Calamity Upon This World

It was now the next day.

Last night was one of the most memorable nights of Williams life, and he was lucky to have been able to make some actual friends in this life.

This has always been one of his gripes in his past life about not having any friends or people he could trust.

Even now, he doesn't regret revealing his true identity to them.

But just when he was being happy, a voice spoke inside his mind.

'Don't get careless now; the more people you have that you care about in your life, the more it would hurt if you lost them because of your flaw' Zephyr reminded him.

William shuddered at being reminded of this.

He already knew this, which is why he tried to stay closed up before.

But he also knew that he would just be admitting defeat if he was too afraid to do anything just because of his flaw.

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This was the whole reason why he had started this trip in the first place.

But before he could go to the neutral continent to claim his prize, there was one last thing that he needed to do.

Which is exactly why he was standing outside Michael's office.

Once he entered, he was once again greeted by a familiar blue colour.

Reminding him of how much Michael loved the colour.

But that wasn't his focus at the moment; instead, it was the bespectacled brown-haired man sitting on a desk.

Seeing William enter his office, Michael flashed a smile and just stared at him without saying anything.

"I assume you already know about the promotion" William asked.

"So I've heard" Michael replied in a knowing tone.

Well done on your promotion; you've really managed to exceed mine and others expectations this time," Michael congratulated him, but his voice showed no emotion.

"I assume you still remember our deal?" William asked.

"Of course, as the head of the  Adventurers Association, it would be improper of me to go back on my word."

"Good, we can start whe-" William was speaking something when he was suddenly off guard.

The space around them changed.

As a luminescent white-blue colour spread everywhere, envoleping everything in Michael's chilling mana.

And before he knew it, both William and Michael were in a completely different subdimension.

'I can't feel the outside world anymore' William inwardly panicked but didn't let it show.

He tried using the [Shadow Step], but there were no shadows to teleport into.

It was all white, as far as the eye could see.

And just standing here, William felt like he was freezing to death.

He felt the chill down to his bones.

His first instinct was to flare up his mana and prepare to fight.

But in the end, he decided against it.

After all, if Michael wanted to harm him, he wouldn't be standing here unharmed like this.

"What's this?" William asked, looking around the beautiful blue-white space.

His voice contained a hint of admiration for the beautiful white space.

While it didn't affect him that much due to him being a child of Mana, as well as his other skills,.

He felt that for anyone, it would be troublesome to feel their mana here.

"Spatial isolation," Michael muttered in a stoic tone.

But his face contained a hint of surprise at Williams's ability to stay calm in such a situation.

It impressed him a bit.

"I didn't know you had spatial affinity," William asked this time, genuinely surprised.

As spatial affinity was extremely rare, he only knew two people with it.

And one of them was a literal God, while the other was the strongest individual in the world.

So for there to be a third person with this affinity was really surprising to him.

During their previous encounter, William could only feel ice mana particles around and inside Michael.

Which lined up with the general knowledge of him being the elemental favourite of ice.

So he hadn't questioned it before, but now seeing what he was seeing, he couldn't help but wonder if Michael had somehow managed to hide his second affinity from the world all this time.

But his queries were shortly quelled by the man in question.

"Nah, it's nothing as special as that."

"But I must say you're quite a curious kid to wonder about the opponent's ability instead of worrying about yourself in such a potentially dangerous situation."

"I've been told that, after all, a curious mind is the makings of a good magician, and as for worrying about myself, there is no need; if you wanted to harm me, I wouldn't be standing here anyway," William replied in an easy-going tone as he continued admiring the space around them.

"Glad to see you can still think rationally even when caught by surprise like this, but to answer your question.

All I did was refine my control over a single element, in this case, ice, and make it dominate the space around us to isolate us in this spatial domain.

This whole dimension is saturated to the limit with ice mana, all of which is marked by my mana signature.

So it should be really hard to use mana for anyone other than me here" Michael calmly explained, answering Williams doubt.

Hearing such a concise and detailed explanation from Michael really impressed William.

He could finally understand what this ability was and wondered if he could use it himself in the future.

The answer to that question was yes.

In fact, he had a fun idea in mind.

"Name an element," William asked playfully.

Michael seemed slightly taken back upon hearing his question, but he decided to answer anyway.

"Lighting"

"Sure, cancel out your isolation," William replied calmly.

Michael seemed a bit stunned, almost as if he had heard wrong, but his eyes told a different story.

A hint of excitement creeped into his face as his lips twitched.

He seemed to want to say something like, 'It can't be' but he held back.

And instead, he did as he was told.

Cracks similar to breaking ice started showing around the beautiful space, and before long, it was no more.

Allowing both of them to return to the same overly blue office.

As soon as the whitish blue space had shattered.

A violent, azure-dark blue colour spread from William and engulfed everything in sight.

In less than a heartbeat, both of them found themselves once again isolated in a different sub-dimension.

The only difference being the source and master of the dimension.

Unlike the previously beautiful and refined ice dimension from before,.

This one was much different, taking on a more violent appearance to match the element that had been used to create it.

Lightning mana ran rampant in the area, manifesting itself into stray tendrils of lightning that wrecked the surroundings.

But it didn't harm either of the two people inhabiting it.

The borders of the whole dimension were azure.

And unlike the previously endless expanse of the white domain, this one was much smaller.

Barely 500 metres in all directions.

The borders also looked rather filmy compared to the hard, impenetrable white border from earlier.

The whole dimension was relatively unstable and not nearly as refined as Michael had conjured it to be.

It was easy to tell that the space wouldn't be able to hold on for long if two equally powerful opponents fought or if either one of them tried to break it.

This was without even mentioning that unlike the barrier from before, where all the mana particles were ice and all were marked in Michael's signature and it was almost impossible for his opponent to use mana.

This one, while filled to the brim with lightning particles like one would expect, was unmarked.

Meaning all the abundant lightning particles were free for both William and his opponent to utilise.

And yet, despite all its flaws, nothing could discredit the fact that William had managed to isolate space itself just after seeing it once.

Looking around, William seemed dissatisfied with what he had created, and despite not saying it aloud, it was easy to tell what was going on inside his head.

'I can do better'

Seeing this finally, the laugh that Michael seemed to be trying to suppress since earlier finally came out.

"Hahahahahahahaha"

A loud and hearty laughter resounded throughout the space.

William was finally distracted from his poor attempt at isolating space and instead stared at Michael as if seeing a zoo animal.

"This is simply absurd," Michael exclaimed, finally having calmed down.

"I'm having trouble believing it, despite it being in front of me."

"Spatial isolation is supposed to be an extremely secret and high-level technique reserved for the best of the best"

"Heck, it took even me, with all my talent, a whole year of practice and training just to learn it"

"And that too can mostly be attributed to my being an elemental favourite"

Yet a mere kid was able to recreate it with just a single glance.

And the fact he had asked him about what element to use implied he could potentially recreate theisolation with other elements

"If  I tried to tell anyone this, they would think I'm going insane."

For the first time today, Michael genuinely seemed surprised.

One could tell he was feeling a lot of emotions at the moment, and yet not one of them indicated even a shred of jealousy.

Instead, he seemed genuinely amused at what he had stumbled upon.

There seemed to be a lot that he wanted to say and ask, but before that, there was something that needed to be done.

"Before we continue this conversation any further, remove your mask."