Beginning with his usual combo, Victor cast {Gap Hole} — spatial rifts opened all around Alphonse in a chaotic net. Without waiting, he followed up by casting {Warpblade} multiple times until there were a total of dozens of ethereal blades. The Cosmic Rubik above his palm spun like a gyroscope, exuding an otherworldly pressure as it empowered his spells with devastating force.

  “This thing is even better than the Voidborn Orb despite its incomplete state,” Victor murmured, feeling the surging infusion of Cosmo elemental particles that bolstered his control over space itself.

  The ethereal blades shot out in erratic patterns, twisting midair like serpents as they homed in on Alphonse. But the Nexus Temporal Magus was no amateur. With a sharp flare of mana, he conjured a layered icy barrier around himself, instantly plunging the surrounding temperature as his defensive spell activated.

  The blades collided with the barrier in rapid succession. The first few ricocheted harmlessly off, only to vanish into nearby spatial rifts and re-emerge moments later from unexpected angles. They focused on a single point — converging in precise succession. By the eighth strike, spiderweb cracks spread across the icy surface, which caused Alphonse’s brow to twitch in annoyance.

  “This is far more force than any normal Elemental Adept should be able to produce…”

  He raised the fractured blue crystal orb in his hand. Mana surged violently around him as he chanted, then roared, “{Frozen Meteor}!”

  Immediately, a bone-chilling pressure descended from above. A gigantic chunk of ice, carved from the fabric of the upper atmosphere and wrapped in frost, plummeted toward Victor.

  “Again with this spell?” Victor sneered.

  Rather than dodge, Victor tapped into the Cosmic Rubik, channeling its immense power to enhance his control. Then, one of the sigils activated, giving him a large amount of infused mana. Calmly, Victor cast {Spatial Fold}, warping space a hundred meters above and redirecting the meteor to crash into the empty forest behind him — freezing an entire section into solid tundra.

  Victor didn’t even glance back. His gaze remained locked on Alphonse while a smirk appeared on his face. He had truly become stronger, strong enough now to deflect a full-force attack from a Nexus Temporal Magus empowered by a magic artifact.

  “Impudent brat! I truly can’t let you live!” Alphonse shouted. “So what if you have become stronger? You’re still just an Elemental Adept Magus! Perish!”

  He thrust both hands forward and began chanting furiously. The air around him trembled as a sigil on his forearm lit up with pale blue brilliance. Ancient runes shimmered and rotated, channeling vast amounts of infused mana into him like a floodgate bursting open.

  He’s going to use that spell again, Victor thought. He remembered vividly — the spell that had nearly defeated him during their last battle. And judging by the pressure now, it was the exact same technique.

  “Ice that devours all—! {Absolute Zero Ray}!”

  A blinding beam of condensed frost formed at Alphonse’s palm. It was razor-thin and incomprehensibly cold. It was a cryo spell that bypassed matter, mass, and magic alike — capable of turning anything it touched into a brittle, frozen ruin.

  Not taking any chances, Victor activated one of the sigils etched into his chest. A burst of mana erupted from within as the space around him twisted unnaturally. In the blink of an eye, his form flickered, vanishing and reappearing behind Alphonse in a spatial flash.

  “{Prism Divide}!” he chanted.

  A cross-slash of five overlapping spatial blades — sharp enough to shear through space — exploded forward in an X-formation. This was no ordinary attack. It was a Bet-tier spell Victor had generated and learned in order to counter Magi like Alphonse. And its destructive potency far surpassed {Warpblade} despite being a Bet-tier spell.

  Alphonse turned with uncanny speed and caught the spatial blades with his bare palm. The air ruptured as the strike landed — the sky itself seemed to scream from the collision. A blinding shockwave rippled outward, scattering the clouds in every direction and distorting the elemental particles across hundreds of meters.

  What? He faced that attack head-on without cancelling his spell? That’s reckless! Victor thought in dismay.

  “You’ve improved,” Alphonse muttered, glancing at the burn marks etched across his robes and bleeding cracks along his arm. His body had been damaged, but he never stopped maintaining his spell. “But unfortunately, it’s still not enough. Now die!”

  With a roar, he unleashed the completed {Absolute Zero Ray} — The blinding beam of condensed frost launched at Victor at terrifying speed.

  Victor’s instincts screamed at him. He tried his best to get away, immediately casting {Blink} followed by {Ethereal State}, his form flickering and half-vanishing into a haze. At this point, it was too late to cast {Nova} while activating several sigils to counter the attack like he previously did. To make matters worse, the space around him suddenly thickened, making him almost unable to move!

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  I’m locked?! A spatial anchor… from the orb!

  Alphonse had clearly used magic treasures in conjunction with his broken magic artifact to lock the surrounding dimensions, and it seemed that Victor had walked right into the trap. The next instant, the beam struck Victor, who barely managed to teleport ten meters away, slipping halfway into subspace. But alas, it wasn’t enough.

  The icy beam cut him. Pain exploded through his side as frozen energy lanced across his torso, searing through his barrier and armor alike. In that moment, his entire body was flash-frozen — a perfect, crystalline statue suspended in midair.

  Then, with a brittle crack, he shattered.

  Chunks of frozen flesh, scattered robes, and a spray of mana particles erupted into the air like falling snow. There was no scream. Just silence and ice. As though he had never been there at all.

