Chapter 120 – Choices in Life (II)

Chapter 120

Choices in Life (II)

It is rather difficult to describe the sensation of feeling my hands catch fire. They weren’t literally ablaze, no, as the man’s attack never reached quite that far, but my brain, blinded by the decades of living in a non-magic world, was certain that they were burning.

As soon as I pulled the Tortoise Mirror out, a particularly bright sheen of light exploded from its cracked surface. It contorted outward like a slime or a membrane, fanning out to cover the entire area around me.

The moment the gigantic, hurtling ball of flames descended upon its surface, the entire sheen turned bright red, as though immolated. It didn’t stay that way for long–rather, it couldn’t even be measured in normal time, I don’t think.

The only reason I even saw any of this was because the time seemed to almost slow down for me, as everything unraveled as though in want of being seen by my eyes.

Upon impact, the ball of fire dissipated across the surface of the projected sheen, and less than a blink later, the sheen was back to its original appearance while a spewing ball of flames twice the size of the previous one was sent back twice as fast toward the point of origin.

I don’t know whether the attack was especially strong or even particularly deadly, but it was evident that none of them expected any of us to put on any resistance–after all, why would they? They felt I was the strongest, at the measly middle of the Spirit Manifestation Realm, and the person attacking me was, comparatively, a Demigod (not a literal one, I don’t think, but close enough).

Thus, none reacted as the ball of flames reached them. It all unraveled in less time than it takes to blink, and the ball of flames erupted into a world-consuming inferno that briefly turned the night into a day.

Three pillars of fire jutted out for over a hundred yards into the sky, debris was flung up and outward like an eruption of a volcano, and the world quaked and was nearly torn apart at its seams as the ejection of energy demolished practically everything in front of us for almost four hundred yards.

All the trees were gone; in their stead was scorched dirt with ashes slowly piling on top.

Even the rocks and stones melted, turning into sludge swallowed up by the ground.

Everything was consumed in the infernal blaze… everything but us. The fire never so much as looked our way, as though it were a protector keeping us safe.

Eerily, it did not continue burning as flames ought to.

Within a second, it devoured, destroyed, and consumed everything… and it disappeared, as though something else entirely swallowed it up out of existence.

It was gone.

The sound that was just budding to erupt into an explosion that would definitely burst my eardrums… it was cut.

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The blinding light that just flashed the night into a day disappeared, as though it had never been there.

Even the warmth that I just started feeling against my skin cooled down immediately.

In a way, it was even more petrifying than my reflecting of the attack.

Speaking of such…

I’m shaking.

Holy shit, am I shaking!

Did I just really do this?!! Did I just kill like thirteen people?!

No, no, no, they killed themselves! Right, they attacked, the attack was bounced, and boom! So were they. Bounced from life.

Ugh. Is this really a time for bad jokes?!