[Nightmare]

Helix cracked his neck and started stretching his body.

"What? Giving up on attacking me with a magic circle so soon?" Tilo laughed.

Helix gave him a slight smile but stayed silent.

"You know those specific stretches won't help your body from getting hurt, right?" Tilo continued with narrowed eyes.

"Yeah. But it's good form, don't you think?" Helix asked with a mocking smile.

"Hmmm. I suppose you're not wrong. Are you ready to begin?" Tilo chuckled.

"Give me two months with a sword trainer, help me level up killing monsters, and buy me breakfast, and I'll be ready." Helix sighed.

The man laughed.

"If what you said wasn't so rational, I'd have spasming face muscles." Tilo chuckled with an amused expression.

"Since you have time to joke, you have time to fight.

The countdown starts now!"

Helix closed his eyes.

'Charlotte, Marie… I hope that our legendary harem night blessed me with enough stats to pull this off.' He thought after a deep breath.

"Ten!"

"Nine!"

"Eight!"

"Seven!"

"Six!"

"Five!"

The blood in the crowd was pumping with enthusiasm.

"Four!"

"Three!"

"Two!"

"One!"

"Go!"

Helix ran at Tilo with the full speed of a mortal.

Tilo's eyes went wide at the strange development.

When Helix got within ten feet of the man, he threw two discs out.

"Hah. Right off the bat, I see." Tilo chuckled.

"However…. interesting choice.

I'll let this one trigger and see what he does." He added under his breath.

A second later, Tilo's body split in two.

To Tilo's shock, the clone remained one foot in front of his face and mimicked his movements.

As a result, he couldn't see Helix!

Everywhere he turned, he was staring at his back which was a creative and advanced usage of the technique.

There were other spells with more practical ways of achieving what he did, so it was a bewildering twist.

The moment that Tilo's shock subsided, a disc land five feet from the back right.

"Tch!"

Tilo clicked his tongue when he saw the disc containing Line Shot Trigger.

The magic circle shoots an earth bullet at the victim.

It's not powerful, but the criteria were to land a hit on Tilo.

The interesting part of the spell was that its range was large.

However, it shot in a straight line.

So by throwing it [behind] Tilo, the man was required to jump ten feet high backward to avoid the potential for collision.

In front of the man was an annoying clone that limited his vision.

Therefore, his only option was to move horizontally before negating the spells.

To the left, there was a familiar magic circle.

To the right, Helix was running to attack him.

While he could kill Helix in a second without his eyesight, Helix had 21 moves before Tio could touch him!

The man didn't know whether to laugh or cry when he realized his predicament.

"Tch! I can't believe I'm already pulling out circles." Tilo sneered.

Tilo shot to the left. He gracefully avoided the [Circle of Disillusion] attack area and triggered a modified Circle of Negation to make the clone disappear.

Clear of the obstacles to his senses, Tilo jumped again to avoid Helix, rushing to his position.

However, to his shock, Helix tripled his speed in an instant.

Just as the man was preparing to dodge, his body shook with a strange wave of distortion.

"I avoided this damn spell. I know it!" TIlo gritted his teeth.

Due to his prior research of Helix, he had prepared for him to use the spell.

As a result, he placed a magic circle on his body to instantly negate the effects.

Tilo's strategy was purely defensive.

Show the helplessness of magic against skillful countering, and then beat the lesson into him.

Spirit particles flowed into his pocket, and the circle lit up to negate the spell.

However, the effect didn't disappear.

Tilo's eyes widened in disbelief.

The effects of the spell were getting more aggressive by the second.

His entire body felt like it was moving in multiple directions at once.

Helix rushed Tilo and punched at his chest with his full speed.

In a haze, he dodged the punch and backed away.

Spirit particles followed into another negation circle.

However, there was no effect whatsoever.

The punches kept flying at Tilo, who was disoriented and angry.

"What the hell is this spell!?" He gritted his teeth.

The crowd was stunned-silent by the strange scene that was unfolding.

Tilo, a grandmaster, was genuinely on the defensive, and they couldn't believe their eyes.

Moreover, they could see something shimmering on Tilo's body but couldn't figure out why the man wasn't getting rid of it.

His appearance was nothing short of hallucinogenic.

While spells often created hallucinations, they had never seen a spell so visually distorted.

Luckily, Helix was as slow as a snail to Tilo and lacked combat experience.

If he was a Level 40 Myriadian or Level 15 Earthian, Tilo would be struggling, despite being over Level 180.

That's how destructive the spell was on his mental processes.

"Six!"

"Five!"

"Four!"

Tilo counted down the punches left before he could knock out Helix and have time to think.

"Three!"

Suddenly Tilo's eyes shot open and murderous rage overcame him.

