Novel Full Chapter 1756 The Price of Time
Chapter 1756 The Price of Time
The battered group of warriors immediately turned their heads when they saw the , suffocating wave of pure Dark Magic appear in the sky. It was an attack so impossibly dense and powerful that it was able to completely disrupt and atomize a Grand Magus’s elemental spell in an instant. Surely, a localized phenomenon of that magnitude could have only come from one specific person in existence.
And they were absolutely right. As the smoke cleared, they saw Raze walking slowly and purposefully ahead on the edge of the elevated earth platform.
“The Dark Magus,” Idore hissed, his previously arrogant, untouchable facade finally cracking into a deep, hateful scowl. “I thought there was a very slim, microscopic chance that you would somehow manage to make it out of my labyrinth alive. But I have to admit, I never thought you would make it out so incredibly fast.”
Since Idore and the Dark Magus had hardly ever had a direct, face-to-face conversation with each other prior to this war, it wasn’t as if they truly knew what each other were like on a personal level. They didn’t understand each other’s underlying personalities or motivations. And this glaring disconnect was what, in a lot of ways, angered Raze even more than the man’s raw power.
To Idore, the reason for ordering Raze’s wife’s brutal killing, the reason for the persecution, the reason for it all… was just simply that Raze was a political problem. Raze was nothing more than a stubborn nail getting in the way of the absolute control and the grand cosmic war that the Grand Magus stood for.
This total detachment was exactly why Idore hardly knew that Raze was historically one of the top magic researchers to ever live. Idore had heard the quiet rumors, of course, but Ibarin had intentionally played them down over the years. Ibarin had constantly claimed to the council that the reports were wildly exaggerated and that Raze was just a normal, slightly talented academy professor who got lucky.
Ibarin had spun the narrative, claiming that the press and the rebels were just trying to artificially make a big deal out of the enemy to rally behind a false idol. Furthermore, it actually worked heavily in the Grand Magus’s political favor to have a widely known, “terrifying” enemy that was supposedly highly talented. It gave even more manufactured reason for the Grand Magus’s continued, authoritarian existence, painting a picture where the Dark Magus was a monstrous threat that only the Grand Magus would be strong enough to deal with.
Idore had bought his own propaganda. He had completely underestimated Raze’s unparalleled intellect and his obsessive love for magical problem-solving. It was that exact genius that had allowed Raze to hack the encrypted terminals, navigate the spatial traps, and exit from the floating palace far quicker than anticipated. And, despite his crippling magical Breakthrough, he had managed to find a way back to the battlefield to protect his allies.
“Cheap tricks,” Raze said, his voice echoing with a chilling, dark resonance that made the air drop in temperature. “You have lazily relied on other people for centuries, hardly doing anything with your own two hands. You have relied on cheap, cowardly tricks and stolen artifacts to try and get absolutely all of the advantages you can get, because you are terrified of a fair fight.”
Without waiting for a response, Raze forcefully kicked off the stone ground. As he lifted himself into the sky, he perfectly manipulated the mana currents so that he was now hovering at the exact same imposing height as Idore himself, staring directly into the tyrant’s glowing eyes.
He wasn’t using his signature dark mana Dusk Wing formation to violently keep his height, though. Instead, he was seamlessly using high-tier Wind magic, a testament to his returning elemental mastery.
“How is that even biologically possible?” Idore asked, genuine shock bleeding into his voice as he sensed the , overflowing reserves of mana radiating from the man in front of him. “It wasn’t too long ago that you were physically suffering the exhaustion of your magical Breakthrough! Your core should be completely empty. You shouldn’t have been able to recover your mana for days!”
Idore’s mind raced, thinking of some forbidden, archaic methods to bypass a Breakthrough’s cooldown. But the few dark methods he knew of were permanently catastrophic; they would brutally shatter the user’s core, making it so the mage could never use magic again if they were to force their fragile body to go through the channeling process a second time.
“You’re right. I would never be able to naturally recover my mana in time to be able to use magic to fight against you today. But I didn’t need a cure. I just needed a little bit of time,” Raze said, a dark, knowing smirk crossing his face. “And thankfully, by arrogantly trapping me inside that personal palace of yours, I hacked your private terminal and got some very interesting answers.”
Raze gripped the hilt of his sword, dark energy swirling around the blade.
“You have done a , highly illegal amount of research having to do with Time magic over the centuries, haven’t you? But I guess, in your infinite arrogance, you never really bothered to deeply look into the theoretical applications that didn’t interest your immediate goals,” Raze explained smoothly. “I learned from your hidden files that you are quite the old monster, and you managed to find a parasitic way to permanently slow down time on your own body to achieve immortality.”
Raze’s eyes narrowed. “Thanks to recently meeting with an old friend of yours—an Alterian Emperor of sorts—I have also been able to acquire quite a bit of practical knowledge regarding Time magic myself. And this specific combination of data interested me greatly. Because in your encrypted reports, there wasn’t just a theoretical process for slowing down time to preserve the body… but also a highly volatile, untested one for speeding up time.”
Hearing the exact phrasing, the horrifying reality of what had just occurred was starting to quickly click in Idore’s head.
“You… you used accelerated Time magic directly on your own physical body to forcefully fast-forward your recovery cycle,” Idore breathed, his eyes wide. “So now, you’ve artificially pushed your body to a state of full recovery.”
Idore had figured out the insane mechanic, but it was a forbidden method that was considered completely useless to use in almost all practical cases. For one, forcefully using Time magic in this specific, aggressive way would physically age your body in an instant. It was literally taking years of life away from a person’s natural lifespan to cast.
If a wounded or exhausted mage wanted to restore their mana and heal fatal wounds, it was logically always better for them to cast Chronomancy to go backward in time to before they were hurt. So, it never made any logical sense to use time acceleration as a recovery tactic—apart from this exact, impossible situation they were currently in, where going backward would just put Raze back into his drained Breakthrough state. Raze had sacrificed his own lifespan to skip the wait.
“Idore, you have cowardly avoided me for so incredibly long, and I have gone through absolutely everything—across lifetimes and dimensions—to finally get to you,” Raze said, his voice trembling with a potent mixture of grief and pure, unadulterated rage. He lifted up his dark sword and pointed the tip directly at the Grand Magus’s chest.
“I have spent years chasing after your shadow, and I harbor a deep, burning hatred for you that transcends magic,” Raze declared. “Because of your blind paranoia, the woman I cared about lost her life. And because of your twisted ambitions, thousands of innocent people have lost theirs.”
Raze hovered closer, the dark mana crackling like lightning around him.
“I guess in a lot of cosmic ways, our destinies have always been violently connected,” Raze whispered, his voice cutting through the wind. “Ever since you first met me as a starving, desperate child rotting in the Underside.”
Idore’s eyes widened to an impossible degree as the absolute shock hit him like a physical blow. His jaw went slack. He had absolutely no idea about the true, horrifying origin of who the Dark Magus really was until this exact second. He had created his own executioner.
“It all ends with you!” Raze roared.
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