NOVEL WEB Chapter 90
Chapter 90: Is it over already? (Request for subscription)
“Boom! Boom!”
The ground shattered, and massive rock fragments tens of thousands of meters in size floated in the air like suspended mountains.
Icebergs, volcanoes, and storm-and-thunder-wrapped ruins filled the sky.
In the battle between Xue Ji and Cid, the sky and earth of the small world Bai Luo created began to collapse under the pressure of their colliding magic powers.
“Drip~ drip~~”
Cid knelt on a precarious boulder, his hands braced against the ground. Blood and sweat mixed together, making it hard to tell them apart.
His body was covered with countless small wounds. Vein-like patterns spread from his heart across his entire body, appearing fierce and terrifying.
This was the result of Cid forcibly activating his body’s potential and converting it into magic power.
“Huff~ huff~~”
Cid’s breaths were hoarse, as if squeezed out from his lungs. Since reincarnating into this world, Cid had never been as pitiful as he was now.
Even when Bai Luo sent him back to atomic fission, Cid only felt defeated, not hopeless.
“Is it over already?”
Xue Ji stood before Cid, looking down at the boy who once made her amazed and fearful. “Unfortunately, you still haven’t managed to make me unlock the fourth seal.”
With merely her four-tailed state, Xue Ji had pushed Cid to his limits.
“The first tail is fire, capable of burning everything, symbolizing the release and condensation of energy.”
“The second tail is water, encompassing all things, existing in three states, omnipresent.”
Snow and ice were just one application of Xue Ji’s use of water elements. There were also rain, frost, dew, fog, steam, and more.
“The third tail is the moon, ethereal and lonely, hanging high in the night.”
Xue Ji explained, “The attribute of the moon is emptiness and silence.”
With the spatial attributes of the third tail, a simple flick could shatter the sky, leaving cracks like spiderwebs behind.
As for silence, it was a calming and tranquil force. Even Cid’s ultimate move, “I Am Atom,” proved ineffective under its influence.
By consuming magic power, Xue Ji could utilize the void-silence of the third tail to forcibly seal Cid’s magic fission into another dimension, causing it to vanish directly.
“Finally, there is my fourth tail.”
“Gold!”
The gold fourth tail possessed the ability to manipulate magnetism, generate electricity, and guide lightning. Moreover, the fourth tail could alter metal elements or even create temporary metals such as gold, silver, copper, iron, and tin from magic power.
If it were only the first three tails, Cid might have been able to barely handle them. But with the liberation of the fourth tail, facing the overwhelming power that seemed capable of reversing the entire world, Cid could no longer maintain the balance between magic recovery and consumption.
Internal stability collapsed, and various chain reactions occurred like an earthquake, plunging Cid into a life-threatening situation.
“I lost…”
Cid admitted defeat. There was no way around it; Xue Ji’s strength was simply too overwhelming.
From the start, Xue Ji adopted an extremely aggressive strategy, almost mocking Cid’s claim that his magic usage was inadequate. Time and again, she unleashed forbidden techniques comparable to, or even surpassing, Sunfall’s dominance.
In response, Cid could only intensify his own magic power, unleashing Atomic Collapse to counter her.
However, regardless of how advanced Cid’s development and application of magic power became, his reserves were ultimately limited.
Xue Ji’s attacks were terrifyingly powerful. To her, Cid’s all-out Atomic Collapse was effortlessly neutralized by a mere sweep of the third tail.
Once Cid’s counterattacks ended, Xue Ji’s assaults would come flooding in without delay, giving him no chance to catch his breath.
When his magic power was depleted, what could Cid do?
To avoid being annihilated by Xue Ji’s ultimate moves, Cid had to forcibly stimulate his flesh cells to extract more magic power.
Magic Swordsmen in the Shadow World rarely faced situations where they lacked magic power. More often, the limitation lay in the output capacity.
Like Victoria, also known as No. 559, who could fight relentlessly for three days and nights without rest against the Sect’s pursuers, illustrating the incredible vitality some individuals in this world possessed.
Cid’s vitality surpassed even No. 559’s. However, after nearly ten minutes of relentless attacks akin to the collapse of heaven and earth, Cid found himself trapped in a desperate situation devoid of hope.
He could still extract magic power, and his vitality remained, but his meridians had reached their limit. Like a circuit operating beyond its capacity for too long, Cid’s magic circuits were on the verge of collapse.
“In ten minutes, I forcibly released 54 Atomic Collapses…”
To survive, Cid had no choice but to follow Xue Ji’s rhythm, engaging her head-on with no retreat possible. Stopping meant death. To live, he had to keep going until his last ounce of magic power was exhausted.
“I gave it my all, yet you still retained more than sixty percent of your magic power.”
Cid coughed up blood mixed with internal organs. “Even cheats have limits, damn it!”
