Unsealing Emptiness

As he closed the door, he noticed the two new rooms built on the side. Though there was no one inside as he felt Raven and Blaze on the floor below.

He had almost forgotten that since they were both Rank-8 Mages now, sleeping every day was useless to them.

The Mana Core of Mages had the property to automatically regulate a small quantity of Mana throughout the body all the time. With a higher Rank, the quantity of Mana regulation increased which in turn caused the Mages to be reinvigorated for days.

Ozul shrugged his shoulders and made his way down the stairs. He would never understand why anyone would stop sleeping just because they can.

For him, sleeping put him in a state where he didn’t think of any other worrying matters. That alone was enough to make him want to have hours-long sleep every once in a while.

As he arrived on the 7th floor, all the top brass of the organization were having a meeting. The only difference being that Raven also had a seat on the table.

.....

Blaze, on the other hand, was meditating on the couch placed at the corners of the hall room. Such technical stuff bored him to no end, so he would rather meditate than listen to some complicated reports.

When everyone noticed his presence, they were about to stand up but Ozul motioned them to keep doing whatever they already were.

“Leave it. Follow me to the training grounds. You too, Irvin,” Ozul stated while indicating Raven, Blaze, and Irvin.

Raven and Blaze instantly became anxious and excited at the same time.

Excited because they wanted to show off their hard work after more than a decade of time. But also anxious since they weren’t sure if Ozul would be satisfied or not. What if they disappoint him again? It was a question that worried them the most.

Despite their internal anxiety, the two maintained their facial expressions and quickly followed behind Ozul together with Irvin.

. . .

In the training grounds, Ozul stood in the middle with Raven and Blaze standing on his opposite sides.

Meanwhile, Irvin spectated from a distance only. Ozul had told him to wait here until he was finished with those two.

“After all that time, you both should be familiar with each other’s attacks, yes?” Ozul asked and the duo nodded their heads in response.

“Alright, attack together...” the words had just left Ozul’s mouth when the ground below him started to turn into ice.

Ozul didn’t have a moment to look at this because just then, a dagger appeared behind him. But that was not all, Raven suddenly appeared closer to him together with a couple of floating daggers almost touching his skin.

It didn’t end there either because Ozul moved his eyes to notice the two giant ice pillars completely surrounding him with Blaze flying directly above him, ready to bombard him with hundreds of ice shards.

“...” In the distance, Irvin stared at them with his mouth hanging open in surprise. ‘Monsters! I only blinked once! How did they go from standing so casually to this in the blink of an eye?!’

Irvin was a peak Rank-8 Mage, but even he was surprised at their speed and abilities.

“However, a Rank-9 is not something they can ever hope to match...” Irvin muttered as he watched the battle with keen interest.

Raven and Blaze smirked at their victory since Ozul was completely surrounded by daggers and the sharp ice, but their smiles disappeared the moment they felt something cold against their necks.

Not only that but when they looked at where Ozul stood just a second ago, the spot was empty!

“Wh-” Blaze was about to ask but he stopped when his eyes swept to the corner of the training ground, near where Irvin was spectating from.

Raven sighed because she realized that they didn’t even come near their victory.

Following that, the daggers disappeared in black smoke and the ice pillars emerging from the ground also crumbled down together with the shards floating with Blaze.

The cold feeling Raven and Blaze felt was from needles as thin as hair placed right on their necks, threatening to kill them at any instance.

“You did well. Even if there was a peak Rank-8 Mage at my place, he would have been done for,” Ozul commented in a normal voice. But since the training ground was empty, his words were heard till the opposite corner.

‘They will never be able to show their real strength against someone that will completely overwhelm them...’ Ozul realized only after they had started attacking him.

He turned around and took the nearest seat with Irvin following behind him like a loyal bodyguard.

“Duel between yourselves. Against me, Raven had a disadvantage, so it will only be fair if you two fight instead,” Ozul said as both of them got pumped again.

