As Mercedes flew forward, she saw that the figure that had been attacking was actually a silhouette left by fast movement. As she bounced off the transparent
'Odin's Substitution!'
Mercedes only recognised this too late. Hela's substitution sealed one's movements by forcefully attaching you to darkness, while Odin's substitution created a silhouette from superfast movement and split-second illusion magic. In other words, even if Will had not struck her, her attack would have struck thin air.
As Mercedes landed she looked on at Will's now standing figure. She had planned to blast him with a concentrated light attack the moment her mind could concentrate properly. Will had released an even sharper needle of Intent into her mind.
This time the effects were far worse because she had concentrated all her mental defences in the direction Will had attacked from. In other words, her mind was virtually defenceless from behind. Will's attack had thoroughly rattled her and reduced her ability to concentrate even further.
'Just a second. I only need a second!'
Just when her state of mind was about to allow her to continue, she spotted Will's figure turning into a disappearing mirage.
'Odin's Substitution.'
The princess panicked. Whenever Will attacked he would pull back his dense killing intent. Leaving her focus-blind. If one's eyes were used to being blinded by overwhelming light, it took time to adjust. Her mind was constantly under a heavy barrage of intent, and when that intent retracted so suddenly, it disturbed her mind's ability to focus on her surroundings.
"Where did he disappear to?"
Hela's Dominion could not only suck in light, but it could also allow light to [pass through, making one completely invisible in the dominion. She had assumed Will was applying that trait in some way and panicked further.
She had no idea where Will would attack from, and she did not have the mental capacity to construct a complex spell, so decided to do the next best thing.
"Ha!"
With a scream, she let out a burst of light mana. It was an omnidirectional blast of scorching light. This did not need any complex calculations and thoughts and took advantage of her fast and efficient energy output. But she was still incorrect. Will had indeed applied Hela's Dominion, but not in the fashion she had imagined.
'Try and absorb this with a tiny dominion like yours.'
Mercedes decided to take inspiration from her apprentice brother and release an omnidirectional. She was confident that Will's skin-thin Dominion would be unable to absorb her light attack due to its size. She was even more confident in the fact that her amount of mana far outmatched his. She was capable of releasing an output that could easily match Ulysses when he was sealed. Will needed as dominion the size of the entire arena to absorb Ulysses' Column of Light. Hence she was confident he couldn't absorb hers.
Within an instant, Mercedes had become a small sun that expanded rapidly, encasing and scorching the entirety of the massive arena. Only the two large phantoms in the sky remained unaffected and ignored the searing heat. Mercedes was a true savant of the way of the mage, and thus her attack reflected that.
The walls of the arena heated up so much that the lane had started to become a fiery hell. The layer of rock underneath the combatants had started to melt, becoming a mixed mess of lava and rock. But at the end of the day, the light of a star was still overwhelmed by the darkness of space.
Mercedes' sun did not expand and disperse, but rather shrank in one direction, like water in a bowl being sucked into a vacuum. The entire mass of light was sucked into the giant body of the dragon in the skies. It was locked in a battle of the mental realm with the phantom, but it could still assist under certain circumstances.
The light blast was absorbed by the dragon's body. Mercedes was horrified after noticing a black membrane appear on the body of the dragon.
'The contracted Hela's Dominion!'
The beast had cast Hela's Dominion, and just like Will, it had the ability to absorb energy attacks. Except it was large, very large. Its ability to absorb was not just limited to intent. Mercedes had believed that by attacking all directions she was going to hit her target, but unfortunately she hit the wrong one.
'The beast has Frozen Asgard Arts as well, what's happening?'
The princess however had made a mistake. This was indeed Hela's Dominion, but it was not cast from the frozen Asgard arts. It was cast by the dragon itself. The dragon was a frigid yin beast that had been modified by Will's dense killing intent. It was hard to find a living creature more suited to using Hela's magic under level 100. All it needed was one session under the realms of perspective to learn how to cast the spell. Will's killing intent didn't just morph the beast to make it stronger, he also improved its mental vessel by quite a bit.
[Skill: Colossus Criterion Thesaurus
Class: SSS
Class Restriction: Restriction: None
Level Restriction: None
Special restriction: User must be a Sovereign and must have an Intent Ability.
First Chapter- Colossus Criterion
An ability that allows a user to tame a beast that yields regardless of that beast's level, so long as the user has personally won the battle.
Second Chapter- Thesaurus Phylogenesis
An ability that allows a user to imbue a tamed beast with intent and allow it to evolve can only be used 5 times. Results depend on compatibility.
Third Chapter- Colossus Graft
Fuse two tamed beasts to create a brand new species. Results depend on compatibility.]
Thesaurus Phylogenesis had allowed Will to evolve the beast mentally. Killing intent was a form of negative energy and thus was highly compatible with the former Chilling Yin Dragon.
Now it was more accurate to call it a Slaughtering Yin Dragon. A creature that treads the Dao of yin and death. Casting Hela's Dominion after having fused with it was not difficult for dragons, creatures that not only had mighty bodies but also possessed superb magic-casting abilities.
Unlike Will's Dominion which had been fueled by the enemy, this dominion was fueled by draconic power, an energy on par with divine energy.
It was far more stable and had a greater absorption capacity. In less than a fraction of a second, the arena had rapidly cooled. The dragon did not just suck the light energy Mercedes had released, it had also sucked out a large amount of heat energy in the surroundings, freezing the arena. The rapid change from temperatures had caused a storm of rapid winds to kick up within the arena.
But the winds were no different to a breeze for the contestants.
'Wait where is Peerless?' The moment she had this thought, an odd feeling of danger came from behind. She was free falling to the ground and was only a few meters above the ground, her body was parallel to the arena floor so her field of vision was extremely limited. She did not have time to look behind her and placed all her mental defences on her back. A thick and concentrated killing intent was bearing down on her, thus she reacted instinctively to defend against it by gathering what little energy she could on her back. Blue Shift was far too complex for her to cast as it needed precise calculation, and she had no way to evade danger that felt close in her current state.
But to her horror, she found Peerless in front of her, and he was thrusting up toward her from the ground. She had forgotten that Will had one more spell in his arsenal he had barely used. Bifrost Shift. She watched helplessly as the tip of a spear approached her forehead.