A beautiful woman, staff in hand, appeared atop the replica tower.

"Elezar..." Diogres stared at her, his gaze filled with incomprehension.

Why on earth was she doing this to him? What kind of resentment could she possibly harbor? It wasn’t simply that he felt wronged. He genuinely couldn’t understand the reason behind her action.

They didn’t have a bad relationship. They hadn’t been political rivals. In fact, they’d barely interacted at all. No matter how much he racked his brain, he couldn’t think of a single thing Elezar stood to gain from this.

That was precisely why he hadn’t reacted right away when the accusations began. Before he knew it, things had spiraled to this point.

He had heard the rumors long ago. The empire, specifically Elezar and Dreltein, was accusing him of being a cult leader. He had merely scoffed and dismissed it at the time. Who would believe such a blatant, absurd fabrication?

He muttered, "I thought it was just another pitiful trick by those cultists..."

What made even less sense to him was the woman herself, watching him from afar with complete detachment. Her face held no emotion. There was no hostility, no murderous intent. He couldn’t even see the will to fight. It was as if she were simply performing a task.

"Diogres Kolon..." Elezar raised her staff, the Platinum Queen, above her head. "Please wait just a moment. I’ll be calling for you soon."

Diogres responded in kind, raising Dawnshroud Staff into the air. Vast torrents of magical power poured from the Tower of Dawn and the replica Platinum Tower, wrapping around the two of them. Invisible currents began to surge outward, spiraling violently around the two archmages.

***

The sky turned crimson. "I am the one who melts the heavens and lets them flow..."

The blood-red sky began to collapse.

"With a single drop of flame, I shall drown the world..." Elezar continued her incantation.

Hundreds of pillars of fire began raining down upon the steel puppets below. "Burn, fire. Let all that can burn be consumed."

But the steel puppets did not fall so easily. Before they could, a wave of light surged from the Tower of Dawn.

Diogres had swiftly intercepted her magic. "O starlight that pierced the sun, rise and ascend!"

Countless bolts of lightning roared upward from the ground to the heavens. It was as if a legion of dragons made of light were ascending toward the sky. Dozens, no, hundreds, of lightning strikes clashed against the raining fire, neutralizing it midair.

The soldiers trembled at the apocalyptic sight. But Elezar reacted differently. "Well, of course. There’s no way he would go all out from the start."

With a smile, she gently tapped the air with the head of the Platinum Queen. Ripples of mana trembled in the sky, then plummeted to the ground. The surface of the earth surged like a lake, and intangible blades erupted upward, slashing across the land.

Gigantic scars tore across dozens of kilometers of terrain. At this rate, even the Tower of Dawn might not survive.

"Hmph." Diogres scoffed before sweeping Dawnshroud in a wide arc. "Is that all you’ve got?"

Black clouds gathered from all sides and vomited out hundreds of vortices. From each vortex, mists of cold air spread forth. The moment the invisible blades touched the white fog, they froze in place, rendered immobile.

Elezar narrowed her eyes. "Oh dear. Perhaps I was too conservative?"

It seemed she’d have to open the vault a bit more. Thus, the two archmages, beings who had long transcended the limits of humanity, continued unleashing their magic. Relentless destruction followed destruction.

The very fabric of nature, which should have taken millennia to change, was reshaped in seconds. It was a horrifying spectacle, an utter repudiation of common sense.

An immense territory spanning dozens of kilometers was being arbitrarily rewritten by the wills of just two people. Within that space, neither the imperial army nor the mages of the Tower of Dawn were anything more than ordinary mortals.

"Retreat beyond the range!"

"If you get caught in this, you won’t just die. You’ll die like a dog!"

The imperial army fled in terror, scrambling to escape the calamity, while the mages of the Tower of Dawn poured everything into their defenses.

"Divert all power to protecting the tower!"

***

In the image, the magical battle between Diogres and Elezar seemed evenly matched at first glance. But Karnak knew better.

"Looks like someone’s getting pushed back," he muttered.

"Which side?" Serati asked.

It was hard for her to tell who had the upper hand. The scale of the magic was simply too vast. It was impossible to gauge anything through sheer visuals. With battles like these, one could only grasp the magnitude of an archmage’s power by standing in the midst of it, by feeling their magic firsthand.

But through a projection like this?

"To be honest, it just looks like a guy and a girl in robes flailing their staffs around in the middle of a natural disaster," she said.

Karnak gave a dry laugh and gestured with his chin toward the image. "Elezar’s blocking most of Diogres’s spells. You can tell he’s starting to get rattled."

***

Diogres furrowed his brow slightly. It wasn’t that he was in immediate danger. Both sides had yet to reveal their full strength. There was still plenty of room to maneuver.

But something felt off.

How is she reading my spells this precisely? Could someone have leaked information? No... that’s impossible.

