The sound of something slicing through the air suddenly approached.

Uliya immediately shouted,

"Watch out!"

Boom!

A broken tree trunk came hurtling in from the side with terrifying force and slammed directly into the ground before them, cutting off their path.

Knox instantly became alert.

His hands formed seals as the shadow beneath his feet twisted violently.

A grotesque Cursed Spirit covered in black smoke crawled out from within it.

This was his Special Grade Cursed Spirit.

Graveflame.

Rustle rustle!

Movement echoed nearby.

"Over there!"

Uliya immediately turned toward the source of the noise.

Then, in the next instant, a horrifying sense of danger exploded through her body.

Her breathing stopped.

"Damn it!"

It was bait.

Whoosh!

Caelum moved with speed almost indistinguishable from teleportation as he appeared directly behind Uliya.

Violent Cursed Energy erupted around his fist while the overwhelming power of dual Heavenly Restrictions exploded outward.

Boom!

There was no time to react.

No time to defend.

Uliya took the full force of the unexpected punch directly to her back and flew away like a cannon shell, smashing through several walls before finally stopping.

Dark blood splattered across the night.

Taking advantage of that opening, Knox finally saw the attacker’s face clearly.

It was Caelum.

That supposedly weak glasses guy Zephyr and Sylas kept describing as terrible at hand to hand combat.

The moment their eyes met, Knox’s scalp went numb.

This wasn’t some weakling.

This was a human shaped monster.

There was no time to think.

Knox instinctively tried to activate a technique.

But in that split second, Caelum charged straight at him with unstoppable momentum.

With Knox’s frail physical condition, trying to keep up with Caelum’s combat rhythm was completely impossible.

For an instant, death felt inches away.

"ROAR!"

Only Graveflame could barely react to Caelum’s speed.

At the critical moment, it released a wave of black smoke toward him.

Caelum threw a punch.

The terrifying force combined with explosive Cursed Energy instantly blasted through the smoke.

His fist slammed directly into Knox.

Boom!

Blood exploded into the air.

Half of Knox’s body was blown apart into mist.

Midair.

Graveflame immediately rushed forward and caught him.

Knox’s already pale face became even whiter as unbearable pain crashed through his nerves like a tidal wave.

Grinding his teeth, he immediately activated a technique.

"Reverse Technique!"

In an instant.

Flesh and bone rapidly regenerated across his body.

The entire half of his body that Caelum had destroyed immediately restored itself perfectly without leaving even a trace of injury.

That was the power of Reverse Technique.

A Sorcerer’s Cursed Energy originated from negative emotions.

In other words, Cursed Energy was fundamentally negative energy.

It could only be used to activate techniques and could not heal the body.

Only by using Reverse Technique to invert negative energy into positive energy could it be used for healing.

As long as the brain remained intact, almost any bodily injury could be regenerated in an extremely short time.

An absurdly powerful ability.

Very few people in the entire sorcery world could use Reverse Technique.

No matter how strong someone was, if they couldn’t learn it, then they simply couldn’t learn it.

It had nothing to do with combat strength.

Knox himself did not know Reverse Technique.

Graveflame did.

He was merely borrowing Graveflame’s power and techniques.

And honestly, if Graveflame had not weakened Caelum’s attack with that smoke at the critical moment earlier, Caelum’s punch would have blown his entire body apart.

"What the hell..."

This guy was way too terrifying.

Knox’s heart pounded violently as lingering fear gripped him.

He really had almost been killed instantly just now.

Shing!

A blade left its sheath with a crisp metallic sound.

A sharp flash of steel sliced through a wall.

Blood still hanging at the corner of her mouth, Uliya endured the agony of her injuries and forced herself back into battle.

If she stopped now, they would simply be slaughtered.

Special Grade Cursed Tool: Soulcleaver.

With Heavenly Restriction combined with a Special Grade Cursed Tool, Uliya genuinely possessed the qualifications to fight Caelum.

That was assuming she was uninjured.

In her current state, things were much harder.

The razor sharp blade swept past Caelum’s face and cut away a strand of his hair.

Gritting her teeth, she glared at him.

"You really are a Heavenly Restriction user. My instincts were right."

Not just any Heavenly Restriction user either.

A completely absurd dual Heavenly Restriction user.

And finding out under circumstances like this was basically a nightmare.

Using the opening Uliya created, Knox rapidly formed seals.

Under the pressure of life and death, his hand signs had never moved this fast before.

Caelum glanced sideways.

Using the opportunity created while dodging Soulcleaver, he widened the distance and immediately drew the Grade One cursed blade Sylas had lent him.

Then he threw it directly at Knox.

"ROAR!"

Graveflame immediately tried to intercept it.

But before it could move, another figure suddenly entered the battlefield and casually caught the flying blade.

The newcomer landed steadily on the ground and greeted Caelum as though they were old acquaintances.

"Good evening. Looks like we meet again."

Mordren casually tossed the cursed blade aside.

He had no need for it.

More figures rapidly approached through the darkness.

One grotesque face after another emerged from the shadows as over a dozen Cursed Spirits of varying grades surrounded Caelum completely.

The battle escalated instantly.

Seeing this, Caelum understood everything.

He wasn’t surprised.

The moment he realized Knox and Uliya were responsible for destroying the academy barrier, he had already guessed most of the truth.

Mordren’s appearance only confirmed it further.

They had joined the Cursed Spirit faction.

Mordren looked at him.

"Compared to those two, I’m much more interested in you. I’ll give you one last chance. What do you think?"

Caelum had no interest in wasting words.

His silence was answer enough.

Mordren sighed.

"What a shame."

At that moment, an overwhelming surge of Cursed Energy spread outward.

The source was Knox.

His technique had finally completed.

In an instant, a black spherical space rapidly expanded outward from him.

Caelum.

Uliya.

Mordren.

Every surrounding Cursed Spirit.

All of them were swallowed whole.

This was the highest class of sorcery.

A Domain.

When a Sorcerer developed their core technique to the absolute limit, they could construct a Domain from their own heart and soul.

Cursed Spirits worked a little differently.

Some Special Grade Cursed Spirits could use Domains immediately from birth.

Whether Sorcerer or Cursed Spirit, anyone capable of deploying a Domain possessed combat power far beyond normal standards.

Not every Special Grade could use a Domain.

But anyone who could use one was unquestionably Special Grade.

The gap between Special Grade and everything below it was like a bottomless abyss.

Simply put, even peak Grade One Sorcerers would most likely be instantly killed against an ordinary Special Grade Cursed Spirit.

Inside their own Domain, both Sorcerers and Cursed Spirits gained massive boosts in power.

Most importantly, all attacks released within the Domain became guaranteed hits.

No matter how fast the opponent was, it would not matter.

Knox understood this clearly.

Caelum’s hand to hand combat abilities were far too monstrous.

Normal techniques simply could not hit him.

Deploying a Domain was the only option left.