Ian's plan was, of course, perfectly calculated. Neither the young Saruman nor the old Saruman knew any of that. All they saw was the overwhelming power of Ian's magic.
As Ian cast his spell, the ripple swept outward. Wherever it passed, it was as if time itself had been accelerated millions of times.
The hill-sized Shell Giant Beast never even had the chance to bring its enormous claw down.
Its thick shell instantly lost all color, cracking apart like stone weathered over countless ages before crumbling into dust. Its immense life force vanished along with it, leaving nothing behind.
The Shadow Wraiths' psychic shrieks ended abruptly.
Their bodies, made entirely of hatred and resentment, burst like soap bubbles beneath the sun. Without a sound, they disappeared completely, as though they had never existed.
The Flesh-Eye Monsters were still spewing torrents of acid through the air when their bodies suddenly shriveled. They withered, collapsed, and became nothing more than lifeless piles of ash.
Just one wave of his hand, one ripple of 'Wither', and dozens of the strongest monsters charging at the front were erased in an instant. Not even a trace remained. And that was only the beginning.
Ian Prince seemed mildly annoyed by the interruption.
He finally paused his analysis of the magic array and turned to face the endless tide of monsters flooding toward him. His expression remained perfectly calm, yet beneath that calm, a soul-freezing chill quietly spread.
This time, he didn't use another variation of Avada. Instead, he raised his right hand, spreading his fingers toward the densest part of the horde.
"Black Fire."
Black flames poured from his palm like liquid shadows. But they were nothing like the Black Fire Saruman knew; these flames seemed alive.
The instant they emerged, they split into countless writhing black serpents that wrapped themselves around every monster with uncanny precision.
There were no screams, no struggle. Any creature touched by the black flames, regardless of its size or form, was instantly ignited and simply ceased to exist, as if the very foundation of its reality had been stripped away.
The monsters dissolved into wisps of black smoke that were swallowed by the flames, causing the Black Fire to burn even more fiercely. Like a plague, it spread through the horde, dividing, multiplying, consuming. Wherever it passed, nothing remained.
But Ian wasn't finished. His left hand traced a few simple motions through the air as he spoke several short incantations.
"Spatial Severance."
"Soul Stripping."
"Concept Erasure."
Spell after spell emerged effortlessly from his hands, spells Saruman had never heard of, whose very principles lay beyond his understanding.
Space itself split apart like fragile glass, slicing entire groups of monsters into pieces before crushing them.
Invisible power reached directly into the soul, tearing apart shadow creatures and psychic entities at their roots.
And then came something even more terrifying: a force that seemed to deny the very concept of a creature's existence. As though an unseen eraser had wiped them from reality, they simply vanished.
This wasn't a battle. It had never been a battle. It was a one-sided massacre, an overwhelming purge carried out by a fifteen-year-old Legendary against the twisted spawn of R'lyeh.
Hidden behind the massive pillar, young Saruman and Kag stood frozen in shock.
Ian Prince looked insignificant amid the endless tide of monsters, yet the power he wielded was like an infinite sea of death, mercilessly swallowing every trace of madness that dared approach him.
Every spell was precise, efficient, and completely without wasted motion, as though killing itself had become second nature.
His cold, expressionless face stood in stark contrast to the hell unfolding around him, a contrast that only made the scene more horrifying.
"Oh... my God..." Kag's palm was soaked with sweat as he gripped the hilt of his sword. "How can a wizard be this powerful? He's no different from a god."
"Powerful wizards place even gods beneath their feet."
Saruman, however, had fallen into even deeper contemplation. He wasn't merely witnessing an overwhelming difference in power; he was witnessing an entirely different way of using magic.
Ian Prince's spells had moved beyond form itself, coming closer to directly commanding concepts like death, destruction, and erasure. To call it overwhelming was an understatement.
Within just a few short minutes, the monstrous horde pouring endlessly from the void, a force capable of swallowing an entire army, had been casually wiped out by Ian Prince.
Silence settled over the plaza once more. Nothing remained. No corpses, no ruins, only emptiness and the lingering aftereffects of terrifying magic hanging in the air.
This was what happened once Ian thoroughly understood those corrupted lifeforms. It was nothing like the difficult battles he had fought when he first entered these ruins.
As the saying went among wizards, anything that could be studied could eventually be conquered. Everything could be understood.
Ian Prince hadn't gotten so much as a speck of dirt on his robes. It was as if he had done nothing more significant than brush aside a few fallen leaves.
He calmly turned back toward the enormous magic array on the ground, leaving Saruman and Kag frozen in a chilling sense of awe. For the first time, they truly understood just how immeasurably deep the young Legendary's power ran.
The silence left behind by that overwhelming cleanup was more suffocating than any battlefield roar, the lingering traces of magic silently testifying to the terror of the one-sided slaughter.
Young Saruman and Kag remained frozen behind the fallen pillar like forgotten statues. Only after Ian devoted his full attention to the magic array again did the invisible pressure ease enough for Kag to recover his voice.
Even then, it came out dry and strained, the warrior completely shaken. He swallowed hard before speaking through their mental link, his tone carrying an almost absurd need for reassurance.
"Saruman... could you... stand against a wizard like that? Even... even for one move?"
The moment he asked, even Kag realized how ridiculous the question sounded, but he desperately needed a point of reference. He needed someone he already considered unimaginably powerful to tell him where reality actually stood.
Saruman's expression immediately became complicated. His already pale face flushed red for a moment before turning even paler than before, the corners of his mouth twitching uncontrollably.
Honestly, he had never imagined his friend thought so highly of him. His silver eyes were filled with shock, bitterness, self-mockery, and utter helplessness in the face of such overwhelming superiority.
