Chapter 221: The Dragon (5)
Ignasia watched, her keen senses picking up the tension in the air. Ketal was pouring every ounce of strength into breaking free from the bonds that held him.
You can’t break free, she thought. She had transformed the very space around them into conceptual chains, binding Ketal with the idea of shackles themselves. No matter how overwhelming his strength, this was something force alone could not break.
Maybe I should just let him go now...? she mused. She had no true reason to be Ketal’s enemy. Their fight had only ever been a playful contest, a test, not a battle to the death.
She was about to explain this to Ketal when a strange sensation rippled through her. Her expression changed. The ground beneath her feet was trembling. At first, she wondered if it was an aftershock from their earlier blows, but as she stretched her senses out, her eyes widened in realization.
“What...?” she muttered.
She saw clearly that the space around Ketal was shaking. The chains of space that bound his body were trembling, as if something titanic was straining against them.
Is he...using Myst? she wondered, startled. Can this barbarian really manipulate the laws of the world itself, engaging me at the level of true conceptual magic?
However, a closer look told her that wasn’t it. Ketal wasn’t drawing on Myst. He was simply exerting his strength—utterly, brutally, with the entirety of his being. That was all. Yet somehow, that was enough to make the very fabric of space quiver and creak.
How?
Panic flickered in her eyes. By all logic, brute force could never interfere with the concept of space itself. This was something that even the strongest beings in the world couldn’t do unless they wielded powers on par with gods.
Unless you can affect the foundation of the world, you can’t break this kind of chain..., she thought.
Yet, before her eyes, the conceptual shackles binding Ketal were rattling. It was as if the universe itself recognized that Ketal was not something it could restrain. As she frantically tried to analyze what was happening, she noticed something else, a subtle tilt, a shift in gravity.