The Author's POV

Time stopped.

The world within my vision came to a halt.

From the crowd to the noise. The only thing that stood in front of me was Duke Azonech.

Carefully placing my hand on the ground, my body slowly stood up.

In parallel with this, Duke Azonech's face changed dramatically. In a mutter, he opened his mouth.

"…Y..you were hiding your strength?"

He slowly took a step back.

He appeared to be in shock and fear.

"Not really."

My mouth automatically opened and answered.

"That's impossible!"

In a state of trembling, he screamed.

"Do you really expect me to believe that you weren't hiding your strength?"

"...You call this hiding my strength?"

I suddenly felt a wave of disgust wash over my body as I sensed my other self's emotions.

I found my head slowly rising up.

My eyes soon met with the Duke's.

"Is it really worth hiding this little amount of strength?"

"Wh...what?"

While the two were conversing, I was secretly trying to grasp what was happening around me.

It had to be noted that currently, time was flowing at a much faster rate than reality. For the two of them to be able to converse properly...just how fast were they?

Not only that, the world around me. It looked different. Everything looked a lot more colorful as I was able to catch a glimpse of the mana in the air.

There wasn't much, in fact, there was barely any mana in the air, but it was still there.

Regardless, that wasn't what attracted most of my attention.

'...Limit Breaker?'

These words...

This was the first time I had ever heard of these words, and my curiosity about them was at an all-time high.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the luxury to ponder over those words as my head glanced around the frozen space, and I suddenly found my calves tensing up.

My mouth soon opened.

"My time is limited. This amount of strength will suffice for now."

Within a split instant, I found the Duke's face right before

Swooosh-!

my hand thrust toward the

However...

Duke was able to react appropriately as he dodged my attack by moving his head to the side. It was by a narrow margin, but he

counterattacked with his own palm,

him, like an open book, his every move was

my left

Duke didn't give up, as he rotated his hand and demonic force burst out of his hand, forcing out a black

a futile effort

only thing it took for my other self to avoid the attack was a simple movement of my head, having clearly read his movements ahead of time. The beam soon flew past the

hardened

teeth, he prepared to attack again, but in the blink of an eye, my hand had already

from doing whatever

grasping his hand, my mouth then

"Give up."

I felt

resistance clearly irritated

we're both in the same ranks again. You couldn't

The Duke's face changed, but my hand continued to squeeze

the demons crush inside

me any

my hand back, the hand tore off of the Duke's body and blood began to

throwing it behind me, only to see it stop mid-air and fall down at the same pace time

as it remained still

"Huaak!"

face twisted savagely as he screamed out

gazed toward me, a torrential wave of demonic energy burst out of his body, converging toward the top of his

"H..how dare you!"

tremendous force was pushed out as a

just a casual tap of his

a voice speak inside of my head. The mana inside of

him. Make sure you feel how I control the mana

felt the mana in my

Duke despaired

my emotions

Forming a thin yet durable veil that enveloped my

body, it didn't take me long to figure

'...Mana agglomeration.'

seen this scene once before, back when Monica was fighting the elders at the Monolith. In the years since then, I had been deeply impressed with

already tremendous strength multiplied many times as

body was

'Hm?'

me even having a chance

to before, I could only see a series of black blobs now. There were a couple of more colorful ones inside of the arena, but that was

than others, with the

'What's this?'

as I tried to make out what was going

not important, look

unanswered as my other self spoke. Listening to his words, I sharpened my gaze and

It was then...

what are the small circles in the middle

inspection, I observed small circular balls the size of tennis balls tucked within blobs.

Then it hit me.

'Wait, don't tell me...'

right. Those are