Max sat comfortably, two buildings away from the two that just tried to kill him. Based on the violent attacks they had used on him as well as the killing intent being, He had to scrap his initial thoughts of this fight being a test.
Max scratched his chin. "I was wrong, these guys are here to kill me, like for real."
Upon realization, he knew he had to take things seriously lest he ends up dead because of his negligence.
Sighing helplessly, he got to his feet and once again, his aura exploded but this time… it was laced with pure killing intent.
Then, he spoke. "Since you are here to kill me and you won't answer if I asked who sent you, I'll take you down and then ask the questions, don't blame me if I go too far."
Meanwhile, The hooded man and his summon, Dark Thunder were staring at Max, one with a confused expression while the other seemed to have expected that something would happen, but was still slightly surprised that it happened.
The hooded man asked. "How is this possible?... We clearly just killed him, my blade cut through flesh so how come he is over there?... This."
He turned to look at the area where they murdered Max a second ago and sure enough, there was a corpse… at least until it began to disintegrate.
The hooded man's eyes went wide in shock. "What sorcery is this?... What sort of ability allows one to substitute his life with a clone?... No, that couldn't have been a clone, it was too… real. How is this happening?"
The hooded man was on the point of a breakdown as everything he knew was being subverted.
There were several attributes but none that allowed one to create a perfect copy, the likes of which he had just killed.
Even his Shadow clones were just that, shadows that copied his movements, they held no real power and everything still depended on him.
Yet, this somewhat ordinary teenager without a trace of magic on him managed to create a perfect copy without him noticing anything.
Just then Dark Thunder snorted with a disdainful gaze. "The skills of a Sage have always been troublesome to deal with, don't think much of it, let's just deal with him."
The hooded man paused as his nerves slowly calmed. "Of course… only a Sage could do this, if the person controls the law of Reality, then…"
He grimaced as he made a realization. "From the beginning, you have continually led me on, being in total control of our fight. I have made a blunder."
Max watched this pair of Summoner and summon as they looked at him with bloodshot eyes, preparing to rip him to shreds.
"Come!"
"Just die!" the hooded man roared as he zipped forward with Dark Thunder following behind him.
Max dashed forward as well and both parties met at the center.
Within a few breaths, Max and the hooded figure exchanged several blows between themselves while Dark Thunder circled him to launch a sneak attack.
At this point, Max made full use of his Temporal and Spatial techniques as he kept both parties at bay while struggling to land blows of his own.
Dark Thunder roared at the thought of taking down a Sage. "This is the difference between us. Sages will never rise again!"
In a battle of two against one, Max was slowly getting pushed back as the hooded man gained the upper hand.
Both his attackers were skilled as well as swift, thus there was no wasted movement, with each attack threatening to take his life.
The hooded figure suddenly swung his blade to take Max's head with the latter moving his staff to intercept.
The two weapons collided with none gaining the better of the other.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of it, Max quickly moved back to avoid the follow-up attack that arrived as the darkness behind the hooded man morphed into a clone that moved to cut his torso.
Based on the trajectory and the force behind the swing, he could already tell that his innards would surely be touched if he allowed the knife to connect.
As he moved back, the Shadow Wolf behind him was already prepared for this as it called down lightning.
Max put the staff over his head and spun it around as he was unable to dodge the sudden attack.
At the same time, Dark Thunder charged in for the kill.
Making a quick decision, Max pulled down his staff and allowed the lightning to strike him. "Aaaaagh!"
As Dark Thunder tried to chomp on him, Max gritted his teeth to power through the twitching of his muscle and the debuffs that came with the purple lightning to smack the latter across the face with his staff.
The attack was strong enough to cause Dark Thunder to let out a yelp as it was sent flying toward another roof.
At this point, Max's body was smoking due to the lightning he endured but it was clear that the fight was not over yet.
When battling against a Summoner, the main force to take down would be the Summoner because as long as the person was taken out, the summoning would automatically be canceled.
No matter how strong the summon, it still depended entirely on the one that summoned it.
Thus, Max quickly turned to face off against the hooded man but alas, the debuffs caused by the lightning were just too much to power through.
His strength as well as his speed was halved, with his muscles twitching from time to time. Currently, he was only able to move because he managed to block half of the lightning.
If the full attack had hit, it would be a miracle to survive it.
Just as Max turned, the hooded man was already before him with a grin on his face. "You made a mistake, Sage. In a battle with a Summoner, you always keep your attention on the person and not the dimensional being."
Before Max could retort, he made his move.
Whoosh
"I win."