Zarkan was a difficult opponent.

Unlike his utterly unimpressive, even ridiculous entrance, the power he displayed was not to be taken lightly. Even Najin, who had become a Sword Seeker and acquired two stars, could see that.

'What a nuisance.'

Najin frowned as the battle continued. Zarkan's force field magic was difficult to contend with. It differed from other spells, which could only inflict damage by launching magic and striking the enemy.

One force field per finger.

Ten human fingers plus twenty-one demonic fingers made thirty-one force fields in total.

Each was a large, solid bludgeon. Bludgeons the size of a human torso relentlessly hammered the ground and blocked Najin's sword. They could be used for both offense and defense, and even to keep an opponent in check at range. Thirty-one such force fields hovered around him.

'Their power isn't negligible, either. Every clash shaves off great chunks of my sword aura... '

Worse, those force fields were barely visible to the naked eye, making them exceptionally troublesome. Najin was steadily whittling them down, but his own strength was being depleted far faster than his opponent's. At this rate, Najin would lose.

But did that make him feel threatened? Well... not quite. His eyes remained calm.

"..."

Najin narrowed his eyes.

He paid no attention to the heavy booms produced by the thirty-one force fields. What he listened to was the sound of his own heart. He concentrated on its beat.

THUMP, THUMP, THUMP...

Judging by his heartbeat, he still seemed to have room to spare. In the past, this would have been his limit. Trying to move any harder would have strained his body. It felt as though that might still happen now, yet why was it that he thought he could move more violently?

Najin trusted his instincts.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.

His heart raced. Blood circulated rapidly through his body. His muscles tightened and his nerves accelerated. Every muscle in his body felt taut. Mana enveloped those muscles, which felt ready to snap at any moment.

BOOM!

Najin took a step forward. His eyes widened as he kicked off the ground, intending to move as he normally did. He was moving far faster than he himself had expected.

Where his usual push off the ground would have produced a light tap, now it made a boom, like a cannon firing.

SHING!

Najin sliced through a force field and slid across the ground. A momentary burst of acceleration. He was not the only one surprised by it. Zarkan's eyes, too, were filled with astonishment. Had he been hiding his strength all this time? Faced with that look, Najin's bewilderment soon gave way to a smile.

Ah, so this was what it felt like.

A few exchanges were all Najin needed to adjust to his body's speed. He was beginning to understand how he ought to move. He also thought he understood how the stars and dragonblood had changed his body.

'Rather than strengthening my body, this has... '

"Made the vessel larger. And improved its efficiency."

Merlin was right.

It was only natural that Najin had not noticed. The change in his body was far removed from physical strengthening. The vessel itself had grown larger.

By acquiring stars, Najin had earned the right to challenge the heavens. And that right was neither conceptual nor abstract. He could understand that now.

He still had no sense of how to use his stars. But his body had changed to enable him to wield their power. His vessel had grown, allowing him to handle more power at once. Simply put, his limits had risen, and wielding large amounts of power at once placed less strain on his body.

'And... '

Najin felt out his own body.

The channels through which mana flowed had not changed much in size. But tiny branches had spread around them, like a tree putting down roots. They were still small and insignificant... but not useless.

Those branches allowed him to manipulate mana more precisely and efficiently.

Like this, for instance.

Najin kicked off the ground. The mana spread evenly throughout his body concentrated into his legs. In an instant, mana filled the branches extending through his legs and feet. Zarkan's force fields hammered not the space ahead of Najin, but the places he had already passed.

The distance closed in a fraction of a second.

Yet Zarkan was looking in entirely the wrong direction, unaware that Najin had come right up to him. He would pay dearly for that.

THUD.

Najin stamped down and moved his mana. What had been concentrated in his legs spread throughout his body again, then surged into his arms, shoulders, and waist. He swung his sword.

SHING.

The sword sliced smoothly through Zarkan's arm. Its tip parted the force field and reached his flesh. Cutting through flesh and severing bone, the blade emerged on the other side.

Filthy sludge stretched from the falling arm. Just as that demonic energy tried to reattach it, Najin seized the severed arm firmly and kicked off the ground. Pulling away from Zarkan, he brought his sword down on the sludge stretching from the stump and cut it.