"I'm going to fucking kill you. You goddamn idiot!" Tio roared.

Helix threw out two discs. In front of him was a defense shield known as [Charge Barrier].

It was an intermediate barrier circle designed to withstand fire and blast spells.

Behind Tio was a magic circle known as [Eruption].

To Tilo's horror, Helix had successfully activated the circle, which he didn't think was possible.

"Wait! Isn't that!?"

"It's activated! Tilo!"

—

[Eruption]

[Difficulty: Legendary]

[Usefulness: Calamity Spell]

[Activation Time: Triggers ten seconds after activation.]

[Cooldown: Single Activation]

[Description: Creates a powerful blast that wipes out an area 250 meters around the circle.]

[Notes: Warning! To use, you must create a trigger or have the speed to cover 250 meters in 10 seconds.]

—

The message was that Helix believed an intermediate barrier shield could survive the blast of Eruption.

The option he was forcing on Tilo was to negate the spell and risk an attack while distracted or knock him out before negating the spell.

"You reckless brat! I'm going to teach you something extremely valuable!" Tilo sneered.

Tilo spun around with a beautiful ark and planned to cast a negation spell and smash Helix's chest in a single motion.

However, as he turned mid-motion, he saw that Eruption had been diffused.

"An illusion?" He asked with wide eyes.

The man cackled in bitter bewilderment as he completed his rotation to slam Helix in the chest.

He hadn't realized that the spell he was under had disappeared.

Since his mind was clear, he could see that Helix held a Circle of Illusion in his left hand.

The [Charge Barrier] disc was the [Circle of Negation] that Tilo had given him.

It was a deception.

"This fucking idiot!" Tilo cried under his breath.

He let his guard down slightly instead of completing his motion to shatter Helix's ribs.

The man felt a hit.

To Tilo, it only felt like a tennis ball hitting him.

However, Helix cried out in pain when his hand collided.

After the hit was complete, Tilo chopped Helix in the back of the neck to knock the young man out.

He then caught him in his arms.

Tilo didn't want to even look at the reckless idiot.

While Helix did not technically endanger the lives of everyone present with [Eruption], he did threaten his own life by doing something Tilo [thought] was reckless.

As a result, disoriented and confused, Tilo might have killed him.

"What the fuck just happened?" Tilo gruffed while laying the boy on the ground.

He started inspecting the various magic circles on the ground.

When he saw the [Circle of Disillusion], his eyes widened with shock.

The disc's magic circle was an illusion, and the real circle was [Ghost Walker Trigger].

"What type of God forsaken franken-stitched nightmare is this!?" Tio muttered to himself in disbelief as he looked at it.

The more he looked at the circle, the more amazed he became.

The other two grandmasters ran into the arena with faces flushed red with frustration.

"Tilo! What the fuck was that just now?" A middle-aged man roared.

Tilo looked at the man with a truly pathetic smile.

"Tilo, you better have a good explanation of why you gave that kid an Eruption spell." An elderly woman with gray hair snapped.

"Otherwise, I'll rip your eyes out so you can watch your own death."

Tio scoffed at their pompous attitudes.

"Look. I'd have negated it if that boy had thrown that spell at any other point.

I have a specialty circle for each, and it's a great teaching lesson to explain how stupid it is to use calamity spells." Tio replied.

"That's a shitty way to do things!" The man yelled with a flushed red face.

Tilo closed his eyes.

"Even now, I could have negated that spell and killed that boy." He snapped with frustration on his face.

"Oh, really? It looked like you ate the wrong plant and we're on a day hike to enlightenment." The woman replied with a mocking smile.

Tilo looked at the two with a truly defeated face.

"Look, you two. I've seen thousands of magic circles. It's what I do.

If a boy his age was wielding something I don't know about, it means he's dangerous enough to kill us anyway.

Moreover, that kid was confirmed at Level 1 two days before being stabbed.

He just woke up. So he was Level 1 three days ago.

His spirit particle reserve should have been impossible for him to activate the spell.

Even if he has that library, memorized the spirit mix, and had the spirit particle control necessary to pull it off, it still should have been impossible." Tilo pointed out.

The two of them stared at Tilo with dumbfounded expressions.

The logic was sound, but the context was baffling.

"More importantly, which one of you would have been prepared to handle this?"

The two grandmasters stared at the circle with disbelief.

—

[A/N: Welcome to the level-up arc! Help get this to the top where it belongs. I'll write a bonus chapter for every review up to 25, and I'll start tomorrow. So three a day :)

The fight scenes are regular from now on, they'll become biblical in scope, and will get increasingly mind-bending as Helix breaks through the barrier and is allowed to use his Nightmare ;)]