Saruman felt as though he were drowning in the sheer insanity of his own theory.
King Arthur! Merlin! The Knights of the Round Table!
They belonged to an age so distant that time had long since buried it beneath layers of myth. Even orthodox histories of magic were frustratingly vague about that period, with fact and legend hopelessly mixed together.
Most detailed records had been destroyed by wars, religious purges, or simply distorted beyond recognition by generations of overly enthusiastic bards. Only forgotten and forbidden places, like the Raven Ruins, might still contain a few genuine fragments from that era.
And Saruman, having inherited a thousand years' worth of forbidden knowledge from his older self, happened to know far more about that age than most people, even if what he knew was still horribly incomplete.
According to those scattered fragments, Merlin had been a figure somewhere between a man and a demigod, an unfathomably powerful wizard with an ocean of knowledge, mastery over almost every branch of magic, the ability to glimpse the future, and even the power to communicate with nature and dragons.
He had served King Arthur and helped usher in a brilliant, if tragically short-lived, age.
King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, meanwhile, were said to have possessed a unique supernatural power known in some records as 'Holy Radiance', and in others as the 'Path of the Knight'.
It was completely different from modern wizarding magic, which relied heavily on wands, spells, and mental power. The Path of the Knight placed far greater emphasis on conviction, honor, physical strength, and some mysterious form of energy.
According to legend, those who cultivated it to its highest level could slay monsters and dragons, and even stand against powerful wizards.
And now...
The young man before him, Ian Prince, displayed far too many characteristics connected to that ancient era.
His magical power was unfathomable and far beyond anything belonging to the current age, consistent with the legends of Merlin. He personally knew King Arthur, and apparently knew him well enough to mention him as casually as an old friend. He had immediately shown intense interest in Kag's Magical Energy, which might very well be a variant or branch of the ancient knights' Extraordinary Power.
And on top of all that, Ian's swordsmanship was absurdly good.
Swordsmanship was one of the defining skills of a knight. Most wizards wouldn't even bother learning it. But Merlin? If Merlin had spent years beside a close friend like King Arthur, learning some swordsmanship from him would make perfect sense.
Then there was Ian's appearance. He looked young, yet carried the strange weight and presence of something ancient. And some legends claimed Merlin could preserve his youth, or perhaps had even achieved immortality.
One clue after another began snapping together inside Saruman's mind. With a thousand years of accumulated knowledge helping him assemble the puzzle, a conclusion emerged that made even Saruman himself shudder.
'Could Ian Prince actually be the legendary Archmage... Merlin himself?!'
Or perhaps Merlin's direct successor? Maybe even some kind of incarnation?
It would explain everything. His overwhelming power. His impossible knowledge. His youthful appearance. And, most importantly, his connection to the age of King Arthur.
'Merlin?'
Saruman's heart hammered against his ribs. 'Could he really be Merlin?!'
Blood rushed to his head as he desperately searched his older self's memories for descriptions of Merlin's appearance.
Unfortunately, the surviving records were useless. Some described Merlin as an elderly man with white hair and a long beard. Others claimed he could change his appearance at will. Some didn't describe his appearance at all.
The only thing everyone seemed to agree on was that Merlin had been a male wizard.
Ian Prince. Male. Wizard. Young and extraordinarily handsome... That didn't exactly rule him out, did it? Especially when the legends couldn't even agree on what Merlin looked like.
'What a waste of a thousand years of knowledge...'
Saruman suddenly felt like laughing at himself. He had inherited the accumulated wisdom of a millennium of research and exploration, and what was the first thing he was using it for?
Trying to determine whether the ridiculously powerful young man in front of him was secretly a mythological figure, while said mythological figure could crush him with one hand, while his companion was fighting for his life, inside one of the most dangerous places imaginable.
Apparently, merging with a thousand-year-old soul hadn't completely eliminated the wandering, occasionally ridiculous thought process of a young man.
Fear. Shock. Curiosity. And the bizarre excitement of realizing that he might be witnessing living history, all of it mixed together until Saruman barely knew what to feel.
He finally forced himself to drag at least part of his attention away from his outrageous theories and back toward the fight. Kag was still risking his life over there. Saruman couldn't spend the entire time lost in his own imagination.
And by now, the battle in the distance, or perhaps it would be more accurate to call it Ian's combination of stealing techniques and providing live feedback, had entered a new phase.
"AHHHH! STOP HUMILIATING ME, YOU BASTARD!"
Kag's furious roar and the howling of his greatsword were the only violent sounds in this bizarre space. By now, Kag had completely lost himself in the fight. He had forgotten his fear, forgotten that his opponent was an unbeatable Legendary. Only the instincts of a warrior remained: defeat the enemy in front of him.
His greatsword tore through the air with terrifying force. The crimson Magical Energy around him constantly shifted according to his needs.
At times, it gathered along the edge of his sword to increase its destructive power; at others, it erupted around his body to reinforce his defenses and increase his speed.
