Silence.

It was heavy and suffocating, pressing down until even the howl of the wind and the crackle of lightning seemed to vanish. Marquis Vistro hovered in the air, his silver blade trembling in a hand that had never once known hesitation. His mind, sharpened by decades of cultivation and political schemes, struggled to process what he was seeing, fragments of disbelief crashing together without forming a single clear thought.

He couldn’t take his eyes off the person in front of him. The outfit, the eyes, and the clear familiar features meant it could only be one person: his third son. It didn’t make any sense.

’How?’ The question beat in his head like a painful headache. How could a kid who hadn’t even gone through the awakening ceremony, who had no way to get mana stones from the Church of Light, suddenly use magic? As far as anyone knew, in all the history books of the seven kingdoms—from ancient writings to the records in the royal library—no fifteen-year-old had ever reached the High Mage Stage. Usually, To reach this level requires the maturation of the core via a Saint Flame.

So did he inherit one? Impossible. The Vistro line had no such legacy. Did he create one? No it can’t be. The Marquis himself had spent twelve years in the True Mage realm trying to birth a flame, and he was considered a genius among his peers. The thought of his son making one was enough to make the Marquis feel like he was losing his grip on reality.

"Edward..." the Marquis finally said, his voice rough. "What is the meaning of this? Explain yourself!"

Edward didn’t reply. He simply gave his father a death glaze—a look of such profound indifference that it made the Marquis feel like a speck of dust beneath the foot of a titan.

The Marquis’s face twisted, fear turning into anger. "You think a sudden surge of power makes you my equal? I am the master of this house!"

From Edward’s gaze, the Marquis understood his intentions with chilling clarity. He was the target, and if he hesitated or continued to overthink instead of acting, the outcome would be disastrous for him.

The Marquis threw his head back and let out a chilling laugh before unleashing his own aura. A massive wave of brilliant blue mana erupted from his body, slamming into Edward’s dark, purplish pressure. It was a raw contest of mana strength, and the force between the two was so intense that it warped the air itself, sending cracks spidering across the remaining windows on the upper floors.

The guards on the ground could only stare at the sight before them. It was not something one witnessed often, two powerful mages clashing head-on. The power radiating from them was a clear testament to their status, and the guards understood all too well that between these two men, they were nothing more than ants, waiting to be crushed beneath an elephant’s step.

For a moment, the blue and purple aura stayed locked in place. Then, Edward took a single step forward.

And the purple aura expanded in a sudden surge, its force overwhelming and absolute, dispersing the Marquis’s blue aura as if it were nothing more than smoke in the wind. He didn’t merely lose the clash, he was struck head-on by the sheer pressure of it. His body was hurled from the sky, plummeting toward the earth before crashing into the central courtyard with a bone-jarring thud. He landed on his knees, forced down by the sheer gravitational pin of Edward’s presence.

The Marquis struggled to stand, gasping for air as he fought against the weight of the Edward’s aura. He was a practitioner of the Elemental Law of Wind, a path that favored speed over brute strength. He realized now that he could not win a battle of raw pressure.

He then bit his thumb, smearing a drop of blood across his palm. With that act, he unleashed his elemental spirit, invoking a spirit manifestation spell reversed for those at the True Mage stage and above.

Immediately, the air around the Marquis began to swirl into a small hurricane. From the heart of the vortex, a giant Wind Falcon manifested. It was made of clear air, and its wings were over forty feet wide. Its feathers were like blades of wind that could cut through steel. The falcon let out a piercing roar that vibrated the very stones of the manor and shot upward toward the sky.

The creature blurred, moving at a speed that outpaced sound. It tore toward Edward, its beak open to swallow the boy in a vortex of piercing air.

Edward, whose body was still covered in streams of blue lighting, watched the incoming falcon with a look of boredom. He didn’t lift his sword or try to dodge.

Instead, he held out his left arm, his palm open and facing the falcon.

When the bird was close enough to touch his hand, Edward’s palm glowed with a bright purple light.

Blast!

A beam of pure mana energy shot from Edward’s hand. The beam struck the Wind Falcon square in the beak and tore through its entire body in a split second, erasing the elemental spirit from existence in an instant.

The violet beam kept going, shooting over the manor, clipping the top of the clock tower, and ending miles away by making a perfect hole in the side of a hill.

The courtyard fell into a deathly silence. The knights, and even the Marquis himself, were left dumbfounded. To easily disperse the elemental spirit of a Peak True Mage was not a small feat by any measure.

Suddenly, the crushing weight of the purple aura vanished. The sky cleared, the spiritual pressure retreating back into Edward’s body as if it had never been.

The Marquis stood on the ground, his eyes darting frantically. He looked up, seeing Edward still floating in the sky. But in the time it took for him to blink, the space in front of him rippled.

Edward was gone from the sky.

He reappeared an inch from the Marquis. The teleportation was so instantaneous that the air didn’t even have time to rush back into the void Edward had left behind, creating a sharp crack of vacuum.

The Marquis’s first instinctual reaction was to divert his gaze from the sky to the boy now standing directly in his personal space. His eyes widened, but he was too slow. Edward’s left palm was already pressed firmly against the Marquis’s stomach.

Edward’s hand glowed with that same, catastrophic purple light.

"On your feet already?" Edward whispered, his voice the only thing the Marquis could hear over the hum of the mana. "I never said you could stand."

BOOM!

A point-blank beam of mana energy erupted from Edward’s palm. It hit the Marquis’s abdomen with the force of a battering ram, the energy bypassng his defensive mana shroud and striking his physical form directly. The Marquis was fired backward like a projectile.

He tore through the air, a blur of silver and red. He crashed into the main wall of the manor, breaking through the stone as if it were nothing. The sound of the building collapsing echoed through the estate as the Marquis disappeared into the dark interior of his own house, leaving a trail of dust in his wake.

Edward stood in the center of the cratered courtyard, his hand slowly lowering, his eyes fixed on the hole in the wall.