“Oh? Now that’s interesting, why do you say that?”

  Also, what the hell? She is right behind me! Oh wow, she really is that silent as she floats around, isn’t she? I mean, she was able to get behind me without even noticing it although I was a little too occupied with my own thoughts… You know, thinking about if I should end this universe or not. Normal stuff.

  “He seems to be a mutated shadow or maybe an evolution of them? That’s why I think he’s weak to Light magic and since you haven’t used it yet…”

  Alright, you don’t need to lower your tone of voice towards the end. Fortunately, I was just about able to hear it and even though you might be unsure of what you affirmed, what you said more than makes sense. There’s nothing to lose and to be honest it’s better than my previous options. Even if it does not work out, it will give me time to prepare our escape once I blow this entire place into nothing. Ah, wait a second, I still have to get the damn stone! I can’t blow this place up without getting it first! Crap! Man, I completely forgot about it! Now this has to work as otherwise… I will have to literally beat him into a pulp. Smash every single bone of his. All of his organs splattered around this room, forcefully getting out from any of his holes. And yes, I do mean it and no, I will not go into detail as it really is that disgusting and gruesome. Just imagine it, I punch him in the guts with such destructive force that his stomach comes out from one of his mouths. Yep, now imagine any of his other “available” holes.

  Alright, why did I even think of this?

  “I also have reached the same conclusion but since I haven’t seen anything like him, I was on the fence about whether he is or not a Shadow. It seems we will figure it out as if he truly is weak to Light magic then, he is indeed a special evolution.”

  Part of me does not want it to be true as this means that the Shadows can get under special conditions even stronger than what they are, ones that of course I have no clue what they potentially might be. Just think with me, imagine more so. A small kingdom where the citizens are happily living their lives, the king is doing his best job as he rules his small kingdom, the knights are protecting the city from normal threats such as low rank monsters, bandits and so on. The children are enjoying their childhood in laughter, all while the parents watch them… Can you imagine said scenario? Alright, now release Cerberus into the middle of said kingdom. What type of tragedy do you think it would’ve been written into history? To make this worse, imagine several “Cerberus” out there terrorising the world itself. Even S rank adventurers wouldn’t be able to defeat this monstrosity of Shadow, let alone several of them and potentially all of them different from each other.

  Well, another reason to defeat him here and now, wouldn’t you say? I can’t allow for such to happen.

  “Oh, goddess that bestowed me with thy blessing. I hereby pray for thy, as I need thy help.”

  Nothing too drastic however, I really want to make sure that I only purely use Light magic and the best way for such is to start one of these incantations, ones that were given to me by the goddess that made me the Hero of this world. But now that I’m mentioning this, she must feel a little lonely as I really might be the only one who can pray to her. The strength of this spell will be in the upper realm of S rank, twice the strength of Cerberus to be more exact but it should be enough to pierce through him with ease. Though, since I’ve used Martial Arts close to SS- rank and a magic spell in that realm and somehow, he still is breathing after getting hit dead on by both so, I will try to keep my expectations realistic.

  “The foe in front of me is a threat to mankind and that is why I need thy help. Give me the strength to strike him down, ending this endless battle.”

  I raise my arm upwards as much as my body physically allows; however, I’m holding my Paladin White Sword as I do so, as I do intend to infuse it with this incantation. Now, a good question to have is why don’t I use the Holy magic from the Paladin White Sword? It’s quite simple actually, I in fact don’t feel like using it. It’s as if a sudden surge to use the magic that my goddess gave me came out of nowhere, I really can’t explain… It’s almost the same as before, as I still think that I heard her directly speak to me. But in this case, I have a feeling that she asked me to use her spells, you know? I think she’s mad somehow… Argh, who am I kidding! Of course, no one knows of my delusions! I’m the only one who is hearing voices in my damn heart, not from the head, straight from the heart I say! Maybe!

  “Igniting my sword with thy kindness and mercy. Allow me to be the beacon of light for those that stand by my side while allowing me to be thy sword and strike my foes that dare to oppose thy!”

  Magic noises!

  Now comes the fun part per say as I’m materializing the spell onto the blade of my sword. A few small light balls appear near it, going straight towards the blade and with some speed behind it, disappearing into nothing as they hit it; however in reality, they are being absorbed by the blade. A few moments later and as more and more light balls appear and are quickly absorbed the very next moment, with a quick but bright flash the blade is fully “ignited” with Light magic, gaining a beautiful and even warm yellowish colour to it. It’s actually breath talking and the first time that I used this spell I was completely taken by it, staring at it for a few good seconds until I was smacked in the head by that Oni of a teacher… Ah, not so great memories that I have no clue if I should cherish or be traumatized by them. Either way-

  “Aponia Sword.”

  My voice is stoic, the tone of it is calm however, the warm feeling that this spell is giving to the very world around me is something else. Even a child with no knowledge of magic itself could easily understand the greatness of this spell, how powerful it truly is. Shame I’m using it as a test, in a sense I should feel that I’m disrespecting my very own goddess and yet… I’m quite happy and excited for some reason. It’s almost as if I’m showing the world just how great her spells are. Actually, how long has it been since I’ve used this spell? Maybe a decade or close to it? I think the last time I used it was to slay quite the powerful foe or that was the plan at the time. I did fail miserably at that as I was quite a bit weaker than her but, I’m really, really grateful for such as she ended up becoming someone quite important to me, someone that I treasured deeply just like a greedy individual treasures his gold but in my case… I even loved her….

