Floating a few meters in front of his grandfather, Riven returned to his usual form.

  "So you saved these wretches again," he grimaced, the mere thought sickening him.

  "How dare you use a royal's body for such a task?!" He shouted, only for a cough to immediately follow afterwards, but this time, when he pulled back his hand from his mouth, he was greeted with blood.

  Enraged at the sight, he said while glaring at Riven, "Undo this—" but he barely got through his sentence when he fell to his knees with another coughing fit.

  Remaining silent, he just stared down at his grandfather, Lord Ignatius Cross, one of the Seven Great Royals. The man he idolized and that raised him—but despite all that.

  He had only one thought:

  Looking up to see those gray eyes staring down at him, he clenched his teeth. "You dare look down on me?" He groaned as he struggled to his feet, the cold feeling of humiliation pushing his body upright.

  Raising a single hand, flames from the burning building flew over to him and gathered behind his body in several orbs that were swirling like miniature suns.

  "Burn you... abomination," he growled as he launched the orbs toward Riven like comets.

  As the volley of projectiles came sailing towards him, he continued to think while taking an assessment of the situation.

  "I guess I did more damage than I thought," he murmured as he condensed razor-thin compressed ash into a blade before planting his feet firmly and, with near-perfect form, slicing three that came his way through the flame.

  Before quickly dissolving the blade and shifting into a thin-coated, armor-like mist that protected him from the residual heat and blast that followed.

  Seeing this, his grandfather flicked his hand, causing the orbs to swerve to both the front and flanks, forming a trident-like pincer attack.

  Observing the many attacks coming at him from all directions, he materialized his wings and flew up, avoiding them entirely.

  But before he could relax, his grandfather shouted.

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  "You're not going to get away!!!"

  He quickly raised his hand; the orbs that missed Riven flew up, following him like angry wolves.

  "What is he plotting?" he muttered while side-stepping the obvious attack, but as they flew past harmlessly, one quickly turned on a dime and hit him dead center, sending him flying back and falling out of the sky as the rest of the orbs followed close behind, impacting his falling body one after another and accelerating his fall. Making his body look akin to a falling star.

  Accelerating to the ground at great speed due to the impact, his mind drifted in a haze of unconsciousness as the one remaining orb was hot on his tail.

  But just before he was about to hit the ground, his eyes suddenly shot open and--

  

  His

  Soaring back into the sky, his head was a mess of ringing, and his white t-shirt was nearly burned through, revealing his lightly burnt skin underneath.

  The pounding headache lasted a few more seconds before the majority of it began to fade; "He added a tracking spell," he murmured as his vision came back into focus.

  thought to himself while shaking his head to make the residual ringing fade faster.

  The action unintentionally made his eyes glance downward at the scene below.

  Where he saw Alice and the other firefighters, along with paramedics, herding everyone away from the scene, but the people in the crowd were rebellious, pushing back and even fighting the civil servants.

  "I want to see," he heard a few of them say. "Isn't that a royal?" He heard more say their curiosity literally about to get them killed.

  "Commoners," he muttered before turning his attention back to his grandfather. "I can't fight him at range if he's using tracking spells," he thought as the idea of flying between buildings to lose the spells crossed his mind but was immediately shot down.

  "Too much of a risk of the people being hurt," he muttered. "I can't keep blocking his attacks," he continued as he felt his hands ache from cutting through those attacks.

  he thought as memories of his grandfather training him cycled in his mind.

  he concluded.

  And as if his grandfather heard him, more orbs of fire came surging at him.

  Barreling out of the way, he flew at full speed at his grandfather, dodging left and right as a flurry of blasts came at him.

  "Get out of him, you abomination!!!!" he shouted as he shot out a huge stream of flames that Riven barely rolled out of the way of before he landed on the ground right behind his grandfather.

  Seeing what was coming but not having time to summon the appropriate magic to shield himself, he gathered as much internal magic as he could muster into his fist, causing his hand to set ablaze as he twisted his body to meet his foe with all the strength he had, but in the same moment, Riven cocked back his arm before solidifying and condensing the smoke to coat his own fist in a similar manner.

  Turning around is right. Riven's fist was coming at him; their fists clashed and

  BOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!

  The punch sounded off like an explosion between them—two forces clashing together, a never-before-seen reaction that occurred at the same time and at the exact point of contact—but as the reaction ended, the one who was sent flying was...

  LORD IGNATIUS.