NOVPUB
Chapter 144: The Hero Of Knowlege’s True Power
The barrier shattered as Eclipse powered through it, its tail whipping around like a wrecking ball.
Tobias ducked, sliding under it and firing a series of compressed spell bullets — each one carrying distinct elemental energy.
Lightning, fire, ice, wind — they all struck the beast in rapid succession, staggering it mid-air.
Tobias didn’t stop.
He shot forward, forming footholds mid-air with platforms of light.
He leapt up them like a scholar possessed, shooting spell after spell, each one more complex than the last.
Eclipse roared in fury, meeting him in the air with snapping jaws and wings that sliced through the sky.
The two collided in a flurry of motion.
Claw met arcane blade as Tobias conjured a glowing sword of his own making — refined through dozens of layers of magic.
He parried the claws, deflected the teeth, and countered with piercing strikes of magical precision.
But Eclipse was adapting.
The dragon twisted in the air, using its massive body like a whip, and struck Tobias hard across the torso.
The scholar spun midair, coughing as blood left his mouth, but stabilized himself just in time to cast a displacement spell, dodging the follow-up chomp.
"Okay..." Tobias panted, floating high in the sky on a pillar of magic, several hundred feet above the lake below. "You’ll be the first to see this."
He raised both hands.
Dozens — hundreds — of runes exploded into the air above him. They twirled, combined, and merged into massive spell matrices.
"O Keeper of the Eternal Codex,
Hear me now, by word and will.
Let every tome I’ve touched and turned,
Return to me, their wisdom filled.
By ink and glyph, by rune and seal,
Through scholar’s breath and iron quill —
Unveil the vault of thought concealed,
And let this mind no limit feel.
Reality, bend to knowledge vast,
A thousand truths from ages past.
Within my hand, let all recall —
Obey the scholar’s arcane call!" he declared.
The sky darkened.
Eclipse screeched as space twisted.
Reality folded into itself, and suddenly the dragon was trapped inside a colossal circular construct of floating tomes, each one chanting and emitting pulses of refined energy.
It was like being inside a swirling library of doom.
Tobias, now within his own domain, floated calmly in front of the dragon.
"Within this space, all spells I’ve ever learned are enhanced, and all knowledge I’ve accumulated is at my disposal. Let’s see how you fare... against everything I’ve ever studied."
He couldn’t use this for too long though.
The dragon responded by sending a wave of purple fire surging toward him.
Tobias didn’t even flinch — he pointed a finger, and a reflective prism barrier materialized in front of him.
The fire bent, refracted, and exploded outward into the lake.
Tobias moved.
No, he blinked.
Teleporting across the domain, his figure blurred with afterimages.
He slammed the dragon with gravity-enhanced blasts, flash-freezing its wings mid-flight, then igniting them with explosive fire moments later.
Eclipse fought back savagely, crashing into Tobias and biting into a protection ward just before it could hit flesh.
It snarled, wings shredded, scales cracked. But it wasn’t going down without a fight.
"You’re not the only one who learns," Tobias murmured as Eclipse reared back for another attack. "I analyzed your flame composition mid-battle."
A blue glyph appeared beneath the dragon.
BOOM.
The purple fire it spewed fizzled into smoke as the glyph drained the elemental essence, effectively neutering its most dangerous weapon.
The dragon thrashed in fury and tackled him, breaking through three layers of defensive screens and throwing them both into the trees beside the lake.
Tobias crashed into the dirt with a grunt, his barrier shattered and coat torn.
"Okay... that hurt," he muttered, blood dripping from his lip.
Eclipse wasn’t done. It lunged again — and Tobias pulled a glowing relic from his coat, slamming it into the ground.
The resulting blast knocked Eclipse backward with the force of a magical nuke, the surrounding trees disintegrating in a wave of energy.
As the smoke cleared, Tobias stood up, adjusting his bent glasses with a trembling hand. "Still... too much brute strength... not enough calculation..."
Eclipse screeched again, its wings barely functioning but its rage hotter than ever.
Tobias smiled faintly, finally seeing what he needed. "Right... there’s the weak point."
With one final surge of energy, he dashed forward, spells forming in rapid succession around his hands, each one layering over the other.
The moment his hand touched the dragon’s chest, the runes exploded in reverse, imploding rather than detonating, and forcing the energy within Eclipse to fold in on itself.
Eclipse gave one last distorted roar — and collapsed, unconscious and defeated, into the waters below.
Tobias stood still, barely upright, but victorious.
Then he sighed, pushed his glasses up one last time, and muttered, "I hate dragons."
...
Eclipse drifted deeper into the ocean’s abyss, the weight of the battle pressing against its frame.
It had turned back into a cat to lessen the amount of space it took.
Its heartbeat — if it even had one — raced.
Its lungs, nonexistent as they were, felt suffocated by the sheer force of the moment.
As a creature of shifting skin wielding a miniature power of it’s Master, The Demon Lord.
Eclipse had always chosen its battles carefully. And in all its long years, it had never imagined needing to flee from the Hero of Knowledge.
It shivered.
Even now, it couldn’t fully process what had happened.
How Tobias — quiet, bookish Tobias — had become a maelstrom of magical force.
It had been observing all the heroes, for a long time and it could see that Tobias was the weakest out of all of them.
He was a hero it had mocked from afar. A man it had believed weak. And yet...
’That spell... that accursed spell.’
Eclipse’s body shimmered with light as it reverted into a smaller feline form, compact and nimble, hoping to vanish within the dense shadows of the sea.
But before it could escape further, something broke through the surface above.
Shink!
The water split like fabric.
Eclipse’s eyes widened, pupils dilating as it saw Tobias descending like a divine spear, the edges of his blade slicing down where it had been just a moment before.
With a frantic yowl muffled by the depths, Eclipse twisted, shrinking into an even smaller form, something closer to a darting eel, and slipped away at the very last moment.
’That speed... That precision... How?!’
