Three more bullets shot out of the magic circle and appeared before Lochras, but when he stepped to the side to dodge them, he felt his foot suddenly step on something extremely slippy, and his body began to fall to the side.

Another earth bullet shot out, but this time it wasn’t aimed at him, but rather it was aimed at where he would be. Silas had thought it out. He knew how the battle would play out from the start; it was just that there was one thing that surprised him.

However, now that he knew about it, he took it into account and revised the plan to work around it and the potential it had.

Now, all he had to do was shoot earth bullets until one of them hit…

But that was the problem.

None of them were hitting.

When Lochras began falling, his instincts instantly made him flip over the bullet.

However, that didn’t fix the slippy ground problem. Or at least it wasn’t supposed it.

When he flipped, Silas saw toki cover his feet before they slammed into the ground. The tactic was simple but effective. The ice wasn’t strong enough to be considered thick, and from the power of that stomp, it didn’t seem like he would be slipping again.

Ice crystals flew into the air, but Silas had already taken that into account.

A drill made of earth shot toward Lochras again, but just like before, he sliced it up or dodged it. However, now there was a difference.

No matter how he tried to dodge, there was always another bullet or drill coming for him, trying to break through his defenses.

This game of dodgeball carried on for a couple of minutes. They were already far from home since Silas had continued to dash away from Lochras while shooting at him, but Silas could see that Lochras was getting increasingly annoyed by the second.

And when his annoyance hit a new peak, he got reckless.

Within an instant, he began to shoot off several arches of toki with the intention of hitting Silas.

‘Predictable.’ Silas grinned and stabbed the staff into the ground.

However, as the earth began to shift, it wasn’t pillars that came out.

A tier-3 magic circle suddenly engraved itself into the ground. It had a one-meter radius around the circle, but before the spell could activate, Silas had already jumped back, using air fusion to move as far back a possible with the staff in his right hand and the tier 1 magic circle still on his left.

“Silas! What the hell is this!” Lochras shouted. The earth continued to rumble as Silas quickly dodged the remaining archs with an insane speed that even Silas was unaware he had.

His body had evolved constantly every time he got hurt during that beast and monster horde. His body was stronger, and while his fusions and mana might not have reached that same level, fusion magic didn’t give him strength. It amplified what was already there.

His cells were filled with mana. More than they ever have been before this moment. He only realized recently, but when he used fusion magic, he didn’t just strengthen his body by adding elemental mana to his cells. Sure, that was the case with mana fusion, but not the the same extent with elemental fusion.

When using elemental fusions, every mana particle within his cells also turned into that element. Meaning that every cell in his body vibrated to the symphony of a single element.

Every time he used the elemental fusion, it was as if he became one with the element. Sure, it didn’t help much in spell casting yet, but when it came to close combat fighting…

It was almost as if he became a force of nature… Something more than himself.

*SWOOSH*

Silas ran like the wind as tentacles made of earth broke through the cracks in the ground and wrapped themselves around Lochras.

His blurry image ran around the enormous tentacles that lifted Lochras a few meters in the air.

Silas continued to build momentum for a few second, and before Lochras could even think about breaking out of the tentacles, he saw something shooting toward him at an outlandish speed, appearing in front of him within an instant before a fist slammed into his cheek and whipped his head to the side.

Silas quickly appeared again behind him and landed another blow, before appearing at his side, then above him, then in front of him again and again, landing a flurry of punches in quick succession, each one holding more power than the last.

And when Silas was finally done, he appeared a few meters away from his father, panting heavily as he pointed his hand into the sky and morphed the tier-1 magic circle hovering before his fingers into a tier-3 one.

Keira also looked into the sky before her eyes bulged, and her heart rate increased rapidly.

“What the f*ck…” She muttered, making Lochras also look up.

Every spell Silas had created out of earth. Every drill, every bullet, and every single piece of earth that had his mana signature. All of it was floating above Lochras, morphing into one enormous sphere made of earth with a ring of small rocks around it.

It wasn’t nearly as big as the earth bear’s earth prison, but it was half the size of their house and looked extremely dense.

Keira hadn’t seen it earlier because it was not only a scattered crowd of earth pieces being floated in the air by Silas’ tier-1 magic circle but also because it was far too high. It only needed a tier-3 spell to put it together, and Gravity could do the rest.

“Dad…” Silas grinned.

“I win!”

And with those words coming out of his mouth, the magic circle disappeared, and the boulder fell, slamming into the trapped Lochras and kicking up an enormous dust cloud to end the battle once and for all…

“Ha… Haha… Hahahahahaahahahaha… HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA.”

Or at least that’s what Silas thought.

Pointing his hand toward his father, Silas quickly created an ice lance and shot it toward the dust cloud. He could still see his father with mystic eyes, but even though he had been using its duller, less bright form, now that there was a ton of dust in the way, he had to intensify the amount of life equation energy going to his eyes.

Looking at his grandmother, he saw that she didn’t seem worried. She looked shocked, but not even a shred of worry could be seen in her eyes.

It was as if she knew.

However, when she caught a glint of bright emerald green from the corner of her eyes, she also looked at Silas just to widen her eyes even more when she saw a pair of emerald eyes glance at her for a moment.

“I have to admit, Silas. That was impressive. No, it was beyond impressive. You would have probably won if it wasn’t me you were against.” Lochras’ voice echoed throughout the field. By now, not only had Rhea come to the window to see what happened, but some of the towns folk closer to the gate had come out to see what the explosion was.

And everything after that happened in an in instant.

Earth fusion coursed through his body on instinct as a feeling of dread fell upon him.

Time slowed to a crawl as the dust cloud parted, and his father appeared before him.

Silas had barely enough time to raise his arms in time. Lochras was too fast. He wasn’t even a blur. One moment he was inside the dust cloud; the next, he was in front of Silas with his fist extended outwards while glass-like icy shards flew into the air and became a mist.

And in the next moment, he felt every bone in his arms shatter before his body was flung almost a hundred meters away from where he stood.

His vision shifted constantly, and when he finally hit the ground, everything turned black.

——————

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