Dark Magus Returns

Chapter 1638: Broken Will

Time magic had saved Raze more times in this battle than he could count. Every reversal had bought him a breath, a moment, a heartbeat to think. Against Heino, he had realized how utterly broken the spell could be, how unfair it was compared to the limits of every other discipline. Time didn’t just rewind wounds. It rewound mistakes. It rewound drained Qi. It rewound mana. It rewound desperation itself.

But it also had limits, and Raze knew those limits painfully well.

He didn’t have enough time affinity to freeze a moment, slow a second, or create the kind of temporal cages that Ibarin could. He could only revert himself. And because he was burning through Qi and mana at a terrifying speed, his affinity would never grow either. Every moment he used another spell, he drifted further away from ever controlling time the way he needed to.

Even worse, Gizin had figured it out.

"Did you really think you could keep using that trick forever?" Gizin mocked, his voice echoing across the ruined arena. "These techniques may have worked against a fool like Enaxx, but they will not work against me."

Raze kept moving, cutting through the dust and scattered rubble, but he felt the cold weight of truth in every word.

"I can tell you’re reversing time," Gizin continued. "I don’t know where you got such a ridiculous affinity, but it’s obvious. You can only rewind to a certain point. You can only revert so far. And I can guess exactly where you’ll appear when you do it again."

One of the clones stepped forward, its golden cane glowing like a burning sword.

"With this many of me, predicting your next move will be a walk in the park."

Raze gritted his teeth. The worst part was that the Grand Magus wasn’t wrong. That was precisely how Raze had killed Heino, by predicting where he would appear after reversing time. Now that same logic was being used against him.

So Raze did the only thing he could.

He ran.

His wings of darkness burst into existence again, lightning wrapped around his feet, wind magic coiled at his ankles, and with a thunderous crack he shot across the battlefield. He slashed a clone aside, dashed between two others, spun out of the path of a golden beam, and then leapt upward as a cane slammed into the ground behind him.

He moved like a blur of black and silver, but he was burning through an ocean of mana to do it.

Running only delayed the inevitable. Running didn’t win fights. And Raze knew that more than anyone. He hadn’t spent years crawling through Pagna’s libraries, stealing forbidden scrolls, studying every formation under the sun just to flee.

But if he left this crater... if he escaped into the Underside...

More people would die.

The thought stabbed at him, not because he cared for this cursed place, but because of something uglier, something he hated admitting even to himself.

The Underside was a prison. It was a nightmare. It had taken everything from him.

So why did he feel sick at the thought of destroying it?

Why did some part of him hesitate, even now?

’What is wrong with me?’ he thought sharply. ’After everything this place did to me... do I still have some pathetic attachment to it?’

And yet he still refused to run.

There was another option, one he had used countless times before.

He could escape the fight entirely.

Retreat. Plan. Survive. Return when the odds were right.

When Raze was too weak to fight a Grand Magus, he fled. When he couldn’t overcome an enemy he’d miscalculated, he ran. When the world pushed him into a corner, he always escaped.

There was always another day.

There was always another plan.

And yet... that thought never crossed his mind this time. Not once.

’There has to be a way,’ Raze thought, his heartbeat pounding in his skull. ’Something in everything I learned. In every formation. Every rune. Every technique. Every piece of research I studied. There must be a way to beat this man.’

But his thoughts were too slow. His focus was split between survival and strategy, and that single moment of hesitation was all it took.

Above him, hundreds of Gizin clones drifted into the air, forming a deadly circle. Light condensed in their palms, swirling into golden spheres.

Raze didn’t notice.

Not until the sky itself seemed to ignite.

A massive beam of golden energy descended, an execution from above. It hit Raze straight in the chest before he could even brace, the impact cracking the ground beneath him. His body was crushed into the stone, wings folding inward, the Blazer roaring to absorb what it could. The heat burned through his skin, his bones, the world around him blurring into white.

This was the moment he should have reversed time.

This was the moment he should have used the Godslayer Blazer.

But he didn’t.

He let the attack hit.

Some part of him desperately hoped it would force his mind into clarity, that the pressure would tear open the answer he couldn’t find. That somewhere in the pain lay the key to victory.

His thoughts blurred.

His vision dimmed.

And then,

Gizin struck.

Multiple canes slammed down toward Raze, ready to end him the moment he rewound time.

But before the blows landed,

before the canes touched him,

before the clones could finish their assault,

A violent shockwave exploded from above.

A spear crashed down from the sky.

A burst of light tore through the battlefield, scattering the Gizin clones like scraps of paper. They were thrown back by a surge of radiance so powerful it left streaks of white across the ground.

And a familiar voice, sharp, furious, unwavering, cut through the chaos.

"DON’T TOUCH MY BROTHER!"

Safa landed between Raze and the Grand Magus, her spear raised, her stance firm enough to split the earth beneath her feet. Light magic rippled outward from her body in waves. The stone scaling across her skin shimmered as divine energy coursed through her veins.

She didn’t look back at him. She didn’t need to.

Her presence alone said everything.

She was there to protect him.

And she was ready to fight a Grand Magus to do it.

***

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