, mana interferes with the use of magic. Just like water-control spells struggle to manipulate the blood inside another mage's body. Besides imagination limitations, the mage's own mana protects them.
But now, with unimaginable mana and astonishing precision, Ash broke through the injured replica's mana protection.
With that single clenching motion, an extremely abnormal gravitational force twisted the space around her body.
The girl's two halves were instantly distorted and compressed, turning into a small lump of crushed flesh in the blink of an eye.
Throughout the entire process, Frieren did not resist Ash's mana with her own. She calmly accepted the arrival of death.
In that final moment, she poured all her mana into the staff in her hand.
As her body vanished and death arrived, the staff she had thrown aside began to glow.
"A desperate final strike?"
Ash narrowed his eyes slightly.
He grabbed the incoming hair attack and pulled it forward, smashing it toward his own replica charging again.
But just as he finished that series of movements, the rock beneath his feet suddenly collapsed.
At the same time, the staff shattered and released an extremely intense light.
In an instant, inside the hall, which had been heavily reinforced with magical defenses yet was already on the verge of collapse, the mana barrier Ash had just reconstructed around himself was completely expelled.
'What kind of magic is this? I've never heard of it before.'
The dispersing mana barrier made Ash widen his eyes slightly in surprise.
Although the expulsion lasted only a fleeting moment, every mage present was among the world's top tier.
They all seized this one chance, the only opportunity that might allow them to kill their opponent.
A chance that their important companion had exchanged with her life.
Almost simultaneously, they unleashed their ultimate attacks.
A storm of flames.
Gravitational lightning.
Extremely compressed attack magic.
Hair that had gathered into spear-like shapes, no longer resembling hair at all.
All of them pierced forward at nearly the same moment.
Within the trembling space, facing attacks that rushed toward him like beams of light, Ash responded just as they had seized the fleeting chance bought by Frieren's sacrifice.
He launched a magical counterattack.
Between his hands, while his enemies gathered their finishing blows, a strange gravitational point resembling a black hole formed.
With a gentle toss, the roles of attack and defense reversed instantly.
Light began to distort, pulled by invisible forces into a dark swirling center.
The moment the black hole formed, it began influencing the surrounding gravitational field, like a rehearsal for the end of the world, twisting the entire underground space into something dangerous.
Everything nearby was dragged toward it in an instant.
The first thing affected was the sound in the air.
It twisted into a shrill scream within the black hole… yet since the sound itself was sucked inside, no one could hear anything.
Whether the stone floor, the countless spells, or the walls and ceiling surrounding the underground hall, everything was stripped away one after another. Nothing could escape the raging suction.
From tiny particles of dust to massive rock walls, all objects and living things were stretched, compressed, and deformed by the black hole's gravity.
Even the supporting structures of the underground space began collapsing the moment they touched the black hole's edge, like an invisible grinder crushing them into nothing before they completely vanished.
Yet these objects were not simply swallowed.
As they disappeared, they emitted strange flashes of light, like the final brilliance of falling stars, only even shorter and more tragic.
Building materials all around were dragged inward.
Even this disaster, more terrifying than any natural catastrophe, couldn't spare Fern. She had planted her staff into the ground and poured all her mana into it to stabilize herself.
But she still couldn't hold on and was pulled into the artificial black hole Ash had thrown.
Sense's hair was also sucked in.
But she instantly severed it herself and forced the rapidly expanding strands deep into the ground that had previously been compressed by gravity and still contained magical defenses below.
Like a spider, she rooted herself into the earth to resist the suction.
Denken manipulated the earth, raising the ground beneath him.
But in less than two seconds he followed Fern's fate, being dragged into the black hole along with the lifted rock wall and instantly annihilated.
Sense's replica likewise struggled against the suction.
Before long her entire body was lifted into the air. Strands of hair were ripped from the ground one by one.
From afar she looked like a giant spider struggling in a violent storm.
Only Ash's own replica resisted by manipulating gravity directly.
But during the process, pieces of earth torn away and stones flying at high speed constantly struck both their bodies.
Not long after, just as Sense was about to be completely torn free, the black hole calmed down.
Or rather… Ash himself casually waved his hand and dismissed it.
At this moment the entire underground hall looked as if it had been reborn.
Everything had returned to a primitive state, leaving only exposed rock.
"What a huge investment. The entire underground space at the deepest level has been reinforced with magic."
Ash landed on the ground, lightly kicking a rock with his toe, a smug grin painted on his face.
Under normal circumstances the entire dungeon should have been swallowed.
But when the ancient empire built it, they had repeatedly reinforced the key outer traps and especially the deepest section countless times, giving it extremely strong resistance to magic.
Because of that, no one had dug through it.
Otherwise, even with the Spiegel inside, someone would have tunneled in long ago. There were plenty of earth-controlling mages who could easily dig deep underground and simply bypass the demon from behind.
The reason no one had done it was simple. They couldn't.
This massive region at the deepest level was so reinforced that entering with magic alone was nothing but a fantasy.
