Suddenly, a shockwave blasted Rita backward.
The magician had more than one trick up his sleeve. He activated a second one to finally get rid of the Black Viper—
But this time, Reno stepped in.
And against all expectations, the shockwave collided with an unmoving wall of muscle.
Reno advanced slowly, walking forward while resisting the waves the magician kept sending at him.
Orubos showed a nervous smile.
"This is nonsense. Absolute nonsense."
He interrupted his strange spell and extended his hand again but to his great surprise, the moment it emerged, it was instantly severed.
"Huh?"
Rita had hidden behind her husband like a shadow, waiting for the exact moment he stopped that damned spell.
Her plan had worked.
Now the magician no longer had a right hand.
Black blood covered in bubbles spilled from his severed arm.
Reno quickly extended Man-Eater and, with one rapid yet devastating motion, slashed through the place where the magician stood.
Orubos was cut clean in half at the waist.
The upper half of his body floated in the air, his expression visibly confused. The building behind him was sliced apart just the same.
He took a moment to observe the scenery while floating upside down in the air, half his body drifting the opposite direction while the black bubbles quietly activated, popping like bullets.
Reno held Man-Eater firmly, his battle madness seemed to have faded.
Rita was still in her state of extreme concentration—a kind of flow where she maximized every one of her abilities. She didn't truly know whether they had won, but her condition was beginning to stabilize.
As for Orubos, he didn't really understand what was happening to him.
But while still floating in the air, Reno and Rita saw his mocking smile appear once more.
"I see… You think you've won, huh?"
Reno tightened his grip on his sword while Rita instantly focused again.
Orubos, meanwhile, casually spun himself around in the air, and the moment his upper body straightened, black bubbles began appearing again.
They repeated the same process as during his arrival, and soon the magician once again possessed black liquid legs and a fully restored arm.
He scratched his head while waiting for his magic to recreate his clothes.
"I always hated Aerothene. We'll settle things soon enough. Sending two damn hounds like you after me pisses me off beyond belief."
Neither Reno nor Rita understood a single word, but they wasted no time.
In the blink of an eye, Rita attacked again, followed closely by Reno.
However, this time, the magician seemed genuinely angry.
So angry that once again, space itself began trembling.
An instinctive fear slowed them down—but did not stop them. Soon, Rita's daggers struck the invisible wall protecting him once more.
But this time, it was different.
The moment Rita's weapons touched the barrier, she was blasted backward with overwhelming force.
It wasn't the same force as before. Everything seemed amplified.
Reno, slightly behind her, caught her fall and gently placed her back on the ground.
Then he advanced toward Orubos, believing he could cut him down once again but the exact same thing happened. Even though he didn't get thrown back twenty meters, Reno was destabilized, his guard broken by an invisible force.
"Reno!"
Rita shouted, but it was already too late. The magician pronounced his next spell.
"Creos."
In less than a second, several massive black stakes erupted from the ground and launched violently in every direction.
One struck Reno directly in the abdomen.
Rita panicked, believing her husband had been pierced. She screamed again.
"Reno!!"
However, Orubos did not see that.
"You…"
However, the stake was not able to pierce Reno's skin, who was smiling nervously.
"Haha… Looks like I'm as invincible as you."
But then another spell was hastily cast. Reno was instantly frozen. His entire body became trapped inside ice so cold it was nearly zero, appearing from nowhere.
The stake launched it like a cannonball, leaving the Ogre completely immobilized.
Orubos shrugged.
"You're lucky. Usually it's absolute zero. Right now, it should only be around one hundred degrees above it."
Orubos calmly advanced toward Rita.
He had immobilized the Ogre for one simple reason: To him, Rita was far less dangerous alone.
Now he could take advantage of it and kill her.
"Sorry. I have nothing against you, but it's easier to obtain aura when I kill."
Rita didn't understand.
Since the beginning, the magician never seemed to speak her language properly. Certain words vanished the very instant he pronounced them, as though some voluntary—or involuntary—censorship prevented her from understanding their true meaning.
Rita panicked. But she quickly refocused. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then opened them again.
Rita could enter that state whenever she wanted. A state where her body moved instinctively according to everything she had learned and experienced. A state of extreme concentration where the best of the warrior emerged naturally.
A killing machine…
However, Orubos did not seem surprised.
"I already know that state. I—"
He didn't even have time to finish his sentence before Rita was already upon him, dagger aimed straight at his throat.
Fortunately for him, the invisible shield protected him once again and hurled Rita backward.
He smiled.
"I told you… it won't work."
Suddenly, a thin but sturdy wire wrapped around him, and soon it pulled tight.
Orubos cursed—but it was already too late.
Before he could activate another spell, Rita yanked the wire and dragged him away once again.
He slammed violently into another building, collapsing it on impact.
"Shit!"
Rita wasn't finished.
She flung him around like garbage across several meters before smashing him into the ground.
Orubos cursed again.
Rita pulled the wire a third time ut this time, the magician had enough time to teleport and landed arrogantly on top of the assassin's head.
"It's useless."
But in a flash, Rita grabbed his foot and slammed the magician into the ground.
Orubos cursed again and teleported farther away to escape the Viper's range. That was without considering the fact that the moment he teleported, Rita was already there.
The wire wrapped itself around his entire body once again, but this time the entanglement seemed messy.
But it wasn't…
Orubos didn't even have time to breathe. Rita's wires twisted strangely around his body, and the moment she pulled them, Orubos' entire body bent violently in every direction.
His left arm twisted in front of his right leg. His right arm folded behind his back. His left leg bent dangerously the wrong way. And his head was cleanly severed.
