Calamity Upon This World

'This is fine, I can win'  William thought, but in reality he was being completely delusional.

No matter what he did in this situation, defeat was inevitable, and yet an overwhelming feeling of superiority ran through his body as he gazed at his opponent.

Even when he saw Noir get one shot, he remained calm as he casted [Ice Storm].

On his outstretched hand, a white mana circle manifested, and from it emerged a storm of frost, which charged at Kaust.

His summons moved out of the way, seeing the spell cast by their master.

However, Kaust didn't bother moving as a purple circle similar to a mana circle but still different manifested in front of him, and strangely, when the ice storm made contact with the circle, it got absorbed.

"Your little tricks won't work on me, boy," the demon snickered, finding the boy's attempts amusing.

'What the fuck?' William thought as he felt the disappearance of the mana particles his spell contained.

Mana is just like any other energy; it can't be destroyed or created. Even when someone breaks a spell, the mana particles that formed the spell just get dispersed and still remain in the environment.

And yet what William just experienced completely broke that basic understanding; he just felt mana particles disappear, almost like they were destroyed.

And the energy contained within the circle he summoned wasn't mana, so it must've been miasma.

So going by that logic, assuming that miasma is capable of destroying mana should be a fair assumption, but how would that even work?

William had no idea about that, but he knew that if he wanted a chance at beating his opponent, he needed to understand the energy called miasma.

'How interesting, this is fun' William thought at encountering something he couldn't understand and challenged his understanding of mana.

That's right, even after encountering the unknown, instead of being afraid like most people, William was excited.

At the end of the day, he truly loved the concept of mana, and this played a key role in his desire to reincarnate.

And if he truly wanted to achieve his goal of reaching the apex of magic, he couldn't be ignorant about the properties of magic and how it interacted with other energies.

There were a lot of things he wanted to try, but he knew now wasn't the time, so instead he narrowed it down to a few key things that he would use to figure out the properties of miasma, after which he could deduce a way around them to win.

However, while William was racking his brain, Kaust wasn't just going to stand around and wait, so he charged towards him, intending to rip his heart out in one clean move.

Thankfully, his summons weren't going to let their master get hurt. Golden Sting and Machak moved towards Kaust and prepared to hit him, but sadly, they were out of their league.

Two black curver blades appeared on Kaust's hands, which he used to intercept both of them, and after a slight struggle, he was able to overwhelm them both and easily kill them.

Now all of his servants were dead—well, not really dead, as they will be reborn within his shadow, but that will take days, so they were out of commission for this fight.

But, even despite being killed, they had done their job of buying their master time.

Now William had a pretty good idea about how to deal with this threat.

And the first step was activating

[Mana Ascension] This form took a huge strain on his body even in his peak condition, and right now his body was nowhere near that, so he could barely maintain this form for a few minutes. In these few minutes, he needed to somehow understand the properties of Miasma and beat the demon.

Immediately, red and crimson mana became visible in the area as William dyed the environment with his mana, making it hard for anyone other than him to utilise mana and allowing him to influence the mana in the atmosphere.

It also drastically boosted his own mana capabilities, but the only thing was that his opponent didn't utilise mana but rather some mysterious energy called miasma.

"Ooh, fancy transformation; let's see if it will be enough," Kaust chuckled.

With his new boost in strength, he used (flame arrows) as small flame mana circles manifested behind him, and from them emerged arrows made of flame that charged at Kaust.

Seeing the hundred arrows charging at it, the demon didn't try to dodge or block and instead chose to take it head-on with an attack of his own.

Kaust raised his hand, and from it, a long-pitch black javelin shot towards the arrow.

The javelin flew a bit before dividing into 100 different smaller javelins, which clashed with the arrow.

The clash between the arrows and javelins destroyed the roof and, in the process, exposed the destroyed upper area of the warehouse.

'First test result:negative; regardless of how spread out or small the attack is, it will be destroyed' William thought as he once again noticed particles of mana dissapearing.

'Let's move onto test two' with that thought, he said (instantial combustion).

BOOOMM!!!

As soon as William cast a spell, an explosion occurred at Kaust's location, too fast for him to even react.

Once the smoke cleared, an unharmed Kaust was standing; however, the black smoke that was previously surrounding him was gone.

"Is that all you can do?" Kaust mocked.

But William completely ignored the comment as his attention was drawn to the mana particles from his spell, which were surprisingly not destroyed and instead moved in the environment like the rest of the particles.

Despite the 'instaneous' effect of his spell, William noticed Kaust had conjured a shield of miasma around himself before the spell could hit him, but it was destroyed.

And now, after getting hit while he himself was unharmed due to his own strength, the black miasma smoke that was previously surrounding him was gone.

With that knowledge, he once remembered how, in both his previous attacks, the quantity of miasma used was significantly higher than the quantity of mana he used.

And once the quantity of mana used exceeded the miasma of the opposing attack, the mana attack was able to easily overpower it.

He still wasn't sure why that black smoke was destroyed, but it was only a matter of time until he did.

'Test number 2 results: positive; in order to 'destroy' mana, the quantity of miasma used must be significantly higher'

Finally, William had learned a bit more about what he was up against and how to combat it, and even despite being angry at failing to keep his promise and having his life on the line, he couldn't help but mutter.

"This is fun."