The sequence unfolded so quickly that, to Zarkan, it seemed his arm had simply fallen off the moment Najin brushed past him. The pain struck belatedly.

SHHHHHH.

Landing in a slide across the ground, Najin flung Zarkan's arm behind him and spoke.

"That's one."

A smile spread across his lips.

2.

A momentary burst of acceleration created by concentrating mana at a single point. Though the movement exceeded the flesh's limits, mana acted as a cushion, keeping the strain on the body low.

Once Najin realized that, he made active use of it.

For Zarkan, who had barely been keeping up with Najin's movements until now, it was a bolt from the blue. He had lost an arm. Fortunately, it had been a human arm rather than a demonic one... but the loss was still considerable.

Five force fields had vanished. Yet Zarkan was a mage with abundant combat experience. Rather than panic at the blood spurting from the stump, he crushed it with a force field to stop the bleeding.

CRUNCH.

His face twisted with pain, but that was all. He promptly glared at Najin and swung his force fields.

KRRRRRRRRK!

The force fields scraped across the ground as they surged toward Najin. Transparent cubes, they emitted force that shattered anything touching them. A mere touch would be enough to crush those arms and legs.

But they never touched him.

Was it because Najin was moving faster? No, that was not all. He did not move quickly all the time. He moved at the same speed as before, accelerating only when Zarkan showed even the smallest opening.

SPLIT!

Zarkan gritted his teeth as blood spurted from his shoulder. It even felt as though his opponent were toying with him. Facing someone whose speed kept changing was enough to drive him mad.

With every exchange, his wounds multiplied. Blood flowed.

Until now, a battle of attrition would have favored him. No longer. The situation had reversed, and Zarkan realized it.

'Fucking hell. Really.'

Zarkan brought out the move he had kept hidden.

Its consumption was so severe that he had intended to use it only at the decisive moment. It was the demon's authority. Marphos, the demon he had contracted with, governed Refraction.

Refraction. Bending and breaking. Distortion.

The demonic hands extending from Zarkan's back moved of their own accord. The force fields, which had maintained their cubic shapes, refracted to follow Najin's evasive movements. Najin's eyes widened as a force field abruptly changed shape.

CRUNCH!

He reacted even to that, but not perfectly. The force field struck his shoulder, tearing away flesh. Blood poured from the wound.

And that attack did not come only once.

Twenty-six force fields rampaged wildly, changing shape from moment to moment as they descended on Najin. They bent, broke at angles, and refracted without warning. Of course, controlling them was no easy task for Zarkan, either.

Blood trickled from his nose. His eyes became bloodshot. He was devoting the entire computational capacity of the Seventh Circle to moving the force fields, and even that was insufficient, forcing him to entrust calculations to the demonic hands.

Every change in a force field's size consumed great chunks of mana. He had to settle the fight before it ran dry.

Third-Circle magic, Fragmentation.

Sixth-Circle magic, Force Field Storm.

Twenty-one force fields split apart. From twenty-one to forty-two, then from forty-two to eighty-four, the divided force fields spun along irregular trajectories and swept through the area. Buildings struck by them crumbled into powder with brittle crashes.

A force field storm created by a Sixth-Circle spell.

There was nowhere to evade it. Najin let out a long breath and leaped into the storm. Within the raging tempest, white light flashed several times each second. Every flash made the storm smaller.

Then—

WHOOM!

Najin burst through the storm. He had not escaped unscathed. Flesh had been torn from his shoulders and legs, leaving him bleeding. But none of those injuries was fatal. Emerging from the storm, he sprinted toward Zarkan.

At that moment, Najin saw it.

Zarkan's arm, stretched straight toward him.

Of his twenty-six force fields, Zarkan had used only twenty-one to create the storm. What of the remaining five... the force fields controlled by his human arm? As though offering an answer, Zarkan pressed his middle finger against his thumb.

He snapped his fingers with a sharp click.

Sixth-Circle spell, Refraction.

Five force fields rubbed against one another. Merging together, they surged toward Najin. The spell bent and refracted everything it touched. Because Zarkan had contracted with the demon of Refraction, its power approached that of the Seventh Circle.