Orubos looked like a headless contortionist. But judging by the expression still frozen on his face, he was absolutely not doing well.
At that moment, he realized immobilizing Reno had been a mistake. He should have immobilized the Viper.
She was the truly dangerous one.
Rita pulled a second time, and his entire body shattered apart from every angle. Black blood spilled once again from the wounds while the separated body parts calmly fell to the ground.
Everything seemed over a second time. Humanly speaking, continuing was impossible. They had defeated him twice. The terrible entity who performed not miracles, but atrocities in the name of magic. The other world he came from did not seem capable of defeating the ultimate duo of this world.
But Orubos refused to leave…
The black bubbles rapidly reformed, moving so fast that in less than a second he already had another body taking shape.
However, the moment something resembling a face and a single eye appeared, he saw a massive block of concrete hurtling toward him at terrifying speed.
The block slammed violently into him and launched him straight into another building.
The black liquid exploded once again from the impact.
Black bubbles emerged from the cracks within the concrete block and began reforming in the open air.
Orubos regenerated through his monstrous healing ability.
The moment he regained a head, his first thought was to kill that bitch who had proven far too dangerous.
But the instant he thought that a serpent-like wire was already wrapped around his head, tightening violently. Rita stood directly above him.
The wires had once again wrapped around his skull.
"Fuck!!"
A fraction of a second later, he was headless once more.
Rita stepped back to observe the body reforming through those horrifying black bubbles that simply refused to stop moving.
She charged toward the shapeless black liquid mass once again but this time, the bubbles behaved strangely.
They attacked the wires and dissolved them. The threads melted the instant they touched the bubbles.
Rita displayed a cold, robotic expression of surprise while Orubos smiled with his white teeth beneath the black viscous liquid.
"See? I told you tha—"
But suddenly, an immense shadow covered him once again.
The magician knew that shadow. He had already seen it that day. It had already blocked his vision with enormous muscles and a gigantic sword. This wasn't the first time that monster had stood in his way.
And honestly, he was getting sick of it. No matter how much of an entity he was supposed to be, he was the one being cornered…
Reno Gazor was there. The Ogre had returned…
It was then that Orubos finally turned pale. For a very understandable reason: he no longer knew whether his magical barrier could block this strike—nor whether the black bubbles would even be able to rebuild him afterward.
Reno brought his sword down with savage fury.
The blade split Orubos clean in two and shattered the magical shield effortlessly. Black liquid burst in every direction.
Rita's group of men stared in shock as the slash carved a massive straight trench across the ground, stretching nearly fifty meters ahead. Everything caught in its path had simply been erased.
The blow was monstrous. The entire city trembled beneath it. Buildings collapsed once again, and only the throne staircase and the surrounding stonework remained standing within the devastated zone. Even the warriors still fighting throughout the capital felt a chill crawl down their spines. Of every terrifying strike exchanged during the battle, this one carried the greatest killing intent.
Reno stared at the place where the magician should have died. A gaping void remained.
Part of him was almost proud—it was the most powerful strike he had ever unleashed. And yet, he felt no joy.
The fight should have been over. Reno should have been able to return home at last.
But he knew. He knew it couldn't end like this.
He wanted to ignore the words of the Valon clan chief, truly he did. But it was stronger than him now, like a painful truth lodged deep inside his chest. A thorn he simply couldn't pull free.
He knew the entity had reformed somewhere high in the sky, far beyond the Ogre's reach.
Orubos now wore an expression of pure rage.
"So you think you've won? You think humans can defeat an entity like me? Then I'll show you what magic truly is. I'll show you the true power of my name."
The sky, already dark, grew even darker.
Soon, it was almost completely black.
The only remaining source of light in the entire capital was Orubos himself.
Most of the warriors who had already fled turned back just to witness the horrifying spectacle. It looked as though a pillar of pure darkness had descended endlessly upon the battlefield.
Inside it, nobody could see anything except a faint light floating high above.
All eyes turned toward it.
Orubos maintained a pale, almost divine glow within the abyss, so radiant that one might have mistaken him for a savior.
But he was no savior...
Reno stepped protectively in front of Rita. He feared that if the merciless being was about to unleash some catastrophic attack, it would happen now.
Yet Rita no longer felt protected.
The situation had already surpassed them completely. Never in their lives had they imagined fighting a man capable of teleportation, giant ice constructs, torrents of flame, invisible barriers, and flight itself.
The magician had only been using small tricks from his arsenal so far. If that was all he could do, he never would have come here.
He was far beyond that. In truth, his real power surpassed all of it. Far beyond humans.
And somewhere deep inside, Reno understood it:
Orubos could destroy the world if he wished.
And this attack… this was merely a glimpse of the entity's magnificence.
The magician still floated high above them. The light intensified more and more until anyone who looked directly at it was forced to avert their eyes. It became so blinding that even Reno and Rita lowered their heads. The capital now shone like a city engulfed in a thousand suns.
All darkness seemed to be drawn into the magician and transformed into unbearable radiance.
Yet outside the capital, the pillar of darkness itself looked indestructible.
Reno's anxiety worsened as he remembered the words of the Valon clan chief.
"However, rest assured—he will not win. You will kill him… but at a heavy cost."
Kill him? Was that truly possible? And was Rita really the heavy cost?
As he lowered his gaze, he saw his wife standing behind him, struggling against the devouring light. Her expression remained resolute, completely ignoring the worried look Reno gave her.
He didn't want to lose her. It was the last thing he wanted. But the only way to prevent it… was to kill that bastard magician.
So Reno steadied himself and fixed his attention back on Orubos.
"I'm definitely going to kill you."