Kag pushed every battlefield sword technique he'd learned throughout his life to its absolute limit. His style was broad, brutal, and merciless. Every strike carried the savage determination of a man willing to drag his enemy into death with him.
"I'm the warrior here!"
Kag knew his technique might not be as refined as Ian's. Fine. Then he'd make up for it with strength. With momentum. With the determination to drag his opponent down with him if that was what it took.
"I know you're a warrior," Ian replied. "But I'm the Sword Saint of Hogwarts."
Even under Kag's storm of attacks, Ian remained completely at ease. The ordinary longsword seemed alive in his hands. Every block, deflection, and redirection used the smallest possible movement and the least possible effort, yet always intercepted Kag's heavy strikes at exactly the right moment.
His footwork was light and almost unnatural, like someone dancing along the edge of a blade. Every time Kag's greatsword seemed certain to hit him, Ian slipped away by the narrowest possible margin.
"Why the hell are you toying with me?!"
Kag didn't care what Hogwarts was, nor did he care about some so-called Sword Saint. His furious roar echoed through the warped Space-Time Rift, filled with the particular madness of a warrior driven into a corner, half rage, half despair.
And to be fair... Kag genuinely believed Ian was humiliating him. He was a warrior, after all. He wasn't stupid, but his mind wasn't quite as flexible as a wizard's.
Every last trace of Magical Energy inside him ignited. Crimson flames seemed to pour from every pore until Kag resembled a human torch.
"Haaah...!"
The greatsword in his hands seemed to lose all weight. It became a crimson storm of destruction, crashing toward Ian in the most violent and reckless way possible.
Technique no longer mattered. There was only strength. Speed. And absolute commitment.
Every swing seemed capable of tearing open space itself. Crimson blades of Magical Energy even left brief scorch marks across the strange, slowly writhing masses of color around them.
"Respect me!" Kag roared. "I demand your respect!"
He was fighting for his dignity now, abandoning defense entirely. Everything he had, his strength, his will, even his remaining life force, was poured into this final berserk assault.
Against an opponent like Ian, Kag knew defense was meaningless. Technique was meaningless. His only chance was to push his offense beyond its limits and somehow, before Ian crushed him completely, manage to touch so much as the corner of his clothes.
At least then... he could preserve one final shred of dignity as a warrior.
"Not bad."
Faced with an assault like an erupting volcano, Ian became even harder to pin down. And now he stopped limiting himself to the precise movements of his so-called Ian-Style Swordsmanship.
At times, the ordinary longsword became impossibly soft and fluid. The blade vibrated at high frequency through tiny movements of Ian's wrist, peeling away the tremendous impact behind Kag's greatsword layer by layer and redirecting it harmlessly elsewhere.
Then, without warning, Ian's style would become brutally direct. Highly condensed magic flowed into the blade, and he struck precise points in the circulation of Kag's Magical Energy, using concentrated force to break apart a much larger flow.
Apparently, using magic like Magical Energy worked pretty well too.
Each impact made Kag's crimson aura flicker violently. Ian's footwork changed along with his swordsmanship.
One moment, he moved like a ghost, slipping effortlessly through the tiny gaps in Kag's storm of blades. His robes fluttered around him, yet his movements barely disturbed the surrounding energy.
The next moment, he became immovable.
When one of Kag's most powerful downward strikes came crashing toward him, Ian planted his feet. For a brief instant, it was as though his entire body had become anchored to this chaotic space. He raised his longsword and directly caught the mountain-splitting blow.
Ian's body sank only slightly under the force. Yet beneath his feet, even the surrounding void seemed to ripple outward in an invisible ring.
'This guy... This wizard...'
Watching from a distance, Saruman felt his heart tighten even further. Because while dealing with Kag's berserk assault... Ian was still running experiments.
An observer often saw things more clearly than the people fighting. Saruman noticed one moment when Ian deliberately reacted half a beat too slowly.
Kag's greatsword swept so close that the blade nearly brushed the tip of Ian's nose. At the final instant, Ian turned sideways. At the same time, he extended the index finger of his left hand.
A tiny glow of magic gathered at the fingertip. Ian lightly tapped a spot beneath Kag's ribs that had been exposed by his full-power swing.
'Pop.'
The crimson Magical Energy armor covering Kag's side visibly dented inward. Ian hadn't broken through it, but the impact still sent Kag's blood and energy surging chaotically through his body, disrupting his attack for a moment.
Ian merely nodded thoughtfully. It was as though he'd just confirmed a theory about how Magical Energy defenses were distributed and where their weak points might lie.
Then, during another exchange, Kag launched a tremendously powerful rising diagonal slash. This time, Ian neither blocked it directly nor dodged. Instead, he laid the flat of his longsword against Kag's greatsword.
His wrist began vibrating at a strange, extremely rapid frequency. The point where the two blades touched produced a piercing metallic shriek, almost like steel being pushed to the point of fatigue.
"Why is it getting harder?! What's happening?!"
