Chapter 791: Mutual Destruction
Terrifying black lightning erupted where the two Abyssal Spheres collided, each bolt stretching over ten meters and twisting like frenzied serpents, circling the spheres in a relentless, chaotic dance.
A streak of black lightning slammed into the ground, blasting open a crater more than ten meters across—this earth was supposed to be harder than refined iron.
In an instant, countless black lightning bolts shot out like blinding blades, slicing madly in every direction. The thunderous roar was deafening, echoing without end.
Within a radius of more than a thousand meters, the ground had first been flattened by the shockwaves, then riddled with holes by flying debris—now it looked like a poisoned beehive.
Now, the land was pockmarked with one crater after another, each more than ten meters wide and five or six meters deep. Shards and dust billowed up, only to be instantly pressed down by the oppressive force hanging in the air.
A terrifying ripple of energy spread between the two spheres, making the air grow heavier and heavier. Visible waves distorted everything, rolling outward in slow motion.
In just three or four seconds, the crushing pressure pinned every fragment to the ground—none could rise, no matter how light.
Another few seconds passed, and cracks began to split the earth, as if it could no longer bear the strain. Spiderweb fissures crept across the ground and even up the slopes on either side.
Overhead, the sky itself fractured—a terrifying rift stretched for more than a thousand meters. Chunks of debris tumbled down, but as soon as they fell ten meters, the pressure below slammed them back up.
The Black Dragon Warlord gritted his teeth, his face twisted as he forced the Abyssal Sphere forward. Duncan, black flames flickering wildly in his eyes, pushed his own sphere with skeletal arms.
All the dense abyssal smoke around them had already been drawn into the spheres. The fluctuations grew more terrifying, a violent and repressed power brewing at breakneck speed.
Far away, Leon's face had gone ghostly pale. He no longer cared about drawing the attention of these lunatics.
Damn it, these maniacs—if you want to die, don't drag me down with you! Seriously, they're actually competing with raw magic power now. They've lost their minds!
It's true—the Black Dragon Warlord and Duncan, after exhausting all their spells against each other, had resorted to the most dangerous showdown: a contest of pure magical force.
Honestly, unless you're insane, no mage would ever do something like this!
A contest of pure magic means abandoning all spells and tricks—just raw power against raw power. It's even deadlier than bare-knuckle duels between warriors.
In warrior duels, there's a bloodiest, most dangerous fight called the 'three-step brawl.' The arena is only three steps wide, and the fighters stand face to face, nowhere to dodge. Behind them, lethal traps are set—take one step back, and you're dead.
But compared to a mage's direct contest of power—even the cockiest warrior would break out in a cold sweat. They'd swear it's deadlier than the three-step brawl.
Because here, it's not just about winning—unless the gap is enormous and one side crushes the other instantly, the best outcome is hurting your enemy and wrecking yourself. The loser gets devoured by their own magic, burning up in seconds. Forget the body—even the soul is reduced to ashes.
Even the winner would lose most of their magic, dropping a whole rank—or worse, suffer a backlash and end up crippled.
If the two are evenly matched, there's only one outcome: they're both doomed.
Now, the Black Dragon Warlord and Duncan had been locked in this contest for a full ten seconds. Leon could already see how it would end—especially as he sensed the power between the Abyssal Spheres growing wilder by the moment. He immediately cast a spell and sprinted away.
Leon had just flown a thousand meters when everything behind him changed.
At the center of the two Abyssal Spheres, a pitch-black dot appeared—utterly still, without a ripple. The moment it surfaced, the gigantic spheres, like pools of black oil, began to warp and twist.
In a flash, it was as if both spheres had been punctured, their black oil frantically rushing toward the dot at the center.
In the blink of an eye, that utterly dark, rippleless dot swelled into a sphere half a meter across.
This small Abyssal Sphere devoured the two larger ones, which had held all the magic of the Black Dragon Warlord and Duncan. It had seemed like a shadow of pure emptiness—now it radiated a terrifying power.
