Northern materialized behind Rughsbourgh, driving through his space a razor-sharp, lightning-fast punch. The space naturally halted his hand, but the barrier bent. Northern's sword was already slicing down from another angle.
Rughsbourgh's expression darkened as he realized he had wasted precious time on a decoy. He tried to move, but it was too late.
The sword plunged toward his neck—but it never struck. Northern was hurling a punch straight toward his side, using it as a feint while concealing his sword hand... however, he stopped mid-motion and dissolved into fragments of light.
Rughsbourgh's frown deepened.
The fact that Northern was adapting to his Rewind remained as intensely baffling as ever.
Consciousness, in theory, could not perceive the flow of time. Time was a great river, ever surging forward, and the mind was but a single drop carried along its current. A drop wasn't meant to detect the river's movement—it was simply part of the flow.
After all... When does the river flow forward, and yet the waters backward?
Northern's increasing awareness of time's reversal defied that truth. It was more than an anomaly—it was a threat. Not just to Rughsbourgh's dominion, but perhaps to the very structure of causality itself.
Rughsbourgh despised what he was witnessing.
Of course, he was proud of Northern, and even though Northern was hell-bent on killing him, he wasn't considering killing the boy. This was, after all, what little proof remained that he wasn't wrong—that he wasn't completely insane.
That maybe drastic methods were what was needed to yield groundbreaking results.
Yes, to Rughsbourgh, Northern was groundbreaking.
'But I still need to put him in his place.'
He sighed. More pages in the tome within his hands flew open to a certain point and stopped.
Northern now stood distant from Rughsbourgh, staring with a subtle frown as he gripped his sword.
Rughsbourgh held his head high, regarding Northern with a calm, indifferent expression. His voice emerged in a soft, chilling crawl.
"Let's teach you a little lesson, shall we?"
Northern suddenly felt a dire premonition. His spatial awareness peaked, every sense of perception incredibly heightened. Something suddenly charged the air, and because his body could relate to the environment so intimately, he was acutely conscious of what was unfolding.
He tensed his muscles and gripped the Illusion Hefter even more tightly, slowly narrowing his eyes to slits.
The air around Rughsbourgh seemed to shimmer, golden specks like dust gathering around his lower body. The Tome floated before his torso as he moved his hand and extended it forward.
"Throne of Nocturne: Monarch's Descent"
The entire ground seemed to tremble—not just the ground, in fact, but the very air itself and the concept of reality seemed to violently shake for a brief second. Then the entire battlefield darkened, the sky instantly shrouded with darkness before a terrifying thunderclap roared through the black clouds.
Northern frowned, waiting, his sword hand at the ready and his eyes sternly locked on his opponent.
From behind Rughsbourgh, a massive throne of molten gold and darkness formed. The entire battlefield became submerged in a strange and hostile atmosphere.
Northern felt suddenly rejected by the space, though not so much that he would be seized and thrown out. It was as if the very concept of his being here was being subdued by the laws of this domain.
A cold, wicked smile gently stained Rughsbourgh's lips.
"You feel it, don't you?"
He began to walk closer, moving with the throne of molten gold behind him.
"A subtle suppression of your existence..."
He stopped a few meters before Northern.
"Isn't it astonishing—Spell art, that is... isn't it astonishing that an age discovered a way to manipulate the essence of language, words to carve out authority and expression."
Northern glared at him while simultaneously enduring the pressure that felt like he shouldn't exist. His mind almost refused to engage in any conversation. He was tempted to assert his existence against this strange force, to resist it with the sheer power of his will—however, Northern's premonition warned that would be wrong.
He wasn't sure what Rughsbourgh had done to the space, but he suspected it wasn't a weave of will. In fact, will didn't seem to be any integral part of it.
'Spell arts, huh... I've been curious about it too.'
Rughsbourgh grinned, baring his teeth. Then he waved his hand.
The ground erupted toward Northern. Love this story? Show your support on M9VLEMPYR.
Golden liquid surged forth with vicious speed, solidifying into cold javelin spears. Northern gritted his teeth and gripped his sword tightly, straining to move.
However, the force was even more terrible than he'd imagined. Where he commanded his body to move, the force commanded his body not to move.
He tried to shift his legs, but they were frozen in place. Veins bulged on his forehead, his face reddened as he struggled to move that single leg, but achieved no breakthrough.
He had never felt so powerful in his entire life, and yet had never felt so powerless.
He felt so powerful because he was applying all the strength in his body to move just one leg—he was trying to move one leg with the power that could shove a mountain aside.
Blood began to drip from his ear as he continued to fight against the force. His eyes reddened, and soon he was bleeding from his eyes and nose.
And yet, movement was not a concept available to him. As a matter of fact, his existence was frozen in perpetual contemplation by the space. Movement was not a luxury afforded to him, and the more he tried to break that rule, the more the reality of this domain frowned upon him.
Golden javelins streaked down upon him. One pierced his shoulder, another drove into the center of his chest, the third stabbed through his right thigh.
[Your armor has been destroyed]
Northern watched with a bleak expression as the fragments of his best buddy vanished into shards of black light and dissolved into the air.
Rughsbourgh regarded him with a cold, stoic look in his eyes. It was a look of pure condescension.