He tried to use his spatial magic, intending to simply rip open a portal and drop Yuno and the spirit somewhere else outside the capital walls. But as he channeled the mana into his ring, the spatial coordinates failed to lock. A harsh, static feedback burned through his nervous system.
He remembered the tactical layout of the invasion. The Eye of the Midnight Sun had erected a massive, capital-wide spatial blockade. Short-range teleportation within the city was still possible, but trying to punch a portal completely outside the perimeter, especially while caught inside a chaotic storm of highly concentrated spirit mana, was suicidal. It would tear his physical body apart in the transit void.
He couldn't leave. And he couldn't let her continue this rampage, or she would alert every hostile mage in the city to their location.
Taking a deep, steadying breath behind his mask, Lencar abandoned the idea of a clean exit. Since it had come to this, there was no need to overthink it. He just needed to deal with the wind spirit as fast as possible and shut her down by force.
As a dozen massive wind blades closed in on his position, Lencar opened his heavy brown grimoire.
He didn't bother with incantations. The source code of the magic he possessed responded directly to his will.
To counter the storm, he didn't build a wall. He built a bigger storm.
Lencar raised his right hand, his palm glowing with a fierce, emerald light that perfectly mirrored the spirit's own attribute. He pushed a massive volume of his own Wind Magic outward, commanding the ambient air to rotate in the exact opposite direction of Sylph's tornado.
The two opposing forces collided with a thunderous, concussive boom that shattered the glass of every remaining window for three blocks.
Lencar's counter-rotating winds ground against Sylph's vortex, effectively slamming the brakes on the catastrophic weather event. The spinning debris slowed, the razor-sharp blades losing their momentum and dissipating into harmless gusts of air.
But Lencar didn't stop there. He knew that matching her in raw wind output was a losing game of endurance against a literal elemental. He needed a physical medium to crush her mobility.
He flipped a page in his mind, channeling a completely different attribute.
"Plant Magic: Ironwood Vanguard," Lencar commanded silently.
He targeted the massive, floating chunks of dirt and cobblestone that were suspended in the stabilizing air currents. From his outstretched hand, thick, glowing green seeds of magical energy shot into the floating debris.
Instantly, explosive growth overtook the sky.
Massive, incredibly thick roots burst from the stones, intertwining and weaving together with terrifying speed. In a matter of seconds, a colossal, towering tree erupted right in the middle of the fading tornado. The bark was as dark and hard as forged iron.
Lencar landed lightly on one of the massive branches, using it as a stable platform high above the abandoned cellar. He commanded the tree with a flick of his wrist.
Dozens of incredibly thick, flexible branches whipped outward, lashing toward the tiny glowing fairy like the tentacles of a kraken. Simultaneously, Lencar summoned his own barrage of sharp wind blades, hiding them within the chaotic movement of the striking branches to create an unavoidable, multi-layered offensive net.
Sylph, hovering above the sleeping Yuno, saw the massive wall of wood and wind bearing down on her.
She didn't back down. A spirit of her caliber didn't know the meaning of the word retreat.
She placed her tiny hands together, closing her eyes in deep concentration. The ambient mana in the entire district suddenly rushed toward her, creating a suffocating vacuum that pulled the flames of the surroundings entirely off-kilter.
When she opened her eyes, they burned with blinding power.
The wind around her condensed, taking on a physical, glowing emerald mass. The form grew with explosive speed, expanding from the tiny fairy into a massive, towering construct of pure kinetic energy.
It was a huge, six-meter-tall woman made entirely of swirling, hyper-compressed wind. Her features were indistinct, glowing with a divine, terrifying radiance. The sheer density of the mana forming her body was heavy enough to make the air itself ripple and distort.
The giant wind construct raised her massive arms, manifesting a colossal bow made of concentrated air pressure. She reached back, pulling an arrow of pure, blinding white wind into existence on the bowstring.
She didn't aim at the incoming branches. She aimed directly at Lencar, standing on the trunk of the massive ironwood tree.
The construct released the string.
There was no sound of a bow twanging. There was only the deafening, horrific screech of the atmosphere being torn in half.
The concentrated wind arrow shot forward with the force of a meteor. It didn't just pierce the incoming plant whips and wind blades; it absolutely annihilated them. The ironwood branches, capable of stopping cannonballs, were vaporized into fine sawdust the moment the arrow touched them. Lencar's offensive net was shredded in a millisecond.
The massive arrow continued its trajectory, bearing down on Lencar with lethal, unavoidable speed.
Lencar's eyes narrowed. The raw output of a wind spirit was beyond what basic elemental shielding could handle.
He channeled mana into his silver ring.
"Spatial Magic: Void Step."
Just as the blinding arrow of wind slammed into the trunk of the massive ironwood tree, completely obliterating the upper half of the construct in a shower of splinters and shockwaves, Lencar vanished.
He didn't try to teleport out of the blockade. He made a short, precise jump, tearing a hole in space and stepping out directly behind the massive, glowing head of the six-meter wind construct.
He raised his hand, gathering a highly concentrated burst of fire magic to blow the construct's head off from point-blank range.
But the construct wasn't a simple, static spell. It was an extension of Sylph's will, and it was entirely alive.
Before Lencar could release the flames, the six-meter woman twisted at the waist with impossible, fluid speed. The massive bow dissolved into thin air, and the construct raised a colossal fist made of swirling, dense wind.
It swung a brutal, sweeping backhand directly at Lencar in mid-air.
Lencar was forced to abort his attack, throwing his arms up to block. The impact was staggering. It felt like being hit by a runaway carriage. He was launched backward, skipping across the empty air before using his own wind magic to violently arrest his momentum.
He stared at the towering, glowing woman. She settled into a loose, aggressive fighting stance, her indistinct, featureless face locked onto him. She was abandoning long-range artillery to fight him in close combat.
"Fine," Lencar muttered behind his mask, his blood running cold with absolute, focused combat adrenaline.
He flipped the pages of his grimoire again, diving deep into his arsenal.
"Beast Magic: Primal Apex."
The transformation was internal, but the physical results were terrifying. Lencar didn't grow fur or sprout fangs, but the underlying density of his muscle tissue skyrocketed. His heartbeat slowed to a heavy, thunderous rhythm. His senses and ki sharpened to an animalistic degree, the world slowing down around him as his reaction time breached superhuman limits. The sheer kinetic energy stored in his limbs made his joints pop and crackle.