Chapter 45 Fallen Witcher VS Superpowered Individual 8 (Third Update, Volume 1 Completed)
It was only then that I realized I had made a very serious mistake.
Zhuang Cheng said his flames were his spirit. My understanding of this is that his spirit, in its standby state, is just an ordinary spirit. Only when he activates his superpowers does his spirit act as fuel for the flames, or directly transform into the flames themselves.
But what if that's not the case?
Zhuang Cheng is a superhuman capable of freely transforming between himself and flames. If his spirit in its idle state isn't an ordinary spirit, but possesses the same burning flame attributes, or even more closely resembles a "flame mimicking the spirit"...
Wouldn't my actions then be as foolish as reaching into a working incinerator?
Reality even transcends metaphor; at that moment, I experienced a hallucination of witnessing the sun.
The moment I unleashed my power on Zhuang Cheng, I felt as if I had collided head-on with a blazing sun. Destruction, death, annihilation, vaporization... I witnessed such endings with uncanny realism.
At the same time, many questions that I couldn't understand in the past were suddenly answered in my mind. For example, why did Zhuang Cheng say that he had never encountered anything strange before?
He wasn't lying; he probably really hadn't encountered it before.
It's a common human principle that strange things attract each other, but this outdated principle cannot bind truly powerful beings. In fact, it can even backfire, causing other strange things to shun them.
Strange creatures that act on instinct will avoid them out of fear, while intelligent strange creatures will unconsciously avoid paying attention to them, and even strange creatures that appear purely as phenomena will pass by them due to unknown laws.
Now I understand why I couldn't sense any magical energy fluctuations from him. It wasn't that he had any special attributes, but rather that we weren't in the same dimension. Just as a two-dimensional being cannot perceive or interfere with a three-dimensional being, unless the object I was sensing was the flame that was a fragment of his spirit, or he deliberately lowered his level, I couldn't possibly sense any magical energy fluctuations from him.
Being in the mountains, one is unaware of their immense size. To me, he is an overwhelming presence, while to him, I am an insignificant one. He probably cannot even sense the fluctuations of my magical power, just as he was completely unaware of the soul attack I launched against him earlier.
This is clearly the domain of the Great Impermanence...
Wait... how come I haven't been burned to death yet?
I then came to my senses; the illusion had already ended. Zhuang Cheng was standing in front of me, seemingly waiting for my next move.
"What's wrong? Aren't you going to call me?" he asked. "If you don't come, I'm going to go over there."
As he spoke, he took a step toward me, and I couldn't help but step back, while hurriedly checking my mental state and supernatural abilities.
I immediately understood why I hadn't died yet. The activation of my powers had stopped on its own before I was burned to death by the illusory sun.
The illusionary sun could have burned me to death in an instant, but the power's activation and deactivation took less than a moment. Just as a mantis shrimp can generate temperatures exceeding the sun's surface for a brief moment without causing significant damage, a contact lasting less than a moment couldn't kill me. But that's not the problem; the problem is why the power stopped on its own.
It wasn't because Zhuang Cheng used magic to block my ability, nor was it because my ability had any protective mechanism. It was simply because the duration of my ability had ended.
The duration my ability traps a target in a dead-end illusion depends on how much of an emotional response the target experiences in that illusion, similar to what I did. And if the ability terminates itself immediately upon contact with the target… that means… that means…
Before my supernatural power could be shattered by his magic, it was overcome by his spirit...
"No, impossible, I don't admit it... I don't admit it!"
A surge of rage, from who-knows-where, made me roar out inappropriately.
"What are you denying?" he asked, looking puzzled.
The contact with my superpower was too brief; he seemed completely unaware that my superpower had been activated.
I ignored his reaction and instead, with all my might—even beyond my own limits—manipulated all the shadows around me that I could control.
Countless shadows surged wildly from the gaps and corners, transforming into sharp blades that shot towards Zhuang from all directions with the force of a volley of arrows. He manipulated the surrounding sea of fire to create waves, sweeping away all the shadow arrows from all directions. But this was merely a feint; at this moment, I had even taken control of the shadows on the floors below.
The moment he focused his attention on the attack he could see, the floor beneath his feet was shattered by a surge of shadows that engulfed him.
The shadow vanished instantly, and Zhuang Cheng, who had been in the middle, disappeared without a trace; he simply vanished into thin air.
It wasn't that he dodged my attack; rather, I simply teleported him into the shadow world.
Banishing targets to the shadow world is of no benefit to me, so I have never thought of using this tactic against others before, and I never even thought of using it at first.
And now, all I want is for Zhuang Cheng to die!
Logically speaking, even he shouldn't be able to think and survive in a world without the concepts of time and space, let alone return!
However, what happened next completely shattered my hopes.
Zhuang Cheng reappeared. With a flash of fire in the sky, a humanoid figure composed entirely of flames appeared in the sky above, where only countless layers of reinforced concrete were stacked and crisscrossed.
I couldn't understand how he could return, so I quickly gathered all the surrounding shadows and transformed them into a giant serpent to attack him. But I knew very well that this seemingly powerful attack was nothing but a facade, and would be utterly useless against him.
He simply raised his right hand and made a downward chopping gesture towards the shadowy serpent.
Not understanding what had happened, I only saw a dazzling flash of light before my eyes, and then I was engulfed by the explosion. My body was blown away into the distance by the shockwave, like a leaf caught in a storm.
I was blasted by the explosion and thrown outside the unfinished building, even flying higher in the air than the unfinished building itself.
In the upside-down view, a magnificent waterfall of fire rose up against the current, splitting the entire unfinished building vertically in two!
The shadow serpents and their kind had vanished completely, and deafening explosions continued to be heard.
How can one possibly contend with such an absurd opponent? If I immediately disappear into the shadows after landing... I'll definitely be caught...
No, even if they manage to escape...
I also……
Scenes from my past life kept flashing through my mind.
As a child, he yearned for a magical and bizarre world; as a young adult, he knelt in despair in a dead end; in middle age, he abandoned his conscience and committed murder in pursuit of power…
The creator of the monster's past words are also interspersed throughout:
—When you feel utterly hopeless and resigned, convinced that you are powerless to change anything…
—The seed of your heart will leave you.
The last thing that stuck in my mind was Zhuang Cheng's expression, completely unaware that I had activated my superpower.
I closed my eyes, feeling utterly empty.
The seed of the heart, which I had nurtured until now, vanished from my body like a dream bubble.
The power that permeated my entire body lost its center and began to run rampant out of control, tearing my body to pieces from the inside out...
(End of this chapter)
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