It wasn’t just unlikely. It was impossible. Even he had never used his tenth-circle magic in real combat before. How could someone leak data that didn’t exist?

There’s no way she’s seeing the future, right...?

That, as it turned out, was exactly what she was doing.

"I know exactly how you’d act in this era." Elezar continued shaping her mana as she gazed at Diogres. "Because your future self told me."

Whenever Diogres cast a spell, she was ready with a prepared counter. Reacting after a spell was cast consumed a massive amount of mana. But if she could anticipate it, she could respond with far greater efficiency.

Of course, even Diogres’s future self couldn’t predict his every move. No one could perfectly predict their own actions, not even themselves. At best, he could guess about seventy percent. But that was more than enough for Elezar, since she stood on equal grounds with Diogres.

Still, Elezar wasn’t completely at ease. She was busy contemplating while she continued to manage a magical radius that stretched dozens of kilometers.

The problem comes now.

If she joined forces with Dreltein, it wouldn’t be too hard to defeat Diogres. They could overpower him and bring him down.

But to win without damaging his body? That was near impossible.

I can’t cast magic with intent to kill...

Right now, both were using wide-range spells, so the lack of lethal force wasn’t obvious. But in time, Diogres would realize something about her spellcasting felt off. Could she afford to risk it? Could she throw killing spells at him and simply hope he would block them in time?

What if one lands the wrong way?

On the battlefield, death often came when one least expected it. She knew that well, from long, hard experience.

"In times like this..." Elezar scanned her surroundings with a cold smile. "I should borrow his wisdom."

***

Suddenly, Elezar launched herself into the air. The archmage glowed like the sun in the air, wreathed in radiant light. It was a majestic sight, and the imperial army erupted into cheers.

But Diogres frowned. She chose flight magic in this situation?

To the masses, a mage soaring through the sky and flinging fire and lightning was the very image of an archmage. But in reality, flying during a duel between mages wasn’t the smartest move. Taking flight meant making yourself an easy target.

"That means she’s up to something." Remaining wary, Diogres responded with textbook anti-flight tactics. "Waver, O winds. Break the footing of my foe."

Vast mana churned the air around them. Storms howled in every direction, violently shaking Elezar’s elegant ascent.

Then came a barrage of light projectiles. "Ultimate Mass Magic Arrow."

It was a simple first circle spell, cast with tenth circle mana and scale. The result was hundreds, thousands of mana bolts blotting out the sky as they hurtled toward Elezar.

She responded with a shield. "Let all things be blocked."

Her staff, the Platinum Queen, glowed with blinding light, and a massive sphere of brilliance enveloped her. Countless mana projectiles battered against the sphere of light, and the deafening explosions continued without end.

Amid that relentless bombardment, Elezar did nothing but curl up within the barrier, like a rabbit hiding in its burrow. There was no way to dodge. Her flight magic was being suppressed.

Diogres calmly watched the situation unfold while continuing to manipulate the air around them. There’s no way she doesn’t know the risks of flying in a battlefield like this.

No matter how powerful the mage, no matter how skilled they were at aerial magic, if the mana in the surrounding air was disrupted, they couldn’t maintain flight. It was like trying to float a ship with no water underneath. It had nothing to do with the sailor’s skill.

Because of this, even mages capable of flight rarely ascended to heights where a fall could be fatal.

So? What’s your plan now?

Just then, a long blast of a war horn echoed through the air. It was the signal for a ground assault.

Diogres’s eyes narrowed. So that’s what this was for?

Now he understood why she had taken flight. She had drawn his attention and his magic skyward, just to create an opening for the imperial army to advance.

But that still didn’t make much sense to him. The battlefield surrounding the Tower of Dawn had turned into a living hell due to their duel. Flames scorched the land, steam erupted, ice froze entire sections of the field, and shockwaves tore through the ground. Any ordinary human who stepped into that chaos would meet a miserable fate.

And yet she’s sending in the imperial army, bright young soldiers of the empire, into that madness?

Elezar de Reflasion, imperial court mage of the empire, wasn’t a saint. That much was true. She had held high office throughout her life and had been entangled in countless political struggles. She had used her fair share of cunning and manipulation when necessary. She could hardly be called someone who had lived a purely righteous life.

But neither was she a villain. She always upheld the moral lines humans should not cross. She never knowingly sacrificed innocents. Of course, what she did in secret was beyond Diogres’s knowledge, but as far as the world knew, she had never crossed the line.

If one were to place her somewhere on the spectrum between good and evil, Elezar clearly belonged to the side of good. Even if that goodness was partly an illusion, she was never the type to throw away lives for nothing.

No, even setting morality aside, the situation itself is odd.

What could possibly be gained by sending imperial troops into this magically-ravaged field of disaster? What good would come of such senseless waste of precious military strength?

With a scowl, Diogres muttered under his breath, What are you really after, Elezar?