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In the dark underground cavern, brilliant magic clashed violently against twisted, dark-purple energy.
The dazzling flashes lit up the battle between Ian and the indescribable monster, turning it into a bizarre and spectacular sight.
Sadly, no matter how many words you used to describe it, there wasn't a single witness to see it. Deep within the cavern's core, only Ian and the monster knew what was happening; everyone on the surface was far too far away to approach, let alone find out.
"Take this, Divine Might! Nothing can withstand it!"
Before crossing over, Ian must have been a huge MOBA fan. He still had the spare breath to shout out his attack names, which meant he wasn't in any real danger yet.
Ian's figure flickered like a ghost, weaving through countless whipping tentacles, sprays of acid, and soul-rending shrieks. His wand moved so fast that it left behind afterimages.
"Ice Age!" Ian slammed his wand against the ground.
You could tell at a glance he'd picked that move up from Finite Incantatem. An overwhelming wave of freezing cold erupted from him, instantly turning everything within a hundred meters into an absolute-zero frozen domain.
Countless tentacles and part of the monster's main body were trapped inside thick, magically reinforced black ice. Their movements stopped completely, and even the monster's maddened screams seemed frozen in place.
The monster appeared to be restrained, for the moment. But just as Ian finished casting Ice Age and paused to think about his next move, something changed.
Crack...BOOM!
It wasn't the sound of the ice breaking. Instead, the dark-purple core inside the frozen monster suddenly blazed brighter than ever before, like the final flash of a collapsing supernova.
The next instant, an indescribable wave of soul energy, filled with endless hatred and madness, exploded outward in every direction like an invisible tsunami.
It didn't target the body; it struck the soul directly, ignoring all physical barriers.
"What the hell?!"
Ian's mind buzzed violently. It felt as if an invisible sledgehammer had smashed straight into the core of his soul.
His thoughts went blank, his ears filled with the shrieks of countless resentful souls, and the world around him twisted. He nearly dropped his wand. Even his powerful mental defenses groaned under the pressure as tiny cracks spread across them.
"A soul shockwave? And it hits an entire area?"
Ian's heart sank. Even cornered, this monster could unleash such a terrifying soul attack. So much for thinking it only had physical attacks.
He had no choice. Biting the tip of his tongue, he used the sharp pain to force his scattered consciousness back together. At the same time, he frantically maintained Occlumency while instinctively sweeping his wand through the air.
"Psychic Barrier - Absolute Protection!"
A solid barrier, shining like a seven-colored crystal and covered in countless protective runes, instantly formed in front of him. It barely held back the remaining shockwave. The barrier shook violently, letting out harsh cracking sounds, but in the end, it stopped the fatal attack.
Ian tasted blood as it rose into his throat, and a thin stream trickled from the corner of his mouth. His soul had taken serious damage.
The silence lasted less than three seconds.
Inside the frozen monster, the dark-purple glow pulsed wildly. Cracks echoed nonstop as the enchanted black ice was forced apart from within. Countless smaller, vein-like tendrils burst through the ice, greedily absorbing the surrounding corrupted energy. The frozen prison rapidly collapsed.
Ian wasn't surprised. By now, he'd learned enough about the creature to know this wouldn't finish it. He was simply testing different methods, looking for any weakness it might have.
Just like in Pokémon, where every creature has at least one type it's weak against, Ian was trying to figure out whether this monster had some similar fatal weakness hidden in its makeup.
"Join... us... forever... become... one..."
The monster continued its endless whisper. Ever since it had lost its original divine will and become this horrifying abomination, this seemed to be the only thing it could still say.
Across the monster's mountain-like body, the tentacles that had been frozen and shattered didn't regenerate.
Instead, they melted and fused together like scrap metal thrown into a blast furnace, gathering in front of its main body to form an enormous dark-purple energy shield. Its surface was covered with reliefs of twisted, agonized human faces.
The instant the shield took shape, it slammed toward Ian. This wasn't another tentacle strike; it was a savage, mountain-crushing charge.
That charge wasn't just backed by overwhelming force, it also distorted the space around it, crushing everything nearby. Ian suddenly felt as though he were trapped in deep mud, every movement becoming painfully sluggish.
"Not good! Gravity control... and spatial compression!"
