Chapter 579: Even if We Are Both High Enchanters, You and I Are Not the Same
"In other words, when it comes to Enchantment Magic, you are completely outmatched," Irene declared, her voice laced with absolute certainty.
"I know that," Noah smiled casually. "But my Enchantment Magic isn't too shabby either. It should be more than enough to keep up with you for a while."
"Ignorant, arrogant brat!" Irene hissed, her expression turning glacial.
A terrifying surge of magic erupted from her body and channeled directly into her staff. She pointed the tip at Noah, instantly firing over a dozen highly condensed concussive shockwaves directly at him.
Noah didn't retreat. Instead, he charged forward, weaving and side-stepping with blinding speed to smoothly evade the incoming barrage.
Before Noah could close the distance, a colossal fireball abruptly materialized directly above his head, plunging downward to crush him. Simultaneously, Irene fired another dozen shockwaves to cut off his escape routes.
To make matters worse, the earth directly beneath Noah's boots began to glow a furious, burning red. A massive reservoir of volatile magic had been enchanted into the ground, ready to detonate.
Noah didn't panic.
"Separation Enchantment: Deus Zero!"
Noah stomped his right foot violently against the glowing earth. The apocalyptic magic brewing beneath the surface instantly dissipated, completely wiped from existence.
Simultaneously, he raised his right hand and swiped at the air. The colossal fireball plummeting toward him vanished as if it had never existed.
With the traps neutralized, he fluidly dodged the remaining shockwaves.
"Tch," Irene clicked her tongue in annoyance.
Seeing him flawlessly execute Deus Zero—the pinnacle of separation enchantments—confirmed that he truly was a High Enchanter. However, seeing him casually wield the very magic she had perfected centuries ago only infuriated her further.
"Even if we are both High Enchanters, you and I are completely different! Let me show you what true power looks like!" Irene snarled.
An even more suffocating, catastrophic wave of magic erupted from her. The sheer pressure violently fractured the earth around her, tearing chunks of bedrock into the air before instantly pulverizing them into dust.
She raised her staff and swung it downward.
An even larger fireball—dozens of meters in diameter—materialized directly above Noah. The sheer, apocalyptic heat instantly vaporized the moisture in the air and turned the ground red-hot.
Noah immediately channeled Ethernano into his clothes to prevent them from combusting under the oppressive heat.
"Separation Enchantment: Deus Zero!"
Noah raised his hand, casting the nullification spell directly at the descending sun.
"I'll use Deus Zero to negate your Deus Zero!" Irene roared.
She pointed her staff directly at Noah, instantly casting her own separation enchantment to perfectly cancel out Noah's nullification spell.
Seeing his spell neutralized, Noah realized the colossal fireball was still hurtling toward him. If he tried to cast it again, she would just cancel it again.
He immediately abandoned magic and physically leapt backward.
KABOOOOOM!
The massive fireball slammed into the earth. The ground instantly shattered like glass, half of the fireball sinking into the crust before it violently detonated.
The explosion tore the landscape apart, sending a catastrophic shockwave filled with molten bedrock and shrapnel screaming in every direction.
Irene didn't even flinch. The air in front of her subtly rippled, generating a localized atmospheric barrier that effortlessly deflected the incoming shrapnel and heat.
The fireball soon dissipated, leaving the area blanketed in a thick cloud of dust and smoke.
Irene narrowed her eyes. She could still sense his magical signature perfectly. She knew an attack of that level wouldn't defeat him.
As the wind cleared the smoke, Noah was revealed standing at the edge of the crater, completely unharmed.
Irene's mind raced. Noah was a High Enchanter. If she relied on standard enchantments, the fight would inevitably devolve into a crude battle of magical attrition—a tug-of-war where they simply used Deus Zero to cancel each other's spells until one of them ran out of Ethernano.
Naturally, she possessed absolute confidence that she would win a war of attrition. Four hundred years of accumulating raw draconic power was an insurmountable advantage. She could already sense that his raw capacity, while monstrous, didn't eclipse her own.