Kag suddenly felt as though the power inside his sword had been fed into a rapidly spinning millstone. His strength was being ground away at an astonishing rate, and the trajectory of his greatsword began drifting uncontrollably off course.
Ian used the opportunity to disengage and step back. Then he glanced down at the blade of his ordinary longsword. A nearly invisible scorch mark from Kag's Magical Energy had been left across the steel.
A flicker of understanding appeared in Ian's eyes. Saruman caught it clearly.
This was exactly why wizards needed brains.
'He's analyzing the properties of Kag's Magical Energy! He's testing its strength, durability, and rate of energy decay!'
Saruman instantly understood what Ian was doing, and the realization only horrified him further.
This wasn't a fight at all. It was the most efficient and direct form of live combat data collection imaginable. Every desperate attack Kag threw at Ian was nothing more than another sample to test, measure, and record.
"Kag! Be careful! He's testing you!"
Saruman shouted with all the strength he could muster, desperately trying to warn his companion before rage completely swallowed his reason. But his voice was pitifully weak against the roaring energy currents and constant clash of steel.
Kag could hear nothing but the thunder of blood in his ears and the roar of Magical Energy burning through his body. The outside world had ceased to exist. Again and again, like a moth hurling itself into a flame, he threw everything he had at that unreachable figure.
"Damn it! Sound barely carries in this place! And I can't even amplify my voice with magic!"
Saruman was frantic, yet there was nothing he could do. His magic still hadn't recovered from the earlier exhaustion and the shock of the soul fusion. His mental power was also unstable after everything he'd experienced and all the frantic thinking he'd been doing.
So as Kag's companion, Saruman could only watch. Kag was like a trapped beast throwing itself against an invisible net Ian had carefully woven around him.
And every time Kag erupted with more power, Ian seemed to gain another piece of information, another insight, another step toward understanding the entire system behind Magical Energy.
The helplessness was almost worse than facing death.
Then, just as Saruman was reaching the limits of his anxiety, the situation subtly began to change.
"I'm almost done... I'm burning out!"
Kag's reckless assault couldn't last forever. He hadn't possessed much Magical Energy to begin with, and burning through it without restraint had only accelerated the drain. The crimson aura around his body visibly began to dim and shrink.
His sword grew slower. His strikes lost power. His breathing became ragged, like air being forced through a broken bellows. Sweat poured down his body, mixing with tiny beads of blood seeping through his skin from the extreme strain.
Before long, Kag looked as though he'd been drenched in blood.
Ian, meanwhile, seemed to have collected enough data. He stopped testing Kag as frequently. He no longer deliberately created openings or used unusual techniques just to see how Kag's Magical Energy would react. Instead, his responses became almost... normal.
He still used the same ordinary longsword. His swordsmanship remained just as precise. But Saruman could clearly tell that something had changed.
There was less experimentation in Ian's movements now. Less curiosity. Instead, there was simple observation and response.
Ian blocked. Deflected. Occasionally counterattacked. Every one of Kag's increasingly weak attacks was neutralized in the simplest and most efficient manner possible.
And Ian's attention had shifted. He was watching Kag's sword posture, his footwork, and the way the last traces of Magical Energy moved through his body. Almost as though he were... reviewing what he'd learned? Reinforcing it?
Or perhaps…
Saruman's heart sank. An absurd possibility entered his mind, but after everything he'd witnessed, he couldn't dismiss it.
'Don't tell me... In this ridiculously short amount of time, he's already figured out the basic properties of Kag's Magical Energy and the structure of his swordsmanship... And now he's moved on to actually learning it?'
Not merely copying Kag's techniques, but studying the combat philosophy and personal style behind them?
"Even if he really is Merlin, isn't this a little ridiculous?!"
Ian's absurdly well-rounded talent didn't merely make Saruman despair. It made the entire situation feel unreal. Then again, perhaps that was only natural. Ian's talent was enough to make even gods fall silent. How could ordinary humans possibly have seen anything like it?
"Haaah...!"
At that moment, Kag suddenly used a move he'd never shown before, and it was surprisingly dirty. At first, it looked like another straightforward overhead cleave, but halfway through, Kag twisted his wrist sharply.
The huge blade traced a tight, sudden arc, and the downward chop instantly transformed into an upward slash aimed straight at Ian's lower abdomen.
It was a vicious little trick Kag had learned from an old mercenary during his younger days in underground fighting pits. There was a touch of a thief's cunning to it, completely unlike his usual broad and brutal battlefield style.
"You still had something hidden?"
Even Ian seemed mildly surprised. But his reaction was immediate, the reflexes of a Legendary were simply too fast. Almost instinctively, Ian pressed his longsword downward.
The spine of the blade struck the rising greatsword at precisely the right point, knocking its force off course.
At the same time, Ian shifted his feet. Using a smaller and faster movement than Kag's, he performed a similar sideways slide, only far smoother.
In an instant, he opened the distance between them. For the first time in a while, the two separated.
(End Of This Chapter)