The dueling field was silent except for the sound of wind brushing through the dry grass. It was an open stretch not far from the Asteriscus Manor—wide enough for two Elemental Adept Magi to let loose without threatening the estate. The elders of the family stood in a semi-circle at the edge, carefully inscribing protective formations around the field. At the center, Victor and Maverick faced each other from a distance.

  Both men stood still, measuring the other with unwavering eyes. The air between them crackled faintly with mana and elemental energy, like the quiet before a storm.

  But before the duel could begin, a sudden ripple of power descended over the field. A streak of blue light cut across the sky and descended toward the ground. It was a Magus, a quite powerful one.

  He was an old man with a flowing mantle of dark indigo and silver threads. His long white hair was neatly tied back, and his eyes, sharp and faintly shining, carried the weight of someone who had lived for a long time. Though his expression was calm, the ground seemed to bend slightly beneath his feet as he landed.

  “Sir Alvin Asteriscus…” one of the elders whispered in awe.

  Is this the rumored sole ancestor of the Asteriscus family? Victor narrowed his eyes. Despite bearing the same family name, Victor had never once met the man in person.

  The last living ancestor of the Asteriscus line, Alvin, had secluded himself in deep meditation for decades. A peak Elemental Adept Magus whose name once stirred fear around the region, he had not appeared in public for over thirty years. He could be said to be Roland’s senior, as the family record noted that he was slightly over two hundred years old.

  Had another century passed, Victor thought, he might have been dismissed as a legend, or simply assumed dead. After all, even with rare life-extending elixirs, the lifespan of a peak Elemental Adept Magus rarely exceeded two hundred years.

  Still, there remained the possibility of Alvin’s interference. If two peak Elemental Adept Magi were to strike him simultaneously, it might give Victor a moment’s trouble, though nothing he couldn’t handle.

  “I sensed the mana fluctuation of a sixth-sigil Elemental Adept Magus from the Asteriscus bloodline and came to witness it myself,” Alvin said in a steady voice. He looked first at Victor, then at Maverick with realizing eyes. “So… it has come to this.”

  With a simple motion of his hand, a circular magic formation flared to life above the dueling field, creating a boundary between the duelists and the onlookers.

  “I will preside over this duel,” Alvin declared. “No interference. No deceit. The winner shall be acknowledged as the next patriarch of the Asteriscus Magus family.”

  Victor caught the slight turn of Maverick’s head as he looked briefly toward Alvin as though trying to tell him something. He must have sent a magic transmission just now, maybe one last-ditch plea for support in exchange for something.

  However, Alvin just smiled and flew up without stopping, much to Maverick’s quiet dismay.

  Seated cross-legged atop an icy blue platform that hovered effortlessly mid-air, Alvin extended a hand and shouted with finality, “Begin!”

  The instant Alvin’s voice rang out, Maverick’s form blurred, wind coiling around his figure. He lifted one hand, activating a sigil as he chanted, “{Cyclone Fang}!”

  A tempest roared to life in his palm, coalescing into a spiraling drill of compressed air. It shrieked through the air toward Victor with razor-sharp edges. A deadly Bet-tier spell powered by an Elemental Adept’s sigil — sharp enough to rend steel and tear through layered defenses with ease.

  Victor met the oncoming spell with calm composure. “{Spatial Fold}.”

  With a wave of his hand, space itself twisted in front of him, creating a translucent fold in the air. The wind drill slammed into the warped space and vanished, reemerging far above the battlefield where it exploded harmlessly in the sky.

  Maverick gritted his teeth. “You dare deflect my magic like that?”

  After all, it was a spell powered up by a sigil, and no Elemental Adept Magi would dare to do what Victor just did because of the power contained in the spell. But Victor was able to deflect it like it was nothing, hurting Maverick’s pride.

  Victor offered no response. Instead, he lifted his right hand, channeling infused mana into the sigil embedded there. With a snap of his fingers, his form shimmered — as if slipping out of phase with the world.

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  Then he vanished, casting {Blink}.

  In the blink of an eye, he reappeared behind Maverick.

  “Behind—!” an elder shouted, alarmed, but Maverick had already whirled around and cast a {Gale Barrier}, forming a dome of slicing wind around himself.

  Victor’s ethereal blade — {Warpblade} — had already formed in his hand, and it shimmered with a purplish cosmic glow as it collided with the whirling dome of wind. Sparks of spatial friction lit the air as the Cosmo-elemental magic sliced through the barrier like it was paper, the wind scattering in chaotic directions.

  Maverick’s eyes widened in disbelief as the blade halted inches from his neck.

  “I’ve only used one sigil,” Victor said, his voice laced with calm superiority. “If I used all six, you wouldn’t even have a body left to bury.”

  Alvin, watching from above, nodded with subtle interest. “He’s toying with him.”

