Chapter 228: Mirror of Damnation, A Battle of Life and Death
"What a blood-curdling aura."
"But regardless of what kind of skill it is, I can only use Warlock Variation to deal with it because I don't have many arcane particles left."
As he observed Rinsyi's strange state, Ayrin, who never felt fear, suddenly felt extreme danger.
"Skunk Devil Summoning!"
"Warlock Variation!"
Without hesitation, Ayrin immediately invoked two skills in sharp succession. Another skunk devil fell from the sky as a colorful ring of light blossomed from Ayrin's body.
"This again?"
"Just how much does Ayrin like this Skunk Devil Summoning skill?"
"Rinsyi is in such a terrifying state, yet he still used this comical skill. He has completely destroyed the tense atmosphere."
Many girls who had been scared to the verge of crying by Rinsyi's suddenly transformation suddenly felt the urge to smile again as they saw Ayrin use Skunk Devil Summoning.
"Do you really think that you can use this laughable technique to defeat me?"
An intense air of resentment seemed to hang around Rinsyi as he spoke in a scathing tone. The tone of his voice was so jarring that it caused another wave of discomfort to sweep through those who heard it, as if it contained a curse.
"This laughable method defeated Megan. Aren't you just ridiculing your own teammate like this?"
In the stands, students of Holy Dawn Academy couldn't endure any longer as they opened their mouths to mock Rinsyi, but as the scene before them unfolded, no words came out.
A two-sided, oval gray mirror about as tall as Rinsyi suddenly appeared atop the stage right between Ayrin and Rinsyi.
A strong aura of death rippled from the mirror's surfaces. The side facing Rinsyi seemed to be normal as Rinsyi's current hideous appearance emerged atop the glass, but the side facing Ayrin was not, as an abnormal and seemingly infinite arcane energy surged out from the surface and a strange domain power undulated outward.
"What kind of domain is this? Such strong spiritual fluctuations."
The expression of Jean Camus, who had started carefully observing Rinsyi, slightly wavered as he abruptly felt like he himself might not be able to defend against the power of this domain.
"They've been sucked in?"
"This is an imprisonment skill?!"
The colorfully glowing Ayrin and the skunk devil which had just fallen from the sky both seemed to be affected by some strange force as they were sucked into the oval mirror.
All the spectators became flabbergasted as a still image of the glowing Ayrin and skunk devil appeared on the glass surface of the oval mirror enveloped in the gray gases of resentment.
Although frozen, the blank appearance of the skunk devil and the fighting intent on Ayrin's face were remarkably lifelike and vivid.
"What skill is this?"
From the midst of Holy Dawn Academy's team, even the calm Rinloran couldn't help but cry out in shock.
With such domain type skills, a single moment was enough to determine the difference between life and death.
"I don't know."
Even Carter's face had paled as he replied, "It's a kind of spiritual domain."
"Is Ayrin's life in danger?"
Chris's expression was still calm, but her words were full of anxiousness. "Teacher Carter, should we immediately stop the match?"
"Just which of House Baratheon's secret skills is this? It's based on Body of Vengeance…" At this moment, thoughts of stopping the match also emerged in Clancy's mind as he subconsciously began moving towards the mirror.
"What, you wish to stop the match?"
Clancy had only just started moving when Rinsyi's harsh voice rang out once more, causing him to abruptly freeze where he was.
"It's useless. Even if you stop it now, he will still die."
A chill ran through everyone's body as Rinsyi's insidious words rang through the arena.
"What do you mean?"
"Ayrin's life is already in danger?"
"What does he mean?"
The entire arena descended into chaos as countless cries of shock erupted from the stands.
Charlotte, who had long since stood up from her seat, felt her mind go blank as her body began to shake.
"Even if you kill me now, the spiritual power of my Mirror of Damnation will not disappear."
Rinsyi slightly tilted his body as he looked at Clancy. A cruel smile appeared on his gray gas covered face as he continued, "You can't forcefully break it either. Any power capable of shattering the Mirror of Damnation will also tear Ayrin to pieces. Even I, the caster, have no way of ending the power of this domain."
"He's not lying."
At this moment, two voices simultaneously entered Clancy's ear, "Don't act rashly. This is a spiritual enchantment type domain. A great amount of Rinsyi's spiritual strength and some of Ayrin's spiritual strength should have merged together to form it. It has become a battle of spirits… but in the Body of Vengeance state, Rinsyi won't die if his spirit is heavily wounded while Ayrin will. Of those present, I don't believe there is a single person who can solve this domain. We cannot help Ayrin, he will have to rely on himself this time."