The Black Dragon Warlord and Duncan had no time to react—the small sphere exploded.
It was silent—just darkness expanding, swallowing everything around it. Yet that bland, unremarkable shadow spread wider and wider.
The instant the darkness touched the Black Dragon Warlord and Duncan, it was like they'd been struck head-on by a Golden Behemoth. Two blurred figures shot out, their bodies flung a thousand meters before slamming into the slopes on either side.
Two heavy, muffled booms echoed. Ash and dust billowed up into mushroom clouds on both slopes. When the clouds cleared, Leon saw two massive craters, each hundreds of meters across, with the Black Dragon Warlord and Duncan lying at the bottom.
The Black Dragon Warlord's armor was shattered, and everything below his right knee was simply gone. Blood soaked him from head to toe, as if he'd been doused in it.
Duncan wasn't any better. The grotesque armor he'd conjured had been reduced to shards, and his black bones were covered in countless cracks—like a glass bottle about to shatter.
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At the center of the battlefield, the spherical shadow expanded rapidly, engulfing a range of two or three thousand meters in an instant.
Once it reached that size, the shadow instantly collapsed, shrinking back to a tiny dot and vanishing as if it had never existed.
But where the shadow had passed, a crater several kilometers wide remained—as if a monstrous maw had silently devoured everything there.
Leon was drenched in cold sweat, no longer daring to fly recklessly. He kept heading for the front half of Blacknight Gorge, knowing that the spatial rifts there could kill him—and that this wasn't over yet.
Leon landed swiftly, then swung the Doombringer Staff, spitting out a rapid stream of notes. Instantly, one Gate of Eskrym after another rose up before him.
Nine giant deep-blue ice gates, each five or six meters tall, lined up in a row, shielding Leon. As soon as the spell was cast, he decisively raised a rune shield as well.
No sooner had Leon finished than a terrifying wave pulsed from the silent, kilometer-wide crater ahead—as if its true power was only now erupting.
Within the crater's vast range, it was as if gravity had vanished. Debris began to float, even massive fragments drifting upward.
Seeing this, the battered Black Dragon Warlord and Duncan seemed to snap back to their senses, the madness fading from the Warlord's face and reason returning to his eyes.
The black flames in Duncan's eyes calmed, now just a flickering spark, on the verge of going out from sheer magical exhaustion.
Awake again, neither cared about their injuries or depleted magic—they instinctively cast the strongest defensive spells they could muster.
In front of the Black Dragon Warlord, layer upon layer of Abyssal Dragonscale Shields appeared; before Duncan, a series of black frost shields materialized.
Then, in the vast crater, every floating fragment—no matter how large—instantly crumbled into fine ash as a terrifying shockwave erupted.
Space itself rippled violently as the shockwave swept out in all directions.
The shockwave slammed into Leon's ninefold Gate of Eskrym, shattering them one after another—the first gate touched by the wave disintegrated into dust instantly.
Second gate, third gate...
All nine Gates of Eskrym shattered instantly, offering no resistance. The shockwave tore through them and crashed into Leon's rune shield.
Crack...
With a clear snap, the rune shield was covered in cracks, its endless runes frozen in place, their light dimming all at once.
In a blink, the shockwave passed. Leon's rune shield shattered, and he spat out a mouthful of blood.
Glancing back, Leon saw the nearby spatial rifts had been ripped apart by the shockwave. Ahead, a crater several kilometers wide and fifty meters deep scarred the land, its edges sliced away by the force.
The Black Dragon Warlord and Duncan were in even worse shape—already battered by their contest of magic, now barely alive only thanks to their unique constitutions.
The Black Dragon Warlord, an Ashen Orc with monstrous resilience, had been corrupted by evil power. His recovery was terrifying; even with every bone broken, he'd heal in no time.
Duncan had lingered beside that colossal heart for a thousand years; with his flesh gone, his skeletal body was even tougher than the undead—yet he wasn't undead, possessing a vitality that surpassed even them.