But there was one thing he had overlooked.

The notions of bending and breaking were a poor match for Najin. The sword aura of the boy who had never once yielded or broken shone brightly. Najin kicked off the ground and assumed a stance. A stance whose meaning was the opposite of refraction.

A sword for executing demons.

Atanga's sword shattered the force fields head-on.

3.

Zarkan. Once known as Zarkan Blen.

He had once been a promising talent.

Just as everyone lived with a story of their own, Zarkan, too, had one. Regardless of how weighty or trivial that story might have been, he, too, had lived a life.

Zarkan Blen, a promising talent of the Force Field School.

He had talent. It was that talent which had brought him to the Sixth Circle at sixty-seven. Considering that some devoted their entire lives to magic without ever breaking through the wall of the Fifth Circle, Zarkan was talented indeed.

Having talent had been his good fortune.

Having a clear limit had been his misfortune.

Zarkan followed the proper path until the age of ninety-seven. Yet he could not advance beyond the Sixth Circle. Thirty years of dedication yielded nothing. Around then, he realized that this was as far as his talent would take him.

No one called him promising anymore. He was merely an old man who had grown aged. An old man whose body, however, remained fixed at the time when he had shone brightest.

Those with power on par with a Sword Seeker became free of aging. They lived their entire lives in the bodies of their prime. At first glance, it might seem that they had been granted eternity, but that was not the truth. Eternity was precisely what the world would never permit.

The world allowed humans one hundred and twenty years.

One hundred and twenty years—the maximum lifespan of an ordinary human.

A human who lived beyond that was, from the world's perspective, an error. Something that did not conform to its principles. What, then, was to be done?

They were pushed out of the world.

From the world of the living to the world of the dead. From this shore to the farther shore. But those whose bodies had overcome aging would not be pushed away. They refused to accept death, rejecting the natural law of the cycle. And so the world pushed them beyond itself.

The Outer Lands. Outside the world.

Those who refused to be driven there met death as their bodies and souls crumbled. The speed varied, but erosion would unfailingly come. That was the death allotted to those granted eternal bodies.

To avoid death, they had to leave for the Outer Lands.

That was why so many warriors of Sword Seeker caliber went to the Outer Lands of their own accord. They proclaimed grand ambitions of saving the world, becoming heroes, or purifying the Outer Lands, but those were merely rationalizations.

They were people who no longer belonged to the natural order.

People who could no longer live on the continent.

Here was one old mage.

Zarkan Blen was no different.

His erosion began at ninety-seven. The moment he saw his body crumbling, he despaired. Death was approaching. He had to leave the mage tower and head for the Outer Lands. But what awaited him there was death as well.

The Outer Lands teemed with monsters.

There were magical beasts resembling Camlann's accursed creatures, the transcendent beings shining in the night sky, demons coveting human souls, and greedy hunters who wished to become Constellations.

He had no confidence that he could survive among them. Nor did he wish to become a soldier and fight them. Zarkan was a mage, a seeker of knowledge. He had only wanted more knowledge and more research.

His allotted time had ended.

Zarkan had to choose.

What would he remain as?

And Zarkan chose.

He abandoned his convictions. Abandoned his conscience. Forsook the oath he had sworn before his teacher long ago. Offering all of it as payment, he bargained with a demon. He stepped into the next realm he had so desperately desired.

The Seventh Circle. Demonic hands. Knowledge of a higher order.

He could do more. He could know more. The transcendence he had so long desired shimmered before his eyes. These were the things he had sought his entire life.

It seemed magnificent, in a way.

"Ah."

And yet it was also pitiful.

Zarkan saw it. The magic he had devoted his entire life to researching was being torn apart before his eyes. Sword aura resembling a constellation—sword aura that would never bend or break—was approaching, shattering his force fields.

Driven out of the continent.

Driven out of the Outer Lands as well.

A mage who had had no choice but to settle on the Boundary.

The last thing that mage, left behind by the world, saw was pure white light. A white flash swept past Zarkan's neck. Then golden light burst before his eyes like fireworks.

SHICK.

Zarkan's head fell to the ground.