One exchange. That was all it took for the black-robed man to be completely suppressed.
His expression grew solemn. He knew his teacher's final "lesson" had officially begun.
"I'm capable of more than this!"
With a low shout, the mutated magical power inside him erupted, forcibly breaking through the viscous pressure surrounding his body. His wand swept through the air, tracing an intricate symbol.
"Ten Directions Defense!"
Whether this spell incorporated elements of Eastern magic was hard to say. There were certainly traces of Western magic in it as well, but such hybrid spells were hardly unusual.
If there was one thing African wizards excelled at, it was borrowing the strengths of other magical traditions and combining them into something useful. As the black-robed man completed the spell, two shields with entirely different properties instantly overlapped in front of him.
"Don't waste your energy shouting. Show me what you can do."
The force generated by Saruman's outstretched hand didn't slam directly into the shields. Instead, it flowed around their edges like water, continuing to exert pressure from the sides and above.
At the same time, several threads of magical power, so faint they were almost impossible to detect, moved like living things toward the shields' energy nodes.
"Layering your defenses is the right idea. But the nodes are too obvious, and the flow of energy is sluggish."
Saruman's calm instruction seemed to whisper directly beside his ear. The black-robed man suddenly felt the shields he had worked so hard to maintain become unstable. For a split second, their energy supply fell into disorder.
Alarmed, he immediately changed his hand gesture. "Flame Descent!"
Another spell was cast almost instantly. A blazing wall of fire surged forward, its wide area of effect intended to force back both the invisible pressure and the magical threads probing for weaknesses in his defenses.
"Better." Saruman nodded slightly. This time, he raised the index and middle fingers of his right hand together like a blade and gently drew them across the center of the approaching flames. "But still not enough."
There was no violent collision of magical power. Instead, an invisible fissure simply split the raging wall of fire cleanly down the middle. The flames rolled harmlessly to either side, revealing the somewhat stunned black-robed man behind them.
The divided flames didn't disappear, though. An even more refined force seized control of them, and they slowly began circling Saruman like obedient pets.
"Elemental magic. Reasonable power, but the form is too rigid. You lack variation and control. Remember, fire isn't only useful for destruction. It can become a barrier, a repelling force, or..."
As Saruman spoke, the flames circling him suddenly transformed into several slender fire serpents. They shot toward the black-robed man from strange angles. They weren't particularly fast, but their trajectories were remarkably tricky, cutting off nearly every route of escape.
"This pressure is ridiculous!" Gritting his teeth, the black-robed man abandoned any thought of dodging and slammed the tip of his wand against the ground. "Eternal Damnation!"
A powerful shockwave erupted outward from his position, intended to blast the fire serpents apart. Yet just before the shockwave reached them, the serpents scattered on their own, dissolving into a scorching cloud of sparks.
The shockwave tore through the fiery mist, but its power was weakened layer by layer. Meanwhile, the sparks settled across the black-robed man's shields and clung stubbornly to them. Sizzle, they continued burning, steadily draining his magical power.
"Your response is forceful, but too rigid. You still need to improve the rhythm of switching between offense and defense."
Saruman continued his commentary as calmly as ever. This was obviously no duel between equals.
Over the next several exchanges, the black-robed man practically emptied his entire arsenal. He tried 'Dark Cut', launching a fast and precise cutting attack, only for Saruman to flick out a fingertip wrapped in magical power and knock the spell off course at the very last instant.
He summoned thick, viscous shadows to bind Saruman, but his teacher casually activated the faint glow of purification runes already present within the chamber and dispersed them.
The black-robed man even unleashed a mental shriek carrying a trace of R'lyeh's corruption, but it vanished into Saruman's mental defenses without so much as a ripple. His teacher's spiritual barrier was as unshakable as the Wall of Sighs.
Instead of accomplishing anything, the attack earned him another lecture.
"Be cautious when using powers that don't truly belong to you. Before trying to control an alien force, make sure your own mind and will are stable." A moment later, Saruman added another criticism. "Your magical output is insufficient."
Saruman had yet to move from where he stood. From beginning to end, he relied solely on the astonishingly precise movements of his hands, his seemingly absolute control over the surrounding energy and force fields, and the vast ocean of mental power at his command.
One after another, every attack the black-robed man unleashed was effortlessly dismantled. And every time, Saruman pointed out the flaw and explained how it could be improved.
Most frightening of all, Saruman was deliberately restricting himself. The total amount of magical power he used was kept only slightly above whatever level the black-robed man was outputting at that moment. Yet the difference in technique, control, awareness, and understanding of battle was like heaven and earth.
"That's because you're too strong, Teacher."
Before long, the black-robed man was drenched in sweat. It wasn't from the consumption of magical power; it came from the immense mental strain of maintaining absolute concentration while having every attack analyzed, dismantled, and corrected almost the instant he used it.