Saruman let out a bitter laugh. Turning toward Kag, he looked at him as though he had just asked the most insane question imaginable, his voice strained through the mental link.
"Kag... are you joking? Take one of his attacks? Didn't you just see what he did? Those weren't spells. He was manipulating the rules themselves. That wasn't magic as we understand it, it was the direct manifestation of phenomena. The concepts of death and annihilation made real. I can't even begin to understand the principles behind those spells. In front of someone like him, my magic, my knowledge... they probably aren't even worth a second glance."
His voice held a level of honesty that bordered on despair. As one of the greatest prodigies of his era, Saruman had always been proud of his talent and scholarship, but everything that young man had displayed had shattered his pride completely.
This wasn't a gap that hard work could bridge. It was an abyss so deep that he couldn't even comprehend the form in which it existed.
"I see..." Kag fell silent.
Saruman's reaction explained everything more clearly than any words ever could.
The gap between themselves and that young man was even greater than he had imagined, not something courage could overcome, nor something intelligence could fully grasp. It was an absolute divide in the very nature of life and power.
"This is unbelievable..."
The two of them lapsed into a long, uncomfortable silence. There was nothing they could do except continue hiding.
Approach him?
That would be suicide.
Leave?
Even setting aside Lina's condition and the uncertainty of finding an escape route, the curiosity buried deep inside them, the desire to witness what a true Legendary was doing, kept them rooted where they were.
So they continued playing the role of ants, holding their breath, watching the young man study the magic array, and hoping that, somehow, they might glimpse even the smallest fragment of the mysteries behind his incomprehensible actions.
Ian Prince slowly circled the array. This time, his movements were no longer as casual as before.
Every few steps, he would stop, raise his right index finger, and begin carefully tracing something in the air. Ian's fingertip never actually touched the ground; instead, it glided slowly through the air just above the engraved lines of the formation.
As his finger moved, faint silver trails, so delicate that ordinary people could never see them, were left hanging in the air like dust made from starlight, resonating with the flow of energy within the array.
Then something astonishing happened. The formation's hidden energy nodes, the paths along which its power flowed, and the connections between them all appeared before his eyes in a clear, visual form.
"What?!" Saruman's eyes flew wide open.
'What kind of technique is this?!'
He had never encountered anything like it in any ancient magic text. This wasn't some advanced detection spell; it was as though Ian were reading the rules embedded within the magic array itself.
'So this is what a Legendary can do...'
Saruman barely dared to blink, afraid that if he looked away for even an instant, he would miss something irreplaceable.
Then Ian raised his left hand. With a casual gesture, several pale blue runes materialized out of thin air. They were astonishingly complex, composed of impossible geometric structures intertwined with abstract symbols.
Nor did they remain still; they slowly rotated and reshaped themselves like living keys searching for the correct lock, continuously matching themselves against the shifting energy vortices within the array.
"What... am I even looking at?" Saruman felt dizzy.
He couldn't understand the construction of those runes, nor the logic behind how they functioned. For the first time, he felt just as lost as Kag.
He could tell they contained an enormous amount of information and could sense the exquisite control over magic behind them, but beyond that, he understood absolutely nothing.
It felt like a child who had only just learned addition and subtraction suddenly being handed a page full of advanced calculus. Nothing but confusion.
Kag narrowed his eyes and shaded them with one hand as he peered into the distance. "So... what's the kid doing?"
"Heh..." Without even looking at him, Saruman slowly stroked his short beard. "If I knew, my eyes wouldn't be bulging out like this."
Kag whipped his head around, eyes wide. "You're a wizard too!"
"Simple." Saruman forced out a bitter smile and glanced sideways at him. "The gap between one wizard and another is even greater than the gap between you and me."
He deliberately paused after saying it. Kag's face stiffened. His mouth opened as if to argue, but in the end all he managed was a heavy snort. He clenched his fists, then slowly relaxed them, his shoulders slumping as he kicked a pebble at his feet.
"...That was a terrible thing to say."
After a moment of silence, however, he looked up again, a trace of unwilling hope still in his eyes as he leaned forward.
"Surely... you can figure out 'something', right? Even a little? You're Saruman."
Saruman finally turned to face him, his eyes as deep as an ancient well. Then he sighed.
"If I could understand what he's doing... I wouldn't be standing here talking to you."
Of course, he still had his pride, so he offered the only conclusion he could honestly make.
"He's analyzing the core structure of the formation... and the laws governing its operation," Saruman murmured to himself, his voice filled with helplessness. "But the Legendary is using a system of knowledge and techniques completely beyond my understanding. The level he's operating on is at least a thousand years beyond mine."
"A thousand years?" Kag blurted out. "I thought you said he might come from the ancient era. How is that possible?"
Saruman smiled bitterly.
"Those two ideas aren't contradictory."
His gaze never left Ian.
"Perhaps, before the ancient age we know of, there existed an even older, even more brilliant magical civilization, one that was completely erased from history. We already know such things are possible."
He paused, then spoke in a much less certain tone, as though he himself struggled to believe the words.
"Or perhaps... for true geniuses, an era has never been a limitation. They can absorb and surpass thousands of years of accumulated knowledge with ease... and even create a path that transcends their own age."
In that respect, Saruman wasn't wrong. History had produced countless brilliant prodigies, but people like him, extraordinary talents by ordinary standards, could never truly surpass the limits of their own era.
A genuine genius didn't merely stand above their contemporaries; they stood above history itself.
(End Of This Chapter)
You can read ahead up to 110 chapters on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/darkshadow6395