High above the clouds, Alphonse Merlin stood at the prow of the Merlin family’s flagship, the Zephyros, his Magus robe fluttering in the rushing wind. His eyes stared unblinking at the distant specks fleeing ahead — dirigibles bearing the crest of the Asteriscus family.

  “Cowards. They don’t even dare to face our vanguard fleet,” Alphonse scoffed, lips curling into a disdainful smile.

  Behind him, his aides stood in silence. None dared disturb the patriarch when his focus sharpened like a blade. The other two dirigibles flanked him at a distance in a tight formation — exactly as he’d drilled into them. These three dirigibles were the pride of the Merlin family, the fastest ones they possessed. These dirigibles were at least three times faster than the standard models of average dirigibles.

  Nevertheless, as an old sly fox, Alphonse couldn’t help but feel a bit suspicious of the Asteriscus family’s motive. They were fleeing too easily. With the speed of the Merlin dirigibles, the Asteriscus family had no hope of outrunning them. Anyone with a brain would know that. Which could only mean—

  “They’re baiting us…” he muttered under his breath.

  He stroked his beard as his thoughts churned. He couldn’t help but remember the humiliation that they had given him when he sent his elite unit to scour the Asteriscus Manor. He vowed that he would pay the debt one thousand times over right now, and he had learned who the orchestrator might be.

  Despite all the high-ranking spies he had planted in the Asteriscus family being discovered and eliminated, he had still managed to learn — through some other hidden channels — that they had elected a new patriarch. What was surprising, however, was that the new patriarch turned out to be none other than Victor Asteriscus, the same boy who had gone to the Thornwood Forest with his grandson, and more crucially, the very target of the “person” who had ordered him to attack the emerging Magus academy there.

  Even more telling was the direction in which the Asteriscus fleet was fleeing, which was none other than the Thornwood Forest.

  That could only mean one thing: this Victor was the root cause of the troubles that had thwarted his plans multiple times. But that in itself made little sense. How could a brat barely the age of his own grandson become the patriarch of the Asteriscus family, let alone establish a Magus academy? He must have some sort of hidden secret, or perhaps the support of a powerful, unknown backer.

  Whatever the truth was, Alphonse had expected the Asteriscus family to dispatch one of their more capable Magi to intercept or delay the Merlin advance fleet. And he had a strong hunch that it would be this so-called Victor.

  So then… where was he?

  As he was wondering that, a faint presence flickered below the clouds not far from the Asteriscus fleeing fleet, causing Alphonse’s eyes to light up with interest. Although it was almost imperceptible, Alphonse was no ordinary Magus.

  “Ah, so there you are.” He grinned.

  Regardless of whatever the Asteriscus family was planning, it mattered little to him, a Nexus Temporal Magus. After all, he would crush it with absolute force.

  Victor’s heart pounded faster with each passing second as the enemy’s vanguard fleet got closer and closer. Even from this distance, he could clearly make out the imposing figure of the Merlin family’s patriarch, a Nexus Temporal Magus.

  [A powerful extraordinary life form has been detected!]

  [The life form is expected to have early Primal-stage Nexus Temporal Magus combat capability.]

  Minutes slipped by. The enemy fleet was now only a few hundred meters away. Alphonse flew ahead of the dirigibles, halting midair before Victor with a cold, imperious glare.

  “So, you’re the bastard who killed my grandson… and the envoy my family sent?” he questioned coldly. “You sure have given me a lot of trouble.”

  Victor remained silent. He didn’t need to say anything, as the look on his face said it all.

  Frost bloomed instantly as Alphonse raised a single hand. In an instant, dozens of large ice lances spiraled into existence around him, each one radiating a freezing aura that made the very air brittle.

  “Hmph. It doesn’t matter if you're here to stall while your family flees,” Alphonse said, his voice cold as the magic swirling around him. “I’ll kill you first, then I’ll hunt them down. You may think you can delay me… But a mere Elemental Adept like you can’t possibly—”

  “Yap, yap, yap. You Merlins really love to yap,” Victor cut in with a smirk. “Even your grandson couldn’t shut up before he died. You people really are third-rate villains.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “You! Perish then!” Alphonse roared, hurling the ice lances at Victor with a mere flick of his hand.

  Dozens of crystalline projectiles screamed through the air, tearing through clouds and distorting the space around them. Each one carried the might of a Nexus Temporal Magus — enough to flatten a huge area, let alone a single mage.

  Yet Victor didn’t even flinch as he simply cast {Spatial Fold}. A shimmering ripple distorted the air before him. The ice lances vanished one after another, sucked into the spatial rift that swallowed the destruction whole. Not a single shard made it through.

  “What?” Alphonse’s pupils contracted. “You mastered the Cosmo element? Damn it! You were the one who laid that trap back in the Asteriscus Manor. All of it was you!”

  “It takes this long for you to figure it out? Are you stupid?” Victor mocked.

  “Arrogant brat!” Alphonse bellowed, mana flaring as frost bloomed around him. “I’ll kill you!”

  “Kill me? Can you even do it?” Victor replied coolly.

