## CHAPTER 62: The Forbidden Catalyst
The atmosphere in the training courtyard didn't just grow hot; it became suffocating. Alium stood amidst the blackened, cracked ruins of the arena, his breath coming in jagged, wet rattles that whistled through his teeth. He looked down at his ruined sleeve, the scorched flesh of his arm a weeping mess of red and black, and then he looked at Caspian.
The "Ordinary" stood twenty feet away, unaffected by the heat, waiting with the terrifying, silent patience of a tombstone. There was no fear in his stance—only a chilling, observational stillness.
"Yield?" Alium's voice was a low, fractured hiss, dripping with a venom that transcended mere rivalry. "You want a Castamir to kneel? To bow before a peasant who shouldn't even be able to breathe the same air as the gifted? You think your little parlor tricks with a piece of sharpened iron can overturn the natural order of this world?"
His body surging with power from the mana catalyst he just consumed.
In the capital, these were more than just forbidden; they were a death sentence. They were volatile gems, harvested from the hearts of god-class monsters, acting as a secondary, external mana core. They forced a mage's mana gates to burst open, flooding the body with power far beyond its natural capacity. It was like pouring an ocean into a glass bottle.
"Alium, don't!" Lyra's scream cut through the heavy air, her voice cracking with genuine horror.
Alium didn't even blink. He didn't care about his future; he only cared about the erasure of the boy standing before him.
***CRA-CRACK.***
The sound of the gem breaking was like a thunderclap. Immediately, a pillar of dark, violet-rimmed flame erupted from Alium's body, soaring thirty feet into the air and punching a hole through the low-hanging clouds above. The shockwave was physical—a wall of concussive heat, sending chairs and training dummies few feet away flying. Even the strongests among the spectators were forced to shield their eyes from the blinding radiance.
Alium was no longer a boy; he was a conduit for a catastrophe. His eyes didn't just turn red; they began to bleed pure, incandescent light. His veins glowed like molten wire beneath his skin, spider-webbing across his face and neck as the catalyst's energy forced its way through his nervous system.
"He's gone mad," Zerav whispered, his hand hovering instinctively over the hilt of his own weapon. "That's a suicide move. He's going to completely burn himself out and his mana veins."
"Watch," Silas commanded. His dark eyes were unmoving, fixed on Caspian. He saw something the others didn't.
Caspian watched the monstrous transformation with a curious, rhythmic tilt of his head. He wasn't reaching for his sword in a panic. Instead, for the first time since the duel began, a small, genuine smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. It wasn't a friendly smile, nor was it the smile of a hero. It was the sharp, predatory grin of a master craftsman who had finally been given a material worth the effort of his blade.
"So that's your answer," Caspian said, his voice easily carrying through the roar of the violet fire. "A shortcut to power. How very... Noble."
Alium didn't respond with words. He gave a guttural roar that sounded more like a beast than a human. He slammed both glowing hands into the stone floor, the impact shattering the ground for ten meters in every direction.
"**MAGMA BURST!**"
The stone beneath Caspian's feet didn't just crack—it turned to liquid instantly. Fountains of molten, white-hot rock exploded upward in a geyser of thermal fury. But Caspian didn't retreat. With a single, powerful thrust of his hind leg, he moved—not away, but *through* the center of the eruption.
He performed a dizzying mid-air twist, his black boots grazing the churning surface of the lava as if he were skating on glass. He was a blur of motion, defying gravity and heat alike, closing the distance while the world melted around him.
Alium, fueled by the catalyst's artificial speed, moved like a lightning strike. He appeared in front of Caspian mid-glide, his fist wreathed in a sun-bright flame that turned the air to plasma.
***BOOM!***
Caspian didn't draw. He blocked the strike with the flat of his black scabbard. The force of the punch was monumental, sending him skidding back across the courtyard, his boots leaving deep, smoking furrows in the stone. But before he could even reset his weight, Alium was already there—a shrieking blur of violet fire and hatred.
"DIE! DIE! DIE!" Alium screamed, his voice a jagged rasp.
A barrage of high-density fire-punches rained down like a meteor shower. Each strike carried enough force to level a building, turning the air into a series of concussive explosions.
Caspian's defense, however, was a masterpiece of kinetic economy. He moved with a terrifying fluidity, his body swaying mere millimeters away from the strikes. He didn't waste an inch of movement. Each punch was parried by the tip of his scabbard, the hilt of his sword, or a gentle, redirecting palm. The air rang with a rhythmic, metallic ***tang-tang-tang***—the sound of steel meeting magic, a drumbeat of impossible survival.
"Is he... laughing?" Edna whispered from the stands, her face pale.
Indeed, through the swirling smoke and the incandescent fury of Alium's onslaught, Caspian's eyes were shining with a dark, vibrant life. He was a predator in his natural element, dancing through a storm of fire.
As Alium swung a massive Fireball that would have decapitated a bull, Caspian ducked so low his chest nearly grazed the burning ground. The punch whistled overhead, the heat melting a stone pillar behind Caspian into a heap of slag. In the same motion, Caspian's leg whipped out, a low, sweeping kick that caught Alium's ankle with the force of a falling tree.
Alium tumbled, his momentum sending him rolling through the dust. But as he scrambled to get his bearings, Caspian didn't press the advantage. He stepped back, his sword still sheathed, his posture relaxed.
"Is that all the catalyst gives you?" Caspian asked, his voice cutting through the roar of the flames like a cold blade. "More heat? More noise? I expected a noble to have more... finesse. You're just a child swinging a bigger stick, Alium. You haven't mastered your own power; and now you fall victim to power even you don't understand."
Alium scrambled to his feet, his skin beginning to crack and peel from the internal pressure of the overflowing mana. He was a ticking time bomb, his very cells screaming under the strain.
"I will erase you!" Alium's voice rose to a shrill, hysterical peak. "I will erase your name, your face, and the very memory of your existence from history!"
He pulled every remaining ounce of mana from the crimson shard in his hand. The air around him began to liquefy, warping into a shimmering, distorted lens. He began to chant a forbidden high-tier spell—a technique that required three complex incantation circles to overlap into a single, blinding point of absolute annihilation.
"**Hades O' Malia... Sun of the Abyss...**" Alium chanted, his voice overlapping with a ghostly echo.
The circles rotated with violent speed, turning blood-red as they synchronized. The temperature in the courtyard skyrocketed, the moisture in the air evaporating instantly.
"**APOCALYPSE NOVA!**"
The center of the circles erupted into a sphere of pure, white-hot energy. It was a miniature sun, a ball of concentrated destruction that promised to leave nothing but a shadow on the stone where Caspian stood.
Caspian's eyes narrowed. He finally reached for the hilt of his sword with his right hand, his left hand gripping the scabbard tight. The smile was gone.
"Fine," Caspian whispered.