The power from the sword strike was unexpected for Raze, as his whole body was lifted into the air and hurled like a cannonball. Similarly, he had crashed right through the walls of the building, eventually landing on the ground, covered in dust.

"Kuk!" Raze coughed, feeling a thumping pain on his back. Thankfully, the walls were relatively brittle, having decayed for so long; otherwise, the hit would have taken a bigger toll on his weakened body.

Lying on the floor for a moment, Raze pressed his hand against his chest over his heart, right where the sword strike had hit him.

'If I didn't use the skill shrouded heart… I would have died,' Raze thought to himself.

As a 1-star mage with only the dark attribute, there were only so many formations and spells that Raze could use. Dark magic wasn't heavily researched until him, so there were fewer spells compared to other attributes.

In total, Raze could use five different spells right now. Dark pulse was an offensive move, gathering and condensing the dark energy into a singular beam, and there was the skill he had just used to save his life: shrouded heart.

This skill would gather all of the mana it could, creating a type of barrier. The barrier would expand slightly out of the chest, appearing just outside one's clothing.

However, the skill was not to be used lightly. For one, it used up all of one's mana regardless of the amount. Even Raze, as a 9-star mage, would deplete all his mana using this skill, rendering him unable to fight afterward and preventing the use of other magical skills while it was active.

The second downside was that the skill would only cover the heart. If the attacker had aimed for his head, Raze would be dead right now.

It was a powerful defensive skill, but if one knew its weaknesses, it was practically useless.

"You know, with how long you've been lying there, one would think you were dead," a quirky young voice said.

Rolling his eyes to the top of his head, Raze saw an upside-down face smiling right at him.

"For f*ck's sake, what did I do to deserve this?" Raze said aloud.

It was pointless now. He had used all his mana and had been thrown from one person to another, seemingly another martial artist, judging by the dark grey clothing they wore.

"Someone's not in a good mood," the man remarked. "Although I do understand, since you did just come crashing through that wall. It couldn't have felt nice. Kirk, do you have one of those energy pills?"

A large, bald-headed man appeared by the young man's side, and from a bag around his waist, he pulled out a red-colored pill. It looked similar in size and energy to the pill that Kron had given Raze.

"Do you really think I'm going to eat a pill a stranger ga-"

The man shoved the pill forcefully into Raze's mouth. "Just eat the damn thing."

Swallowing the pill, it didn't take long for it to have an effect. Energy spread out, and a tingling sensation could be felt all over Raze as his body absorbed it. His aching back and sore chest began to dissipate.

However, his depleted mana had yet to return; that would slowly come back to him.

"That worked!" Raze exclaimed.

"I believe you're looking for the words 'thank you'," the man smiled.

Now no longer on the brink of death, Raze got a proper look at the people he had encountered. Similar to the girl he had just met, they were all wearing martial arts-type cloth material, wrapped around them like a robe.

There were four of them in total. Two of them had weapons, while the other two appeared unarmed. The man who had force-fed Raze had long hair, tied up on a pony tail like the woman from before, but his fringe parted in two ways. While he did look young, his jaw and eyes were incredibly sharp. His kind words and playful demeanor didn't match his face.

"ARGHH!" A man continued to groan in the background.

The group, along with Raze, was currently on the third floor of the building. They were in a hallway that was as much destroyed as the outside. Originally, Raze thought the outside looked bad and was falling apart, but the other side of the building was completely open.

There was no wall at all, allowing one to see the streets and other crumbling buildings in the distance. On the floor, one of the men was screaming, holding the top of his knee, while another was attending to a wound on his shin.

The wound didn't look ordinary, as it was pulsating in a green color, having burnt the top layer of skin and seeming to still move.

"It's a shame these pills do nothing to help him out. They're useless," the man said. "It might be best for us to head back."

From a distance, Raze recognized something similar about the wound. During mage raids, they had suffered similar attacks from beasts. Raze began to walk over for a closer look.

"What are you doing?" the young man asked.