  He flicked his wrist, and another rift cracked open in the sky, this time above Alphonse. A heartbeat later, all the ice lances that had vanished earlier came spewing out of the rift, descending like frozen javelins of death.

  “I’m not here to delay you,” Victor said. “I’m here to destroy you.”

  Alphonse’s eyes widened. He waved his hand with practiced precision, conjuring a translucent dome of frost around himself. The air snapped and crackled as the redirected lances struck his barrier. The impact sent shockwaves spiraling across the clouds.

  When the dust cleared, the dome was still intact with no signs of cracking. As expected of a Nexus Temporal Magus, his half-effort spell wouldn’t be able to hurt him.

  “Brat, let me show you the might of a Nexus Temporal Magus!” Alphonse snarled, raising one hand toward the sky as a secret incantation spilled from his lips like frostbitten winds. “{Frozen Meteor}!”

  Immediately, a chilling pressure descended. Moments later, an icy meteor materialized high above, trailing a tail of glacial mist. It plummeted toward Victor at supersonic speed, howling like the scream of winter itself. Though the meteor was only a few dozen meters wide, it radiated a cold so oppressive that even space itself seemed to shiver.

  Victor’s instinct screamed. He tried to fly away, only to find that the frigid air around him was trying to restrain him in place.

  Shoot!

  “{Ethereal State}!” Victor chanted, activating the sigil on his solar plexus.

  The moment the spell activated, space shimmered and twisted around him. His form flickered like a mirage before vanishing entirely, slipping into the subspace. A heartbeat later, the icy meteor collided with the point where Victor once at.

  BOOM!

  A white shockwave erupted, devouring trees, rocks, and land alike in an expanding dome of frost one kilometer in diameter. The entire forest below turned into a shimmering tundra in mere seconds — its flora petrified mid-motion; animals encased like statues of ice. The destruction was as beautiful as it was terrifying. Such was the devastation a Nexus Temporal Magus could unleash with a single spell.

  Victor emerged moments later, several meters away, gasping as he stabilized his form. Frost clung to his clothes and skin. His hair was tipped with ice, and his fingers trembled faintly.

  Even though Alphonse was a middling Nexus Temporal Magus, he was still a whole rank above Victor. His mana reserves and overwhelming destructive force couldn’t be matched by Victor’s esoteric elemental affinity alone. He could distort space and even manipulate time a little, but this was no simple battle — this was a battle of survival.

  Victor quickly cast {Time Reversal} on himself, his body glowing faintly as temporal energy coursed through him. In an instant, the frost clinging to his limbs vanished, and the lingering pain from the earlier impact dissipated. It was as if the effects of the spell had never touched him, and his body was restored to a moment before the blast, completely unharmed.

  The freezing mist soon faded from the surroundings, revealing Alphonse’s imposing figure high above, just a few dozen meters away. His Magus robe billowed in the wind as he stared down at Victor.

  “Impressive,” Alphonse muttered in genuine surprise. “You actually survived a Gimmel-tier spell cast by a Nexus Temporal Magus. No wonder you became the new head of the Asteriscus family.”

  Then, his eyes turned cold. “Very well. I’ll go all out.”

  Subsequently, Alphonse took out what seemed to be a magic artifact — a shattered blue crystal orb — from his interspatial ring. Despite its fractured state and its appearance resembling that of a broken magic artifact, it radiated a pulse of power that dwarfed even the finest superior-grade magic tools Victor possessed in his arsenal.

  “Do you have any last words?” Alphonse asked coldly, completely confident that he could kill Victor with his next spell.

  Victor responded by taking out his own magic tool — the Voidborn Orb — from his interspatial ring with a sneer. “Ha! Do you really think it’s wise to focus all your attention on me?”

  “Hm?” Alphonse frowned. A flicker of unease crossed his face before his head snapped toward the Merlin advance fleet.

  At that very moment, Victor flicked his finger. Several muffled explosions erupted in quick succession around the fleet. Waves of violet light flared, followed by concussive blasts that shook the skies. The protective magic shields enveloping the three dirigibles trembled violently, then two of them cracked and shattered under the relentless assault.

  Flames and spatial distortions engulfed the fleet as panic and disorder spread among the Merlin troops. Alphonse’s eyes widened as he realized what had happened — Victor had preemptively set up the same spatial mine trap that had annihilated most of the advance unit at the Asteriscus Manor.

  “You bastard!” Alphonse roared, his fury bursting over the ceiling.

  Victor smirked, the Voidborn Orb hovering over his palm with an eerie violet pulse. “What’s wrong? Didn’t expect a trap? Or are you just that slow?”

  Naturally, it was understandable that Alphonse hadn’t anticipated such an ambush. Under ordinary circumstances, placing powerful magic traps of this caliber would have required significant time and preparation. After all, the Merlin advance fleet had been in constant pursuit of the Asteriscus family. So, when could Victor have possibly laid such precise spatial mines?

  The answer, of course, lay in his spell — {Spatial Fold}. With it, Victor could store pre-cast magic within subspace, ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. All he had to do was coordinate with the elders of the Asteriscus family, have them embed their spells into spatial rifts, and store them in advance. When the time was right, he simply unfolded them.

  It was just that simple.

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