Several scorched patches and tears had appeared across his black robes, marks left behind whenever he'd been a fraction too slow to dodge or defend.
If R'lyeh's corruption hadn't transformed his body, granting him strength and regenerative ability far beyond that of an ordinary person, he would have collapsed long ago from magical backlash and sheer physical exhaustion. But Saruman knew his limits perfectly.
The strength of every attack and the depth of every lesson were calculated to push him right to the edge of what he could endure. Saruman forced him to break past his limits without ever causing truly irreversible harm.
Finally, the black-robed man poured everything he had into a complex combination spell. Saruman responded with a simple Magical Deflection Shield, simple in appearance, at least.
The spell seemed to contain some principle of spatial folding, effortlessly bending the incoming magic away and dispersing it into nothing.
That was the last straw. The black-robed man dropped to one knee, supporting himself with his wand as he gasped for breath.
He had never felt so exhausted in his life. And yet, strangely, his mind had never felt clearer. Many of the questions that had troubled him throughout years of training and battle now seemed to have answers.
Saruman's relentless barrage of instruction had forced him to see things he had never understood before.
"I only used one percent more than your magical power," Saruman said.
He remained exactly where he had started, hands resting naturally at his sides. Not a speck of dust marked his clothes, and even his breathing was as calm and steady as ever.
He wasn't showing off; he was simply stating a fact. The entire exchange, which would have left most wizards overwhelmed and scrambling just to stay alive, might as well have been a relaxing morning walk for him.
"That said, you did fairly well." Saruman understood that harsh teaching worked best when paired with encouragement. His empty eye sockets turned toward his kneeling student as he sensed the complicated mixture of exhaustion and newfound understanding within him.
After a brief silence, Saruman spoke again, his old voice gentler this time. "You've improved faster than I expected. These years haven't been easy for you."
The black-robed man's body trembled slightly.
Then Saruman's tone became solemn, carrying the weight of one final piece of advice.
"Remember what you felt just now. The essence of using power isn't having more of it. What matters is using the right amount, in the right way, and having control. The road ahead may be even harder, but you already have the foundation you need to keep walking it."
He paused, as though gathering himself for what came next. Then his voice reached his student's ears, clear and firm.
"Now..."
"You can do it."
"Kill me."
With those words, Saruman completely withdrew every automatic magical defense and mental barrier around himself. His hands fell naturally to his sides. He tilted his head back slightly, exposing his wrinkled throat completely to the black-robed man's wand.
And once again, a faintly provocative smile appeared on his face.
Well... any solemn emotion that had just built up inside the black-robed man was immediately shattered by that last sentence. For a moment, he even wondered whether his teacher had somehow cast a taunting spell on him.
Of course, that was only a passing joke. He understood what Saruman meant.
"You can do it. Kill me."
The words certainly sounded provocative, but they didn't make the black-robed man lash out in anger. Quite the opposite: they were like a key unlocking the final restraint buried deep inside his heart.
He understood his teacher's intention immediately. This wasn't merely Saruman announcing his readiness to die; it was the last, and most difficult, test of his lesson.
Saruman hadn't lowered his defenses simply to make himself an easy target. He had handed complete control of the situation back to his student, while simultaneously removing the protection he had been providing throughout the duel.
From this point onward, the black-robed man would have to rely entirely on his own strength, intelligence, and judgment. He would have to break through that final barrier himself.
Saruman might appear completely defenseless, but the invisible difference in their realms of understanding still remained. In some ways, this was harder than everything that had come before. And far more real.
The chamber fell utterly silent; only the black-robed man's heavy breathing could be heard. In Saruman's palm, the Raven Feather rested quietly, giving off its ominous, ghostly glow. It seemed to pulse ever so faintly, almost as if it could sense fate calling to it.
"All right!"
The black-robed man slowly straightened. His breathing gradually steadied, while the light in his eyes became sharper than ever.
He no longer saw this duel as a painful duty he was obligated to complete. Instead, he saw it for what his teacher intended it to be: one final gift, the last and most precious opportunity Saruman would ever give him to advance.
He would hold nothing back. He would show his Legendary teacher the edge he had forged over a thousand years of standing guard, resisting corruption, and tempering himself in situations where there had seemed to be no hope of survival.
"I'll remember your teachings, Teacher!"
But the black-robed man didn't immediately attack, nor did he choose some overwhelmingly powerful spell that Saruman could easily predict. Instead, he lightly tapped his wand against the ground.
"Earth Pulse!"
A wave of earthy yellow magical power spread rapidly across the floor. It wasn't a direct attack; its purpose was to disrupt the stability of the magical energy beneath Saruman's feet and interfere with his ability to sense movement through the ground. At the same time, the black-robed man rapidly retreated, putting distance between them.
