"I can''t believe I am using my forbidden magic against such a young child," he spat.


    Jaegar had a bewildered look on his face.


    The fabric of Reemush''s shirty in tatters upon his body, torn asunder by unseen forces. His once unblemished skin now bore the sinister mark of writhing ck tentacles, snaking their way across his chest and arms with an unsettling, unnatural fluidity. As if driven by some malevolent will, they extended their reach even onto his face, obscuring his features beneath their dark, twisting embrace.


    Jaegar''s gaze locked onto the spectacle before him, his senses tingling with a mixture of awe and apprehension. The air seemed to crackle with an uncanny energy, a palpable tension hanging thick around them like an ominous shroud.


    With each passing moment, the atmosphere grew increasingly charged, as though the very fabric of reality itself was being warped and distorted by the presence of these sinister appendages.


    Jaegar could tell that this man was around grand mage level right now. Did his energy increase suddenly? Jaegar pondered watching those ck tentacles.


    Continue reading at mvl


    As if to answer him, red tendrils of earth me coiled and undted around Jaegar''s clenched fist, casting a pulsing, bloody aura across his imcable features. He studied the smouldering congration burning in his grasp, his piercing eyes reflecting the hypnotic dance of light and shadow.


    "Not gonna bber anymore, eh?" Reemush''s arrogant drawl sliced through the tension, his lip curling in a disdainful sneer as he regarded the profane fires. "Are you to continue standing there, basking in your paltry fireworks? Or do you actually possess the mettle to engage a true arcanist in the higher disciplines?"


    Jaegar raised his gaze to meet the mage''s, his expression untouched by the barb. "You seem to mistake restraint for hesitation," he responded, his deep bass rumbling with subtle menace. "A miscalction you''ll soon regret, worm."


    A sneering chuckle escaped Reemush''s lips, even as his hands began tracing the first subtle gestures of an intricate arcane weave. "After all your posturing, I expected more than mundane bravado from one who has glimpsed the true face of the Unbound. But if you insist upon squandering what little enlightenment you''ve attained..."


    The aura around him abruptly changed, causing Jaegar''s senses to prickle at him.


    His voice descended into a droning litany of obscure sybles, gaining fervour and power with every esoteric permutation. The air grew steadily thicker and more electrically charged, as if the veryws of physics were being bent and shaped by the mage''s malefic will.


    Reemush''s robes began to stir in the localised winds whipped up by his channelling of mystic forces, his long hair and beard disheveling wildly.


    Then, with a final resounding emphasis, his eyes snapped open - no longer their customary hazel but pits of scintiting ck spheres.


    "Let us reveal the mettle of your untamed potential, punk!" Reemush''s voice boomed with pealing finality, barely humanoid undertones reverberating through his throat.


    With a violent thrust of his outstretched hand, he unleashed the volleys of magical energies straight towards Jaegar''s unflinching form. They materialized asnces of coruscating force, rapid-firing with almostser-like precision.


    Yet mere moments before impact, each zing projectile detonated against an invisible barrier surrounding the Jaegar—a localised distortion of space-time itself, warping the very fabric of reality to shield him. They burst apart in dazzling auroras of incandescent spark and me, but the impact sent Jaegar m against the walls, cracking them.


    Jaegar could tell that the attack was different from earlier ones.


    "You can still hold, impressive. But not for long."


    Rather than reply directly, Jaegar simply clenched his fist tighter around the whickering red ze and exhaled a searing torrent of fire directly towards his foe. And Jaegar didn''t stop at that, With his hands, which were now engulfed in red, intense mes, he pped at once, making a defeaning sound.


    Then he swung his arms onto opposite sides, two streams of red mes burst out from his hands, and he strode towards Reemush.


    Jaegar''s adeptness had helped him use the might of earth me. But he was far from using its full potential. After his body refinement, Jaegar''s body had limated to the mes, and he was able to use them like they were at the beck of his hand.


    With a frantic shing gesture, Reemush interposed a shimmering azure barrier, warding iing torrents, only for the inferno to simply part around its peripheries, relentless and unstoppable. The balcony''s very stonework began to blister and run like molten wax under the sheer intensity of the toxic ck smoke billowing in stinging miasmas.


    In the face of a relentless attack, Reemush grinned from ear to ear, looking at Jaegar in the eye. Then he extended his hands, the ck tentacles spreading around, countless from his hands, covering him from the fire.


    Yet Jaegar stalked forward, step by unhurried step, the cataclysmic fire bending effortlessly to his will. It wrapped around Reemush''s crumbling barricade in an all-consuming vise grip, denying the mage any chance of retreat or counter-attack.


    Soon his smile faded, and the tentacles started to burn around him.


    With sweat beading across his brow and panic wing through his chest, Reemush screamed out the sibnt chords of a desperate invocation. The wavering ellipse miasma surrounding the twobatants detonated outward in a shockwave of annihting force.


    Only to part against Jaegar''s inexorable approach like a curtain of rice paper disturbed by the faintest zephyr. Serpentine tendrils of profane meshed out, binding around the mage''s wrists and ankles with searing intensity.


    Reemush could only howl in anguished disbelief as the inferno reduced his defences to rubble in mere moments and drew him inextricably into its rapacious maw.


    AAHHHHHHHHHH!!


    Yet even as the arcane maelstrom reached its apex, Jaegar gestured subtly with his free hand, and the holocaust dimmed, contracting into a concentrated cyclone that whirled around Reemush''s suspended form.


    Close enough for the mage to feel the blistering heat singeing his very aura, yet held in merciless abeyance by that iron will.