Night would have liked to Blink away, but they were in the middle of the encirclement created by Supernovas, and it fully covered the dimensional spell’s area of effect and then some.
“You are insane.” She said while bracing herself for the impact. She pumped as much mana as she could inside the Black Rose armor and engulfed her body with a thick layer of darkness.
“Indeed!” Manohar replied as the world around them turned into the rough equivalent of the surface of the sun.
Meanwhile, on the outside, Balkor was amazed by both Manohar’s control over his spell and his foolishness. Not a single speck of light or fire escaped the encirclement, leaving the god of death able to fully focus on his own spell.
Just like light and darkness were the two sides of the same coin, Creation Magic had its own counterpart in Chaos Magic. Salaark had forbidden its practice because it was too dangerous, but Balkor had no option left.
He cursed his hubris for showing so many skills to Baba Yaga’s Horseman. Now that she knew what he was capable of, the Black Night would never leave him alone until she got what she wanted.
‘If I back down now, I’ll live in fear whenever Salaark is away for her personal business. I need to show Night that by messing with me she has more to lose than to gain.’ He thought.
Contrary to what many believed, the greatest danger of conjuring Chaos magic didn’t lie in losing control of its darkness component. When that happened, the caster would simply and quickly die.
The use of Chaos magic required to completely separate light from darkness, but while darkness would be shoot at the enemy light would remain. Without its other half, the light element would stimulate the metabolism of its caster to the extreme, turning each second into a year.
The few mages who practiced Chaos magic would either be eaten by the darkness, consumed by the light or both. Only Abominations could safely use it because their bodies could absorb the light element without a limit.
Balkor was just a fake Awakened and his life force would have already been extinguished if not for Salaark’s treatments, he couldn’t afford to make a single mistake.
While Manohar’s spell ravaged the underground complex, causing the room to tremble and dust to fall from the ceiling, Balkor never lost his focus. He split darkness and light in two separate spheres, holding them respectively on his right and left hand.
When the blinding light of Supernovas faded, Balkor unleashed his tier three Chaos spell, Chaos Eater, the moment he recognized Night amid the steam. He was using normal vision with his right eye and Life Vision with his left.
One had been blinded by the mana while the other by the light so he could trust neither. Life Vision spotted Night’s darkness magic, but it was eyesight that allowed Balkor to distinguish the friend from the foe.
Manohar stood too close to Night for Life Vision spotting him. His clothes were tattered and he was bleeding from his eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth due to the aftereffects of his own spell.
‘How the heck is he still alive?’ Balkor was flabbergasted. A mage couldn’t be hurt by their own mana, but the shockwaves were supposed to have ripped Manohar apart and the steaming air to be so hot that it would burn his lungs.
The god of healing was kneeling on the ground with his eyes veiled, but Balkor could see his chest moving rhythmically.
To make matters even more unbelievable, Night was faring much worse than the Never Magus. Her black armor had turned white-hot from the heat and emitted the characteristic smell of barbecue.
Small cracks had appeared on the Black Rose’s armbands that Night had used to shield her upper body. For a Horseman, the head was just an accessory, only the living crystal in their chest mattered.
“How the heck are you still alive?” Night roared, unleashing her attack simultaneously with Balkor’s.
She had seen an odd shroud of light wrap Manohar’s body, but it was so thin that she assumed it was just a desperate last-ditch effort. Even though Manohar had sustained less than one-tenth of the Supernovas’ full power, he was supposed to have died ten times already.
Thorn lunged at Manohar’s heart as fast as a bullet, but Chaos magic was faster. Chaos Eater struck her right side, destroying the upper part of the Black Rose along with Night’s right arm and part of her chest.
She lost her grip on the Thorn, but, even while withstanding such a deadly attack, the expertise Night had gained through the centuries allowed her attack to reach its target.
Manohar conjured all the constructs he had left, but they only managed to slightly deviate the attack.
Instead of piercing his heart, Thorn struck his left shoulder, blowing it up as it if was a needle pricking a water balloon. Blood, flesh, and bones splattered everywhere, leaving Manohar with a wound almost as bad as Night’s.
The problem was that she was an immortal, whereas he was only human.
The Mad Professor fell on his side, screaming in pain while he tried to stop the bleeding before it was too late.
“At least now we’re even, meat sack!” Night beckoned and Thorn returned to her left hand. “You’ve failed, my love. I can wait for another individual as talented as you to be born, it is you who is cornered and alone. Last chance.”
Her arm was already regenerating and her armor mending. Without a distraction, the second part of Chaos Eater would never connect.
“Don’t count your corpses before they croak, old hag! Do it now!” Manohar used his right arm to cling with the full weight of his body on her neck and unleashed a few heat rays through her exposed flesh.
He seemed to have overcome the agony and kept casting spells even with only one hand.
Balkor felt new respect and amazement for Manohar’s stubbornness that edged on insanity and unleashed Chaos Eater again. The white pulse of Chaos Magic was as fast as its dark counterpart, but its effects couldn’t differ more.
Chaos Eater absorbed all the darkness element from its victims’ bodies to restore the natural balance, causing them to crumble and die. An undead would become stronger with age because the necromantic energies inhabiting their bodies would become more stable as they adapted to their host.
A powerful undead was nothing but a powerful mass of darkness magic with a soul and a need to feed upon light energy to prolong their existence. The undead fed only to stabilize their blood core, but it was the amount of darkness element it stored that determined how much mana they possessed.
Chaos Eater robbed Night’s host of its darkness, turning her into a corpse filled with life force that had nowhere to go. The Black Rose cracked everywhere as the lack of balance made the enchantments that comprised it crumble.
The armor shattered and Night’s host rot at a speed visible at the naked eye thanks to the light magic boosting the growth rate of bacteria and fungi.
As for Manohar, by the time the white flash disappeared, his body was already that of a person way over 100 years old. His limbs were as thin as twigs, his skin so flabby that it made him unrecognizable, his white hair and beard long enough to touch the ground.
Only the mad spark in his eyes was unchanged.
