Only at that moment did I finally realize I had made a catastrophic mistake.

  When Z said his flames were his spirit, I had interpreted it to mean that his spirit was ordinary in its dormant state—only transforming into fuel for flames, or directly becoming fire itself, when he actively used his power.

  But what if that wasn’t the case at all?

  Z was an esper capable of freely converting between self and flame. What if his spirit, even in its passive state, wasn’t ordinary at all—but instead constantly burned with the attributes of roaring fire, or even took the form of something closer to “a flame mimicking the appearance of spirit”…?

  In that case, what I had just done was no different from stupidly reaching my hand into an active incinerator.

  And reality proved far worse than any metaphor. In that instant, I experienced a vision of staring directly into the sun.

  The moment I unleashed my ability toward Z, it felt as though I had slammed headfirst into a blazing, all-consuming sun. Destruction, death, incineration, vaporization, sublimation—I saw every possible end with horrifying clarity.

  At the same time, so many things I had never understood before suddenly clicked into place in my mind.

  For example—why Z had said he had never encountered any anomalous entities in his life.

  He hadn’t been lying. He probably truly never had.

  Anomalies attract other anomalies; that’s common sense in this world. But that tired old rule simply doesn’t apply to true powerhouses. In fact, it can backfire completely—causing other anomalies to instinctively shy away.

  Mindless anomalies flee in fear. Intelligent ones unconsciously avoid paying attention to him. Even purely phenomenal anomalies, governed by unknown laws, simply pass him by without interaction.

  Now I finally understood why I had never sensed any mana fluctuations from him. It wasn’t because he possessed some special concealing trait. It was because we didn’t exist on the same plane of reality. Just as a two-dimensional being cannot perceive or interfere with the third dimension—unless the target was one of the flame fragments of his spirit, or unless he deliberately lowered himself to my level—I could never detect his mana.

  You can’t see the mountain when you’re standing inside it. To me, he was an overwhelmingly vast existence; to him, I was an insignificantly tiny one. He probably couldn’t sense my mana fluctuations either—just as he had been completely unaware of my earlier soul attack.

  This was clearly the domain of the Great Unpredictables…

  Wait… why hadn’t I been burned to death yet?

  I snapped back to reality. The hallucination had already ended. Z stood right in front of me, still patiently waiting for my next move.

  “What’s wrong? Aren’t you going to attack?” he asked. “If you won’t come to me, then I’ll come to you.”

  With that, he took a single step forward. I instinctively retreated, frantically checking my own mind and ability.

  I immediately understood why I was still alive. Before the illusory sun could incinerate me, my ability had stopped itself.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Normally, that sun would have killed me in a single instant. But the entire duration from activation to shutdown had been less than an instant. Like how a mantis shrimp can generate temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun for a fraction of a second yet cause no meaningful destruction, contact that brief simply couldn’t kill me.

  The real issue wasn’t the brevity itself. The issue was why the ability had stopped on its own.

  It wasn’t because Z had blocked it with mana. It wasn’t because my ability had some built-in safeguard. It had simply… reached the end of its duration.

  The length of time my ability could trap a target inside the dead-end illusion depended entirely on how intensely the target’s spirit reacted to it—how much of the same despair and terror I myself had once felt it could generate. If the ability ended almost the instant it made contact…

  That meant… that meant…

  Before Z’s mana could even shatter my ability, his spirit had already overcome it…

  “No… impossible… I refuse to accept this… I refuse!”

  A surge of inexplicable rage erupted from somewhere deep inside me, and I screamed incoherently.

  “Refuse what?” He looked genuinely puzzled.

  The contact had been so fleeting that he apparently hadn’t even registered that my ability had activated at all.

  I ignored his confusion. Throwing caution to the wind, I poured every ounce of strength I had—and more—into commanding every shadow I could reach in the surroundings.

  Countless shadows surged madly from cracks and corners, transforming into razor-sharp blades that shot toward Z from every direction like a storm of arrows. He raised waves from the surrounding sea of fire and swept the visible shadow projectiles away in one motion.

  But that was only a feint. While his attention was fixed on the obvious attacks, I had already seized control of the shadows beneath the floor below him as well.

  The instant he focused on what he could see, the floor beneath his feet shattered under a tidal surge of darkness, swallowing him whole.

  The shadows dispersed just as quickly. Z, who had been standing right in the middle, vanished without a trace—like he had evaporated from the face of the earth.

  He hadn’t dodged. I had directly transferred him into the shadow world.

  Exiling a target to the shadow realm had never benefited me in any way, so I had never considered using it as an offensive tactic before. Even earlier, it hadn’t occurred to me in the heat of the moment.

  But right now, all I wanted was for Z to die.

  By all logic, even someone like him should be unable to think or survive in a world without time or space—let alone return!

  Yet what happened next shattered every last shred of my hope.

  Z reappeared.

  A streak of fire flashed across the sky, and a humanoid figure composed entirely of flame materialized in midair above the tangled lattice of exposed rebar and concrete.

  I couldn’t comprehend how he had returned. I desperately gathered every remaining shadow around me, shaping them into a colossal serpent that lunged toward him. But deep down, I knew this seemingly grand attack was all show—utterly futile against him.

  He simply raised his right hand and made a casual downward chopping motion toward the shadow serpent.

  I didn’t even understand what had happened. A blinding flash of fire exploded before my eyes. The next instant, the entire world was swallowed by detonation. My body was hurled backward like a leaf caught in a hurricane, flung far outside the unfinished building—higher even than the structure itself.

  In my tumbling, inverted vision, I saw an unbelievably spectacular reverse waterfall of flame erupt upward, splitting the entire unfinished building vertically down the middle!

  The shadow serpent had already been obliterated. Deafening explosions rang endlessly in my ears.

  How could anyone possibly fight an opponent this absurd?

  If I escaped into the shadows the moment I hit the ground… he would catch up…

  No—even if I somehow managed to get away…

  I…

  Scenes from my past life flashed through my mind one after another.

  As a boy, yearning for a world of magic and mystery. As a young man, kneeling in despair in a dead-end alley. As a middle-aged man, abandoning conscience and slaughtering in pursuit of power…

  Interwoven among them were the words once spoken by the monster creator:

  “When you truly despair from the bottom of your heart, when you accept that nothing can be done…”

  “…the seed of the heart will leave you.”

  The final image frozen in my consciousness was Z’s utterly oblivious expression—he hadn’t even noticed my ability had been used.

  I closed my eyes in profound emptiness.

  The seed of the heart I had nurtured for so long vanished from my body like a dream, like foam on water.

  And the power that had filled every inch of me lost its anchor. It spiraled out of control, rampaging from within—tearing my body apart into fragments…