"Liszt… Rowan…"
Clancy didn't even bother looking into the stands as he immediately realized who was speaking to him from their voices. It was the fighting genius of the Office of Special Affairs, Liszt, and the strongest arcane master of the Southern Devil Corps, Rowan.
Clancy understood that if Liszt and Rowan, who was a spirit control type grandmaster, were both saying the same things, then Rinysi's words had to be true and that there was no one present to save the situation.
"Rinsyi!"
Even the unbiased Clancy couldn't help but feel angry towards Rinsyi as an uncontrollable rage surged through his mind.
Rinsyi was blatantly trying to kill Ayrin!
Although Ayrin seemed fine on the mirror's surface, Clancy knew that Ayrin was most likely facing an indescribable suffering and torment within the illusory spiritual realm.
After all, he was stuck in a world created by Rinsyi.
Perhaps the suffering and torment he faced was even hundreds of times worse than in reality.
Would Ayrin be able to fight his way out of this spiritual world which Rinsyi had created?
Clancy felt his hands and feet become cold.
He didn't have much confidence in Ayrin because he knew that he himself wouldn't necessarily be able to survive through an attack like this.
"I told you I would kill you."
Rinsyi took a deep breath of air.
Although he didn't need to breathe while in the state of Body of Vengeance, he did so anyway. He felt as if the air around him had suddenly become filled with an extraordinary sweetness.
From his point of view, Ayrin was as good as dead.
Or rather, he was in the process of being killed, and everyone was powerless to save him.
……
"What happened?"
As Ayrin observed his surroundings, he only saw the gray void of space around him.
It seemed to stretch endlessly in all directions and was completely devoid of everything except for an unpleasant gray aura which permeated through the entire space.
At this moment, Ayrin couldn't sense the existence any arcane particles within his body, and his body felt strangely weightless.
It was as if he had been turned into a floating mass of air.
"What kind of arcane skill was I struck by?"
"Why is everything like this?"
"Has Rinsyi hidden himself somewhere within this space?"
At the start, all kinds of thoughts and notions successively floated through Ayrin's mind.
He waited, but Rinsyi didn't appear, and his surroundings remained the same.
"Have I been trapped in here?"
Ayrin couldn't endure any longer as he began moving.
He quickly realized that this world was not normal at all.
Because this gray void of space seemed to be endless.
Ayrin continued moving in the same direction for a long time, yet there wasn't a single change.
"I can't escape?"
"No way. Either way, even if I can't escape, there are many people out there like the referees and Teacher Carter who will intervene."
As Ayrin came to this conclusion, other thoughts began to run through his mind.
"Rinsyi, you idiotic coward, do you dare come out and fight with me!"
Ayrin screamed into the void. As it echoed through the empty space, the space only seemed to become even more empty and endless.
Time slowly ticked forward as seconds became minutes, and minutes became hours. It was enough to cause one to go mad.
Finally, a day seemed to have gone by.
A second day followed the first… then three… and four…
"Could it be that I have already died?"
"Or has my spirit been eternally trapped in his domain, never to leave?"
After countless days passed without any signs of intervention, such a thought finally popped into Ayrin's mind. But those thoughts were quickly quashed as Ayrin successively roared into the nothingness.
"No, how can one die so easily!"
"Rinsyi, you bastard, I don't believe you will be able to maintain this world forever!"
"When I was still in the mines, something like this happened, and I thought I would never make it out!"
"Those mines were even darker than this, yet I was still able to escape!"
"Rinsyi, I will definitely defeat you!"
……
In reality, only a short couple of seconds had passed.
"In the Mirror of Damnation's world, one cannot sense the flow of time. Have you already gone mad and killed yourself?"
As Rinsyi was also connected with the mirror, he was unable to move. Gray gases undulated from his body as he quietly muttered to himself.
He watched with cruel eyes as the oval gray mirror slowly dimmed.
In the pane of glass facing him, his image gradually disappeared.
"The skunk devil has already turned gray! It's almost indistinguishable now, as if it has merged with the mirror!"
At this moment, a shrill cry broke the immense tension within the arena.
"Ayrin's yet to change color. What does that mean?"
"Is Ayrin in danger?"
As these cries entered Rinysi's ears, the look of happiness in his cruel eyes quickly disappeared.
"What?!"
"Ayrin hasn't changed?!"
In the next moment, Rinsyi couldn't help but shrilly cry out, "How! How can he still be alive?!"