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Although, why am I rumbling about nonsense? I’m in the middle of the battle for crying out loud!

  “It’s so pretty…”

  “I agree, though don’t stare at it for too long as your mind might waver towards god knows where. And I do speak with experience.”

  “Ah, I’m sorry…”

  Well, I don’t think you need to apologise but, I believe she did it out of habit, however, she did sound quite cute as she slightly raised her tone of voice by a little bit as she “gets caught in the action” and gets slightly embarrassed by it. I think, I'm still staring at a rather perfectly round pink orb… Moving on, I should tell her my plan as if this does fail, I will have to figure out a way to end this while getting that damn stone or whatever we might need. If this happens, I will have to use stronger spells and I don’t want to “delete” this Bubble Universe by mistake, putting her in risk even if she’s not physically here.

  “Before I go, if this fails then I will have to use drastic measures and those will put you in danger. However, if that happens to be the case, I will warn you and when I do, I want you to leave. Once this is done, I will get in contact with you after all, you still are holding it, right?”

  “I understand and yes, I still have it with me.”

  “Also, have you noticed the barrier that surrounds him? And do you know what type of spell he’s using to recover from the damage?”

  “I noticed something was off as your attacks seem to be hitting something, however, I had no clue that it was a barrier. And… I think that since he’s a shadow, he simply his using magic to reconstruct himself rather than using a magic spell.”

  Brilliant! Seriously, she’s a genius! Argh man, we really need to work on her confidence and she would be perfect… I mean, if at this moment I was going to make her my wife I think I would be pretty happy for the rest of my slow life-and why am I talking about this now!? Why do I yap so much!? Anyway! What she said more than makes sense and I can easily believe it as it does seem to be what’s happening. As we know, Shadows are made of purely magic, using a conventional healing spell might actually not work on them as they don’t have a physical body for such spells to do their magic on them. That’s not a bad thing nor a good one either, just some pros and cons as for example, if you lose your arm then, you might as well have a funeral for it as the probability of you getting it back will be rather small. The same however, cannot be said about a magical body, as long as the core (heart) is in good condition then, as long as you have the necessary magic energy you can “grow” back whatever you might have lost. Though this might mean that if Cerberus wants to, with a more intense usage of magic he can probably heal whatever wound I inflict on him in a split of a second however... He does seem to have a physical body and yet, he’s still capable of such regenerative abilities. Maybe it’s just like she said and since he might be an evolution then, it allows him to be able to do this, question mark?

  “I see, let’s move on then but, before anything…”

  Blast! Woosh!

  It has been a few good seconds and the Great Majestic Fireball still has Cerberus “pin down” towards the wall however, the magic energy on it has decreased drastically, still stronger than him but not enough to cause much damage to this room if any at all to be honest. This means that, with a little bit of magic manipulation I can force it to explode and that’s exactly what I do. The explosion is powerful enough to shake this entire place with some violence, enough to destroy everything on a radius of 25 meters and the terrifying shockwave that follows it will increase said destruction even further being that the next 5 meters suffer the exact if not an even worse fate as those previous 25 meters. Once it’s done a big black smoke cloud emerges, covering everything with it and leaving us wondering if he survived or not although, with Magic Sense we will instantly sense the answer for it while with Magical Eyes we see it.

  Step!

  Everything is set in motion with my simple but loud footsteps. The sound echoed inside this room, one that can be considered grand thanks to its massive size but also fantastic looking thanks to the mystical aspects of its design that fitted well with the grand nature of the room. However, after all of this, while the size is roughly the same, I cannot say that it still looks as fantastic as its past days and glory as the vast majority of it is now in shambles. Debris left and right, ashes in some areas, scratch marks in others and of course, thanks to my definitely not destructive spells that I carelessly used, you can clearly see the areas that suffered from such small catastrophes. Holes exactly my size, some even wider while others deeper. But even if the scenery has changed, the situation has not. I still have yet to defeat the foe in front of me.

  And the same can be said about him as with all of his might, all of his magic energy still available to him, he does his best to recover from the wounds that were inflicted upon by me. His entire body was closed to being crushed as the Great Majestic Fireball squished him with such force that he was not able to push it away nor was he able to get away instead, the only thing that he could do was to simply recover the damage that was being inflicted upon him but, looking at him, you can easily say that even that simple action, one that he has done several times now, thanks to how tremendously powerful the Fireball was, he was not able to fully heal himself in fact, in roughly 10 or so minutes I would guess that, he would’ve been burned alive. Shame that at the time I didn’t know that as otherwise I would have done it. Although, I do have to give him credit as he was able to recover somewhat rapidly.

  Step!

  Maybe it’s because I’ve unconsciously decided that this is the end of this epic battle but, my footsteps are heavy, not because I’m having trouble walking but more so that they portray to the world a message, a meaning with them. One that tells those who hear it that, I’m ready to resolve this, ready to put an end to this far too long battle but at the same time, the amount of confidence that I have that I can accomplish this. Maybe that’s why he seems to be powering up even further beyond what he has shown until now. Maybe it’s why he growls at me with pure hatred and rage as he gathers all of his strength. Maybe it’s why he stares at me with deadly eyes as I calmly cover the distance between us… Maybe it’s why he’s dashing towards me with everything he has.