Descending Into A Novel

Baron Mane turned, seeing the two identical clones and unable to make out a difference as well.

He smiled, making his face look unsettling with how unnatural it was.

"Seems like you’ve found a good one this time."

Was it the demon who influenced the contractor? Or the contractor who influenced the demon? Or maybe they were both just fighting freaks.

Either way, seeing Raymond’s clones was enough to give him a rough idea of his strength.

Setting aside the fact that he could inspect the clone. With how perfect of a clone it was, the mage that casted it was obviously someone extremely proficient in magic.

The demon licked his lips, revealing his freakishly long tongue.

"Well then my contractor. How do you want me to deal with this?"

"I’ll target one while you target the other."

The whole time, Raymond had been constantly bombarding the two with different spells. Freeze rays, frost blasts, spears of ice. Each spell was being swiftly blocked or merely deflected away however.

Raymond stopped, checking his mana reserves.

The best part about the time clones was that other then the mana used to summon them. They were completely self-sufficient.

They were clones of Raymond after all, so they naturally had the same capabilities as him. Minus the fact he needed to control practically every single minute movement which really ate I to his mental power.

The problem was that casting the spell in the first place required an extreme amount of mana. Raymond normally didn’t mind since he had the mana reserves, and his ability as a perfect human let him absorb mana whenever. But the problem was Terra!

The mana was too little to let him recover fast enough in any fight. Matter of fact, after any fight. He had to sit around and do nothing for hours on end just to regain his mana.

So in any fight, he had to constantly reserve his own mana. It was really damn annoying.

So what if he was strong for his level? He kept facing off against enemies that were higher then his level as well!

Raymond grit his teeth, seeing the man and demon split up. With the demon choosing to attack the real him and the man attack the clone.

At least this was better, he didn’t have to dedicate as much mental capacity to control his clone.

Another good thing was that the Black Battleground also weakened the demon until they were all the same level. So technically, they were all equal in terms of strength according to the standards of the battleground.

Of course, it was still a disadvantage for Raymond who was fighting a two on one battle.

Controlling his clone to follow his movements, the two casted another storm of icicles.

Teleporting was also hard to do in this battleground, burning through more of his mana then expected at the earlier teleport. Likely to prevent whoever was trapped inside from escaping.

He frowned, seeing the rapidly approaching demon. Wielding a similar sword to the one who he contracted.

Dodging to the side, he winced as he felt the sharp potrusions on the sword scrape against the barrier he had.

Some demonic energy lingered on the barrier, hungrily eating away at it before it was purged by Raymond.

At the same time, his clone blasted away the man with a frost blast. His own barrier sustaining the same hit.

Aiming to blast away the demon, Baron Mane proceeded to simply cut through the blast before jumping towards him again.

Sending several frost spears, the two of them continued this game of cat and mouse for a while longer.

Each time one got close to Raymond or the clone, he would cast a spell before dashing away again.

At some point he had dismissed his barrier spell, relying entirely on his skills to dodge each attack.

Narrowly dodging another arc of demonic energy, he clenched his fists. Decisively deciding to cancel his Cloak of Ice. It was eating into his mana too much, and the amplification it provided for ice spells wasn’t doing much right now.

Looking over his own mana reserves, he sighed.

Only about a fifth of his time-attuned mana was left. While he still had about nine-tenths of his dimension-attuned mana.

Just the one teleport spell casted him a tenth of his mana despite the fact that it was heavily amplified. This entire battleground was heavily limiting his most powerful offensive options.

Seeing his cloak disappear, the two intensified their attacks on him. His low mana was a good thing for them after all!

’Thought acceleration.’

Casting a buffing spell to increase the speed of his thinking. The movements of his real body and clone immediately became much more smoother. If it was moving in 30 frames a second before, it had become 60 frames a second now.

With the extra thinking power, he immediately thought of a plan to defeat these two.

’Flash Freeze!’

Rather then running away from Baron Mane again, he abruptly dashed towards him. Catching the demon off guard and letting Raymond land a clean spell. Ice forming on every part of his body and causing wounds that would kill a regular human.

Coughing out crystals of blood, Baron Mane grinned—letting out a roar and shattering the ice on his body.

"Good! Good! Show me more Raymond Vance!"

Still wary of his flash freeze spell, the clone managed to land a clean freeze ray as well with a fake out flash freeze.

Despite neither managing to land a single hit on Raymond yet, their confidence was unbelievable. Still grinning and smiling, knowing that as long as he ran out of mana they would win.

