NOVPUB"Our lord said you would come," the fairy spoke, voice almost gleeful. "This too is part of your trial—to see if you're truly worthy of evolution. You see, each hero receives a task scaled to their strength. Sometimes the challenge is balanced… but yours requires intervention from us spirits or so my Lord told me. So, let's begin. We were told to make this difficult—just like with the hydra which the fire spirit informed us about."
The glowing creature began drawing in more of its kind. Spirits merged with it, enhancing it further. Though it remained roughly human-sized, Logan could feel the surge of pressure with each light wisp fusing into its form.
"I hope to at least get something for beating you," Logan muttered, rolling his shoulders back. He saw there was no avoiding this fight. Despite being a tamer, and having full right to use his beasts, something inside him stirred—he wanted to do this alone. To test himself. To prove his own strength.
He called his creatures to retreat.
Then, without warning, he launched his opening move.
"Let's start with Cinda strongest move… let's see what Crimson Cataclysm can do here."
The hydra's most devastating ability. It had three possible effects—each deadly. A bombardment of mana-forged meteors. An earth-fracturing eruption that turned the battlefield into molten chaos. Or unstable tectonic ripples that split the ground and spawned magma vents.
Logan picked the meteor variant—massive destruction condensed into a single, lethal strike from above.
He concentrated hard, shaping the magic. A single blazing meteor, twenty meters across, tore through the air with blazing velocity. Logan felt almost half his mana burn out in a single moment.
The spirits didn't flinch though.
They raised barrier after barrier of gleaming light—overlapping layers of protection. Logan expected nothing less. These beings had lived longer than some mountains. They were not going to fall easily. Especially not when one of their own had once blessed him.
But that was just phase one.
He wasn't done yet.
"Let's see how wind fares," Logan whispered.
Calling upon Zephyr's power, he activated Typhoon Barrage. Wind blades swirled around him, razor sharp—but this time, they were laced with arcs of crackling electricity. The energy fused into each gust, turning them into charged strikes.
Instead of scattering, Logan directed them all toward a single target: the shields.
He didn't need to break all of them—just enough to make the spirit flinch.
As Logan unleashed the charged wind blades, he noticed a strange shift—some of the light shields buckled and shattered, while others glowed brighter, reinforced mid-cast. It wasn't just one spirit behind the magic. There were multiple fairies, at times even working on the same skill, they all are working in tandem, layering their mana into a defense far more complex than he anticipated.
But Logan didn't waver.
He had much more mana to burn.
"Infernal Beam," he muttered, recalling and summoning Scorch's newest ability.
A fiery red light burst from his hand, cutting a path toward the center of the spirit cluster. The timing had to be perfect—the meteor was almost overhead, fully manifested and now falling fast. If he waited too long, he'd get caught in it too.
Logan held the beam steady for five full seconds, carving through shield after shield, each one bursting like crystal under pressure. The air rang with the sharp, glass-like cracks of shattering defenses.
Then he vanished—Shadow Step triggered at the last second, teleporting him out of the impact zone.
From a safer perch, he watched the chaos below. His vision blurred slightly—mana drain catching up with him—but he forced himself to focus. The spirits moved quickly, darting through the air like motes of light. If he lost track of them now, the meteor would hit nothing but dirt.
"Let's see what you'll do…" Logan muttered, his voice edged with defiance. "Teleport away—or die trying to protect this forest."
He watched as more fairies emerged, rallying to the defense. The battle was about to truly get to the best part—and Logan somehow knew they wouldn't run.
They were going to try to stop it. Logan could feel it—their determination, their loyalty to their lord, and their need to protect this forest. That was fine.
It was exactly what he planned for.
He watched as the fairies grew in size again, their bodies swelling with borrowed power.
They then formed a barrier of light and, in a single coordinated strike, punched upward into the descending meteor. The construct of condensed mana fractured—its form created mostly by mana destabilized from the sudden collision—and shattered into flickering pieces of light, dissolving before impact.
That moment of strain, this was the the gap Logan had been waiting for.