However, she absolutely refused to stoop to a crude stamina contest. She was the former Dragon Queen, the creator of Dragon Slayer Magic, and the undisputed master of Enchantments. She would not allow herself to be dragged into a stalemate in the very field of magic she had invented.
"I am getting serious," Irene warned, her voice dropping to a deadly, resonant hum.
The moment the words left her lips, she tapped her staff against the ground.
Instantly, the earth surrounding Noah violently churned. Hundreds of razor-sharp stone spikes erupted from the ground to impale him. Among the spikes, dozens of flexible, hardened mud whips lashed out, attempting to bind his limbs and pin him in place.
Noah stomped the ground, casting Deus Zero to erase the earthen traps.
But exactly as he did, the atmosphere around his body violently distorted.
Irene had instantly enchanted the air directly surrounding him with three completely different, conflicting properties: a pocket of extreme high-temperature gas, a pocket of absolute-zero gas, and a pocket of highly-charged plasma.
The three volatile atmospheric pockets converged on Noah simultaneously.
KABOOOOOM!
The conflicting elements collided, triggering a devastating, localized elemental explosion.
Before the smoke from the blast could even clear, Irene tapped her staff again. She instantly commanded the thick smoke from the explosion, enchanting it into a massive, searing-hot serpent. The air around the smoke snake warped from the sheer heat radiating off its body.
The serpent violently lunged toward Noah, who had just managed to deploy a magical shield and leap backward to escape the initial blast.
Irene pointed her left hand downward. The earth beneath Noah churned again, unleashing a fresh wave of spikes and whips.
She then flicked her fingers upward. The air immediately surrounding Noah instantly solidified, effectively freezing him in place just as the searing smoke serpent and earthen spikes converged on him.
So fast! So incredibly strong! Noah gasped internally, his mind racing.
Her casting speed was utterly incomprehensible. Not only was she casting multiple, highly complex enchantments simultaneously, but she was flawlessly layering completely different environmental manipulations on top of one another without a fraction of a second of delay.
She was a true genius of Enchantment Magic, backed by four centuries of relentless practice. Her mastery was on a completely different dimension. Noah knew he couldn't match her proficiency in this specific field.
While marveling at her skill, Noah instantly cast Deus Zero on the solidified air around him, shattering the atmospheric binding.
He vaulted forcefully into the air, narrowly avoiding the spikes and whips erupting from the ground.
Instead of countering with another enchantment, Noah raised his right hand. A blinding golden laser erupted from his palm, instantly piercing the searing smoke serpent.
BOOOOOM!
The laser and the serpent collided, detonating and filling the air with thick smoke.
BANG!
Before the smoke could even dissipate, a massive, invisible shockwave of atmospheric pressure tore through the cloud, screaming directly toward Noah.
But Noah had already relocated. From a new vantage point in the sky, he fired another golden laser directly at Irene.
Noah had quickly realized that trying to out-enchant the creator of Enchantment Magic was a fool's errand. If he kept trying to match her in her own domain, he would lose. If he wanted to fight Irene, he had to use the magic he was most familiar with: Light Magic.
Seeing the incoming golden laser, Irene elegantly side-stepped.
Unlike his enchantments, she could tell this golden beam possessed a significantly higher lethality. It was clear that this was his primary combat magic.
Knowing his attack had missed, Noah didn't stop. He activated his speed enchantments and began rapidly circling Irene, moving in a blur.
As he moved, he unleashed a relentless barrage of golden lasers and highly condensed light bullets, firing them at varying speeds and erratic trajectories to constantly pressure her.
Seeing Noah abandon Enchantment Magic, Irene didn't bother using delicate, high-tier atmospheric manipulation. She opted for pure, overwhelming brutality.
She pointed her staff. Massive, sun-like fireballs instantly materialized around her, violently expanding outward to intercept Noah's barrage.
The smaller light bullets were instantly swallowed by the fireballs, creating tiny ripples on the surface of the flames. Only the highly condensed lasers possessed the penetrative force to detonate the fireballs upon impact.
