As the ice cracked and fell alongside flames that died down before they hit the ground, I was still floating in the middle of the air by holding gravity back with [Spatial Manipulation]. Everything was a little blurred for me, but I had a suspicion why that was.

  Ever since I was sucked out of that shadow place and spat back into the normal world, I’ve been feeling like I could just step away from normal space. I didn’t know how to better describe the feeling. It was like I had a ladder that I could climb up or down any time I wanted.

  When I was encased inside the block of ice, I climbed the ladder, and suddenly I was at the same place, but not exactly there. If I were to guess, I had shifted phases, basically became intangible.

  [Species: Fire Dragon]

  [Level: 15]

  ‘Huh, so I would be like him if I had chosen the fire dragon evolution,’ I thought. Looking at him, he was basically the same red dragon one would think when they thought about a ‘fire dragon’.

  My barrier had fully regenerated, so I stepped back from the ladder, and the world became defined again.

  I looked at the dragons. Pyro kept absorbing more fire from the lava spewing out of the volcano, while the others kept staring at me with determination.

  I tried to look for Lilith, but couldn’t see her. Imagining she would hear me if I simply called her, I started speaking.

  “Uhm, Lilith. Isn’t the fight done?” I asked out loud. I had already proven they couldn’t really damage me much, and taking a look at my own magicules, I took a look at my MP and saw it had gone down by two thousand units, and I knew for a fact most of that came from the slowdown of time and the intangibility I just did.

  Lilith descended from somewhere higher, her wings barely flapping.

  “Does any want to conclude the fight?” She looked each dragon in their eyes, but none showed any reaction other than lightly shaking their heads, then she turned to me. “By tradition, the fight only lasts until either side forfeits or is unable to continue fighting, be it by dying or just physically unable to.”

  I thought about giving up the fight right then and there, but I just sighed instead and nodded my head. “I understand.”

  Lilith flew higher and disappeared. As I turned my attention back to the other dragons, everyone but Pyro had vanished.

  “Of course,” I said.

  Suddenly, a large amount of spatial energy surged behind me. I quickly turned and saw Korin launching a breath attack at me. It was so much for me to casually dismiss. I had to reinforce my barrier and charge it with my own spatial energy.

  As it hit me, both energies started to clash, one trying to tear me apart and the other trying to distort it around me. The other layers kept me safe, but the same couldn’t be said about the surrounding space.

  As the energies clashed, it sent wave after wave of gravimetric distortions. Some of the stronger ones reached the ground, breaking apart the boulders into fine dust.

  Borris suddenly appeared a dozen meters away from me, but it wasn’t for an attack. Some of the waves had hit him instead, and he was falling to the ground with one wing broken.

  I quickly calculated the necessary coordinates and teleported myself. I fully expected to receive damage from the distorted space, but I simply slipped past it and reappeared on top of Korin. A perk about having evolved, it seemed.

  Before Korin could react, I touched her and, with a whole bunch of temporal energy, alongside a bubble of solid space, I pushed her forward in time.

  From the outside perspective, I just touched her, and she vanished. It was something that came to me after pulling so many versions of my past self and releasing them. If my calculations were correct, I had just sent her a few minutes into the future.

  Of course, time was still very much raw inside the palace; that was why the bubble of solid space around her.

  Another quick teleport upwards, and I evaded another fireball aimed at me. I looked towards Pyro, who was pulling even more fire from the lava. I could see it was starting to turn back into a solid from how much heat Pyro was extracting from it.

  I could just let him do as he pleases; I already had a thought process keeping tabs on him, so I wouldn’t get caught unaware again, but I decided against it.

  After I had sent Korin into the future, the illusion keeping Fae hidden dropped. She was on the ground with a massive magical circle being created around her. From what I could understand, it was meant to create a massive blizzard.

  I still had time before she could complete it, so I ignored it for now, keeping a thought process on it as I concentrated on other things first.

  Teleporting right in front of Pyro, I cast several ice beams into the volcano. The spell turned the lava into a black glass that I think was called obsidian, if I was right. The flames being extracted from the lava were cut as the heat vanished.

  Pyro seemed surprised at me cutting his power source and tried to hit me with his claws that suddenly glowed red.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Another quick cast, and Pyro was sent spinning out of control backwards. I had to teleport and grab him by his tail to stop him from hitting his head into the caldera walls.

  He used to opportunity to hit me in the face with his own breath attack. I wasn’t sure how he managed to do it so quickly, as even I had to gather magicules in the base of my throat for a few moments before releasing.

  Blue fire wrapped around me. My barriers took the brunt of it, but even so, I felt the extreme heat. My barriers were starting to literally melt away, magicules acting like a liquid and breaking off.

  I threw him into the obsidian. He hit it like a hammer, cracking the volcanic glass, but even then, he didn’t stop spewing out fire. The distance weakened the flames enough that my barrier was regenerating, but he didn’t show any sign of stopping, and I could sense Fae was close to finishing her spell.

  I teleported in front of him, grabbed his muzzle with both my hands, and forced it closed. His eyes widened as I did so, and a moment later, something exploded, and the mark on top of his head cracked.

