Seraphine had been watching the battle since the very beginning, paying particular attention to how Evan would handle an enemy of this caliber.
More than anyone else, she understood exactly what an Abyss God like this was capable of, and the same was true of its Avatars. She knew just how adept they were at devising new tricks and unexpected strategies whenever they faced a worthy opponent.
She’d known Evan wouldn’t be able to keep relying on numbers alone, and sure enough, the other side had used those strange fruits attached to its vines to summon several C-rank and B-rank beings, a move that nearly wiped out the numerical advantage Shadow’s army had been counting on.
She’d known all of this beforehand, which was why she watched the battle unfold with calm, measured attention, curious to see just how strong Evan had become, and how he would use the forces at his disposal. She knew that, with his current strength, dealing with the avatar wasn’t entirely impossible, but it wouldn’t be easy either.
But when Evan decided to use the Law of Space, and did so with a mastery far superior to the last time he’d used it, for the first time since the battle began, Seraphine found herself genuinely surprised.
’His mastery has already reached that level? How?’ she thought, running back through all the progress Evan had made recently.
She’d already expected impressive gains, given how hard he’d been training and how much he’d been growing his affinity with the void, but she’d assumed that, however remarkable that was, he would still fall short when it came to true comprehension and application of a Law.
The Law of Space was one of the most complex Laws in existence, not just because of how rare it was, requiring a certain natural affinity with it just to begin understanding it, but also because of the sheer complexity of its rules and the way it had to be applied.
It was a powerful Law, like a few others, and just like those others, it took very little for the one wielding it to get themselves killed while trying to use it.
That had happened to Evan more than once in the past. Several times he’d used it incorrectly, but all of that had been perfectly normal, that was simply how one learned to use a Law like this. There were no real shortcuts. She’d known that, with enough practice, his understanding would grow, and that eventually he would learn to use it correctly.
But she never would have imagined that such growth would happen in a matter of days, not weeks, as she had originally assumed.
’His natural talent is far more impressive than I gave him credit for,’ she thought, watching him deliver a clean demonstration of how to use space itself to eliminate an enemy.
She herself had no affinity with space, but she still possessed knowledge about it, enough to understand exactly what Evan needed to do to pull off an attack like that, and so she understood just how difficult it truly was.
And yet he’d managed it, with minimal effort, in an absurdly short span of time, and after only a handful of attempts.
The avatar had clearly come to the same realization, which was why it immediately tried to make a move against him, determined to make sure a threat like that didn’t grow beyond its control. But just like the avatar, Seraphine too had found her interest in the boy reignited, to the point of becoming almost obsessive.
She didn’t think twice before stepping in to shut down whatever the avatar had been about to start.
She knew this would carry unwanted consequences down the line.
She knew an action like this wouldn’t go unnoticed by anyone who’d been watching the battle unfold. But none of that mattered to her, not when Evan’s sudden leap in comprehension had thrown a serious wrench into the timeline she’d originally prepared herself for, one she’d expected to take months, at minimum. Things had taken quite the turn.
With that mindset, she didn’t hold back at all, and used the small sliver of authority that this fragment of her power still allowed her, enough to sever the avatar’s connection outright.
Unaware of the whirlwind of thoughts Seraphine had worked through in the span of only a few seconds, Evan wasted no time eliminating one of those beings, and then another.
After doing so for the third time, he finally had a complete grasp of the process required to use the Law of Space for this specific kind of attack, and he realized that, aside from the growing fatigue weighing on him, he could actually push this technique much further.
’Given how much energy it costs me per hit, I could probably manage two, maybe three more uses like this. But what if I combined it all into a single attack?’
He’d noticed that scattered individual attacks and one single combined attack seemed to cost roughly the same amount of energy, something he’d pieced together from his three uses so far, but he also noticed there was a small chance that combining the effects of multiple attacks and unleashing them on a wider scale wouldn’t simply add up linearly.
It wasn’t one plus one equals a force of two, it was closer to four.
Not only would this give him the chance to take care of every enemy in one single stroke, but it would also save a considerable amount of energy for his clone, energy that would matter for what he intended to do next.
With that in mind, Evan no longer held back, and once again called on even more of the Law of Space, this time spreading it across multiple targets, with far greater precision than before.
The moment all of them fell within his range, he didn’t hesitate, and unleashed the attack, freezing every single one of them in place in an instant, as though locked in place, and immediately after, forcing the surrounding space to collapse inward toward the center point of every single one of the avatar’s creatures.
This led to a complete, instantaneous massacre of every enemy in range, an outcome that not only lifted a massive burden off Shadow’s army, but also seemed to deal a real amount of damage to the avatar itself, which began writhing slightly, its many eyes, previously fixed on something else, snapping back to the battlefield, and then to him.
Seeing the ferocity in those eyes, Evan couldn’t help but grin as he continued on with what he’d already planned.
At once, several of Shadow’s subordinates who had put a fair distance between themselves and the center of the battlefield drew shadow bows that materialized in their hands and immediately loosed a volley of arrows, not toward the battlefield itself, but straight toward the wave of Forsaken that the battle had drawn in.
He’d already noticed them earlier, back when he’d seen Lirien picking them off one by one.
He hadn’t paid them much mind at the time, since he’d noticed they weren’t getting any closer. He’d already realized they were afraid of void energy, something he’d noted before, and seeing the girl set herself up in a decent, defensible position, he’d turned his attention back to his own fight. But now things were different.
Those things, annoying as they usually were, were, at their core, a source of energy for him.
The large-scale attack he’d just unleashed had drained his energy reserves without mercy, leaving him a bit short on both strength and mana, but these creatures would help make up the difference.
[Ding! Your clone’s minions have killed a D-Rank (advanced-stage) Forsaken!]
[You have gained +2,000 ESS]
[Ding! Your clone’s minions have killed a E-Rank (advanced-stage) Forsaken!]
[You have gained +2,000 ESS]
[Ding! Your clone’s minions have killed a C-Rank (Mid-stage) Forsaken!]
[You have gained +2,000 ESS]
...
As that steady stream of notifications kept ringing out, Evan felt a wave of energy pour into his body, quickly reaching every point that had just been drained, replenishing the strength he’d used.
Within seconds, he found himself completely full of energy again.
He couldn’t absorb the ESS he’d just gained, not with his current bottleneck, but the raw energy itself was a different matter entirely.
That, he could use as much as he wanted, and that’s exactly what he did now.
Energy began surging through him once more, his presence growing suddenly, sharply stronger, his eyes beginning to glow faintly as he leveled them at the avatar.
He’d already sensed the rage and pain radiating from it, something he attributed to the damage he’d just dealt.
He understood that this alone wouldn’t be enough to bring it down, but that didn’t matter, because what he was about to do now definitely would be.
He’d seen more than enough of his opponent by now to understand how it fought, and just as importantly, what its limits were.
"Let’s see how you plan on saving yourself from this one," he said, and immediately activated his ability.
[Death Mark]