But that also meant the construction had required enormous manpower and resources.
No ordinary kingdom, nor even the current empire, could build something like it again.
Even Ash himself felt reluctant to completely destroy such a treasure of ancient civilization.
"You must understand how I feel about destroying this—"
Ash spoke casually, with no tension or urgency in his voice. Even hostility and killing intent were extremely faint as he looked up at his own replica.
But before he finished speaking, the replica had already drawn its blade and rushed forward again.
Without a word, a silent slash that broke the sound barrier closed in on Ash.
The speeding blade carried a destructive force far beyond normal imagination.
Even the wielder's body had exceeded the limits of human sight.
Like a whisper of death, it wrapped the air with suffocating pressure.
But—
"You picked the wrong target."
Faced with the storm-like barrage of slashes, Ash relied purely on instinct and reflex.
With every motion of his hand he weakened the momentum of the opponent's blade, deflecting each strike perfectly.
Each clash rang with sharp metallic sounds and flying sparks.
It was like a dazzling martial performance that could easily mesmerize anyone watching.
Sense's hair couldn't interfere at all.
And in this duel, the one steadily retreating was the replica.
The stalemate didn't last long.
Amid the swirling sparks, a silver flash tore through the wind and struck the blade the replica held horizontally above its head.
"Just behave… and die."
The two lightning-covered blades scraped violently against each other.
But with Ash's whisper—
The game ended.
BOOM!
With a roar like thunder or a meteor impact, Ash's blade suddenly carried an overwhelming pressure.
The replica, which had been resisting desperately in front of him, was crushed instantly.
The blade snapped in two.
Its body, along with lightning itself, was split in half from top to bottom.
Even the ground was torn apart along the shining trajectory.
The entire dungeon shook violently.
Even the mountain above seemed to split in half.
From deep within the dungeon's middle section, Ash's full-power strike carved a long narrow fissure straight through the entire structure with a blade of gravity.
Looking upward, if one's vision could surpass human limits, one could even see a faint ray of sunlight thousands of meters away.
Deeper below, the Spiegel had almost been sliced apart by Ash's attack.
But Ash did not destroy it.
Instead, he sealed the demon's main body with a reverse motion, since it lacked offensive ability.
He then prepared to leave the deepest area.
He didn't even destroy Sense's remaining replica. As he passed by, he merely patted it on the head.
After all, the exam still needed to proceed.
If it ended too easily, the third round might become deadly.
By sealing the demon, he also stopped it from generating further replicas.
Otherwise producing another copy of himself, or Frieren, would cause serious trouble for the examinees.
While fighting earlier, he had also noticed several other exits around the deepest chamber.
So when he destroyed those replicas, some newly created ones had probably gone through those routes to attack other intruders.
Even though he knew this, he didn't intend to interfere.
His own replica had clearly been created last.
The Spiegel wouldn't be able to recreate someone like him quickly.
So it wouldn't cause too much change to the exam.
———
While Ash was defeating the main replica forces among the examinees, the surging waves of mana and the occasional thunderous explosions made the later exploration teams tremble slightly as they advanced.
The distant booms, even from thousands of meters away, sounded like hoarse cries tearing through the silence of the royal tomb.
The strange sensation rising from deep underground filled everyone with unease.
It felt as though something had awakened a despair buried deep within their souls.
Their legs trembled unconsciously.
If they hadn't known it was their companion, and that the exam didn't require them to attack each other, most people would have already fled in panic.
Meanwhile, Ash, who knew nothing of their confusion, walked out from the deepest area after returning to his normal appearance.
He shook his head and sighed as he walked.
"How did things turn out like this?"
Although he had achieved his goal, things had gotten a little out of hand.
That completely went against his original plan.
At first he had wanted to enjoy himself for a while and see what it would feel like to be surrounded and attacked by everyone.
He had even wanted to let them fully display their abilities.
But before he realized it, he had acted too quickly and destroyed too many enemies, making the whole thing boring.
"If I'd known, I should've dragged it out longer. But fighting puppets the whole time isn't interesting either. I guess I'll check on how everyone else is doing."
With a hint of regret, he pushed aside the disappointment and quickly moved through the dungeon.
Although the greatest threat had already been eliminated by Ash alone, the earlier massive vibrations and surging mana had stimulated the various monsters hidden deep inside the dungeon.
Even the traps had been triggered by the shaking.
After all, a thousand years was enough time for many mechanisms to break down or for monsters to fall into deep hibernation.
But the violent tremors Ash created had effectively cleaned the dust from traps that had been too clogged to activate.
Even mechanisms with rotted parts had been jolted into working again.
And monsters sleeping deeply were awakened by the surge of mana and the terror it carried.
Walking through the dark tunnels, Ash could clearly hear miserable cries echoing from various places.
There were also the roars of monsters and the mechanical tremors of traps activating.
After running randomly for a while, the ground ahead of Ash began to produce small but rapid vibrations.
Since his magic had already detected Fern and the others somewhere ahead, he instinctively raised his head to look toward the upward-slanting tunnel above.
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