Elemental Cats

Right as Toz was about to lunge forward and shove the pirate leader into the Void with his foot, a chill ran down his spine. Toz froze up for an instant before retracting his leg and leaping back a couple of steps. This time the pirate didn't follow, and a lull appeared in their battle as the two of them stood still after Toz put some distance between them.

"Ahh, so close!"

Considering how the pirate didn't chase after him, Toz wasn't surprised that the pirate was stalling and recovering by talking. However, the pirate's face startled him slightly. The ever-frowning eyes emanating anger were complemented by a grinning mouth. The combination gave the pirate a wicked expression as he kept panting through his open mouth.

Toz wanted to wait and see what the pirate would do. If he would continue talking, stay quiet and recover as much as possible, or if it was a feint to bait Toz into attacking. Toz didn't mind either way. He was confident he recovered quicker than the pirate. And the moments of breathing room also allowed him to realize that the pirate had figured out his plan and was intending to use it against him. If Toz had really tried to kick the pirate off the island, it was very likely he himself would have been thrown off instead.

"When did you figure it out?"

Since the pirate wasn't doing anything, Toz wanted to see if he could figure out the pirate's inclination.

"And why should I tell you, you shitstick?"

Though, he wasn't successful.

Instead of waiting for the pirate to recover enough and retake the advantage, Toz started preparing his next move. With the distance he had put between them, he would be able to use magic before the pirate could react. The only problem was if it would be enough to deal with the pirate.

However, there was only one way to find out, and that was by using magic to attack the pirate. Since the pirate had discovered Toz when he was hiding his presence with darkness magic, Toz assumed that the pirate was already wary of that type of magic. However, it should be impossible for the pirate to know Toz's other attributes.

Although Toz still hadn't figured out the pirate's inclination, he still had at least something to rely on to defeat the pirate now that his plan to shove him into the Void wasn't going to work.

Toz couldn't let the pirate have all the time he needed to recover, so he attacked first again. Though this time, he didn't close the gap at once and instead gathered the nearby shadows and darkness to cloud the pirate's senses and judgment.

After refining his mana four times, bringing all his elements to the fourth level, Toz hadn't just been sitting on his hands and smelling the imaginary flowers. Despite having four elements, Toz tried to get more than a surface-level understanding of each of them. The Fireball spell had helped a lot when he was practicing his proficiency with the fire element.

But Toz had to exert some more effort with the other elements and use his surroundings. With metal and lightning, he could easily compare notes with Nil and Scrael. But since Lucy had such an intuitive and advanced understanding of darkness, Toz had difficulty learning from him. Especially after Lucy had started playing with people's minds, no matter how much Toz tried, he couldn't see into people's psyches and begin manipulating them. So instead, Toz had taken a different approach.

Toz's approach and inspiration for his darkness magic were thanks to them being stuck in the Void. It was easy to focus on the stars and sources of light when staring into the Void. However, after some time, Toz started noticing all the darkness instead. No matter how brightly the lights shone, they weren't even close to being a match to the infinite and overwhelming darkness.

With his understanding and affinity for darkness, Toz felt at home with the realization that it didn't matter how far one looked since his gaze would always look at darkness. However, what would happen if it was someone who didn't have an affinity for darkness or if the experience was used as an attack? Those thoughts had helped Toz develop his own means to suppress people using darkness magic.

Although he couldn't replicate the entire Void with basic magic, he could fill up someone's senses with darkness. Cover their entire being with darkness. And that was what he did with the pirate while he was still panting and trying to stop the bleeding from his wounds.

With the focus it took from Toz to arrange the mana, the pirate could have easily stopped it if he had been closer and reacted fast enough. However, when the pirate was about to move and attack Toz, who was busy concentrating on controlling his mana, it was already too late. When his footstep landed on the ground, everything around him disappeared.

Though the pirate soon realized that he wasn't surrounded by emptiness. He wasn't looking at nothing. He wasn't touching nothing. His nose was inhaling something. His mouth felt sticky and heavy as the air passed through his mouth on the way out. Rubbing his eyes didn't clear his sight because there wasn't anything blocking it. The pirate's surroundings were simply an infinite amount of darkness that clung to every single piece of him and covered him head to toe.

The pirate could retain his calm for a few seconds. But then he realized how deeply the darkness had affected him. He couldn't tell up from down, left from right. He didn't know if he had fallen to the ground or if he was still standing. The only thing the pirate could rely on was his mind, but when he couldn't tell how much time passed, even that began failing, and the pirate was soon panicking. How could he be certain that he hadn't died yet? What if this was the result of that swordsman using his inclination?

Maybe the reason the swordsman hadn't used his inclination was that it came with a severe drawback. But then, why had he sensed the swordsman hiding with magic? Maybe the swordsman had a companion? But then, had he suffered an ambush by the mage? Was this infinite hell of darkness the result of a spell that the mage had cast while the swordsman stalled for time? Wha-

The pirate's thoughts ended, along with every other sign of life.