The scarred Gnome stared at his own darkness hand, still protruding from Grey’s chest, trying to understand why an attack that had clearly passed through the young man’s body had done nothing at all.
’An afterimage?’
He discarded the thought almost at once. He could still sense Grey’s presence clearly. The hand had gone straight through him, yet it had left no wound, no blood, no reaction of any kind. The contradiction left him momentarily stunned.
Grey took a step forward. The darkness hand remained embedded in his torso as if it belonged there. The earth wall he had raised earlier crumbled into dust as he closed the distance.
Grey’s approaching figure frightened the scarred. He dissolved the darkness hand at once and turned to fly in the direction of the sealed Ninth-stage, hoping the two of them might still stand a chance against this monster.
Grey’s figure disappeared from where he stood, appearing in front of the Gnome. Blue flames erupted from his palm and surged forward in a tight, concentrated wave that distorted the air with heat.
The scarred Gnome threw up a wall of darkness to intercept it. Before the wall could fully form, a sudden, violent gust of wind slammed into him from the side, throwing his balance completely off. The flames struck the half-formed defense, and its impact hurled him backward through the air. He crashed through the upper floor of one of the ruined buildings below, ancient stones exploding outward in a cloud of dust and debris that billowed across the cavern floor.
Grey did not stop his attacks here. Two inscriptions flared to life behind his shoulders, glowing with cold blue and sharp white light. One released a continuous rain of razor-sharp ice shards that hammered the rubble without pause. The other sent successive waves of wind blades screaming downward, cutting through stone and dust alike. Both attacks pounded the pile of debris for several seconds, kicking up more dust and sending fragments of the ancient building flying in every direction.
The sealed Ninth-stage watched the bombardment with widening eyes, his sealed cultivation leaving him unable to do anything but stare. He had known Grey was dangerous. Every Gnome did. But most of them had believed the real danger came almost entirely from that single mental attack, his ability to sever their link with their puppets and leave them helpless for a critical moment. They had treated the rest of the rumors about Grey’s talent as exaggerations or others trying to conceal their weaknesses. Standing here now, watching a fellow Ninth-stage being driven into the ground without that mental attack even being used, he understood how badly they had underestimated the human. The gap was far wider than any of them had been willing to admit.
The scarred Gnome burst out of the rubble a few seconds later, coughing dust. His clothes were scorched and torn in several places. Tiny arcs of residual lightning still crawled across his arms and shoulders before darkness essence flared around his body and snuffed them out. He was not seriously injured, but his expression had changed completely. The earlier confidence was gone, replaced by raw recognition of the difference in strength.
He glanced once at the other Gnomes still fighting below, then turned and shot straight toward the open sky without another word in a trail of dark light.
Grey was not surprised. Gnomes at this level almost always tried to flee the moment a fight with him turned against them. They were not used to opponents who could cut their connection to their puppets and still overpower them in direct combat as well. Every other enemy they had fought never possessed this ability. Grey did, and the scarred Gnome had just felt the full weight of that combination.
The sealed Ninth-stage Gnome felt despair settle coldly in his chest as he watched his companion become a streak of dark light racing upward, abandoning them without hesitation. He had hoped the scarred Gnome would at least hold Grey long enough for the seal on his own cultivation to be broken. Instead, Grey had beaten him without needing the mental attack at all. The sunlight pouring through the broken ceiling felt suddenly harsher, exposing every ruined building and every desperate figure still fighting below.
"There’s no escape."
Grey’s voice sounded directly beside the fleeing scarred Gnome.
The scarred Gnome lashed out instantly, forming dozens of darkness spikes that shot toward Grey from every angle, sharp and fast. A soft golden halo expanded around Grey’s body, the light calm and steady. The spikes struck the halo and shattered harmlessly into black mist that scattered on the wind.
Grey reached out with one hand, palm wide open.
The scarred Gnome slammed a thick wall of darkness between them and tried to change direction mid-flight, twisting hard to the left. Grey’s figure simply vanished. When he reappeared, he was in the exact same posture, arm still extended, standing directly in the new path the Gnome had chosen. The scarred Gnome, still turning, flew straight into his grasp.
"I told you," Grey said, voice calm and almost quiet against the wind. "There’s no escape."
Before the Gnome could gather enough essence for another attack, blue light flared under Grey’s palm. Complex inscriptions, dense and precise, sank into the scarred Gnome’s body like water into dry ground. A sharp, clear cracking sound echoed across the open cavern, cutting through the noise of the ongoing fights below.
The heavy aura of a Ninth-stage Sovereign collapsed in an instant, leaving behind only the thin, unstable presence of an Elementalist. The scarred Gnome’s eyes went wide with pure disbelief as the power he had relied on for so long simply vanished from his reach. He couldn’t believe how this was possible.
Capturing a peer who was actively trying to flee had always been harder than simply killing one. Grey had done it with the same quiet ease as before, under the bright sunlight that now fully illuminated the ruined underground city.
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