Chapter 703: Inside The Dark

Third Person’s POV

After a brief search, they found a suitable cave and entered it, using available materials to cover its entrance and reduce the amount of freezing wind and snow blowing inside.

Once they had secured their temporary shelter, they lit a fire to warm the interior, allowing the group to recover from the effects of the storm.

Naturally, Eleanor and Aurelia settled close to Ethan, huddling beside him as they enjoyed the warmth of the flames.

Ethan smiled at the two women, feeling a quiet sense of comfort at having them beside him again.

After a short while, however, he rose to his feet.

“Wait for me. I have to answer nature’s call.”

He deliberately spoke in a fairly loud voice, then glanced toward Arlene with a faint smile.

The young princess’s expression immediately became awkward.

She looked at Ethan as though she were trying to understand why this mysterious and powerful young man had suddenly announced something like this in such an unnecessarily loud manner.

For someone who usually carried himself with considerable composure, his behavior was rather unexpected.

Eleanor and Aurelia, on the other hand, were not particularly surprised.

The two women exchanged a brief glance before returning their attention to the fire, simply assuming that Ethan’s strange behavior might be one of the lingering side effects of the potion they had administered to him earlier.

Without offering any further explanation, Ethan walked deeper into the cave.

The farther he went, the weaker the firelight became, until the orange glow eventually disappeared behind the uneven stone walls.

Soon, he found himself completely alone in the pitch-black darkness.

For an ordinary mage, such an environment might have been immensely uncomfortable, particularly in an unfamiliar realm where their perception was already being suppressed by the ice storm outside.

For Ethan, however, the opposite was true.

The moment he entered the deeper darkness, he felt an indescribable sense of security settle over him.

His steps gradually slowed, and the tension that had remained within him since he had entered this realm seemed to dissipate little by little.

Here, he felt safer than he had in the brightly illuminated snowy landscape outside.

The familiar darkness surrounding him seemed to soothe his mind, and as he sensed the dark mana flowing through his body and mingling with the darkness present in his surroundings, a peculiar emotion rose within his heart.

His crimson eyes softened.

For a brief moment, the way he looked at the darkness almost resembled the gaze of someone who had finally reunited with a beloved companion after a long separation.

The feeling was difficult to describe, but the return of his dark mana had restored something he had deeply missed, and even now, he could not help appreciating its presence.

After remaining still for a moment, Ethan acted on the reason he had made such an excuse.

He reached his senses inside his storage ring and retrieved the broken saber gathering dust in a corner.

The weapon appeared as unimpressive as ever.

Its blade was dull, its condition was poor, and nothing about its outward appearance suggested that it had once been a Rank Seven weapon, let alone one connected to the mysterious Law of Devouring.

Nevertheless, Ethan examined it with renewed interest.

If the Nexus spirit’s theory was correct, his newly acquired comprehension of the Aspect of Twisting might finally allow him to awaken whatever power remained dormant within the blade.

He extended his hand toward the weapon, and dark mana immediately spread across his palm, coating it in a layer of black energy.

With a thought, he began gathering the dark mana in his hand, gradually condensing it into a small, spherical vortex that enclosed the energy within itself.

Unlike the blood poisons, which had generated outward-expanding twisting force fields, this vortex collapsed inward, keeping its twisting power contained rather than allowing it to spread into the surroundings.

From the outside, it looked like an ordinary dark sphere, with no particularly remarkable characteristics.

However, beneath its seemingly calm surface, waves of dark mana continuously twisted around one another, forming increasingly complex spirals as Ethan fed more mana into the dark sphere.

The mana did not merely circulate in a simple, uniform motion.

Instead, each wave twisted against the others, compressing the dark mana further and further, making the sphere increasingly dangerous with every passing moment while maintaining its overall shape.

A normal dark mage, or even a mage possessing another elemental affinity, would have been horrified by Ethan’s ability to manipulate such a volatile force formed entirely from his own mana.

Maintaining the sphere’s structure while continuously compressing and then twisting the elemental energy into a suppressed forcefield within it required an extraordinary degree of control.

Even the slightest mistake could disrupt the delicate balance, causing the entire structure to collapse and unleash a violent explosion that could blow his hand apart in an instant.

Yet Ethan managed it with relative ease.

His greatest advantage lay in his exceptional talent for the Dark Element, coupled with the fact that what would be an extremely difficult feat for other mages was almost second nature to him: mana control, the fundamental ability every mage learned when first embarking on the path of magic.

This was one of the spells he had conceived during his recent state of enlightenment, and he was now attempting to put his newfound comprehension of the Aspect of Twisting into practice.

The dark sphere continued to grow.

Before long, it had reached approximately the size of an orange, and the density of the mana contained within it had increased considerably.

Yet the broken saber remained completely unresponsive.

Ethan examined the dull blade, then glanced at the dark sphere hovering above his palm, a trace of confusion appearing on his face.

Nothing?

He had expected at least some kind of reaction, even if it was only a faint vibration or a slight change in the blade’s appearance.

Instead, the weapon remained as lifeless as ever.

Just as Ethan was beginning to wonder whether he had misunderstood the Nexus’s instructions, a frustrated voice suddenly rang out inside his mind.

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