Chapter 300: Spell Amplification (300 Chapter Milestone!)

Without hesitation, Elias roared, bringing two fingers close to his face as his robes whipped violently in the air. His eyes bulged with a frantic energy while his single arm shook from the sheer effort of the spell he was preparing.

“Solid matter does not yield!

Stillness is the natural state!

From my essence, I forge an anchor in this space and decree…”

“Amplification: Heavenly Restriction!!”

Down below, a grin spread on Althea’s face, and without missing a beat, she struck.

The slash of the green blade carved through the air and slammed into the space Elias had fortified. There was a sound like a hammer hitting an anvil, a heavy thud that vibrated through the very foundation of the world. The space around Elias had solidified into something harder than diamond, yet Althea’s strike didn’t bounce off… it bit deep into the solidified space and began to unravel the logic he had spent his soul essence to create.

Elias felt the impact in the center of his being. He was not using the replenishable soul essence that usually fueled Ossuarist spells, but instead he was directly drawing from his total capacity. He was using the very limit of his soul’s container as a sacrifice to fuel the spell amplification for his Heavenly Restriction.

With each strike the barrier successfully defended, his soul density dropped. The extremely high density he was born with and had spent decades cultivating to progress within the Preceptor rank, was being shaved away. With every passing second, he was growing physically and spiritually weaker.

His aura began to flicker and dim. The overwhelming presence that usually radiated from him became thin and weary. He felt a sharp, soul-deep pain as he watched his progress as an Ossuarist literally evaporate to stop Althea’s advance. Deep within, he still held on to the desperate hope that she would tap out first. He didn’t believe for a second that there was no cost to her strikes, such power had to be draining her just as much as it was draining him.

It was now a gamble. Would Althea run out of strength before he dropped to a level so low he could no longer be classified as a Preceptor? Or would she somehow go all the way?

The second and third strikes slammed into the solidified space with a relentless rhythm. Althea moved with a fluid, mechanical grace that allowed her to swing the glowing green blade again and again without a single moment of hesitation. Every time the edge of her sword touched the diamond-hard space, Elias felt a jolt of pure agony radiate through his soul.

He gritted his teeth and forced more of his soul density into the anchor, but he could feel the container of his essence growing lighter and more hollow. The immense weight of his presence was thinning out and the air around him lost its oppressive edge as he funneled his very progress into the defense.

As the barrage continued, Elias began to feel the specific nature of Althea’s attacks through the vibrations in the solidified space. He realized with a growing sense of dread that her strikes were barely composed of order magic at all.

Deep beneath the green radiance, there was a profound sense of incongruousness that felt like a glaring flaw in the fabric of the world. It was as if she were wielding a physical lie that the universe could not tolerate. Reality itself seemed to be reacting to the presence of the sword by frantically trying to correct the error it created.

This correction process was what made the attacks so impossible to defend, because everything in the path of the blade was being rewritten and erased as the world tried to restore its natural laws.

Elias struggled to keep his fingers held in the ritual gesture while the green slashes shredded the edges of his Heavenly Restriction.

What kind of spell was this?

Even though he knew the original fragment bearer was in control of Althea, he still wondered how, in the first place, a girl who had only recently been a student could possibly manage a spell that forced reality to correct itself on such a massive scale.

She simply lacked the power required to create it.

Even though the original fragment bearer was in control, Althea was still a vessel who lacked the power for such a massive spell. The bearer could only use what was available in the host, so the fact that she was forcing reality to correct itself consecutively defied logic. Where was the power coming from?

Unless…

Elias’s eyes widened as more and more of Althea’s strikes lashed at his barrier. A sharp inkling of realization dawned on him as he watched the steady, unwavering glow of the green blade.

What if the sword was an artifact that did not belong to her soul…?

The thought struck his mind like a hammer. It was extremely hard to do… but it could be done. There had been occasions in the Ossuary’s history where soul masses were passed between extremely skilled and powerful Ossuarists.

What if the sword was a foreign object, separate from her, that generated the reality-warping flaw on its own, and Althea was merely acting as the director of that power.

If his theory was correct, then Althea was not actually creating the destructive force of the strikes from her own soul. Instead, she was only providing a shell of Order to keep the incongruous energy stable until it hit his barrier!

She was creating a container so the power didn’t go haywire or dissipate before it reached him! And while maintaining such a shell was still a difficult task that required immense focus, it was magnitudes less soul-exhausting than generating the core of the spell itself!

This explained why she could spam the attacks with such terrifying frequency without showing any signs of soul exhaustion.

Grimly, Elias realized he was in deep trouble. He was burning the very foundation of his rank to stop a series of attacks that cost his opponent almost nothing in comparison. His soul density continued to drop, and he could feel himself slipping toward the level of a weak Preceptor, or perhaps even lower… to a Caretaker rank!

He looked down at Althea and saw the fierce smirk on her face, realizing she likely intended to keep going until he had nothing left to give. He was trapped in a battle of attrition that he was destined to lose because his own soul was the only thing standing between him and total erasure.

The structure of his Heavenly Restriction grew translucent and brittle as the green slashes continued to rain down. Elias felt a wave of weariness wash over him, a deep fatigue that made his single arm feel as heavy as lead. He looked at the glowing green sword one more time and saw the way it vibrated with that terrible, corrective energy. He knew he was reaching the limit of what his soul container could provide before he suffered permanent damage to his foundation.

But just then—

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A/N: We’ve hit the 300 Chapter milestone. 🎉 Thank you all for reading this far. Keep enjoying the story as it progresses.

For readers asking about Finn, we’ll be back to his POV soon. But just a heads-up, in this arc we’ll also switch to Althea’s POV at times. Her POV is necessary to the story going forward, but if you think it’s too much, then I can try to see where I can reduce it.

P.S. Don’t forget to vote with Power Stones and Golden Tickets! And if you can, please drop a review too. Your reviews are more weighted, seeing as you have come this far in the story.

Thank you kindly 🍻

Astrl

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