Chapter 145: Which One Is Real [bonus]
This was bad. The darkness targeted him alone. For Orion, this was home turf.
Orion could see him, sense him, move freely through the black, and cast from any angle he pleased. Regulus was blind, reduced to taking hits he couldn't predict.
His mind raced.
The Shadowstep Charm worked by melding with shadow. This darkness was Orion's creation, one massive, weaponized shadow blanketing the entire room.
Two ways to break it: overpower it with stronger light, or find the caster's real body and interrupt the spell.
His light wasn't strong enough. The Starlight Kite's silver glow had only cleared two meters before the dark crushed it back. A stronger source... maybe some spark charm amplified with the supernova visualization, but building that mental image took time. Time Orion would never give him in here.
That left finding the body.
He kept moving, adjusting the frequency of his magical perception as he went, probing for gaps in the darkness's interference. Spatial awareness cranked to maximum. The Shadowstep Charm merged with shadow and used it for short-range teleportation. It wasn't true spatial displacement, but in theory, it should leave residual spatial fluctuations behind.
How long he searched, he couldn't say. Time warped in the dark. One minute. Five. Then a faint anomaly registered.