"I don't like to have debts, so consider this a debt paid," Raze said. 𝚋𝚎𝚍𝚗ｏ𝚟𝚎𝚕.ｏｒｇ

The man attending to the wound looked unsure about Raze approaching them. He looked to the young man who seemed to be the boss of the group, who politely nooded his head.

Raze, now close enough, confirmed it was the same type of wound after all. Placing his hands at the top of the knee and the bottom of the foot, he closed his eyes.

'I've barely recovered any mana back. I don't even have enough strength to perform a dark pulse, but I can at least do a dark clean of this level,' Raze thought.

"Dark clean," Raze whispered quietly, and the dark energy from his hands started to trickle, moving over the green pulsating parts of the wound.

Dark clean was one of the other skills that Raze could do, the skill that took the least amount of mana, depending on how it was used. Dark energy was destructive in nature, and this skill allowed it to destroy certain things on a level as long as it could be covered in dark magic.

Raze had used it internally on himself when he had been hurt by magic that would take over one's body. Or in cases like this, where an infection, a parasite, venom, and things of similar nature were in or on one's body.

The dark energy stayed on it for a moment and then it completely disappeared, but with it, so had the green color on the wound. From the look on the man's face, the pain did as well.

"It's gone!" The one attending to the wound said. "It's completely gone!"

The young man's eyes widened with surprise.

"The infection is gone, but the wound still needs to be treated and healed. Do your best to bandage it up," Raze said.

"This is not us being equal," The young man said. "You have done me a far bigger favor than you might have realized... are you at the middle stage, or possibly the Deity stage?"

Raze had heard these stages before; they were high-level Pagna warriors. So why was he being confused as one now? Had what he did really been that special? Mages eventually would end up carrying potions around that would not just take away the infection but heal the wound as well.

The good thing was, he now knew when he got back, that he should keep certain skills to himself if he didn't want to cause a misunderstanding.

"I'm not; I'm just a bit different," Raze answered.

The expression on the young man's face didn't change making it hard for Raze to read, the proposal in itself was quite absurd. Since he was only a teen wouldn't it be impossible for him to have reached those stages already? And wouldn't people of that status be wildly known?

The question seemed to be more of a proabing one.

"Come back!" the young man cheerily said.

"Huh?"

"As I said, what you have done is too much. I now clearly owe you a reward. In a week's time, I will prepare something nice for you. Come back here, and I promise it will be worth your time."

Over time, Raze had learned to judge people, but often more than not, he wouldn't even trust his own judgment because he had learned the best thing to do was to just not trust anyone at all.

"We'll see. I won't make any promises," Raze answered.

The young man smiled and nodded, seemingly taking Raze's answer as a yes.

"The name is Dame. Oh great one, do you mind telling me your name?"

Telling him his real name might cause problems in the future if Dame was indeed from the same world as him. But Raze had a sneaky thought that made him inwardly laugh. The idea that one day, the Grand Magus would hear this name again and be shaking in their boots was filling him with ecstasy.

"I am the Dark Magus," Raze answered. "Remember it."

"I see," Dame bowed down politely. "Well, I hope we meet again, Dark Magus, and for you to receive your reward."

"At least, you guys are a lot nicer than that woman," Raze commented.

"Woman!" For the first time, Dame seemed a little frightened.

"Yeah, the woman with the white and golden clothing?" Raze said.

Nearly all the mouths of the men there were about to drop to the floor. They were quickly rushing to their feet.

"YOU!!!" A loud voice bellowed.

From the side, through the hole that Raze had entered from, the same woman in white clothing was standing there with her sword pointed right at Raze again. "How did you live… how did you survive!"

Dame looked at Raze and now it made sense why he had come flying through the wall. Perhaps that should have been the first question for him to ask, but instead, he was now even more amazed by the Dark Magus.

'I was only trying to see his reaction when I asked him about his stage, but he managed to survive a strike from Beatrix, who's at the peak of the initial stage! '