As his long, slender arm sliced through the air, a claw-shaped smoky wave charged out, heading towards Noah at rapid speed.

The wave ripped across the tiles, threatening to tear through Noah’s flesh.

However, Noah only scoffed at it, not bothering to move away.

He extended his right arm, the brilliant golden-yellow Mana Glove pulsing with a sudden, terminal frequency that completely reset the localized atmospheric pressure of the room.

The moment the jagged claw blades of corrupted shadow smoke collided with the outer boundary of his extended palm, the attack immediately froze, its aggressive momentum instantly paralyzed in mid-air as if it had slammed into an unyielding wall, before disintegrating into thin air without leaving behind a single trace.

The demon’s eyes widened, his dull white, pupilless spheres expanding to near-comical proportions as his mouth dropped open in an expression of pure, unmitigated shock.

The total, effortless neutralization of his signature strike struck at the very core of his confidence, forcing him to realize that the entity standing before him wasn’t just blocking his magic—he was systematically deleting it from the universe.

Suddenly, he felt a tingling sensation around his body.

He quickly lunged back, utilizing the full, speed of his seven-foot frame to propel his weight away from the threshold of the confrontation.

Just as he did, a huge spike of ice shot out of the ground where he previously stood.

The massive crystalline projectile erupted from the solid floorboards with a violent, shattering roar, its jagged, multi-layered apex reaching all the way to the ceiling with a force that would have effortlessly impaled the demon through the torso had his reaction time been delayed by even a fraction of a second.

The ice was a deep, glacial blue, radiating a freezing, high-density aura that instantly crystallized the floor around its base.

’When the hell did he cast that?!’ the demon thought to himself, terrified by the suddenly appearance of the spike.

His milky, pupil-free eyes darted frantically across Noah’s silhouette, searching for the telltale signs of a high-tier spell deployment—the somatic hand gestures, the verbal incantations, or the sudden, rhythmic flaring of an elemental magic circle that traditionally accompanied a spell of that caliber.

But Noah’s arms had already returned to their folded position beneath his cloak, his physical form remaining as still and unbothered as a stone monument.

The casting had been entirely instantaneous, executed through the silent, silent commands of his advanced system attributes, completely bypassing the natural casting laws that governed the contemporary era.

The next thing he saw was a cold smirk from Noah, the subtle, mocking curve of his lips barely visible through the sharp mouth slit of his matte-black cat mask.

Before he could react or adjust his footing to initiate another attack, a lightning chain came from behind, wrapping around his legs with the speed of a striking viper.

The projectile didn’t originate from Noah’s extended hands; instead, it had materialized silently within the dark, vertical conduit he had previously blasted into the ceiling, dropping down from the shadows like a heavy, divine anchor designed explicitly to paralyze his mobility.

The construction of the magical restraint was terrifyingly intricate.

The chain was filled with different jagged spikes, all which easily broke through his scales, digging directly into his skin with a sickening, grinding friction.

The dull black armor that covered his shins offered absolutely no resistance against the high-frequency vibration of the arch magus’s purple affinity.

The jagged metallic teeth of the links tore through the protective layers like wet parchment, embedding themselves deep into the underlying muscle tissue and anchoring his tall, slender frame to the floor.

Blackish-red blood spurted out from the ruptured flesh, the thick, foul fluid bubbling violently as it came into contact with the burning energy of the restraints.

The demon shouted in pain, a high, panicked scream of pure agony tearing from his throat as he felt the lightning course through his flesh.

The current didn’t just sizzle on the surface; it surged upward through his nervous system, systematically frying his internal mana channels, disrupting his connection to the pocket dimension’s anchors, and sending wave after wave of paralyzing, high-voltage shockwaves straight through his core.

He could feel that his blood was quickly drying out, the immense heat generated by the jagged spikes rapidly vaporizing his bodily fluids and cauterizing his internal tissues from the inside out.

His porcelain skin began to crack and blacken around the borders of the chain, and he knew that he couldn’t allow the chains remain in him for too long or he would die.

If the lightning managed to reach his heart his body would collapse into a pile of charred ash, and he would end up dead.

Driven by the ultimate instinct of self-preservation, he tapped into the deepest, most volatile reserves of his c energy.

Shadow rose up from the ground, covering his legs in a desperate, hyper-dense shroud of living ink.

The pitch-black fog bubbled out from the seams of the stone tiles directly beneath his feet, coiling around the burning links of the chain like a thick, defensive paste.

Thanks to the hard covering of the shadow, the lightning spikes didn’t dig into his skin as much, and the pain became far less.

The hyper-dense shroud of living ink that rose from the cracks in the masonry rapidly solidified around his shins, forming a thick, onyx-like shell that acted as a conceptual buffer between the jagged spikes of the chain and his ruptured muscle tissue.

The sizzling currents continued to hiss and snap with an unrelenting, high-voltage fury, but they were now forced to exhaust their destructive energy against the replenishing layers of the shadow.

He then opened his mouth, his porcelain-white jaw stretching downward with that sickening, elastic fluidity that bared his razor-sharp fangs, and a powerful stream of dark smoke shot out.

It was a highly pressurized, concentrated jet of raw, corrupted energy pulled straight from the deepest reservoirs of his core.

The black smoke roared into the open space of the vault with a deafening, vacuum-like howl, its sheer volume instantly blotting out the remaining fragments of Noah’s golden illumination.

The moment the dark stream cleared the threshold of his pale lips, the amorphous fog underwent a rapid, surgical transformation under his mental command.

They quickly formed into an army of shadow blades, each one heading towards Noah at rapid speed.

Thousands of tiny, razor-sharp daggers forged from solidified shadow materialized within the swirling cloud, their jagged edges glistening with an oily, malevolent sheen.

The blades ripped across the room, their collective velocity kicking up a violent storm of splintered human bones, skulls, and dried blood from the floor tiles, transforming the air into a chaotic matrix of pure destruction.

’No matter how strong you are, you can’t dodge all of this at this range!’ he thought, feeling like he would at least turn the situation around a bit with this attack.

The absolute geometry of the attack left no room for conventional evasion.

They were standing less than ten meters apart inside a sealed room, and the sprawling army of shadow blades completely saturated the physical atmosphere.

Even if an arch magus possessed the processing power to execute consecutive attacks, the sheer volume of the blades ensured that every potential destination within the chamber was already pre-targeted.

Furthermore, the demon had no intention of relying on a simple, predictable frontal assault.

As the blades were about to hit Noah, about half of them suddenly vanished.

A split second later, they reappeared from the ground behind him before shooting at him with an accelerated, deadly momentum.