The color atop Ayrin's body was becoming increasingly full of vitality once more.
At the same time, the gray mirror began to release an increasingly great amount of gray gases as it slowly began fading and melting back into nothingness.
Chapter 229: If You Wish to Kill Me, You Must Put Your Life on the Line
Rinsyi's face became twisted to the extreme as the gray gas of resentment twined around him surged like a tidal wave. However, before his image completely disappeared from the glass, he couldn't move his body.
A strange and shocking scene unfolded before the spectators' eyes.
The mirror started to slowly disappear.
The image of Ayrin gradually detached from the mirror's surface.
The ring of light around his body remained static as it also slowly exited the pane with him as if slowly passing through a door.
"He managed to break out of Rinsyi's spiritual domain?"
Jean Camus finally regained his composure as he looked towards Dragon Breath Academy's team in the stands and he whispered under his breath, "Morgan, you were not wrong. In the future, this fellow will probably become my greatest opponent."
"Impossible!"
"Even arcane masters whose spiritual strengths greatly surpass mine cannot break out of this domain. Ayrin, your spiritual strength is no where near mine, so how could you possibly defeat my domain?!"
Rinsyi's jarring voice rang through the arena once again, causing many spectators to feel great discomfort.
However, the most uncomfortable spectators were the students of Golden Stag Academy, because they could faintly tell that the unspeakable was happening, and that it couldn't be stopped.
"The mirror has disappeared! The power of the domain is gone!"
"Ayrin has escaped!"
Exclamations and cheers successively erupted across the stands!
It was so loud that some could feel their eardrums quivering.
As the image of Rinsyi also completely disappeared from the other side, the glass completely shattered and scattered into a wave of gray flames.
Ayrin's light encircled body simultaneously reappeared atop the stage in front of everyone.
"This…?"
Ayrin was hunched over, giving the spectators a sensation that he was a wanderer who had lost track of how far he had traveled. He seemed as if his spirit had been completely exhausted as his expression was somewhat contorted.
His eyes remained empty and dull, as if he hadn't realized what had happened.
Swoosh!
But the moment the colorful ring of light around his body created by Warlock Variation broke free of the abnormal power of the domain, it immediately continued to bloom.
The colorful light collided with the extremely chaotic arcane energy and the gray gases of resentment.
Rinsyi's body had regained the ability to move by this point, but at this moment, his body abruptly stiffened.
Fluctuations inexplicably began undulating from the chaotic arcane energy in a strange rhythm.
"What is this?!"
Although there was no obvious change atop the stage, everyone suddenly felt as if a monster was begin born in the sky.
"This?"
Liszt, who had finally relaxed and returned to his normal lazy self abruptly became tense and serious once more as his pupils contracted and a frosty light appeared in his eyes.
"Ah!"
Numerous spectators cried out in shock as a colossal gray figure suddenly appeared behind Rinsyi.
Its entire body was gray and wreathed in the gray gases of resentment and it had a hideous contorted expression on its face. It looked almost the same as the current Rinsyi, only it was several times more horrifying to look at.
Rinsyi turned around in shock.
In the midst of his turn, his body abruptly froze.
"This is… also a spiritual domain?"
A single shocking notion flashed through his mind as Rinsyi motionlessly watched a slight sneer emerged on the face of the colossal Body of Vengeance behind him.
The two enormous hands abruptly enveloped Rinsyi.
"This…?"
Clancy felt a calamitous danger descend atop the stage. He immediately went to stop the match, but he wasn't fast enough as he sensed a powerful soul attack in the next moment, causing his face to abruptly turn pale.
Rinsyi's dim yellow pupils suddenly became a deathly gray color.
Swoosh!
The terrifying sneer on the colossal figure's face abruptly widened, becoming visible enough for spectators to see. Many couldn't help but cower from it in fear.
In the next moment, the colossal figure behind Rinsyi collapsed and turned into countless thin currents of gray gas which rushed towards Rinsyi's body.
"Just what exactly has happened?"
"What kind of arcane energy power has Ayrin's Warlock Variation created?!"
Everyone's breathing stopped as they watched the countless thin strands of air mysteriously pass through one side of Rinsyi's body and then back through the other.
It seemed like Rinsyi's body had become immaterial.
"Curse of the Death Lord!"
In the stands, Liszt and Songat almost simultaneously cried out.
Just as they shouted, the countless currents of deathly gray gas passing through and winding around Rinsyi's body completely disappeared.
