This feeling was numbing, He wore a small smile. The blood on his lance dripped on the floor and the roses bloomed.
He hadn't realized it but his right eye had a spiral replacing his pupil. Isle could see the same as he could before, Except he now saw large blotches floating around, These blotches were mana.
Isle hadn't known much about mana but he knew that if you ran out of mana, Death wasn't far. Isle himself had never lost enough mana to get close to that point, But he had seen the results of losing your mana and they were always nasty.
He could see mana with his right eye but he still couldn't absorb it. With a dormant mana core it was almost impossible to absorb mana, It could still store mana though, As he did with Cassius' mana before he used it.
When he looked at Sandrone he could see that his mana was white, But looking at his own mana it was pitch black and there was a disturbing aura generated by it.
That's when Isle realized, It wasn't Cassius' mana he just used, It may have been at some point but it clearly wasn't anymore. He was thinking of what could've changed it when he thought about the book.
It was in his back waistband when he initially arrived in the prison, At some point it'd vanished, He glanced at the ball of black feathers Vermilion was in.
While Vermilion could very easily have taken it from Isle, He wouldn't, He hadn't shown much interest in anything Isle possessed. Whenever Isle talked about his quantum Vermilion mostly ignored him, Speaking laconically whenever he actually did.
Cassius and Sandrone also couldn't have it, As Isle never showed the book to them. Cassius might've sensed it if he was actually there while they were fighting, But it was just him controlling the puppet that's now Sandrone.
At that point Isle hadn't known where it could've gone until he thought about his mana core. He looked at Sandrone, He hadn't moved since his wing was ripped off. Isle wasn't worried at all about Sandrone anymore.
If Sandrone rushed towards him while he checked his mana core, Then he'd cut him in half with the cutlass. Isle closed his eyes and thought about his mana core, And there it was, The book floated in the center of his mana core.
He didn't know why, Let alone how it even appeared there but it did. It looked exactly as it had before, It's intricate black cover had remained the same.
His now blackened mana core was cracked from the center to the edges, He didn't feel any pain until he saw it. The moment he saw it, His chest felt like it was being torn apart.
He fell to the ground, Clutching his chest. His mana was shooting out of him at an alarming rate, A terrible aura surrounded him.
Sandrone would've immediately attacked Isle while he seemed to be at his worst if it weren't for the awful feeling he had. Isle's mana was now covering him with a dark static, The mirror fragments on the floor splintered and shattered under it.
Sandrone got a feeling that he would die if he even grazed it. With that being said, Sandrone wasn't planning on giving up just because of that.
He'd gained the chance to kill everyone in this realm, If death was something that concerned him then he wouldn't have came here in the first place.
A darkness had encompassed the entire realm, One much more chilling than Cassius' earlier. This, of course, Had nothing to do with Isle, It was manifested entirely by the book currently destroying his mana core.
The lance and cutlass were on the floor, He'd dropped them when he started throwing up a dark substance. The same patterns on the cover of the book were in the mysterious liquid.
Sandrone had found this to be his greatest opportunity to swiftly kill Isle with no trouble.
He launched forward faster than he ever had and manifested a scythe, A slash that should've instantly mutilated Isle was stopped with the shaft of Isle's lance.
The two weapons clashed. Isle slammed his lance into the scythe's blade, Knocking it back slightly before Cassius shot it right back down towards him.
"You're gonna die here like a dog. A dumb, Useless dog." Cassius said coldly.
Isle's smile had vanished, He was terrified and his face perfectly showed it, He'd broken into a cold sweat. Cassius' scythe cut through Isle's lance.
This was it. Isle, The weakest in the realm was going to die by his hand, Though he wasn't only going to kill Isle, He was going to kill everyone in this realm then every other one of those he despised so deeply.
He smiled watching his scythe's blade inch closer to Isle's chest, That was before he felt the cold blade of a cutlass enter his chest and slash his heart in half.
Isle's smile was back and larger than before. It turned out he'd pretended to be scared as a trick to get a hit on Sandrone, It was one of the first tricks he learned in the streets of Pandora.
Sandrone disappeared and reappeared a few miles away from Isle. He groaned, His hand crudely held his chest together. He wore a deep scowl, As he looked down at the wound that would likely kill him.
His breaths immediately began to come out labored, He felt the blood rushing from the gash across his chest. He ran away but his speed wasn't nearly as high as before. The tip of an awfully familiar lance was hurled towards him.
The fragment pierced his leg ripping through his flesh easily. He fell to the ground and roared in agony, Holding the punctured leg with his free hand.
Isle's face was dark, His eyes were ever evident. He walked slowly, His mana continued to flow out of him at a steady rate, Crushing every fragment on the ground to even smaller pieces than they were before.
Isle held his cutlass and the handle of his lance as he advanced closer towards Sandrone. He crawled away as fast as he could, Although that didn't prove to work very well.
Isle had eventually made it to Sandrone, Isle glanced down at him pitifully, Then back up and at the ball Vermilion was trapped within.
"Release him…" Isle sighed then pointed at the ball of feathers.
Sandrone flipped on his back and moaned in pain. He glared at Isle, "You'll just kill me after I do… So why would I?" He waited for an answer.
"You'll die either way… It hardly matters if you refuse to or not, It'll only give me a little more trouble if you decide not to." Isle responded calmly while looking at the wound he'd inflicted upon him.
He wasn't just bluffing. Even if Sandrone refused to do it, Isle would simply cut the ball open himself. It was more of a formality than anything.
In the end Sandrone snapped and the feathers dispersed. Inside the pile of feathers laid the dragon, It appeared he hadn't made any attempts to escape after the first initial few, Instead he chose to patiently wait while laying down.
Once he did, Isle walked past him, Not bothering to spare him even one more glance. The darkness encompassing the realm rushed to return back into the book within Isle's mana core.
After he ripped off his wing no other injuries of Sandrone seemed to bring Isle joy, In fact it was quite the opposite, After some point, Isle had only started to feel pity. The only reason he'd smiled when he slashed Sandrone was the irony of the situation.
Sandrone scowled as he watched Isle walk away. He slammed his fist into the floor, He had the audacity to think he could've killed Cassius or Vermilion when he couldn't even kill Isle, He clenched his fist to the point his fingers digged into his palm and shed blood.
He'd always been an egotistical person but he still managed to claim his losses but this in his head couldn't even be seen as a loss, It was utter humiliation, He hadn't even scratched Isle after that aura appeared from him.
Sandrone had never experienced a loss like this, It disgusted him, It filled him with an indescribable sorrow. He wanted to die, It was cocky of him to even dream that he could lay a finger on anyone in this realm.
He stared up at the blue sky, The clouds moved slightly and it began to rain. Droplets ran down his face but those rain droplets weren't the only ones that did.
He wiped his face and continued to look up, It was hard for him to absorb mana and heal himself currently. He wasn't even sure if he wanted to live anymore, So he laid in silence and watched the rainy clouds.
Vermilion looked at Isle with a curious look, His student looked fairly different from before, Isle's long hair was completely black now and his right eyes pupil was a spiral. Not to mention that Sandrone looked to be almost dead, The Isle that Vermilion knew, Wouldn't have been able to do that to Sandrone.
He would've asked what happened but something gave him the feeling that Isle wouldn't have explained it to him even if he begged.
"I beat him so let's leave, Next is the crow."