  On the sidelines, the elders stood frozen, caught between awe and apprehension. Less than a minute had passed, and the duel had already become a one-sided demonstration of dominance.

  Victor lowered the blade and took a step back, deliberately giving Maverick space. “Is this all the great Maverick Asteriscus has to offer? How can the family prosper if the head is this weak?”

  “Don’t get cocky, boy!” Maverick roared in fury, wind erupting around him. Air surged like a tidal wave in reverse, twisting into serpentine streams that circled his form. But instead of retaliating immediately, Maverick raised both hands to the sky. His remaining sigils blazed into activation one after another — four in total — overloading his body with a massive surge of infused mana. The very air around the dueling field trembled, and the sky above dimmed from the pressure.

  “{Avatar of the Storm Guardian}!” he bellowed.

  A cyclone erupted from beneath his feet, coiling around him like a rising dragon. His figure vanished within the torrent, swallowed by roaring winds. Then, from within the center of the tempest, a monstrous form emerged, towering at twenty meters tall, shaped like a humanoid cloaked in storm. Its entire body was forged from compressed wind and elemental force, with translucent layers swirling like armor plates. Eyes glowing like storm lanterns, it stared down at Victor with hatred etched into its unnatural form.

  Victor glanced up, slightly impressed. “Interesting. So, this is your trump card… Come, then. Show me the storm you’ve spent your life mastering.”

  “Perish! You ungrateful brat!” Maverick roared from within the elemental titan, swinging one of its colossal arms in a horizontal sweep.

  The wind howled violently as the massive limb tore through the battlefield, enough to crush a reinforced wall in a single attack. The pressure alone caused the ground to crack and cave beneath the force of its passage.

  But Victor didn’t even flinch.

  To him, despite the grand spectacle and power on display, which indeed surpassed the weakened state Roland had shown during their battle, it was nothing more than an inflated illusion. One sigil was all he needed to take him down.

  With a calm composure, Victor activated another sigil and spoke the chant. “{Gap Hole}.”

  Space instantly twisted as a black void tore open in midair in front of the sweeping arm, creating a vortex that devoured everything nearby. The moment the arm entered the rift, it vanished—cleanly erased, as though it had never existed. The titan’s swing ended in nothingness, the force of its attack severed mid-motion. But the spell didn’t stop there. Like a beast claiming its prey, the rift devoured the elemental titan whole.

  Each elemental force followed a pattern — Hydro beat Pyro, Pyro overwhelmed Cryo, and so on. But Anemo was different. It wasn’t particularly strong in any one aspect other than its versatility. Not as unyielding as Geo, not as explosive as Pyro, not as adaptable as Hydro, and not as swift as Electro. Against a rare and esoteric element like Cosmo, it could only submit, overwhelmed by sheer authority.

  In spite of everything that Maverick tried to do, his majestic transformation soon dissolved into nothingness as if it had never been. He plummeted to the ground, landing unceremoniously on his backside.

  Victor approached him with unhurried steps, pointing the ethereal blade at Maverick’s throat once again. “Do you yield?”

  “I… This can’t be real… To lose to a single spell… No! This must be a dream. A nightmare!” Maverick muttered, dazed and broken, like a man teetering on the edge of madness.

  “I will say it one more time: Do you yield?” Victor’s voice sharpened as he pressed the blade closer, drawing a bead of blood.

  The sting of pain seemed to snap Maverick back to reality. His eyes widened, and with a trembling voice, he conceded, “I yield… I have lost…”

  “Good.”

  At last, Victor dispelled the ethereal blade and backed away.

  The wind blew across the field, brushing against Maverick’s disheveled Magus robe as he remained kneeling on the cracked ground. The sky above, once thrown into chaos by elemental forces, began to clear as if acknowledging the victor.

  From his floating platform, Alvin rose to his feet and declared, “Let it be known that Victor Asteriscus has won.” His voice echoed across the battlefield, amplified by mana.

  With a wave of his hand, the protective boundary shimmered and vanished.

  “In accordance with the ancestral rites,” he continued, “the position of Patriarch shall now pass to him.”

  All the elders and family members present instinctively lowered their heads and knelt. They had witnessed Victor’s overwhelming power—and his undeniable legitimacy. Even if they wished to object, there was nothing they could do. The outcome had been decisive. Irrefutable. For in this world, nothing was more absolute than power.

  For the first time in centuries, the Asteriscus family glimpsed a new hope.

  Victor stood tall in the center of the field, a flicker of elation rising within him. After all, he had finally claimed the title that had once been the dream of his childhood.

  [Mission Accomplished!]

  [Congratulations on passing the mission. You have successfully seized control and taken over the Asteriscus Magus family.]

  [The reward (10,000 academy points and 1 chance to pull a Nexus Temporal lootbox) has been issued.]

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