Shades of the New World

Evin was armored and equipped with a blunted short sword, while Parvan wore light armor and bore a similarly blunted dagger. On his hand was something akin to a wand. Evin guessed that it was a Channeling Artifact, but unlike Bellaslayn's overpowered artifact that donned 12 different colors, the boy's wand only had two colors on it, white and beige. They were the colors of Light and Earth. Although useless to Evin, it was still a great boon if he managed to obtain it from the boy.

Evin absorbed the Various World's energies, most of them being from the Dark World, Heavy World and the World of Storms. A hint of red and a hint of silver would also be visible if the enemy could see his hue.

His motivation sky high due to his greed, Evin made the first move of the fight. Evin started the fight like he did every other fight, with probing illusions. His illusion got closer to the building's walls and disappeared inside it, while Evin himself silently walked towards the boy, covered in shadows.

Parvan's eyes briefly followed the illusion, but a silver light started shining inside his shirt. The boy seemed to realize something and hurriedly cast a spell that dispels illusions on him. He then saw his enemy silently walking towards him and prepared to cast a Luminous World spell at Evin, judging by the pure white energy coming from his arms.

'A illusion detecting artifact. I should fight more arrogant young masters, if I trick them into betting some items before the fight, who knows how easily I could get rich?' Evin smirked with greed and applied some shadows to his eyes didn't get blinded with the Luminous spell. He could've avoided the spell, but he wanted to try out a quarter-core mage's power. Besides, the Luminous World did not hurt its target that heavily, at least at these levels, so it was the perfect spell to test Parvan's powers.

When the light fell on Evin's body, he didn't really feel anything unpleasant, but the World Sprites and the blood inside his body started panicking greatly.

'Its just light, it won't hurt you!' Evin shouted inwardly and calmed the guests inside his shadow. It was a bit of a sudden thing, but the World Sprites trusted Evin, so they calmed down without much trouble.

He got a rough estimate on how strong his opponent was thanks to the blinding spell. If he compared its firepower to Arza, it was actually two to three times stronger. Evin guessed that Parvan's mana storing capacity was about 3 kgs worth of lodestones. It meant that the boy was not a new advanced quarter-core, since new ones would only be able to use 1-2 kgs at most.

He had little trouble navigating in the bright light, since he protected his eyes quite effectively with his shadow. But obviously, the purpose of a Light spell was to create a distraction so a mage could use another more obvious and direct spell. The enemy was already sending some rock pellets towards his body. Evin could tell that they were much sharper and faster than the rocks that the Easterner mages threw at him back in the forest.

Evin dodge those quite easily and started floating towards Parvan. Judging from the boy fought, he did not like close combat, so Evin's objective became closing the distance. He could exchange some ranged spells with the boy, but Evin was the type of person who like to do whatever his opponents didn't want him to do.

'I would prefer to fight Arza at a distance, since the boy had trouble closing distances, but if I find an enemy that liked to keep their distance, I would do everything in my powers to close the distance,' Evin smirked with glee.

Parvan noticed that his enemy was flying towards him at high speed, so he created two rectangular walls made of Earth to block the way. Unlike Bella's brittle wall of Earth, these ones were much sturdier, and it also had a horizontal gap between them so Parvan could keep his visual on the target.

It was similar to the stone wall that Evin created when he was being attacked by Norna's men.

Evin smiled and quickly flew upwards into a blind spot. He noticed that the walls started to move upwards to follow him, but since he didn't want to give the enemy visual, he sharply increased his speed and appeared on top of the wall.

Instead of the surprised face of the young noble boy he expected to see, he was met with a hail of pellets flying straight towards his face. Parvan obviously guessed that Evin would increase his speed to surprise him, when Evin realized that the wall was moving upwards to follow.

"Fuck!"

Evin cursed and flew downwards, and tanked the few pellets thanks to Karan. He threw air bullets towards the boy to distract him slightly and disguised himself into the shadows of the artificial Earth Wall his enemy made. With the assistance of the World Sprites, he was nigh invisible in an area without light. And immediately, he flew towards the shadow that the Earth wall was creating on the ground.

Parvan dispelled his wall and madly sent bullets towards where Evin disappeared, but he couldn't get a single hit, and was forced to cancel his onslaught and use the Luminous World. Half a second later, white energy gathered on his hands as he prepared to shoot it around himself… But a sudden blue flame that flew towards him out of thin air on his side disrupted him and he was forced to dodge it. His Illusion detecting artifact did not activate, so he knew that the blue flame was real.

But just as he dodged, a kick from under him surprised him once more.

The way a Channeling Artifact worked was very similar to a battery. It simply stored as much World energies in it, and a mage could access it with just a thought. But the mage couldn't take more energy than his core could handle. And there was still a slight delay when the mage decided to recharge himself with the Worlds' energies with the stockpile inside the Channeling Artifact. But it was obviously much faster than taking the energy from the Worlds directly.

For example, it would take Evin two seconds to replenish the mana inside his core, while Parvan would only need half a second. Even more if Evin needed to recharge on different World energies.

Since Evin's mana inside his core was drying out, he immediately used the remainder of his stocked energy to create a distraction with the World of Fire and dashed to Parvan's side and forced him into a melee battle. He had no mana left inside his core, which was a bit worrying, but he nonetheless succeeded in his goal.

Evin did not dare hold back and viciously attacked Parvan's guts with the blunted Karan. The pain inflicted upon the noble boy was so great; the boy lurched uncontrollably, letting Evin elbow the poor child on the back and hit the boy's outer thigh, crippling his movement. Evin wanted to continue his onslaught, but a pinkish hue engulfed Parvan in a split second, after which the noble boy used every mana his core could handle to create a small wall made of pellets around himself. He indiscriminately pushed away every pellet away from himself, with no regard to the surrounding people.

Some pellets flew towards Evin's group, but Rith took care of the situation quite easily with her portals. The guard assigned to protect the boy raised a wall of water to protect Parvan's servants. Purzo watched as the pellets brutally assaulted his Customs house, but he could only watch with a grieving heart.

'Fuck, I need to create distance, but I'll never outrun those pellets! And I'm clean out of energy, so I can't jump into my shadow' Evin thought with panic.

[Karan! Widen yourself and block my vitals!] Evin shouted inside his head.

It was a bit risky, but Karan was still covered in his shadows, so the onlookers would think that Evin used a wall of shadow to block the attack.

Some of the pellets still hit him, heavily bruising Evin's limbs, but it wasn't enough to take Evin out of commission.

Parvan, seeing that the enemy hadn't been blown away, immediately stocked up on Earth energy again and repeatedly cast the same spell.

Using this moment, Evin recharged his mana core to the brim. He didn't have enough time to cycle through every World, before the next row of attack from Parvan came, so he was only able to stock up on Dark Energy. Right before the next wave of pellets came, Evin jumped into his shadow and quickly scurried into the shadows of the building. He could finally get a moment of respite.

"I hope this works," Evin thought before trying something with a serious face.