Chapter 130 - Aspect of Time from the Celestial Eyes

  Phill:

  “In that case, the battle is over, and I win. You mark that in the record,” the boy said, turning his back as if it were nothing. The judge and I exged looks, pletely dumbfounded.

  This kid... he’s crazy.

  “Mark that he forfeited,” I suggested to the judge, trying to keep my cool. But before the judge could note anything, the boy, still with his back turned, snapped his fingers.

  KABOOM!

  A deafening bst shook the ground, the air around us seemed to vibrate, and in an instant, everythi white. The roar that had filled my ears suddenly ceased, transf into something distorted, as if it were being sucked into another pce. I was forced to shield my eyes from the intense brighthat had appeared out of nowhere.

  When I finally dared to open my eyes, the sight before me left me speechless.

  “A lightning bolt...?” I muttered, fused and terrified. Giant bolts of lightning surrouhe etlefield, yet they were pletely frozen, as if time had stopped around them. Each bluish spark, every flicker of electricity, floated in mid-air, as if time itself had bee by an inprehensible force.

  What shocked me even more was how the world around me seemed to have transformed. The enviro, the people—everything had taken on an eerie blue hue, like a fog had settled over the area, immobilizing everything and everyoime had been suspended.

  “What’s happening?!” I shouted, trying to make sense of it, but my voice sounded weak, hopeless. I was trapped inside a prison of lightning.

  “SILENCE!” roared a voice, as powerful as thunder, reverberating through the air. The sound was so overwhelming that my body began trembling untrolbly. My legs almost buckled, and my sword slipped from my fingers, hitting the ground with a muffled thud.

  I slowly turned my head, and terrripped me when I realized the voice came from behind me. A cold, merciless voice, filled with an authority that crushed me like a mountain.

  What...? I tried to speak, but my body refused to respond. Something was holding me in pce, as if the very air around me was suffog me.

  “You were the fool who dared and my mother at that ba hosted by the king,” the voice said, now id relentless, slig through the silence. A chill ran down my spine as I realized I was no longer in trol.

  “Boy! Was it you who did this? What’s happening? eople like this?” My voice was desperate, trying to grasp the situation as my gaze flicked between the frozen figures around us, all bathed in the same blue glow, like ghosts from another reality.

  “Stop breathing, you're b me!” the voice thundered again, and in an instant, an invisible force tore through my body. My lungs stopped funing, and I felt my entire being lock up. It was as if my soul had been ripped from me, leaving oiness behind. Every fiber of my being screamed in panic, but nothing—absolutely nothing—responded.

  I was at his mercy.

  That voice! The same one from that day! It’s the boy!

  I sehe boy approag, passing beside me with uling speed. In the blink of an eye, he stht in front of me, his blue eyes glowing in the midst of the frozen lightning around us. Fear overwhelmed me like never before, a suffog sensation, as if the air itself had been drained from my lungs.

  “B-boy?” I stammered, trying to make sense of what was happening. He stared at me in an eerie silence, unhurried. His eyes didn’t blink, and the longer I looked at him, the more my body wao shrink away, to hide from that crushing presence.

  He slowly raised a finger, and as he did, I felt an invisible force crushing me from all sides. My body, beyond my trol, respoo his will as if I were a mere puppet. His finger moved, and with it, my panic grew. When he finally poio the ground, he spoke, his voice calm but filled with crushing authority.

  “Kneel.”

  Those words, simple yet potent, pierced my soul like a bde.

  “What?” I mao mutter, my body trembling. But without resistance, my knees buckled, and I colpsed, kneeling helplessly, at the mercy of this boy who anded a storm frozen in time.

  He walked slowly toward me, each step weighing like a ton on my body. My mind screamed, begged me to run, but I aralyzed. His presence was suffog, an invisible force that crushed my will. He raised his sword, an odd and threatening bde, and touched just the tip of it to my forehead.

