The moment Jax allowed the dark mana to wrap around his core, his body went completely numb. The pain that had been burning around his gut spread to every corner of his existence as every single vein in his body ignited in agony all at once.

He wasn’t even allowed the mercy of a scream because the violent changes tearing through his body hijacked his physical control entirely.

Even his basic human emotions were brutally stripped away, leaving behind nothing but a suffocating coldness and an anger that had been multiplied to such tremendous and monstrous numbers that it didn’t feel like anger anymore. It felt like a weather system.

Clarice watched him with those flat eyes of hers and unsheathed her sword again. "Excellent. You are finally showing your true colors. Try not to bore me this time around."

She charged at him while completely ignoring his terrifying transformation, paying absolutely no mind to the suffocating aura leaking from his body, the dark spots emerging across his skin, or his eyes turning pitch-black like a possessed demon.

She dashed forward using her skill Phantom Mirror Bloom, but the technique was rendered entirely useless because Jax was not even looking at her. Trying to confuse him or become untraceable was as pointless as hiding from a man who had stopped caring about sight altogether.

Realizing this, she decided to just end the fight instantly by launching herself into the air and using the downward momentum to deliver a brutal strike meant to sever his head no matter how tough his body had become.

But she never landed on her feet because she couldn’t even feel them anymore.

Clarice suddenly found herself hanging suspended in mid-air, tightly wrapped in razor-sharp black threads that were actively crushing her legs from every direction.

Jax finally moved and fueled by his seething anger he simply closed his fist, causing the remaining phantom mirrors hovering around her to instantly shatter as the threads pierced through them like spears, evaporating her beautiful technique into a useless cloud of falling petals.

"That nauseating stench of flowers is giving me a fucking headache," Jax said with a tone dripping in sheer irritation as he looked up at the dangling sword saint.

He released her and she crashed to the ground where Jax immediately placed his foot on her injured and crushed leg. "That is enough jumping around for one day."

Clarice managed to speak through the pain tearing through her body. "What kind of devil are you?"

There was no trademark arrogant smirk on his face as he replied flatly. "I thought your interrogation involved the route where you dismantle me first."

He turned away from her as if she had already stopped existing in his mind. "You were never part of my schedule yet you insisted on being an obstacle. If I were not in such a rush I would make you suffer for stepping into my path. Be grateful I am simply ending your life instead."

A thread wrapped around her neck to finish the job.

But Clarice moved first. She slashed through the deadly threads and forced herself up onto her knees before lunging toward Jax’s exposed back with everything she had left. "Die, you monster!"

Before the blade could find his spine she was violently wrapped in his dark threads again with her wrists tightly bound together. She struggled with everything she had and shattered the bindings, but before she could finally go for the kill Jax was already facing her.

He casually grabbed the sword right out of her grip as if taking a toy from a child, directed her own blade toward her chest, and with a sudden brutal motion pierced it straight through her.

As the blade sank in, multiple pointed dark threads erupted from inside her body and pierced through her skin like lethal needles. The magic violently expanded inside her and instantly destroyed every vital organ while the spikes even shredded her throat so she couldn’t manage a final scream through the agonizing pain.

Jax began to turn away from the mutilated corpse but then he stopped as a sudden realization hit him.

A warrior of her caliber was simply too useful to leave rotting on the ground and he had been looking for a powerful summon to fill his one remaining vacant slot.

With a cold and calculated stare he raised his hand and pulled her soul straight out of her body.

[Back to present]

Archmage Loid was showering blood from where his arms used to be while trembling like a bleeding penguin — after all a wizard without hands to cast spells was about as useful as a blind sniper.

He looked at his absolute defeat and pleaded for his life with whatever dignity a handless man could muster. "Please spare me! I promise I will not utter a single word to the Emperor and I will definitely not tell anyone of the betrayal! So please just let me live!"

Jax interrupted his pathetic plea with a voice as cold as the grave he had just filled. "Just shut it already. Your whining is giving me a massive headache. Get out of my sight right now before I do it myself."

The terrified archmage immediately turned around and started awkwardly waddling away while struggling to keep his balance without arms to stabilize him, looking like the world’s most tragic flightless bird.

Jax completely ignored the pathetic sight and turned toward Delphine with dead eyes. "Where is the dragon child?"

Delphine looked at the terrifying version of Jax standing in front of her and didn’t know what had happened to him but she silently raised her hand and pointed toward Tempris sitting in a corner cell.

Jax turned his head in that direction and started. "I left you with exactly one job and you..."

His voice trailed off completely. The moment his eyes found Tempris unconscious and crammed into a suffocating cage with zero room to breathe, something primal snapped inside him. Every thread of composure he had left was consumed by a terrifying flood of pure wrath that overtook his mind.

Meanwhile the armless Loid had almost reached the exit and was genuinely starting to believe he had actually survived this encounter. That brief flicker of hope shattered instantly when Jax bypassed physical space entirely and materialized right in the middle of the doorway in front of him.

Without a shred of hesitation Jax snatched the fleeing archmage by his scalp and yanked his head back until they were face to face, whispering with a deadly venom. "Who did this to the child?"

Loid did not utter a single word in response. But it wasn’t because he thought speaking would get him killed since Jax had just ordered him to stay quiet moments ago.

He stayed silent because he was the one who had locked that child in that cage, and the man currently gripping his skull was radiating the kind of rage that made confessing feel like a worse option than death.

The gods mercifully answered his prayers right away. Jax had been gripping his hair with so much monstrous rage that he blinked and realized he was now holding a detached head in his hand. His new physical strength had accidentally popped it clean off the shoulders like a cork from a bottle.

Jax clicked his tongue in pure frustration and casually chucked the bleeding head onto the floor. "I will find whoever locked her up even if they hide in the depths of hell."

He moved toward Tempris and neither Evangeline nor Delphine said a single word to the person walking past them with an authority and a mana so dense it was making both of them want to puke where they stood.

Evangeline in particular now realized exactly what her father had meant when he spoke about Jax’s real powers and she was genuinely terrified for the first time in her life.

Jax reached the cage. The high-tier magic seal had already shattered the moment Loid died so he easily broke apart the remaining physical bars with his hands.

He reached inside and pulled Tempris out but he held her amateurishly by the waist with just one hand, dangling her like a man who had read exactly one Chapter of a childcare book and skipped the part about proper holding technique.

She slowly opened her teary eyes and the first thing she saw was Jax standing right there holding her. Without a second of hesitation she jumped at him from the air and wrapped him in a tight hug, pressing her tiny face into his neck.

"I knew you would come," she said through a voice still trembling from the cold and the dark. "It was so cold and dark in there but I knew you would not leave me behind."

Those words made Jax’s heart feel heavy but in a way that was good. As if a massive weight had suddenly been lifted off his soul instead of placed on it.

He looked down and only just realized that his skin had been covered in dark disease-like spots this entire time, but under Tempris’s touch they were rapidly fading away like shadows retreating from a light they couldn’t tolerate.

His pitch-black eyes returned to their normal color and his human emotions flooded back into their rightful place as total control over his own body finally returned to him. The very first thing he did with that control was wrap both of his arms around Tempris and hug her back properly.

"You don’t need to be scared anymore," he promised quietly against the top of her head. "I am so sorry it took me this long to find you."

[A/N: Two more Chapters are dropping today.]