Source Origin(30)

It was like a beast, the mask positioned in front, uncaring of a possible retaliation, ignoring the instincts that should be screaming at her, telling her that she should be protecting herself, instead she was running wildly, as if already gone berserk, no sense seeming to be behind the hidden eyes behind the happily smiling mask of pain that Cades was still fascinated by, the mask that Cades could not stop admiring, a work of art greater than any he had seen before.

And just a moment later, just as he had begun to think about defending himself, he realize that the hands of the female attacker, the berserker that was now rushing at him, inhumane strength hidden under her stride, great endurance and speed, even without her using mana for some reason, he realized that he should use something else, that he should sue the surrounding , that he should use what he was already able to use, that he should block her attack, if he was able to do so with the amount of mana in the air, half of everything he had which was quite a lot.

Cades had been born with an unnaturally great amount of mana, so much so that his mother had almost died due to the radiating foreign energy entering her body while she was giving birth, it was a pregnancy of incredibly high risk and he was the cause, the cause for which she could not walk for an entire year, paralysed from the neck down from what he had been told, though he couldn't remember that because she was healed just a week later, turning the predictions of the magical doctors and healers around, perhaps a miracle of medicine, something that gave them quite a lot of praise and even landed her in a smaller news article, no one really caring.

Actually, though, that was a lie.

His mom had told him that she had been healed a week later, but she wasn't healed a week later, the doctors had right, the healers tried their best, but she only stood up one year later, or, to be precise, 412 days, so a bit more than one years, something that perhaps even caused his sister's defect, the defect of her soul, the reason the colour of her hair was, or is, silver, a sickness born from great amounts of foreign mana in the uterus that flows into the soul.

It was one of the reasons why he had been so strong at the apex and lord ranks, why the fire he had been sending out while fighting the so-called demon of the skies had spread for over a mile from what he could remember, why he had been able to lift the bag of holding, though it should be noted that the bag didn't really affect anything biological or physical, it was more of a metaphysical weight in relation to magic, similarly to the staff he had made and even been using inside that forsaken realm filled with chains and flying islands, though he had been struggling with using it in there to such a degree that he had lost it in his first real fight, right after a short while, so much so that he had even taken the sword with him in an attempt to fight with something else.

So it was quite rare to see this kind of mana filling an area, especially since the weird engravings on his body that he had carved in an half-minded state, presumably not even really being himself, his hands having been led by someone or something else, had severely increased his mana, his energy, his strength during the earlier ranks, so much so that he never really had any problems with his mana during the earlier times, not on ehetria, his home, not really while fighting the giant spider queen, not while killing the demons, though he had been fearing it and even once thought he was close to being out of mana a few times, but in this place and the one before it, he was struggling often, full of fear, forced to send out great amounts of mana and fight for a long time, and as such this place had become something that could only be called his, especially since this Cades, though he hadn't fully realized it yet, only observing others, was talented at more than just fighting, he was talented at magic, something that might not be a big difference between the two, but still, he was better at controlling his mana than the other him.

As such, comprising of his superior control compared to most others, an innate talent for magic that surpassed most of his age by a large margin and even allowed him to once make an infinitely useable pen fuelled by his very own magic, allowed him to create a large amount of artifacts by bathing them with mana, something most people struggled with and the step that was the reason as to why artificers needed a great amount of mana, one of the various reasons their school of magic wasn't that popular despite being one of the most useful ones, his shield and enhancement were both greater than both the other him, and perhaps even almost as great as when he had been at the rank of a transcribe, at least in terms of fluidity, something he felt but didn't quite understand, and the barriers of most others, perhaps even some with greater power than him.

This resulted in the barriers he would call forth to be uncharacteristically powerful and durable, at least in this situation where he had pushed out half of his entire mana pool, a decision that most mages would rather die than use, but not really much of a problem ´for him due to the amount he wielded.

Yet, he still felt anxious as the gloved fist, oozing with thick golden light, rushing towards him, so much so, that he felt the need to step back further and further, evading the monstrous intent and power he felt from this cloaked woman, the pain he felt from under the mask, a pain that he knew too well, a pain that he wanted to be greater than his own.

The pain of losing everything and fighting only for yourself while hiding.