For every laser Noah fired, Irene spawned a massive fireball to block it.
Within seconds, a dozen colossal fireballs surrounded Irene, detonating simultaneously as they intercepted Noah's light barrage.
The sheer force of the chained explosions completely pulverized the ground around Irene, carving a massive, circular trench into the earth. The resulting shockwaves sent lethal chunks of shrapnel flying in every direction, but Irene stood perfectly still, her localized atmospheric barrier effortlessly deflecting the debris.
Suddenly, Noah appeared high in the sky directly above her.
He brought his palms together, generating a tiny, blindingly bright point of golden light. Within a fraction of a second, the point expanded into a hyper-condensed golden sphere.
Noah raised his hands above his head, pouring massive amounts of Ethernano into the spell. The sphere violently expanded into a colossal, dozens-of-meters-wide sun of pure Light Magic.
With a roar of exertion, Noah hurled the apocalyptic golden sphere directly down at Irene.
The colossal sphere screamed through the air, the sheer magical pressure parting the clouds and generating a deafening hum.
Irene's grip tightened on her staff. She pointed the tip directly upward.
An equally massive, roaring fireball materialized above her, instantly rocketing into the sky to meet the descending golden sun.
KABOOOOOOOOOM!
The golden light and the crimson fire collided in mid-air. The catastrophic impact generated a terrifying shockwave that instantly cleared all the smoke and dust from the battlefield.
The two spells ground against each other for a single, agonizing second before violently detonating together.
The resulting blast sphere was nearly a hundred meters in diameter.
The blinding, apocalyptic flash of light was so intense it was clearly visible to the citizens in the city several kilometers away. The deafening, thunderous roar of the explosion echoed across the entire region.
The catastrophic shockwave whipped the surrounding air into a localized hurricane, violently stripping the topsoil and uprooting trees for miles.
Irene didn't even look up at the explosion. Relying entirely on her monstrous draconic senses, she pointed her staff at a seemingly empty patch of sky.
Instantly, another massive fireball materialized, hurtling toward the exact coordinates where Noah had just relocated after evading the blast.
As Noah dodged the first fireball, Irene didn't dispel it. She simply spawned a second one, sending both massive spheres crashing toward him from the left and right in a pincer attack.
Noah thrust both his hands outward, firing two point-blank golden lasers that instantly pierced and detonated both fireballs. He then triggered a burst of speed, rocketing forward to escape the overlapping blast radii.
Seeing him evade the trap, Irene pointed her staff and unleashed a colossal, hyper-condensed shockwave of pure atmospheric pressure directly at him.
Noah raised his right hand, deploying a golden runic array, and fired a massive golden laser to meet it.
KABOOOOOM!
Another blinding explosion rocked the sky as the two attacks canceled each other out.
Irene gracefully swung her staff. Countless glowing red orbs of magic materialized in the air around her. The orbs instantly elongated, transforming into hundreds of homing red lasers that screamed through the air, curving in unpredictable arcs as they converged on Noah.
Seeing the incoming laser swarm, Noah actually smiled.
A laser dogfight? Now we're playing my game, he thought.
He waved his right hand. Countless glowing golden orbs materialized in the sky around him, instantly transforming into a swarm of golden lasers that rocketed forward to intercept Irene's barrage.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The two swarms collided in mid-air. Hundreds of red and golden lasers violently intercepted each other, triggering a rapid-fire, endless chain of explosions that completely blanketed the sky.
Several kilometers away in the city, the citizens could clearly hear the unending, thunderous roar of the battle. The sky flashed continuously with blinding red and golden light. The seismic tremors from the distant explosions were strong enough to rattle the teacups on their tables, sending ripples across the water.
Panic began to spread among the populace, terrified by the apocalyptic display of power just outside their borders.
"Everyone, please remain calm!"
Heine stood in the center of the city square, her voice magically amplified to reach the panicked citizens. Juliet stood beside her, assisting in maintaining order.
"Do not panic! Lady Irene is currently engaging an enemy! Everything is under absolute control!"
~~~
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