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Akeru didn't immediately deactivate his focus spell, but focused on his surroundings, first on the devil, then on Kirsch, and then on the mana in his zone.
He realized that due to reaching a heightened state of focus, his spell had evolved slightly such that now he could change focus in this state without cancelling and activating the spell again and again.
Though, I was going to reach this level anyway as I had planned a similar type of training to quickly activate and deactivate the spell, guess some days of my life are preserved, Akeru internally chuckled as he deactivated his spell.
He grabbed Kirsch's wrist quickly, stopping his fingers one inch before his neck.
"Oh my! You broke through that?" The Devil acted surprised, but Akeru could feel subtle amusement in his tone.
Suddenly, water vapors started moving in Akeru's mana zone.
All the mana of the devil that had intruded was expelled.
This also led to the illusion on Kirsch dispelling.
"I would ap-"
"It's fine, we need to find a way to stall this thing," Akeru stopped Kirsch from speaking.
He didn't really like what he had observed of the devil till now.
"We were going to get to an interesting part, but if you want to play like that, be my guest," the devil said as a green fireball was sent towards Akeru at blinding speeds.
The fireball entered Akeru's mana zone; however, to Akeru and Kirsch's horror, it didn't slow down.
Still spectator, Akeru's all senses boosted considerably and analyzed the green streak of light.
Akeru noticed that the fireball was actually an illusion.
Akeru deactivated his spell and the fireball harmlessly passed through him.
"Even if his mana can't enter this zone, he can indirectly create illusions to confuse us," Akeru said with a frown.
The complexity of this magic was the highest he had seen in his life, second only to his own spell.
"This is going to be ugly," Kirsch said as hundreds of fireballs came at them.
Some of them were slowed down after entering the zone, so Akeru and Kirsch could still differentiate.
"Fuck," Akeru said while seeing all the green fireballs being slowed down after entering his zone.
The shock wasn't due to all the fireballs being real, but the fact that there were illusions mixed in them, all mimicking the real ones.
"Let's see how you handle this," the devil said while looking at them like a kid would look at his toy.
Normally, Akeru would have felt which ones were real and fake due to sensing the disturbances in his zone where there was resisting force.
However, that wasn't possible due to the sheer number of spells the devil had cast.
"The fire, it's unnatural," Kirsch said as his cherry blossoms were annihilated instantly on contact with them.
Mind you, Kirsch's cherry blossoms wouldn't even have a scratch from an intermediate knight's fire spells.
"Yeah, my water can't douse it completely," Akeru said while the barrage of fireballs came towards them inch by inch.
The water vapors inside his zone had already converted into water.
Suddenly, purple lightning materialized in the zone and started colliding with the fireballs.
If I can't douse them, may as well destroy them completely.
Upon getting a grimoire, Akeru's all spells had been upgraded and lightning was incorporated in his Viscous Spell.
Due to the mana zone made of water, lightning was a perfect fit for it due to being a good conductor if the water isn't pure.
Even if there was no water inside his mana zone, it wouldn't make a difference as his lightning could move between the minuscule water created by water vapors instantly.
Though he could create any water spell he knew inside his mana zone, their offensive capabilities were not that high.
Oscillatory Dysfunction was not a spell, but more like an application, so he hadn't been able to apply it to his mana zone yet, but he felt that it was a matter of time.
In his battle with John, he hadn't bothered to do this as it was overkill.
So, even if John's speed increased by 1000 times in that battle, the outcome wouldn't have been any different.
Soon, all the fire spells were annihilated.
Let's create a defense around me just in case he tries something funny, Akeru thought while creating his best defense.
Normally it would take around a second or even less to make it, but that amount might as well be an hour in front of a Stage 0.
"What's the fun in that?" the devil said while creating a fireball that got reduced in size.
In the next instant, Akeru only saw a green light of fire heading towards him.
Akeru did a mana burst from his left side just as a beam of fire pierced his chest.
This all happened in less than a second as Akeru's defensive spell wasn't formed.
A point-sized hole could be seen on Akeru's chest where his heart was supposed to be.
"Tch, it seems my accuracy has reduced over the years," the unnamed devil said.
However, it was a few millimeters away from the heart such that it only pierced through his left lung.
"FUCK," Akeru felt pain.
Lots of pain.
Despite living in the wild and having a high pain tolerance due to that, he had never felt this much pain before.
However, this didn't stop him from continuing his defensive spell which encased both Akeru and Kirsch.
Seraph's Nursery, A spherical water bubble encased them, with the boundaries not only having a solid barrier-like shape, but also lightning could be seen flowing at it.
If one took a closer look, they would notice green-red lightning flickering between each color, in high density at its boundary.
Not only that, the molecules present were vibrating at its boundary.
"Kirsch, you leave first, I won't be able to escape if you are with me." Before Kirsch could say anything, a giant palm of water threw him like a cannonball away from the location.
This was done while countless water bullets were hurled at the devil at very fast speeds.
They had a green-red hue to them.
"Now that is scary," the devil said while a magic circle surrounded him.
A dome of yellow lightning surrounded him as he defended himself from an onslaught which would even trouble a decent number of senior-level magic knights.
Though Akeru had previously said that his prowess was first-class senior knight, he could easily suppress Kirsch.
One year ago, it might have been difficult due to speed, but now that wasn't a problem anymore.
He could easily trap Kirsch in his mana zone and after that, the battle would be over.
This guy is dangerous, I might have missed that point, but I am pretty sure that he was able to disable slowness property of "Viscous Hush" for a fraction of time, does he have ability to turn reality into illusion and vice versa, Akeru felt his heart throbbing.
The size of Viscous Hush decreased to a little above the size of Seraph's Nursery.
Though the name had nursery in it, it didn't have any healing aspects yet.
In the next instant, Akeru appeared near the lightning defense the devil had created.
*I need to catch him off-guard, and kill him in one swoop, otherwise, I don't have any other method to survive,* Akeru didn't believe that he could outrun this devil.
His instincts told him that the devil hadn't shown much of his prowess.
A high amount of mana from his seraph's shell coalesced in his palms.
It started vibrating furiously and lightning could be seen on his palms which phased between red and green.
*Vibratory Chaos,* This was the evolved version of Oscillatory Dysfunction which had been applied to most of his previous spells.
Its penetrative power was nuts compared to its predecessor.
Akeru quickly attacked through one of the blue lines he saw.
The defense broke like butter and Akeru felt his arm inches closer to the devil whose speed had reduced to 1/100.
However, to Akeru's alarm, the guy still had an amused expression on his face.
"Burn," the devil uttered a single word.
In the next instant, Akeru saw all the blue lines on the devil disappearing.
His mana zone was vaporized and a lot of components of Seraph's Nursery started vaporizing too.
*Fuck, I would be vaporized in nearly two seconds,* Akeru cocked back his arms as he activated Orion's Mischief again.
Purple Lightning appeared on him.
Fuck it, I think I need to use that technique after all, Akeru thought with a grim expression.
***
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