Ian's pupils shrank. He jabbed his wand toward the ground beneath him, instantly reversing the gravity acting on himself. His body shot upward like a rocket, barely avoiding the giant shield as it thundered past beneath his feet. The violent gust it created nearly sent him flying.
The shield slammed into the chaotic barrier at the far end of the cavern with a deafening boom, shaking the entire space. Before Ian could steady himself, every anguished face carved into the shield suddenly opened its mouth.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Countless dark-purple beams, each as thin as a strand of hair but as fast as lightning, burst out like a torrential downpour, sealing off every possible escape route. The beams weren't just incredibly piercing; they also carried the disturbing ability to drain energy and break down magic.
"Protego - Thousand Mirror Reflection!"
Twisting his body in midair, Ian swept his wand through countless arcs. A massive magical shield made of countless tiny mirrors instantly spread out before him.
The rain of beams struck the mirrored barrier. Most were skillfully deflected and reflected away into the surrounding darkness, disappearing with dull popping sounds.
But some still slipped through, striking Ian's protective magic and hissing as they ate away at it. He could feel his magical power being rapidly drained, and the glow of his shield quickly dimmed.
"I can't block this head-on."
Ian made his decision immediately. He used a short-range Apparition, his body twisting out of sight before reappearing over a hundred meters away. The place where he'd been standing a second ago was completely erased by the dense barrage, leaving faint ripples even in the surrounding space.
"Join... us... forever... become... one..."
Seeing its ranged attack fail, the monster let out an irritated roar. The enormous energy shield suddenly broke apart, transforming back into countless tentacles. But instead of attacking Ian directly, the tentacles plunged into the dark ground below, a surface that looked as though it had been formed from solidified darkness itself.
Rumble...!
The entire ground began to churn like a boiling ocean. Countless dark creations formed from corrupted energy surged upward, twisted claws, snarling beast heads, writhing vines, and every kind of nightmare imaginable. They flooded toward Ian from every direction.
None of them possessed true life. They were temporary constructs shaped entirely from malice and corrupted energy, and there seemed to be no end to their numbers.
Faced with the overwhelming swarm, Ian's expression remained cold. He raised his wand above his head and spun it rapidly. At that moment, he looked as if Dumbledore himself had possessed him; even the motion of his wand carried Dumbledore's unmistakable style as it stirred the air.
"Inferno Storm - Expanding Ring!"
A sea of magical flames erupted from Ian, spreading outward like an exploding star. The blazing heat ignited and vaporized every dark creation that rushed toward him, clearing a huge empty area around him. Fire and corrupted energy clashed violently, producing one explosion after another.
But the ground never stopped churning, and more dark creations poured out without end. Meanwhile, taking advantage of Ian being occupied with the endless horde, the monster's true body quietly slipped beneath the boiling black ground. It vanished.
"Running away?"
Of course not. Its very nature didn't seem capable of understanding fear, or the idea of retreating to fight another day. In fact, it was debatable whether the thing even had a brain, so this definitely wasn't an escape.
"It's planning to ambush me."
Ian's heart tensed. He expanded his senses to their limit, staying alert for an attack from below.
Sure enough, the dark ground beneath his feet suddenly exploded like a volcanic eruption. The monster's enormous body burst upward, opening the abyss-like mouth at the top of its mountain of flesh. An irresistible devouring force erupted from within it.
But it wasn't aimed at Ian's body; it targeted his soul itself.
Ian felt as though his consciousness, memories, magical core, even his very sense of self, were being torn free from his body and dragged toward that endless black maw. Compared to the earlier soul shockwave, this attack was even more direct and far more deadly.
Another critical moment. Though to be fair, today had already featured quite a few "critical moments," and this one was no exception.
"Soul Anchor - Reality Lock!"
Ian remained perfectly calm. Blending magic with his divine authority once again, he poured every last bit of his remaining magical power into his soul, using both forces to firmly anchor the "root" of his soul to reality itself, resisting the terrifying pull.
"So these attacks aren't magic at all... They're innate abilities of a supernatural creature."
Facing the soul-devouring force pouring from the monster's abyss-like mouth, Ian showed no panic. Instead, understanding flashed across his face. But this time, rather than stubbornly anchoring his soul and enduring the attack head-on like before, he gracefully swept his wand in a half-circle, as though stirring the surface of a quiet pond.
