"Take it...I dare you."
A low voice whispered in a threat.
The mage forced himself to stop his action and jerked his head backward barely evading the blade of a foreign sword coming for his neck.
The blade clashed with the air around the black sorcerer. Something shattered like hitting against a glass wall, traces of faint glowing dust. The sorcerer was blown down the aisle from the force, tumbling and crashing into the ground with a roll.
His thoughts were in disarray.
'What was that? It broke through my barrier with a single blow!'
The attack had gone under his [Mana Sense] unnoticed until the very last second, crushing the defensive barrier cast around his person with a single blow.
"You dodged it. '[Mana Sense]', huh." The low voice slowly uttered once more. Dread dripping with each reverberation.
A tall figure donning a hooded brown cloak walked up to the front of the altar, brandishing a long sword in one hand.
The black sorcerer raised his head and winced back warily. The figure before him was a man. Someone seething with barely restrained bloodlust. He could feel it, this person was struggling to hold himself back.
"...Who are you? How did you get here?" Various thoughts ran through his head.
The whole underground structure had been very lively for a while until now. The sorcerer had found one of his lackeys dead with a broken neck, the sacrifices escaped from captivity, and then there was the cave in which tremors reached even the chapel. And then there was Reo, and now this man.
All sorts of unfavorable conditions had played out for them just today.
'Have we already been found out? Who is this person? Where did he come from?!'
The mystery man took a step forward and stopped. His attention was drawn to the pool of blood underneath his feet, and in front of him was the corpse of a little girl. His gaze lingered on the little girl's corpse and then shifted to the carved-out heart off to the side.
The sword in his hand trembled from his grip.
"...Did you do this?" Regardless of how it sounded, it wasn't a question.
Regardless of what the sorcerer's answer might be, the man had already made up his mind to cut the bastard down. The thick bloodlust permeating the air around him from his build made it evident.
The sorcerer remained quiet, knowing fully well his opinion wasn't worth a damn at this point. He glared at the man, silently cursing, as he readied himself for an inevitable clash.
The mysterious man took his gaze off the sorcerer and instead turned around, approaching the boy passed out on the altar.
The sorcerer was confused by this action but didn't fail to make use of this chance.
'You fool. Turning your back on an enemy.'
The hooded man took Reo into his hand. The boy's expression as he passed out was that of pain. His body was broken and injured, bruised with cuts and gashes all over. His clothes were shredded, soaked in blood and mud, his eyes were rolled back, revealing only the white, and there were traces of tears flowing down his face.
He looked pale.
"Reo..." The man uttered somberly. The pressure surrounding his body intensifies.
And at the same time, the sorcerer readied a spell.
He roared!
"...Blaze forth! [LANCEA IGNIS]!!" Throwing his hand forward, multiple spears of fire erupted from thin air flew across the room. The spears burning a fierce flame, leaving a trail of fire in their path, cut across the chapel, heading straight for the turned back of the strange man.
The hooded man, with Reo still in one hand, took a casual turn around, and simply slashed with his sword through the air, slicing through each of the spells with a single, seemingly, effortless swing.
*BOOM*
The space before the man combusted in a powerful explosion, the force raising a strong gale and shuddering shockwaves. The aisle before the altar was engulfed in a thick cloud of dispersing smoke and dust, the man remaining still and unscathed within.
'D—did he just...!' the sorcerer took an involuntary step back. His scarred face stiffened up in a tight expression.
'I saw it!'
"He cut my spell!" He muttered in disbelief.
The sorcerer clenched his fist and looked straight at the man, his figure in the dispersing cloud of smoke.
"You! Who are you?!"
The wind picked up from the force of the explosion and forced the person's hood back, revealing the face of a young man in his late twenties or early thirties at most. His face was well endowed with a chiseled jawline, and arrogantly handsome features with short brown hair.
"A vengeful father." He took a step out of the smoke. The blade of Cliff's sword coated with literal bloodlust.
"The boy's father?" The sorcerer cast a side glance at Reo placed behind the man at the altar and then back at Cliff.
"Oi," the sorcerer shuddered at the voice.
"There was something you mentioned earlier...did you say you were going to take my son's heart?" Cliff glared at the sorcerer, dead into his eyes.
The sorcerer quickly muttered something under his breath, lowered his body, and slapped his palms against the ground. He said:
"[GREAT MUD LANCE]!"
The sorcerer's palms glowed a pale green, placed against the ground surface. The ground rose and shifted like a wave moving forward down the aisle. The wave of earth doubled in size and erupted into massive thorns of earth, piercing forth from the ground surface with sharp edges and points. The thorns formed in the blink of an eye, climbing high above the ground and into the air. The further they traveled, the taller and larger the earthen thorns were.
Cliff watching the forest of earthen thorns quickly approach felt the ground underneath his feet shift slightly.
He didn't take a stance or move, he raised his sword and let rip a wide horizontal swing. The power behind such a flawless swing resulted in a powerful wave slash that decimated the rapidly growing and approaching forest of earthen thorns.
Destroying the earthen thorns, the powerful air slash continued traveling forward with its reign of destruction, cutting into the end walls of the chapel finally.
The sorcerer only felt a gust of wind above his head and was frozen. Once again, his spell, right before his eyes, was cut through by a single swing of a sword. That was already ridiculous enough, but more so was the unbelievable range and span of such a swing. Not only had it covered the full length of the chapel, but also the full width, meeting the walls on all sides.
The sorcerer feverishly turned around and glanced at the wall behind him. There was a single long slash forming a massive crevice of about four inches deep.
The sorcerer was only safe from being split into equal halves as he was still lowered on the ground performing the spell.
'Magic? No, that wasn't it. That wasn't a magic attack or a spell, if so, my '[Mana sense]' would have reacted to it. But there was no single trace of mana in that attack! Not a speck in the swing!' his thoughts were broken with disbelief.
The man in front of him, was just as much a beast as his son, perhaps even more so.