Raven was also aware that many of her Magical Spells didn’t work on Ozul, so she wouldn’t be able to use them on him. She still remembered when her daggers didn’t hurt him in his hands, unlike what she had willed them to be.

Before the two started, they didn’t miss a black cat slowly walking from Ozul’s side, and at the end, it jumped onto his lap.

Ozul casually started to pat her head with an expressionless face. Irvin curiously looked at him, guessing what his young master was really thinking. Because his actions were soft, but his face did not match his actions at all.

“Start,” Ozul said without waiting for them to get ready.

Raven was the first to react as she cast some spell and smoke started to gather around her. After just a few seconds, black smoke had covered all the training ground except for the seatings.

Ozul remembered that it was the Night’s Shade; the spell he had asked Raven to make for him. Though later, he didn’t need it so much. ‘She upgraded it, huh,’ he pondered because this smoke was not only thicker but also covered a lot more area.

Irvin couldn’t see through the smoke, but for him, the smoke was as good as air. The only thing that tried to block his vision was the Mana, but he wasn’t much troubled by it.

He noticed that Blaze, even after not being able to see anything, wasn’t panicked. Instead, he had closed his eyes and tried to focus on his other senses.

‘They have probably fought for tens of times before, so he might have gotten used to this,’ Ozul carefully analyzed all of their actions. On his side, Irvin didn’t dare to disturb him.

A few daggers closed in on Blaze, but he immediately intercepted them by creating small ice chunks.

Unknown to him, there were several more daggers, all of them floating around him without creating a sound. Raven sent just one of them at first and when Blaze intercepted that one, she made all the others attack simultaneously, hoping to catch him off guard.

However, Blaze simply generated ice walls all around him. The black daggers couldn’t pierce through due to the thickness of the ice.

Raven was about to cast another spell to break the ice walls when the small ice shards were thrown in her direction. ‘Dammit! He is getting used to this...’ she thought before deciding to confront him head-on.

Blaze also removed the ice walls and headed for direct combat because just defending wouldn’t make him win.

“This will take a while...” Ozul muttered before shifting his attention to Irvin and asked, “Why are you here?”

“...” Irvin smiled wryly and answered, “Young master... you had asked me to follow you.”

Only then did Ozul remember that he had things to ask from him and muttered, “I almost forgot about it.”

‘Not almost, Young Master... you really did forget,’ Irvin thought inside his mind but didn’t dare to say it at Ozul’s face.

“Even if you are not a master of formations, you should know about some useful ones, yes?” Ozul asked because of the line of work that Irvin had before, it demanded him to learn almost everything that he could at a basic level.

“I might not be a big help, but yes, I am certainly knowledgeable about the useful ones,” Irvin replied proudly. He really felt like a butler now since the young masters usually asked their butlers about every small thing.

“What about the formations that sense everything under a certain radius?” Ozul asked. He was referring to the one placed around the Royal Palace of the Silverbird Kingdom.

If he wanted to infiltrate the Royal Palace and have any chance of getting his arm back, then studying its defenses was a must.

“Like the one we have set up around our headquarters?” Irvin asked to confirm. They had also built a formation around the tower that detected all people entering their premises.

If the person was unusually strong, even if he used some artifacts, it would instantly alarm them. It was quite a convenient tool.

“Something like that, but not exactly the same,” Ozul answered and added, “I am talking about the one created around the Royal Palace of the Silverbird Kingdom.”

Irvin wouldn’t understand if he didn’t specify which formation he was talking about.

“Young master...” Irvin didn’t know what to say. From where he was looking, his young master was up to no good if he was specifically asking for that formation after inviting Emperor Luthien here previously.

“Just tell me, Irvin. I know what I am doing,” Ozul didn’t explain his reasons but assured him because Irvin was genuinely worried.

Irvin worriedly looked at him for a few moments before sighing deeply, “Alright...”