"Soul Vortex - Deflection Field!"
An exquisitely controlled burst of mental power flowed from the tip of his wand. Instead of forming a solid barrier, it became an invisible vortex spinning at incredible speed. It was the principle of using a small force to redirect a much greater one, anyone who had practiced Tai Chi would understand.
The terrifying soul-devouring force struck the vortex and, as if hitting a perfectly curved surface, was smoothly redirected. Nearly all of its power was guided harmlessly off to the side into empty space. Only the faintest ripple brushed against Ian's soul before his own unwavering will effortlessly smoothed it away.
"ROOOAR!!"
A muffled, startled roar echoed from the monster's enormous maw. It clearly hadn't expected its killing blow to be neutralized so casually.
Then again, that wasn't surprising. Forget its current mindless state, even if it still had its intelligence, as an alien lifeform that had descended upon the Western world, there was no way it would understand the principles behind Tai Chi.
Eastern philosophy ran deep. Only Ian, with a soul from the East, could weave those concepts into magic and create spells with such unpredictable versatility. It was the perfect example of learning from every school of thought.
Honestly, if this were Journey to the West, Ian would be the Patriarch Bodhi, the master who embodied the wisdom of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism all at once. That comparison alone explained why he stood so far above everyone else when it came to creating magic. His understanding had already reached the point where all paths led to the same truth.
"I'm not just good at defending."
"The best defense is offense."
Rather than retreating, Ian drifted several meters forward, riding the fading pull of the monster's attack like a falling willow leaf. His wand pointed downward at the massive crater the monster had left when it burst out of the ground.
"Earth Pulse - Stone Coffin Seal!"
He wasn't targeting the monster itself. Instead, he drew upon the faint but genuine earth element still buried deep beneath this corrupted land. After all, this was the planet's core; no matter how badly it had been corrupted, traces of the earth element still remained.
Rumble... Rumble...
Why was it always described with that same word? Because nothing else fit better.
In an instant, the corrupted rock surrounding the crater came alive, surging inward from every direction. With a deafening roar, it compressed into a gigantic, rough-hewn stone coffin covered in strange patterns, trapping the monster's lower body beneath the ground.
"ROAR!!"
The monster bellowed in fury. Its upper body struggled wildly, trying to shatter the stone coffin. The massive prison shook violently beneath its terrifying strength as cracks rapidly spread across its surface.
But that brief moment of restraint, and the distraction it created, were exactly what Ian wanted.
His figure blurred. The next moment, he appeared above and to the monster's side. Holding his wand level, he chanted ancient, obscure words. The light gathering at its tip wasn't the glow of destruction; instead, it shone with a cool, tranquil radiance, like gentle moonlight.
"Moon of Serenity - Purification of Madness!"
This was another experiment. At this point, every possible method was worth trying.
The cool moonlight poured over the monster's writhing, screaming body like flowing silver. It wasn't meant to attack or suppress; instead, it carried the concepts of comfort, calm, and restoration.
Beneath its gentle glow, the monster's frenzied tentacles noticeably slowed for a brief moment. The savagery burning within its countless crimson eyes seemed to fade ever so slightly, and even the endless whisper…
"Join us..."
...became weaker and briefly disordered.
The spell wasn't harming the monster directly. Instead, it seemed to reach something buried beneath its madness... the final echo of the god it had once been, hidden beneath countless layers of corruption. Or perhaps, you could call it an instinct written into its very being.
Whatever the case, Ian's spell threw the monster's internal power into temporary disarray.
However, its adaptive ability was activated once more. Very quickly, the monster returned to normal, having clearly evolved a new trait that adapted to this technique. The speed of that evolution was so absurd that even Darwin would probably ask to be put back in his coffin.
Even so, the monster was obviously extremely uncomfortable with this kind of "gentle" attack. It even seemed to fear it on an instinctive level, actually taking several steps backward.
Then, its upper body suddenly trembled. Every pore across its body erupted with a thick, dark-purple poisonous mist.
The fog wasn't merely toxic; it also carried intense mental corruption and interference that disrupted magical power. In an instant, it polluted and dispersed the moonlight before spreading toward Ian. Wherever it passed, even space itself hissed as though it were being corroded.
And then, Ian was swallowed by the poisonous fog.
(End of Chapter)