Well they weren’t wrong.

Raymond suddenly felt his entire body stiffen, his body screaming at him that there was an invader.

’This...’

Mobilizing the mana in his cores. He immediately ran them through his entire body, finding a small clump of demonic energy that had been hidden in his body. Acting as a parasite on his mana.

Both Baron Mane and the man turned. Their entirely black pupils locking onto him.

"Found you."

Seeing their look. Raymond already realized what happened.

’Dammit. When did I get marked?’

Purging the tumor of demonic energy, his still stiffened body made it hard for him to move. Letting Baron Mane land a strike on his barrier that he hastily set up.

Crash!

The barrier immediately shattered upon contact, the sword passing through and nicking Raymond on the arm.

With the man rapidly on his way as well. The clone tried its best to help, creating walls of ice in order to block and delay his arrival.

With each wall however, the man merely smashed his through it. Chunks of ice flying everywhere as he ran through wall after wall sword first.

Reaching Raymond, the two raised their swords high, executing a furry of consecutive slashes.

Blood red demonic energy flooded the area as their swords aimed at him. Each of the fang like potrusions emanating killing intent of someone who had already killed many.

They both knew, for a student still in the academy. Experiencing such killing intent was usually enough to scare them into being paralyzed from fear!

Yet faced with their killing intent and sharp swords. Raymond merely laughed, the wound on his arm still leaking blood.

"You’ve already lost."

The Raymond in front of them abruptly exploded, dissipating into mana and revealing it was a clone all along.

The moment the real Raymond had been marked and revealed, he had immediately mobilized his dimension-attuned mana to swap him and the clone—using more magic to hide the effects of his teleportation.

So both of them were still aiming for the clone. While the real Raymond was the one they believed to be the clone!

Seeing the clone dissipate, both of them immediately realized they had been played.

Turning to the real Raymond, it was finally his turn as he grinned at them. His staff brimming with a magic spell he had been charging for the past few minutes.

"Dimensional Fracture."

Both of them immediately raised their swords in a defensive posture. Demonic energy surging as it covered them in a dome.

Blasting out of his staff, might as well have been death to them.

Dark purple fissures travelled through the air ,leaving cracks behind. Every rock, brick and ice chunk that was in its way being split apart into pieces as it met the fissures.

Despite the fissures being small compared to what he could cast in his prime, his dimension magic were his most deadly spells in his arsenal for a reason.

There simply wasn’t a good counter to them.

The best option was to make it run out of energy by putting items in its way, or just evading it entirely. But it was extremely fast, which made it hard to evade.

It could also destroy through many things already despite the fact this version he casted was only a 1st circle spell.

The sheer aura and mana had managed to make these two feel fear for their life! For maniacs who had dedicated their lives to battle, this was already a worthy feat.

Raymond didn’t need to look to see the outcome of the spell meeting their defense.

It was an unstoppable force against a movable object.

The purple fissures clashed against the dome of demonic energy, the dome barely lasting a second before it was split into half and shattered into pieces.

Their armour and swords did nothing to stop the fissures either, the moment it touched them. They both released screams of pain as their bodies were ripped apart vertically from the inside and outside.

Brain Mane might be able to survive due to a demon’s extreme survival capabilities, but his contractor definitely wouldn’t!

And since they were connected via the contract, while the death of one wouldn’t kill the other out right. They would be seriously injured t, practically crippled.

Raymond walked over to the corpse of the man, seeing a still barely alive Baron Mane.

Despite being split in half, he could see his two halves trying to reconnect to each other. Flesh reaching out and blood pouring.

"You shouldn’t have tried to block it."

"Heh..."

Even with his death rapidly closing in, he didn’t complain. Staring at Raymond with a fire in his eyes.

"Good...fight."

Kkurghh

Raymond stomped down hard on his throat, killing him instantly and causing blood to spurt out of his mouth like a spout.

Demons may have been evil, but this one didn’t deserve to suffer.

Well, were demons really evil by nature?

Raymond didn’t believe so, it was just a consequence of their environment and the nature of demonic energy.

So he didn’t hate most demons. If anything he pitied them.

Seeing the Black Battleground slowly crumple away, revealing the overhead sun. Raymond let out a small breath.

He was already used to killing others, he didn’t like doing it but he was used to.

Which was why he hoped the others were fine. This was an event that was supposed to occur later, but had been brought forward because of him and Ellen.

Killing a human never got easy.