Lifting the ban brought not only an increase in magic power but also significantly enhanced recovery speed and quality.
Sixteen times the normal recovery rate, sixteen times the normal magic intensity. Combined, these factors transformed Xue Ji into a forbidden spell artillery, capable of creating the spectacle of ten suns in the sky with every movement.
“The battle is over.”
Xue Ji won and understood why Bai Luo believed Cid would become their opponent. Maximizing magic extraction wasn’t a big deal—she could do it just as well, if not better, than Cid.
What truly astonished Xue Ji was Cid’s continuously improving magic manipulation skills during crises. With each Atomic Collapse, she could sense his progress.
“Is this what genius looks like?”
Xue Ji couldn’t help but marvel. She considered herself a prodigy among Beast People, and Alpha was the direct descendant of Pokémon heroes. Yet both fell short of Cid in terms of acquired talent.
The ease of my victory has nothing to do with me. Effort, sweat, inspiration—Xue Ji hadn’t invested much of any of those. She merely benefited from Bai Luo’s favor, enjoying the Host’s grace.
Thus, instead of saying Xue Ji defeated Bai Luo, it would be more accurate to say that the insignificant bit of power Bai Luo bestowed upon her overwhelmed Cid.
“How does it feel?”
Alpha appeared before Xue Ji, asking about her thoughts on the battle.
“I feel ashamed!”
Xue Ji showed no joy in victory, her expression gloomy. “Despite possessing such immense power, I’ve used it so inadequately.”
Thinking of Bai Luo’s expectations and her inability to meet them, she lamented, “I am indeed a shameless woman.”
Her inner thoughts were caught by Alpha. The two looked at each other, sighing in unison as if sharing a telepathic understanding.
“I feel the same.”
Alpha empathized with Xue Ji and silently vowed to work harder in the future to deserve Bai Luo’s affection.
“But, you’re stronger than me.”
Alpha said, “You actually pushed that guy to such an extent.”
Alpha’s battles with Cid seemed to kill him many times, but in reality, caused little significant harm. In contrast, Xue Ji’s intense pressure left Cid unable to gather high-intensity magic power for a long time ahead.
A fragile magic circuit, once damaged or destroyed, requires considerable time to recover. If the person suffering from magic damage wasn’t Cid but someone else, they wouldn’t recover—they’d simply lie down.
“Such injuries are miraculous to survive.”
“Yet this guy not only possesses cockroach-like vitality but also prepared a self-repair program for his magic circuits.”
At least Xue Ji and Alpha couldn’t repair their magic circuits using minimal vitality in the absence of magic power.
According to numerical classification, Cid, Xue Ji, and Alpha were all in the mid-seven-digit range. However, the ways they reached this level were entirely different.
Multiplying magic quantity with magic control determines true strength in the Shadow World.
Cid’s magic quantity wasn’t particularly large. Even in the middle-to-late stages, it still lagged behind the top-ranking Twelve Demon Gods.
Thus, under the same age, the magic quantities of Cid, Alpha, and Xue Ji roughly ranked as follows: 1 Xue Ji, 2 Alpha, 3 Cid.
Xue Ji’s magic quantity was a peculiar special case. Despite having less Demon God bloodline than Alpha, her fox tails evolved into external magic organs during the process, drastically increasing her magic quantity far beyond the original story, reaching an unimaginable number.
“In terms of magic quantity, we hold the advantage.”
Xue Ji added, “Relying on magic superiority, truthfully speaking, I didn’t win fairly.”
“There’s no such thing.”
Alpha countered, “Having more magic is inherently your advantage.”
“Would you rather you ignore your abundant magic and restrict yourself to the opponent’s level before comparing?”
At under ten years old, Cid’s magic quantity was far inferior to fourteen-year-old Xue Ji’s. Estimating by data, Xue Ji’s magic quantity was at least thirty times greater than Cid’s.
That’s without considering the Gray Sacred Domain. Just the enhancement alone provided a fiftyfold boost, comparable to a Super Saiyan transformation.
Cid’s magic fission was extraordinary, something Xue Ji and Alpha couldn’t match. However, the gap between Xue Ji’s micro-operation-level magic and Cid’s fission-level magic couldn’t possibly reach a hundredfold difference.
Therefore, with a fifteen-hundred-fold magic disparity combined with microscopic operation, Cid couldn’t compensate for this insurmountable gap, no matter how skillful his magic manipulation became.
Ultimately, Xue Ji lifted three seals, using her three-tail form to crush the current Cid.
Even in her normal state, Xue Ji’s magic quantity was approximately two and a half times higher than Cid’s, nearing threefold.
After four liberations, Xue Ji’s magic reached fifty times that of Cid’s.
With over fiftyfold magic disparity and microscopic-level magic application, Cid, despite his best efforts, couldn’t overturn the situation relying solely on the slight edge in magic operation.