Chapter 181: This is Normal… This is Normal

Aerendil found it increasingly hard to breathe; every drag of air from the surroundings to his lungs felt like a labor requiring manpower, and the moisture in his breathing organs was quickly dissipating. Amidst all of this, the glowing aurora on his chest has become more prominent.

_It's some ice-related ability... probably from that Bakunawa woman..._

Aerendil has a frown on his face, not wondering why does an aurora makes his lungs freeze even though they were supposed to be hot, his eyes glowed as a magic circle of considerable simplicity emerged, while doing so, he still regarded Sophia's illusions with the highest apprehension, however, even after his whole body glowed with fire-like light as he used the ability [Solar Dome] to melt the ice inside his lungs, causing him to frown as he willingly ignited himself, causing his blood to boil, overloading with potential difference the cold corroding his lungs and the mist that have fallen alongside him, he still cannot detect any kind of dark magic illusion, nor can he found the person herself.

_I have to find Sophia._

Such thoughts were accompanied by a large dome of plasma hot flames emerging from his body, sweeping the whole of his capital, at the same time, this gargantuan dome that can be seen even from far away served as infrared detector, meaning all things that are emanating heat will be reflecting to the eyes of Aerendil, it was one of the double purpose spells of Aerendil, using this, elves have become a very effective night surveyors and can notice fake faces, yet despite this advanced magic, Sophia is nowhere to be seen, prompting Aerendil to again try vanquishing illusions in his minds, but even then, his enemy, so far seems to keep her words in stone, no illusions are detected, instead, the debris upturned by the [Solar Dome] that really is not something from the sun stopped falling down as if gravity have conceded its influence on them.

As something of a scientist himself, Aerendil immediately concluded that this is something ominous, he turned off the temporary infrared vision of his and decisively stopped his search of Sophia, it's not like the infrared vision can only be used once a day, and indeed, just after he endured an internal encroachment of frost successfully, he saw hundreds, nay, thousands of head sized boulders surrounded him, their positions perfectly aligned so that not even a single hair from his nostrils will escape the ensuing assault, as Aerendil remained vigilant of the illusions, he saw as the boulders get engulfed with pure darkness.

_Still no illusions... I have to be cautious..._

Aerendil thought, finding it normal to be apprehensive of the strongest ability of the opponent, normal if his opponent doesn't use illusions, that is.

However, Aerendil doesn't have any time to ponder such things for the boulders, in a literal instant, finished their "coating" of dark magic, they then hurled themselves towards the false prophet.

The target, despite seeing the head-sized rocks hot in their pursuit of his whole being, remained calm, as if he is not aware of the buffing abilities of the magic being wielded by Sophia, he exhaled as his eyes shone in a majestic display of several overlapping magic circle, his eyes shifting from boulder to boulder, as if calculating the angles, or perhaps, the individual abilities of the boulders, Sophia who refused to use the 4th dimension and is somewhere away from the infrared detection strained her eyes to see that.

_What in the Madara is this Dumbledore doing?_

Yet, she did not care, she watched from afar as if conjuring and controlling magic spells while being kilometers away is a light workout for her brain as Aerendil started to glow and as he did, all the boulders crashed to him, engulfing his arm, face, ears, and eventually his whole body as they throbbed and teemed with darkness, but the boulders did not stop there, they still attempted to clump towards the man, again and again and again until Aerendil has practically became the nucleus of a hill sized boulder, seeing this, Sophia squinted her eyes, not at all happy with the outcome.

"I lost control of the rocks."

Sophia grumbled for she saw the boulders she have painstakingly tagged for dark magic emitted light from its core, it started dim, but intensified in a gradual yet visible pace, until even Sophia herself have to close her eyes for a moment, in her position she can hear a large explosion, however, the explosion is not the chained nuclear strikes she have planned, but the erosion of the [Unholy Rejection] to the head-sized boulders she have controlled, the gigantic rocks, alongside the dark magic that encroached all of them started to disintegrate, not only that, several illusory, white threads have mysteriously latched themselves from the 10 fingers of Aerendil to the stones.

Sophia observed for a while, as if not in a hurry, though she is being strained of all her abilities as of the current, the same as her opponent and is relatively tired despite all her cocky words earlier, one can even infer that she is buying time for something.

"It slowly syphons the dark magic mana energy from the rocks... hmm... he's anticipating me making it explode in his face, but he should know that I will know he will anticipate it... will he somehow use that energy to home in on my location?"

Sophia sighed, with Aerendil as her opponent, everything is possible, thus she anticipated how will he use her mana signature for homing purposes, but still, she wished that Aerendil and Siginarugan will be fast on their things, she strained her eyes further in anticipation and curiosity, maybe she can use one of Aerendil's abilities later on against him, though she is still wondering how did Aerendil healed himself from just his eyes and not from a heart or blood.

Thus Sophia flicked her fingers and commanded all the disintegrating boulders to explode with their remaining energy, causing Aerendil to grin, he knew that Sophia will know he is baiting him to make her let the boulders explode and he also knew that Sophia knew that she will be homed using the energy that she have conjured, but still, Aerendil did it because this fight is nothing but exploitation of the utter confidence of both parties, and also because as far as Aerendil observed, Sophia have yet to comprehend his trump card, meaning she is probably quite perplexed right now.

It's not a matter of confidence but just an edge as he already knew the greatest ace of Sophia, illusions, while the said person doesn't know what his yet.

_I wonder when she will force me to use it at full force._

As Aerendil mused, the dark energy that was about to be blasted in all directions as devastating, pure energy abruptly halted their ravenous advance as if their time have frozen itself, yet of course, that is not the case, Aerendil syphoned all of those nuclear level energy into his palms that already has their palms facing each other and is away one fourth of a meter from each other, in the space that was formed from such a cliche gesture, a grey orb, calm in the surface but has a turbulent storm inside, also grey in color appeared, it grew from grain sized, and then apple until it was as big as the boulders hurled at him.