  “Ahhhhhh!” A scream of agony escaped me as the tip of the bde seemed to pierce my very soul. The pain wasn’t physical, but transded anything I had ever felt before. Strangely, the sword hadn’t even moved—just its mere touch brought on unbearable torment.

  “Silence, mortal,” his voice thundered, and instantly, my mouth snapped shut on its own. I no longer had trol over my own body. The searing pain in my forehead was unbearable, as though acid were burning through my skin and b into my skull, but terror kept me frozen in pce.

  Inside, I was screaming.

  HELP! My thoughts echoed in my mind, but no one could hear me. No o him—this boy who shouldn’t have this power, and who now dominated me effortlessly.

  “Never agaio my mother, or anyone I know, like that,” he said, his voice low and trolled, but brimming with an unspeakable menace. “In another life, I would have cut off your head and that of your king, but I’m feeling more merciful this time.”

  With that, he removed the tip of the bde from my forehead, and the pain vanished instantly, but the terror—this overwhelming fear of being in his presence—remained as strong as ever.

  I tried to move, to speak, but my body was pletely out of my trol, paralyzed by fear. My heart pounded untrolbly, and every attempt to act was smothered by an overwhelming sense of dread.

  I’m terrified… utterly terrified...

  His presence became even more oppressive as he approached. Slowly, without hurry, he brought his face close to mine, and whatever ce I had left evaporated. I was suffog, uo breathe, as if the very air had been sucked from the enviro.

  “Are you afraid, mortal?” he asked, his icy gaze b into me. Soured down my face, my heart pounding, each beat heavy and strained. I tried to look away, but the weight of his judgment was unbearable. He grabbed my hair, f my head up, making me meet his gaze—those pierg eyes that seemed to look straight into my soul.

  HELP! HELP!, I screamed internally, overwhelmed by a primal fear, a feeling of absolute insignifi his presence.

  “You only survived that day because I chose to live a normal life. Remember that,” he said, his voice steady and trolled, every word ced with threat. “If you y path again, you won’t leave alive. I am a force of nature far beyond your prehension. Do not dare challenge a storm, for you will not survive its fury.”

  He started to walk away, but before leaving pletely, he gnced back at me o time.

  “Breathe,” he said, casually.

  “Ah!” I gasped, finally releasing the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. Desperation took over, and I sucked in air, gulping it down, nearly choking in the process.

  What is this boy?

  I still couldn’t speak, couldn’t uand how he had such absolute trol over me.

  "If you tell anyone about this versation... I don't o expin what will happen to you, do I?" he said, his tohly serious.

  "Y-yes," I replied automatically, the words slipping out before I could even process them.

  He turned and began to walk away, his steps slow, but with eae, my urge to dig a hole and vanish grew strohe weight of his presence, even with his back turned, was still overwhelming. I couldn't look at him for long; my head instinctively lowered, as if it was wrong—unworthy—to look at someone like him.

  All I could see were his legs a moving further away. The boy stopped for a moment and, still with his bae, spoke with chilling ess:

  "I think this is where I left off before."

  The sound around me, which had been slow and distorted, began to accelerate. Time was returning to normal, but the dread in my chest only intensified.

  "Rest well," he said, his words eg in my mind.

  Rest? What does he mean by that?

  'KABOOM!' The thunderous souurned, and in an instant, the world around me regais colors.

  Before I could prehend what was happening, I was hit by a crushing force from above. My body was violently thrown. I felt the brutal impact as my back smmed into a wall. All my strength drained from me instantly, and my eyes began to close, slowly succumbing to darkness.

  No one here realizes… but they are in the presence of a monster.

  Those were my st thoughts as my mind faded away, swallowed by unsciousness.

  Viktor Saul:

  I was watg the boy who seemed to fasate everyone, especially because he possessed the rare and powerful thunder element. Even the beautiful girl, who had caught my attention earlier, couldn't take her eyes off him. There was something strange in the air, a sensation that made my skin tih anticipation.

  "In that case, the battle is over, and I win. You mark that in the record," the boy said, walking away from his oppo as if it were nothing.

