Magical Soul Parade

Chapter 283: Madoc Vs Finn

The spatial distortions surrounding Madoc’s hand were a roiling, chaotic mass of violet-black energy that hissed as they gnawed at the air. This was the pinnacle of space magic as practiced by the fragment bearers of this era. It was an attack designed to unmake the target at a molecular level, bypassing physical durability by simply deleting the coordinates the body occupied.

Madoc’s intent was absolute. He struck with the desperation of a man who believed he was performing a necessary execution.

The blow landed on Finn’s chest... or rather, it should have.

Instead of the impact and unraveling Madoc had expected, all that happened was his spatial attack-coated hand passing through Finn’s body entirely.

Madoc staggered immediately, thrown off balance by the lack of resistance he had expected. He immediately withdrew his hand and stared at them, then back at Finn in disbelief, his mind racing to reconcile the logic of what he had just witnessed with everything he knew about the world.

Finn hadn’t even moved an inch from the spot he’d been standing in since he got up. He looked down at where Madoc’s arm had just passed through him with a clinical, detached curiosity, the way a person examined something interesting rather than something threatening.

The Anaelle’s pupils contracted sharply. Two things were happening in his mind simultaneously and neither of them sat comfortably alongside the other.

The first was that he was experiencing Finn’s Invalidation for the first time, the total absence of interaction, his spatial distortions finding no fabric to tear because the coordinates they were attacking had been declared outside the rules of engagement entirely.

He understood space at a depth that very few beings in this era could match, and what he had just felt... or rather, failed to feel, was a complete refusal of spatial participation rather than any form of resistance he could push against.

The second was that none of that should have been possible given what he knew about Finn. He had gauged the Pioneer’s strength accurately when he first met him. Even accounting for whatever the time journey had done to him there was supposed to be a give at minimum. Two forces meeting in space always produced an interaction regardless of the disparity between them. A weaker shield crumbled but it still made contact with the strike that crumbled it. That was simply how space worked...

What had just happened produced no contact whatsoever, and the only explanation Madoc’s logic would accept for that was that the being standing in front of him was operating on a level so thoroughly superior to his own that his attack couldn’t even register.

And that conclusion had only one implication...

He was correct in his analysis. This was definitely not Finn Slade!

Madoc withdrew rapidly, putting real distance between himself and Finn with deep wariness in his eyes.

Finn raised a brow slightly as Madoc withdrew, his expression one of mild surprise.

He wasn’t surprised that he had survived; he was surprised at how fragile Madoc’s power felt compared to his own. In his memory, Madoc had been a figure of overwhelming, lethal authority. The mere proximity to the Anaelle had filled his old self with a constant, prickling sense of danger.

Madoc had been like a mountain. But now...?

Finn realized he was no longer looking at Madoc through the eyes of a lesser or a subordinate. He was looking at him with the perception of an entity that had stared down the Great Dao and survived. He was looking at him through the lens of thousands of years of accumulated life experiences and the density of soul masses that had been refined in the fires of metaphysical transit.

The mountain the old Finn had looked up at was still a mountain, but now he was looking at it from a much higher vantage point.

Of course, Finn knew he was not the same person who had left this Sanctum. In fact, the gap between that person and who he was now was not marginal.

The soul masses he had integrated, the authority he had developed and refined, the full clarity of everything he had remembered in that chamber, and on top of all of that the accumulated experience of previous lives that were now fully accessible to him — all of it had compounded into something that the old Finn had not been and could not have been. The difference in how Madoc registered to his perception was a natural consequence of that.

But even accounting for all of that, the complete non-interaction of Madoc’s strike had given him pause. And when he examined why, his eyes moved over Madoc’s drenched, trembling frame again and the answer became clearer. The Anaelle’s spatial energy was leaking from him in erratic, undisciplined spurts rather than the controlled output of a being operating at capacity.

His fur was still matted and drenched, his chest still working harder than it should have been, the exhaustion of holding the tether open across a journey of that length was very visible.