  A moment later, he vanished into thin air, and Lilith’s voice echoed from above.

  “Pyro is out of the fight,” she stated.

  Acknowledging it with a small portion of my mind, I teleported in front of Fae, who had finished writing the runes necessary for the spell and was charging it with her magicules.

  From my time reading about runes during the loop, I knew enough about them that with a few cuts into some runes and lines connecting them with my claws, I had basically turned the spell she was trying to cast into a bomb.

  I don’t think she understood what I did, because she kept channeling more and more magicules into the spell until it started to audibly hum, which wasn’t supposed to happen.

  Fae furrowed her brow until she noticed the magicules weren’t flowing correctly but coalescing in specific parts of the spell. She tried to dispel it, but it was too late. I teleported away just as it detonated.

  “Faw is out of the fight,” Lilith’s voice echoed as the dust settled and a crater was where Fae had stood a few moments later.

  A boulder exploding on my right revealed Borris with his dark scales rushing directly at me, roaring as he did so.

  I simply inverted gravity, and he once again was sent flying. His scales changed to silver, and only one of his wings started glowing white, as the other was still broken.

  Before he could attack me, darkness surrounded me, cutting off my vision and [Magicule Detection].

  I felt the impacts hitting my barrier before the spatial energy on the first layer distorted the trajectory, and it hit the ground around me.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t know for sure where the attacks were coming from, but I doubted Borris had bothered to move from the area without gravity I had created.

  Casting a few fireballs, I sent them in the general direction I calculated Borris to be in. While I did that, I felt something else hitting my barrier, but I couldn’t know what it was.

  I teleported upwards, trying to shake off the darkness, but it still clings to me, still blocking my vision and magical senses.

  Hits on my barrier told me I probably missed Borris, or he had just shrugged my spells off. He seemed to be more of a tank.

  I tried just blasting raw magicules around me, trying to break off the darkness with little to no effect. All the while, my barrier kept receiving attacks, but I kept regenerating it faster than it was taking damage.

  Eventually, I tired of this and decided to change tactics. If I couldn’t attack them individually, all I needed to do was hit the entire area with an attack.

  Thankfully, [Magical Programming Language] worked directly in my mind, meaning I could see what I was doing. I pulled the napalm spell I had created back on the first-ever dungeon I had delved and adjusted a few lines of code.

  Using [Mathematical Cortex] to its limits, I cast the spell as fast as I could, as many times as I could.

  Fireballs would be raining around me in all directions, and when they hit a surface, they would explode and spread the sticky fire everywhere.

  I head Borris roaring, and the amount of hits my barriers blocked increased.

  I couldn’t know what was happening around me, but I could feel the heat slowly rising. Another thing I could feel was the air itself becoming thinner and thinner as the hot air rose. There was also a strange smell with it.

  Suddenly, everything came back, and I had to close my eyes from the sudden brightness. Looking around, the entire stony place was covered in fire, with the rocks themselves releasing some sort of smoke as the fire burned hot.

  “Borris and Illo are out of the fight,” Lilith’s voice echoed.

  I cut the supply of magicules, and the fire slowly started to die out. The smoke rose towards where I was, and I was having difficulty breathing. A quick wind spell dispelled the toxic fumes around me.

  I landed and looked around. Pyro, Borris, Illo, and Fae were out of the fight, meaning the only one remaining was Korin, but I didn’t think she had arrived ye–

  A pulse of temporal energy appeared out of nowhere, followed by Lilith’s voice.

  “Korin is out of the fight,” she said. “The winner of the challenge is Denaru.”

  I didn’t have a moment to breathe before I was back where everything started, with Lilith and the other dragons around me.

  Borris seemed grumpy. Illo and Fae looked like they were replaying the fight in their minds. Pyro looked both sad and determined as he stared at me. Korin was the only one who didn’t react in any way other than stare at me with her eyes wide open.

  “So, as the winner, Denaru is keeping the title of leader,” Lilith stated. “I hope this short fight was enlightening as to why the decision was made in the first place.”

  Illo, Fae, and Pyro nodded, while Borris just grumbled something, and Korin kept staring at me, no, it was not at me; she was staring straight ahead.

  Fae seemed to notice it and touched her. Korin all but jumped in place. She looked at Fae and whispered barely audibly enough for me to hear.

  “I almost died,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “If it weren’t for the mark, I would be minced meat right now.”

  Ouch. I felt bad for her. I knew how bad time was to be manipulated, but I still sent her forward in time. I tried to protect her by using the solidified space, but it seemed like it didn’t work, or it was just that bad.

  “Now,” Lilith said, drawing attention back at herself and ignoring the fact that Korin clearly seemed traumatised. “Let’s pick some of the material you’ll need. After that, you all will be visiting the final ceremony of a festival the natives of the Cradle call ‘The Dragon Festival’.”

  Lilith then started walking without waiting for us. We all walked behind her, not wanting to be left behind. Fae managed to drag Korin with her. I felt bad for her, but I didn’t know how to approach the subject.

  I decided to talk with her later. I kept giving glances towards her as we walked towards an unknown, to me, part of the palace.