Rinsyi's body had turned completely gray as he stood motionlessly atop the stage. He seemed to have lost all ability to function as he just faintly breathed without any hint of vitality.
"Even his consciousness seems to have unraveled…"
Clancy and the assistant referees, who had gathered beside him, all sucked in a breath of cold air.
"What now?"
At this moment, even the members of the two medical teams, who had been prepared to rush onto the stage, were completely dazed and lost.
Any spiritual strength within Rinsyi's body had been completely eradicated and his current behavior resembled someone who was brain dead, causing them to not know what to do.
"Curse of the Death Lord. A taboo skill used by some cursed arcane masters with abnormal bloodlines during the Era of the War with Dragons which uses all of one's spiritual strength to curse the opponent and seal and extinguish their consciousness."
In the stands, Songat slowly sighed as he said, "It seems like House Baratheon's Body of Vengeance is connected with the arcane skills of those zombie-like cursed arcane masters… is this what goes around comes around? Rinsyi wanted to use a powerful spiritual domain to destroy Ayrin's spirit and turn him into a vegetable, yet in the end, it was he himself who ended up in this state."
"Are there still methods to heal him after being struck by the power of this taboo skill?"
Liszt slowly exhaled as he turned his head to look at Songat and asked.
"Ayrin's Warlock Variation only reproduced a portion of the power of Curse of the Lord of Death, so perhaps there is a method to cure Rinsyi. However, I personally do not have one," Songat replied as he shook his head.
Liszt remained silent.
If the best medical master of the Office of Special Affairs had no way of healing Rinsyi, then there was no one in the entire Kingdom of Eiche who could do so.
"Rinsyi…"
"Rinsyi used a spiritual attack, but it was broken through by Ayrin and he suffered a deadly blow in return… he's become a vegetable?"
As more and more people recovered from their shock, cries began to erupt from all over the arena.
"Rinsyi actually…"
In the stands, Dragon Breath Academy's Morgan, along with many other members of the various participating teams, were completely speechless.
Holy Dawn Academy had defeated Golden Stag Academy.
But this result had already been completely forgotten due to the shock generated by Rinsyi's current state after suffering such an attack.
His current state was no different than if he had been directly killed off.
Had this battle caused the most brilliant genius of his generation from House Baratheon to eternally lose his place in the annals of the Kingdom of Eiche?!"
"If you wish to kill me, you must put your life on the line!"
At this moment, many people suddenly remembered the words which Ayrin had said to Rinsyi at the start of the match.
Rinsyi had indeed attempted to kill Ayrin, yet in the end, he had been beaten into this state where his life was on the line.
"We lost… even captain Rinsyi was…"
Many of the formerly arrogant and domineering students of Golden Stag Academy couldn't hold back their tears any longer as they began to weep in the stands.
"What happened?"
But at this moment, everyone's eyes abruptly widened once more as Ayrin, blinking his eyes as if he had just woken up from a dream, exclaimed in shock upon seeing Rinsyi's vegetative state.
"We won!"
"Ayrin, this fellow…"
The extremely worried Rinloran let out a sigh of relief as an unprecedented feeling of joy surged through his body.
"This must be what true happiness feels like!"
A resplendent smile appeared on the face of the eternally icy and hard to interact with Rinloran.
"Ayrin, nice victory!"
Rinloran loudly applauded Ayrin as he went to clap his hands, but because one of his arms was still unable to move, he was unable to do so.
But at this moment, he saw Chris also only raise a single hand beside him. She seemed like she wanted to clap as well, but also only had one arm which could move.
Clap! Clap! Clap! …
Driven by their indescribable emotions, Rinloran and Chris began to clap together with their respective hands.
The image of these two 'one-armed people' clapping was quite comical, but at this moment, no one could laugh.
"Victory!"
It was like waking up from a dream as countless cheers and shouts of celebration abruptly burst from the stands.
The many students of Holy Dawn Academy began hugging their neighbors and applauding atop the stands.
"Rinsyi was defeated just like this?"
Only now did Ayrin finally recover. As he looked at Rinsyi, he asked Clancy and the other, "How is he?"
"Ayrin! We will never let you go! We will definitely kill you and take our revenge!"
Before Clancy and the others could even respond, several substitutes of Golden Stage Academy had already shouted out in a maddened rage.
"What?"
Ayrin looked blankly at them, then waved his fist at them as he said in a voice which was tired, but still full of conviction, "If you wish to kill me, then you must also put your own life on the line."
His reply silenced the several Golden Stag Academy substitutes as they fell into a daze.