He was not at his peak...

That accounts for more of it than my growth alone, Finn thought. The full version of this man would have been a different conversation...

As if Madoc could read Finn’s thoughts... or maybe it was simply his expression that have it away... the Anaelle snorted, a sharp, bitter sound that carried the weight of his exhaustion. A deep scowl colored his face, his lips pulling back to reveal sharp, predatory teeth. The weariness in his bones seemed to vanish, replaced by a surge of indignant pride.

"I wouldn’t look down on me if I were you," He spat, his voice regaining some of its resonance. "We’re just getting started, Leecher!"

Then suddenly, he disappeared.

This was nothing like the way he disappeared the first time, where Finn had sensed the spatial displacement and tracked the rough direction of it even if he couldn’t pinpoint the exact destination.

This time there was nothing. No ripple in the space around where he had been standing, no directional pull indicating transit, no faint signature of movement trailing away from the spot. Madoc had not just moved faster than Finn could track. He had removed himself from local reality entirely, threading deep enough into the fabric of space that he left no readable trace.

Finn waited. He stayed exactly where he was and let his awareness settle into the space around him naturally, reading the qualities of the space itself without searching for Madoc as a specific target.

A few beats of silence passed. Then, Finn’s gaze shifted. He looked toward a spot to his front and slightly to the left. He didn’t see Madoc yet, but he felt the sudden, violent pull of a localized vacuum.

"Equal fragment bearers my ass," Finn muttered under his breath.

The memory of Osmund claiming that the three bearers kept each other in check felt like a joke now.

Osmund had been a master of space, but his understanding was linear, focused on distance and displacement. Madoc was different. Madoc understood the true depth of space.

The Anaelle reappeared in a burst of violet light, but he didn’t attack with his hands. He stood with his arms outstretched, his claws dug into the air as if he were trying to pry open a stubborn door. Between his palms, space was collapsing.

It was a miniature singularity. Madoc was taking the fabric of reality and folding it inward from every direction simultaneously, compressing it into a point of infinite density. The gravity of the spell began to pull at the Sanctum. Stones that were bolted to the floor groaned and began to vibrate. Dust and loose debris were sucked toward the point between Madoc’s hands, disappearing into the black-hole-like void.

Recreating a singularity through sheer willpower and magical aptitude was an achievement of the highest order. It demanded a level of dexterity that few could dream of. To compress space so equally from all sides required a mind that could calculate the vectors of every cubic inch of the environment in real time.

Finn remained unmoved. The physical tug of the singularity didn’t affect him. His [Invalid] spell ensured that his body’s position was not a variable that gravity could affect. But as he watched the spell, he felt a change in the quality of his thoughts...

His perception was slowing down.

He noticed it because his awareness extended past the range of Madoc’s spell. There was a difference. Inside the range of Madoc’s spell, his thoughts felt like they were moving through resistance, each one arriving a fraction of a beat later than it should have. The interval between one idea and the next had stretched.

A curious smile colored Finn’s face slowly as he analyzed it.

Generating a time dilation around a singularity was skillful but it was also, in its standard form, a liability for the caster against a prepared target.

Time dilation slowed everything in the affected area equally, which meant the target gained reaction time relative to their surroundings. Everything around the target slowed with them, which meant attacks launched from outside the field would arrive slower relative to the target’s perception, giving the target more time to respond.

Used conventionally, a time dilation field around a singularity was more useful to the target than to the person generating it...

But Madoc had inverted it.

He had isolated the dilation effect and focused it entirely on Finn specifically, slowing Finn’s subjective processing speed while operating outside the effect himself at full pace.

And that wasn’t the end of it.

To anyone watching from the outside, Finn would simply appear to have slowed dramatically. But from Madoc’s perspective, Finn was a target whose thoughts were arriving late, the gap between his intent and his body’s execution growing wider with every passing second...

And that gap was precisely what Madoc was after.