  Victor Asteriscus… was gone.

  “Pfft. A genius of this caliber amounts to nothing when he’s dead,” Alphonse scoffed, self-satisfaction written all over his face.

  Floating in the air above the frozen forest, he allowed himself a breath of victory. His overwhelming aura slowly withdrew, and the broken crystal orb in his hand dimmed and chipped away slightly. Unlike the distant southern sky, still bright with chaos and war, this stretch of sky was eerily quiet. In this moment, Alphonse was certain: Victor Asteriscus was dead.

  I’ve finally avenged my grandson… and the fallen members who were killed in this war… That “being” should be satisfied with this and let me off the hook, Alphonse thought grimly.

  He began to turn away, preparing to fly back to his family’s fleet. But then, his body jerked, and his eyes widened. He found out that he couldn’t move a single inch.

  “What…?” he choked, as a cold sensation pierced through his chest.

  Alphonse looked down to see a translucent blade — pulsing with Cosmo-elemental energy— jutting through his sternum, humming with spatial dissonance. The magic aura around it wasn’t unfamiliar since it was owned by none other than Victor.

  For a second, he thought that it was a trap left behind by Victor as a parting gift. But before he could react, a figure flickered into existence behind him, phasing out of subspace like a ghost. Victor emerged fully with a calm expression.

  Alphonse coughed, blood trickling from his lips. “Impossible… I clearly killed you. How did you—?”

  “You truly underestimated me too much, didn’t you?” Victor sneered and leaned in, whispering into his ear like death itself. “What you killed was only an illusion, and your eyes were playing tricks on you. Well, that’s all there is to it.”

  The tone of Victor’s last sentence sounded unnervingly sincere.

  Alphonse’s expression twisted — not from the pain, but from the first taste of fear since facing Victor.

  Indeed, Victor was not dead.

  Everything had been a ruse. From the moment he fled to the secluded part of the forest, Victor had cast a spell to trick Alphonse, and this was no ordinary magic.

  As a Nexus Temporal Magus, it was all but impossible to cast an illusion spell on Alphonse, especially if it was merely a Bet-tier spell. But that was not the case when the spell was a dreamforce spell. This was the reason Victor had sought out Lillie immediately after returning from his journey — to develop a dreamforce spell and fill one of Victor’s sigils with dreamforce by opening a small gate to the Dreamscape.

  The spell itself was a modified version of the spell {Curse of Nightmare}, now called {Curse of Dreamland}. Its core function was insidious: it cast an illusion so convincing, so aligned with the target’s desires, that even powerful Magi would believe it to be reality. A waking dream shaped by the subject’s expectations. Unless the target possessed deep knowledge or mastery of dreamforce, escaping the spell was virtually impossible.

  However, being a Bet-tier spell, it came with many constraints. Its duration, complexity, and effectiveness depended heavily on the user's preparation and performance. That was why Victor had to play his part flawlessly, feigning retreat, simulating pain, and letting Alphonse believe the illusion of victory. Only then could the trap work.

  But as Victor pierced Alphonse’s chest with the ethereal blade, he realized that killing a Nexus Temporal Magus was no easy feat. Even now, Alphonse’s immense mana reserves and immense vitality were resisting his ethereal blade. Fortunately, he had cast a sigil-empowered {Time Prison} on him as well, locking Alphonse in a stasis-like state, though he knew that this wouldn’t last long.

  As such, he must finish this in one spell.

  “You’re truly the strongest opponent I’ve fought so far,” Victor admitted, hovering back ten meters from Alphonse. “I’ll let you witness the spell I created specifically to counter you.”

  With that, Victor raised his hand, and deep within his sea of consciousness, his seventh sigil blazed to life. A pulse of infused mana coursed through him like a tidal wave. The Cosmic Rubik orb spun above his palm until it suddenly split open and wrapped around his arm, forming a sleek, semi-transparent gauntlet that shimmered with Cosmo and Chrono elemental energy.

  Huh… So the true function of the Cosmic Rubik is to become a weaponized suit?

  Alphonse, still paralyzed, stared in dawning horror. His eyes widened as he seemed to realize that Victor possessed a unique sigil, different than the six he possessed.

  Victor extended his palm without hesitation. “{Nova}!”

  “Wait, that’s just your old spe—”

  Boom!

  The explosion threatened to consume everything in a blinding flash, but Victor, with all his might, compressed the destructive force into a tight three-meter radius sphere around Alphonse — maximizing the impact while minimizing collateral damage. The roar of the blast was deafening, so much so that not even Alphonse’s final, pitiful scream could pierce through and reach Victor’s ear.

  This kind of controlled explosion required even more infused mana and control beyond anything Victor had ever attempted. But thanks to his seventh sigil, and the amplified infusion of mana it granted, he succeeded.

  Still, that didn’t mean he was truly unscathed.

  The heat from the explosion hit his skin like he was standing in front of a miniature sun. His shield cracked, his Magus robe smoldered at the edges, and his face was red with burn marks and radiation. But Victor remained standing, floating calmly above the scorched remains of the frozen, almost melting, forest.

  At last, the blast dissipated. Victor exhaled calmly as dust and space distortion rolled past him. “Who said it’s a different spell? All I did was use my new, strongest sigil, is all.”

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