Spoiler title at the end of the chapter

According to studies, the percentage of practitioners who manage to reach Supreme class is below one percent.

Salancans

Hade might've remained useless in the fight if only the man had kept his distance.

However, when Nobu chose to fight at close range, he had unknowingly poked a beehive because when it came to fighting in close quarters, Hade was a phenom in his own right!

'What?! The Mortal class rung caught my attack!' Nobu was shocked and for good reason.

He was a peak Sage class practitioner! The difference between Sage class and Mortal class could not even be described in words. The gap was simply insurmountable!

And yet, here in front of his very eyes... he had been stopped by a mere child! A brat with milk still wet on his nose, a noob with no clue as to what real magic was!

Nobu was incensed!

At first, he was just going to simply kill the two brats but now... oh he was going to tear both of them apart, limb from limb until they begged for him to end their pathetic little lives.

He tried to retract his hand.

'Huh?' Nobu was puzzled. Why wasn't his hand responding to his commands?!

It was then that he realized, it wasn't that his hand did not want to respond, no, it simply couldn't.

"You didn't think that I was going to let you go that easily, did you now?" Hade growled, his voice akin to a demon's.

Before Nobu could even comprehend what was going on, he felt a sudden excruciating pain in his right hand.

"Argh!" His screams resounded throughout the dome.

Nobu's hand... his beautiful right hand was no more! His wrist had been crushed to smithereens by the power of a mere seventeen-year-old!

"You! What the hell are you?!" Nobu screeched.

He used his other hand to try and stop the bleeding but it did not seem to help as blood gushed and sprayed everywhere.

Before Nobu could recover, Wil delivered a huge rocky fist that landed squarely in his gut, sending him flying across the dome.

"Are you okay?" Hade asked Wil. After all, it was the older man who had suffered the brunt of the cloaked man's attacks.

"Yea... I'm okay," Wil replied, his breath wheezing.

"However, we have to finish this now while he is still down."

Wil subsequently released his golem form before gripping the familiar hilt of his broad sword tightly.

"Don't worry, we will make it out of this alive," he assured.

Then, they both fixed their eyes on Nobu whose body was slowly getting up in the distance.

"You will hold him down and I will cut him down... That's the pla-"

Wil did not get to finish his sentence.

*Spurt!*

Both he and Hade simultaneously coughed up a mouthful blood as an oppressive aura that reeked of death suddenly descended upon them!

Nobu slowly rose to his feet as his eyes glowed red beneath the darkness of his hood. The Darkness Sage looked like the live personification of death itself!

And where his right hand once was, was now a devastatingly sharp pitch-black scythe that glinted menacingly even in the limited luminous intensity.

Slowly but surely, the black color of the dome began to darken to the point that the already minuscule amount of sunlight seeping through was completely cut off.

Nobu's Dark Orb of Confinement had evolved to its more potent animation- the Dark World advanced barrier and in the blink of an eye, everything was covered by an abyssal, almost tangible, darkness!

Hade and Wil were at wit's end.

It was almost as if the darkness itself was a living being and like a parasite, it slowly sucked away at their energy, crippling their senses.

To make matters worse, despite their enhanced senses, neither of them could see through the darkness. Nobu's glowing red eyes were all the two could use to pinpoint his location.

"You little shits, kekeke, oh you've done it now!" Nobu shrieked.

He was livid!

"Witness the true power of my Law of Darkness!" He screamed.

Like a torpedo, he propelled himself onwards, this time attacking both Hade and Wil in a frenzy.

Nobu used the scythe as a substitute for his hand and surprisingly, his fighting prowess did not seem like it had been diminished in the least!

On the contrary, his powers seemed to have grown by leaps and bounds!

"Damn it!" Wil cursed aloud.

They were being pushed back! It was as if they were facing an entirely different entity altogether.

In actual truth, it wasn't that Nobu had somehow improved. No, he was only just now starting to take them seriously... The loss of his hand had been a harsh wake-up call.

Unleashing his wrath, Nobu now sought to bathe his scythe in the blood of the two brats that had forever marked him as a disfigured freak.

Forget about fighting back, he left absolutely no openings for either young man to exploit.

While Hade and Wil tried their utmost best to block and dodge the relentless attacks using only their wits and instincts, their stamina soon began to wear out.

Wil's endurance was already so frighteningly high!

The fact that he had somehow survived this long was a great achievement in itself. He was holding his own against a practitioner a whole rank above him!

On the other hand, Hade had never been in a fight of this level and magnitude his whole life... And it showed.

Wil had to continuously cover for him and at times, he had to risk his own body in the process.

As the seconds ticked on, the difference between ranks became more apparent. At this point, it was already evident that the two young men's defeat was inevitable.

Even in a two-on-one scenario, Hade and Wil were clearly out of their depth.

This was especially true for Hade who after only one mistake was sent flying twenty meters back.

He crashed into the sturdy wall of the dome, immediately coughing up more blood right after.

With Hade out of the picture, more and more gory wounds began to appear on Wil's body. Nobu was flinging him about like he was a ragdoll.

Hade wanted to scream to the man to stop but he could find neither the voice nor the strength. All he could do was whisper, "Stop, please stop..."

After two minutes that seemed like an entire lifetime, the darkness within the dorm slowly began to recede but by now, Wil was a pitiful sight of blood and dirt.

Kneeling on the ground before Nobu, the brute could barely breathe.

His face was marred by deep cuts that together with the resulting blood... left him barely recognizable.

Even then, you could still hear him muttering, "I cannot, I cannot..."

"What's that, brat?" Nobu giggled as he squatted down.

"I cannot give up!" Wil screamed in the cloaked man's obscured face, blood spattering from his mouth.

He forced himself to stand up.

"If I have to break through into Sage class to stop you then that's what I'll do. If I have to sacrifice myself then I'll gladly do it. I've never backed down from a fight in my life and I will not start today!"

In a last-ditch effort, Wil desperately swung his sword aiming for the cloaked man's head but it was a pathetic attempt at best.

*Whoosh!*

Nobu easily dodged to the side, but unbeknownst to him, that was exactly what Wil was waiting for, a moment of negligence on his part!

Immediately, two gigantic rocks rose from the ground and slammed into Nobu, crushing him in between!

Sadly, it was only an afterimage... The cloaked man had already retreated to a safe distance.

"I applaud your courage young man. You've far exceeded my expectations," he croaked.

But then, he shook his head, slowly, as if in remorse.

"If only courage was all that it took to achieve victory... Today, you shall learn the greatest lesson anyone could ever teach you...

"In the face of absolute power, all effort is meaningless."

As soon as he uttered those words, Nobu raised his left hand and pointed his forefinger towards Wil.

Feeling a bad premonition building in his heart, Hade watched in horror as all the pikes Nobu had launched earlier in the fight rose from the ground and levitated in the air.

With a snap of his fingers, the twenty-something black pikes blasted towards Wil at a blistering speed that offered little to no reaction time.

"No!" Hade screamed but it was too late.

The pikes drilled into the wide-eyed Wil one after the other until his whole body was riddled with holes!

It was a gruesome sight to see and was undoubtedly extremely painful for Wil who could barely move.

He mustered the last of his strength to turn towards Hade:

"I'm sorry," He mouthed before he collapsed lifelessly to the ground.

...

CHAPTER TITLE: The Death of Wil Baldric