True Magician

Chapter 90

Unknown location.

The spirit's reaction to the snake's destruction was almost instantaneous. Its massive body unfolded towards me, and its wings joined together into one unified web. Every mouth of every snake they formed opened, and a magic circle appeared in front of them. A second later, a whole storm of black and scarlet rays of light flew out at me, completely obscuring both the sky and the size of the spirit body.

I thrust my arm forward, creating a shield and pumping mana into it.

In the next second, a bright flash of intertwining gold, scarlet, and black dazzled my eyes, creating the semblance of a second sun. The massive ball of destructive energy instantly grew to an even larger size, overshadowing everything in sight.

A deafening rumble rapidly spread around the area as the attack reached the shield. Any vegetation and wildlife nearby flew off hundreds of meters, and mountains and earth sagged from the collision of forces. And the heavens cleared under the weight of the power of the blast.

When everything subsided, I frowned, looking at the shield.

The amount of mana I'd poured into it was more than enough to support a dozen Servants using their Noble Phantasms at once. But after blocking just one spirit attack, cracks appeared on the shield. They stretched across its entire area, and if the attack had been a couple percent stronger, it wouldn't have been able to withstand it.

And seeing the shield cracking at the seams, which I dispelled a moment later, the frown on my face was replaced by a smile. An anticipatory and intrigued smile.

I could physically feel the adrenaline rushing through my veins and my heart quickened its pace. My eyes felt as if they had opened from a long sleep, and an excited shiver ran through my body.

This feeling... It was so... captivating... even divine...

Come to think of it, this was the first time I felt challenged. The current situation was fundamentally different from anything that had happened before... When I am forced to use my powers regardless of my whims and desires... When I have no confidence in my invincibility, wondering what the situation will turn into... It's mesmerizing...

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that I was not the only one in a kind of stupor.

Apart from the gods, who had obviously stopped all their actions and were looking at me and the spirit, the spirit itself was watching me with all its three eyes, analyzing what had happened. I could clearly feel his shock and incomprehension at how I had managed to do what he thought was impossible.

- "You... What kind of power do you possess, otherworldly? A mortal cannot harness even the smallest fraction of it." His deep and ancient voice, soaked with incomprehension and genuine surprise, echoed through the neighborhood.

- "Oh? You forgot to add 'usually'," I grinned and really generously poured mana into my magic chains, "And also, it's not my turn, right?"

Four vast magical circles formed next to me, sealed upwards. A second later, colossal whirlwinds of fire erupted from them, reaching all the way to the sky and spreading heat and light for kilometers around. Rain clouds formed in the atmosphere under the influence of the sudden temperature difference, closing the sky again and causing a torrential downpour.

Droplets of water in the vicinity of the tornadoes instantly vaporized, then just as instantly cooled, reaching the upper layers of the troposphere. And as long as there are tornadoes of flame, the rain in this area will not stop. Well, that's going to happen very soon.

As the raindrops bounced like bullets off my personal enclosed field, each tornado slowly shrank, gathering all the fire into a single point. A few moments later, four swords composed of pure flames were hovering around me. All the power of destruction without a single joule of energy lost was now concentrated into relatively small vessels. And each of these sword-shaped vessels had the power of an entire atomic bomb that was dropped on Japan in the twentieth century.