"Phantom Mirror" Logan whispered.
In an instant, a copy of Logan formed where he had just been. It mirrored his last five actions—casting a second Crimson Cataclysm, followed by the Typhoon Barrage, then the devastating Infernal Beam from Scorch. The phantom even copied his precise Shadow Step timing, disappearing just as the attacks launched.
From a distance, the real Logan watched it unfold, already draining dark mana crystals to replenish his reserves. A few sips of mana water followed. He didn't need to fight up close anymore. This phase was all about endurance.
The second barrage began.
The fairies, already winded from deflecting the first meteor, could no longer summon the same layered defenses. Their shields flickered, unstable. A few spirits sacrificed themselves, flinging their glowing forms in front of the electrified wind blades. Others absorbed parts of the Infernal Beam, their forms distorting under the heat.
But the real terror came again from above.
A second meteor, conjured from the mirrored Crimson Cataclysm, descended like divine judgment. Slower than the first—but still strong enough to destroy a good chunk of forest.
This time, Logan saw it—hesitation in their movements. Some of the fairies had scattered before he unleashed his second barrage, and now the radiant figure before him trembled, its body beginning to split apart like refracted light under a chandelier, but they managed to disperse the mana that created the comet yet again at the last second.
"Hero of Taming," a voice echoed with layered tones, "You have grown strong indeed. But power is only half of the trial. Now show us—can you survive?"
The atmosphere shifted violently. Logan's instincts screamed.
A cage of condensed light formed around him, flickering with sacred runes. He reached out trying to get out, but it was too late. The cage sealed, locking him in place, its radiant magic warping the space around him.
Then came the real threat.
A beam of pure light mana began to form, humming with such power that the air itself began to vibrate. Logan could feel the skin on his arms prickling, his mana reacting as if trying to escape his body.
He grit his teeth. "Your getting serious, huh?"
Logan raised his hand, forming shields of layered energy, stacking elemental defenses with his current arsenal. Then, channeling deep within, he began casting Holy Nova. He didn't know if it would directly counter the fairies' beam, but it might disrupt the energy—or at least lessen the blow.
It also reminded him painfully of something else.
"I really need to start spending more on actual gear," he muttered under his breath, wincing as the mana cost ticked higher. "I've been relying on skills so much and yet neglected my armor…"
The light around him brightened. The beam wasn't fired yet, which only made it worse—it meant the fairies were preparing a third attack, something else entirely. A trump card.
Logan's Holy Nova reached critical mass, its healing pulse and light-warping shockwave ready to burst.
He narrowed his eyes and braced.
"Come on then. Let's see what you can do!" Logan shouted, defiant.
The fairies giggled—high-pitched and eerie, like children plotting mischief.
Their magic intensified, weaving together until the third spell finally launched: a beam of holy light so dense it hummed with destructive power. Logan's layered shields cracked one after another under the force, each one barely lasting a second before shattering like glass under pressure.
He didn't panic.
With precision, he rebuilt the barriers, cycling the bare minimum mana needed to conserve strength. He was buying time.
And then—Holy Nova.
He cast it at the final moment, not just as a counterstrike, but to flood himself with its regenerative wave. He needed that healing... because the fairies hadn't just fired a beam—they had unleashed the same skill.
Two Holy Novas collided in midair.
The shockwave that followed rippled like a dome of raw, divine force. Twin pulses of sanctified mana exploded outward, their convergence turning the battlefield into a vortex of radiant light.
Logan held his ground, the wave crashing over him. He clenched his teeth as the force pushed at his ribs, but his wounds mended almost as fast as the damage came.
When the light dimmed, and the wind stilled, both sides stood in silence.
Logan exhaled, slow and sharp. "Same skill, huh?" He wiped dust from his cheek. "I expected no less from spirits of light."
Across from him, the fused fairy entity hovered, its body now flickering between stable form and raw light. Logan imagined the playful smirk wouldn't leave its glowing face.
The real fight was far from over. n𝚘𝚟𝚙u𝚋.co𝚖