Then he began chanting an ancient, difficult incantation. It came from a fragmentary text he had discovered long ago among the ruins of an ancient desert civilization, teacher and student had always shared the same interests, after all.
The spell was called 'Wind-Sand Binding'. It summoned invisible spirits of sand and dust to create a nearly undetectable binding field while producing a subtle mental interference effect.
Although Saruman had lowered his active defenses, his awareness of his surroundings hadn't weakened in the slightest. The moment he heard the syllables of the incantation, his hollow eye sockets seemed to shift slightly.
"Ancient Nutian? A damaged composite spell combining summoning and binding? Not a bad idea. But you've made three mistakes in the transitions between syllables, and your energy-guiding nodes are misaligned."
Just as the black-robed man was about to complete the incantation, fine grains of sand began appearing in the air and the invisible binding field started taking shape. Saruman simply raised his right index finger and flicked at a point in the air above the spell's forming area.
'Ding.'
A faint, crystalline chime rang out.
The black-robed man immediately felt as though an invisible needle had pierced the structure of his incantation. The flow of magical power faltered for a split second.
That was enough. The nearly completed 'Wind-Sand Binding' collapsed almost entirely, leaving only a little dust drifting weakly to the floor.
"Ancient spells often demand extreme precision in both pronunciation and magical resonance. One mistake can ruin the entire spell." Saruman's voice followed at just the right moment, both correcting and encouraging him. "Still, the fact that you found this spell and managed to use it at all means you've studied ancient magical systems to some extent. Very good."
"Understood."
The black-robed man's heart tightened, but he wasn't discouraged. He immediately changed tactics.
His wand moved rapidly in front of him, leaving dark trails through the air. At the same time, his left hand reached into his robes and pulled out a small handful of silver powder sparkling with starlight. He scattered it into the air.
"Shadow of the Stars!"
His wand snapped toward the falling powder, igniting it instantly. A dark, shimmering mist resembling a miniature nebula rapidly spread through the chamber, swallowing the black-robed man's figure within it.
The mist disrupted both ordinary sight and spiritual perception. Worse, it carried a faint negative effect that drained vitality from anything caught inside. It was a strange spell created by modifying ancient astrological magic with Dark magic.
"Oh? A modified version of the ancient Stardust Spell, with a withering property added?" There was finally a trace of approval in Saruman's voice.
"Creative. But starlight and withering are fundamentally conflicting properties. Forcing them together makes the spell unstable and causes excessive energy loss. And…"
He suddenly extended his left hand. His fingers spread toward the center of the nebula-like mist, then closed as though grasping something invisible.
The black-robed man's expression changed. The magical power he was using to maintain the mist suddenly felt as though it had been seized by a gigantic unseen hand and dragged toward Saruman. The entire cloud churned violently, slipping out of his control.
"And you've concentrated your control nodes too heavily in one place, which makes the spell vulnerable to being hijacked," Saruman calmly finished his critique.
The black-robed man gritted his teeth. Then, without hesitation, he deliberately severed most of his magical connection to the mist and allowed Saruman to take it.
At the same time, using the last of the mist as cover and hiding his movements within the chaotic magical fluctuations, his body vanished.
It was a high-level shadow movement spell: 'Shadow Leap!'
The next instant, he appeared less than five paces behind and to Saruman's side. At the tip of his wand was a single black spike, compressed to such an extreme density that it seemed to swallow the surrounding light. Without making a sound, he drove it straight toward Saruman's back.
This time there was no incantation, no conventional spell. He had simply compressed his own mutated magical power, tainted with R'lyeh's corrosive properties, to the extreme and shaped it into a hybrid physical and magical attack.
"Oh?" Saruman narrowed his eyes.
Now this was interesting. The combination of 'Shadow Leap' and the silent thrust was nearly flawless in timing, angle, and concealment. It was a killing technique the black-robed man had forged through countless battles where a single mistake meant death, a technique designed specifically for powerful opponents with sharp senses who were accustomed to countering conventional spells. Many wizards had died without ever realizing what hit them.
Saruman, of course, wasn't going to be one of them.
It was almost as though he had eyes in the back of his head. Just as the dark spike was about to touch his gray robes, Saruman didn't turn around. He barely moved at all.
The left hand that had been grasping at the nebula mist simply rotated backward at the wrist, palm facing the direction of the ambush. There was no eruption of overwhelming magical power; instead, a paper-thin, almost transparent force field appeared behind him, rippling gently like the surface of water.
The dark spike slammed into that seemingly fragile barrier.
'Pop.'
The sound was no louder than a pebble dropping into a deep pool. Yet the violent magical power compressed within the spike was somehow dispersed, redirected, and neutralized by the rippling barrier.
It was the perfect example of using four ounces of force to redirect a thousand pounds.
Apparently, Saruman had gone tomb raiding in the East at some point, too.
(End Of This Chapter)
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