The Extra is a Genius!?-Chapter 614: Noel vs Roberto [I]

Noel stepped out of Roberto’s own shadow with Revenant Fang already in hand.

Roberto turned his head just enough to look at him properly, his expression calm even now, as if the battlefield behind them had not just been torn apart by a spell large enough to change the shape of the war. For a brief second, neither of them moved.

Then Roberto smiled faintly. "That was a pretty surprising attack. I remember seeing it before, but this is the first time I’ve seen it at this level."

"You flatter me."

Roberto let out a quiet breath through his nose. "I’m serious. What you’ve planned isn’t bad at all. You’ve surpassed my expectations." His eyes stayed on Noel a moment longer. "Though, to be fair, you’ve been doing that for a while now."

Noel did not answer immediately. His gaze flicked once toward the battlefield behind them, then toward the ruined land farther away. He had no intention of starting the clash here, not over the active war, not with thousands of people and monsters still tangled together below. If they fought seriously in the middle of that, the collateral damage would be absurd.

So he moved first. "Spatial Shift."

Noel vanished and reappeared far off across a distant stretch of broken land, a ruined area already torn apart by earlier fighting and empty enough that the first real exchange would not erase half the battlefield with it. Roberto understood at once. A second later he was there too, the space between them closing as naturally as if distance had simply stopped mattering.

No more words after that.

Noel came first with "Ignition Surge," fire wrapping around Revenant Fang in a burning layer of orange-red heat as he rushed forward, then chained into "Stormpiercer." Electricity burst around his body in blinding arcs and launched him across the distance in a straight violent line. The air split under the speed of it. Rock beneath his feet burst apart.

Roberto answered with "Lumina Veil," a thin layer of light flowing over his body just before impact, and then "Radiant Slash." A line of compressed light cut forward with terrifying cleanliness. Noel twisted through the exchange, but the moment blade and light crossed, the surrounding space shook hard enough to send a pressure wave rolling across the ruined land. Stone broke open in long jagged lines. A ridge farther off was cut apart so cleanly it collapsed a breath later.

Even from far away, the battlefield felt it. The shockwave ran through the war like distant thunder passing through the ground. Soldiers stopped for an instant. Some looked up. Even monsters hesitated.

Then the space around Roberto changed. Light spread from him in a wide stable field, and the ruined land around them seemed to settle under it. "Solar Dominion." It was not blinding. That was what made it worse. The light was clean, controlled, absolute, stretching over the battlefield until the very rhythm of the fight shifted with it. Noel felt it immediately. Movement grew heavier. Offensive pressure no longer flowed as smoothly. Even the space between actions seemed to belong more to Roberto than to him.

Noel answered at once. "Fire Arc." A sharp curve of flame cut across the light-field, and before it fully crossed the distance he had already moved with "Shadow Rift," a thin tear of darkness spitting him out from another angle. "Chain Flash." Lightning struck forward and split, the main bolt lashing toward Roberto while the branches tore through the light-washed air around him. Roberto stepped through the attack with "Sanctified Step," moving in a way that made distance feel shortened by force. His answer came instantly.

"Flashbind." A pulse of harsh light burst. Noel’s vision flared white for a fraction of a second, enough to break the next movement in his chain. Roberto used that opening cleanly. "Radiant Slash." Compressed light cut through the field in a straight line so pure it did not even look violent until the ground behind Noel split open a breath later.

Noel drove his hand forward. "Glacialis." A concentrated spear of ice shot at Roberto’s chest. Roberto turned it aside with another line of light and fired back immediately with "Corona Breaker." The discharge punched forward with terrifying density, tearing through Noel’s hastily raised "Frost Wall" and blowing apart the ridge behind him in a burst of vaporized stone and frozen debris.

This was no elegant duel. It was two beings at the top of the world throwing contained catastrophes at each other and barely keeping those catastrophes pointed in one direction.

Noel pressed again. "Stormpiercer." Electricity exploded around him as he shot forward in a straight crack of white-blue speed, then layered another cast into it. "Gravity Collapse." The air around Roberto twisted violently and slammed downward. The ground cratered. A ring of broken stone erupted. Roberto countered with "Sanctum Pulse," a circular burst of light that smashed against the collapsing force and sent a shockwave rolling across the ruined land hard enough to flatten what remained of a nearby rise.

Far away, the battlefield kept feeling it. Every few breaths another tremor ran through the war. Soldiers looked over their shoulders between clashes. Mages paused a heartbeat too long. Even some dragons and larger monsters reacted with visible unease, their bodies shifting, wings faltering, instincts warning them that something beyond their rank was tearing itself loose in the distance.

Noel came again from a new angle, sword, shadow, fire, ice, and lightning stacking faster now, enough to finally force Roberto into a less perfect sequence of answers.

Noel pressed harder. He was no longer testing angles or reading habits. Revenant Fang burned with "Ignition Surge," fire wrapping the blade in a violent orange glow, and the next sequence came fast enough that even the ruined land around them seemed slow by comparison. "Spatial Shift." Noel vanished and appeared at Roberto’s flank. "Ice Spike." Jagged spears of ice burst upward from the ground in a wide line, forcing movement, forcing Roberto to answer instead of dictate. Before the last spike had fully risen, Noel had already torn open another path with "Shadow Rift," darkness splitting beside him so he could come from yet another angle, then "Cooling Veil" spread outward in a thin white wave that dragged the temperature down and made the air itself feel sharper, less stable.

Roberto answered by cutting through it all. "Judgment Line." The light did not explode. It simply appeared, a straight silent line that erased everything in its path. The ground split open across the distant land. A whole section of broken ridge was parted so cleanly it stayed standing for half a breath before collapsing in on itself. Noel twisted away with "Spatial Shift," but even the edge of that attack shaved past him with enough force to tear open the space he had just occupied.

Then he came again. "Gravity Collapse." The air around Roberto distorted violently and crashed downward. The land under him caved in, rock exploding as if an invisible hand had tried to crush the world itself into a pit. Roberto met it with "Sanctum Pulse," and the circular wave of light that burst from him flattened everything around them. Stone, dust, broken ridges, all of it thrown in a ring of devastation that rolled across the terrain like the front edge of a disaster.

The scale had become absurd. Mountainsides cracked. The ground opened. Huge sections of land were carved apart, burned through, or simply erased under the force of their attacks. Every clash sent shockwaves all the way back to the battlefield. Soldiers stumbled. Mages raised arms to shield their faces. Humans, elves, dwarves, even monsters paused in disbelief, all of them understanding the same thing at once.

If this fight remained in Vaelterra, the collateral damage would become unacceptable.

Noel forced another opening, fiercer now, blade and magic stacked together in one brutal chain. "Eclipse Rend." Shadow swallowed the light in front of Revenant Fang as a black arc tore forward and erased a whole section of broken terrain behind Roberto, the aftermath leaving nothing but hollow ruin where stone had stood.

That was enough. Roberto’s expression shifted slightly as he looked around the wrecked land, then back at Noel. Light folded strangely around them. The world warped.

Noel’s eyes sharpened at once. "What have you done?"

Roberto answered with the same calm as ever. "I don’t plan to destroy the world either. Where would I live when all of this is over?"