While all of that was happening, Aerendil, still being watched by Sophia that already copied such an ability but doubted she can use it in his current fight and her next fight during the war against Valentine had his eyes looking at the sky, his pupils glowing and dimming repeatedly as circles after circles of magic emerged from his magnificent pupils, the strings connecting his fingers to the energy ball started to snap one after another, announcing the end of this seemingly long ritual for the perception of the two fighters, but for the metaphorical onlookers, it took only a blink of an eye.

Aerendil's eyes also stopped creating large amounts of magic circle as he slowly turned his gaze towards the ball of energy, confident that Sophia will not attack him lest she wanted to waste the opportunity to copy such a potent skill named [Connection], such a creative name, a spell that uses the connection of an object to a person to lock-in to the said person, ffrom strip of clothes, it will only work as vague divination of some sort while things like blood will yield more accurate results, thus one can only imagine if it was mana, an energy directly produced from a person is used.

The gaze of Aerendil finally landed to the ball and as they did, the magic circle on his eyes disappeared and was transferred to the ball of condensed energy, Aerendil then put the ball upwards, near his mouth and whispered: "Sophia Demiurge", the moment the "ge" in his mouth escaped, the ball of energy disappeared, at least for the normal eyes, Aerendil can still see its direction, but the speed is really astonishing, for when Aerendil blinked, the ball of energy is still in his hands but when his eyes opened, it was already gone, Aerendil grinned and also blink the moment magic circles appeared at his Achilles heels, disappearing from the shocked Sophia's eyes.

"It can really lock onto me."

She was surprised, however, of course, she did not forget that the king of elves also disappeared, she looked at the sky, and blotting it out is a clenched fist oozing with light as if absorbing solar energy, in the back of the clenched fist of Aerendil up to the skin just below his elbow, magic circles were lined up, several buffs used to make his punch surpass the damage that can be received by Sophia were present.

_He knew that his punches were weaker than mine, huh._

Sophia mused, yet of course, she is not arrogant enough to confidently receive the punch, she is Sophia Demiurge, not Urduja Tawalisi, putting her index and middle fingers together, using dark magic to taint it black and the fire element to ignite his finger, she created a gun finger using her left hand and pointed it at the temple of Aerendil, causing the elven king's eyes to widen before curling into a smile, Sophia wanted to squint because of this, instead, her eyes widened as she saw Aerendil turn into dusty particles and slowly get replaced by the pure ball of energy in her front that also formed sand.

_What the fuck was that?_

Sophia was confused, well, she is not, it's just that she can't believe that "that" concept will appear in this world, she snapped her head, frowning at Aerendil, who had started to jump at her after regaining his form.

_Atomic magic? Aerendil really created a microscope that can see atoms? Not only that, he was able to use it effectively as a magical ability_

At that moment, Aerendil grinned as if confirming the guess of Sophia, something that she, who knew that "atom" as established physical concept does not exist in the medieval era of her previous world, but it seems like she have underestimated the geniuses of this world and atoms itself, the fact that she used mana in its purest form as the highest form of energy and not nuclear energy is an statement of her disdain to such a primordial concept, though of course relative to her, someone who have managed to harness the illusive Planck energy, known as mana in Pentateuch while being on Earth.

"That's a glimpse of my trump card, care to try and copy it?"

Aerendil felt confident as his fist neared Sophia's "stupefied" face, though because his fist was covering the face of his enemy, he was not able to see the grin on Sophia's face.

She understood the whole concept of atom; she even perfected it before in her previous life, but did not release her findings to the world and tried to make it so that only her country's science department could utilize it, Thus, she successfully copied the magic.

_This moron not only made his [Unholy Rejection] focus on black magic, not thinking about the fact that I can copy normal illusion magic, thus failing to scan my subtle influence, he even made his ability be seen to me, though that is because of my subtle influence as I want to confirm the way his eyes became the center of his regeneration... old people..._

Sophia decided to amuse the clown in front of her, thus she continued her attack, hurling a plasma-grade laser beam of black flames towards her assailant.

"What the hell was that!?"

In order to make her act more convincing, she made her mana surge, the boulders and earth were uprooted, blades of wind, arrows of fire, and glaziers of water appeared all over her as she saw the mocking grin of Aerendil.

"Spill it."

Sophia said, and then attacked Aerendil, who, of course, continued to disperse his imaginary illusions, or dark magic illusion to be more precise, in a chain of cacophonous bombardment.

_She's agitated!_

Aerendil was elated, finally, he have agitated the ever so confident and calm Sophia with his very simple scheme, he was so sure that she cannot understand something he have painstakingly created for decades just like that, he would not believe it no matter what, like Sophia, he decided to amuse his opponent by defending as best as he can.

However, unbeknown to him, as time went by and the endless chain of creative, nigh unpredictable attacks of Sophia continued without remorse, he started to become more irritable, he felt like he was using his [Unholy Rejection] repeatedly for nothing, as if he was being toyed around by his opponent even though in his mind, he is the one who have an advantage, he looked at Sophia who have a ferocious expression that started to pursue him whilst waving her hand as if a conductor of an orchestra vigorously.

Subconsciously, Aerendil fought such frustration, though he did not doubt it, thinking it was normal, after all, there were no illusions cast by the opponent who's supposed to be very good at it.

_I am in control... I am in control..._

Such were his words in his mind, not even wondering why the fight had suddenly become psychological with the side of the blade being tipped at his face.