  Won where? I thought, incredulous. This farmer thinks too highly of himself.

  "Mark that he forfeited," the evaluatgested to the judge. But before anyone could respond, a deafening bst ripped through the air, followed by a blinding white fsh.

  'KABOOM!'

  The sound was so violent that my ears rang, and the entire arena was engulfed by lightning crashing down in every dire. Debris flew through the air, chairs in the arena lifted and fell as if the earth itself had been torn apart. I shut my eyes, trying to protect my vision from the intense brightness of the thunderbolts ripping through the space around me.

  What the hell was that!?

  When I finally mao open my eyes, I was left speechless by the se in front of me. Everything around was in chaos.

  "You've messed up..." the beautiful girl murmured, still watg the boy.

  "That wasn't my iion. I'm screwed…" he replied, his expression mildly guilty.

  What the hell happened?

  The arena was unreizable. The once-solid ground was now cracked aroyed, with shattered pieces scattered everywhere. The stone protes had colpsed, and massive boulders y all across the bat area. People who had beehe battle had been thrown to the ground and were now struggling to get up, clearly shaken by the impact of the explosion.

  But what shocked me the most was the state of the magical barriers.

  No fug way...

  The protective barriers, meant to shield the audience, were all shattered—not just the one in the arena where he fought. Every arena, every ongoing fight around us had been affected. The magical barriers of all the arenas were destroyed as if they were made of gss.

  That boy... he broke them all.

  The ter of the arena, where the battle had taken pce, was scorched, with bck marks scattered across the ground like scars from the destru that had just occurred. In the midst of the chaos, one of the guards y unscious, motionless on the shattered stones.

  "Is he dead?!" an elf asked, visibly shaken, as he g the boy with a mix of fear and surprise.

  "Don’t worry... even if I overdid it a little, it was just the air pressure that hit him. He’ll be fine and will wake up soon," the boy replied, trying to calm the elf, though the casual tone in his voily made the situation more uling.

  I watched in disbelief, still trying to process what had just happened.

  How did he do that? I didn’t see any spell, no preparation... but the impact... that clearly came from the sky!

  My mind raced back over the battle, repying every detail. The only pusible expnation was that he’d prepared for this from the very beginning, when he first uhe lightning into the sky.

  I looked up, and the shock hit me instantly. Iherwise clear blue sky, between peaceful white clouds, there was a single dark cloud directly above the arena.

  This is impossible... Did he trol the lightning and keep it there, in the cloud, until the right moment? How could someone even do that? The energy from his element should have dissipated—how did he mao store it inside a cloud?

  As I stared at the cloud, rain began to fall softly, as if the sky itself was reag to the boy’s presence.

  "What is that kid?" someone murmured beside me.

  "I don't know, but that was terrifying," another voiswered.

  Heat surged through my body.

  Show-off! He might have a rare element, but I have two elements! If I had known he was going to show off like this, I would've used my own powerful spells!

  My hands ched into fists as frustration boiled inside me.

  "I’m going to challehat idiot to a duel," I muttered, notig the pretty girl still staring at him.

  Before I could act, soldiers began st into the arena, armed and ready to take trol.

  "What happened here?" shouted the High Elf woman in charge of the event, her eyes sing the destru around her. Guards spread out across the arena, iing every detail of the chaotic se.

  "Was this some kind of attack?" one of the guards asked, ed.

  "The human royal priook her test earlier and already left," an elf informed, trying t some order to the fusion.

  The soldiers looked at the trail of destru and then at the dark cloud h above us, still causing a light drizzle.

  “Who did this?” the High Elf demanded, her voice firm.

  Almost instantly, all the students around us pointed in the same dire—at the boy, who was now unsuccessfully trying to blend into the crowd.

  The High Elf looked at him for a few moments, then sighed deeply, rubbing her fad massagiemples.

  "What did we say about not drawing attention?" she asked.

  "Sorry..." the boy replied, shrugging sheepishly.