Tales of the Endless Empire
Chapter 230: Nathaniel (1)

Nathaniel channeled the energy around his unbandaged left hand, a brilliant swirl of elemental power coiling down to his knuckles. With a sharp forward motion, he unleashed a blast of force as he manipulated the sand beneath his feet to keep a controlled distance. Yet, something gnawed at the edge of his thoughts—the unsettling sense that the creature before him was merely testing him. It could move faster... if it wanted to.

A wall of compressed air roared forth, slamming directly into the creature’s chest and launching it backward through the churning storm. Nathaniel allowed himself a grin. That strike had pulverized men before, reducing bone and sinew to little more than pulp. But this time? The entity was hurled away—yes—but not broken. It showed no visible wounds, no sign of pain.

It should have been the end. Suspended mid-air, the raging storm would seize the creature and toss it about like a rag doll, denying it any foothold to strike back. Yet the next moment, black mist coalesced beneath the creature’s feet, solidifying into a platform of shadow. It landed without effort, almost casually, as though it had never been in danger at all.

Nathaniel’s aura surged in fury. That display had mocked him.

He summoned more power into his palm, his fist crackling with purpose as he prepared a secondary strike. The plan was simple: disrupt the creature’s stance with another blast, then follow up with a long, hardened sand spear driven clean through its chest. But before he could launch the attack, the darkness around the creature thickened—dense, swirling mist rose, curling like smoke. And then, it ignited.

The shadows burned.

Black flames licked through the storm, their eerie light unbothered by the winds. Before Nathaniel could react, several spikes of obsidian darkness were already halfway to him, cutting through the chaos with ruthless speed.

He abandoned his offensive spell and pulled the raging storm and sand into a barrier before him, willing the swirling particles into a compact wall to absorb the strike. The spikes pierced halfway through before halting, lodged in the thick wall of sand—but the victory was short-lived. The sand around the spikes blackened, the cursed fire spreading across the barrier like rot. He couldn’t afford to be touched by that. Not even once.

His healing potions were potent, yes—but whatever that thing was casting, it was likely beyond quick recovery.

Rising higher into the air, Nathaniel let the storm swirl around him, a maelstrom of howling winds and cutting grains. He needed a visual on the creature—hiding behind that sand wall was a death sentence. When he finally regained line of sight, the figure stood calmly, exhaling more of the ominous black mist. This time, it didn’t rise—it flowed toward him.

Unacceptable.

With a sharp motion, Nathaniel summoned a slicing gust of wind to scatter the mist, tearing through it before the flames could catch. This battle was not going according to plan. Usually, by this stage, his enemies were crushed, either too drained to stand or shattered into pieces. This creature, however, moved as if the storm were a light breeze and his spells mere suggestions.

The air shimmered around him as he released more of his latent power. The storm howled in earnest now as he unleashed a high-pressure jetstream—razor-thin and condensed—aimed directly at the creature’s center mass, intended to cleave it in two.

It simply stepped aside.

From several pools of shadow around it, thick tendrils of darkness erupted, snaking toward Nathaniel. They moved with eerie precision, unaffected by wind, guided by unnatural intelligence. He dodged hard to the right, narrowly avoiding a fatal hit.

This was getting worse.

The entity wasn’t just strong—it was fast, calculating, and entirely unshaken by anything Nathaniel had thrown at it. Worse still, it was fighting inside his domain as if it was nothing.

If he took a direct hit, it would be over.

Landing atop a tall dune, Nathaniel summoned a wave of shifting sand and transformed the entire slope into a rolling avalanche aimed straight at the creature.

“Let’s see how you deal with this,” he growled, his voice low and determined.

Behind the surge, he conjured two sand-forged spears to finish the creature with a quick combination. The concept was simple: create a massive visual and physical obstruction, a tidal wave too dense to stop or endure, forcing the opponent to leap into the air. That’s when the spears would strike.

One was often enough. But Nathaniel had the suspicion this creature would counter even that, likely anchoring itself with shadow or reacting mid-air.

As soon as the avalanche crested, he spotted the creature rising with it, head and shoulders just beginning to appear above the churning sand. He launched the first spear—a crimson missile wreathed in force, shrieking through the storm toward its chest.

The creature didn’t dodge.

It caught the spear.

With one fluid motion, it snatched the sand-forged weapon from the air, spun it effortlessly, and hurled it back.

Straight at Nathaniel.

Nathaniel froze for an instant—stunned. Never before had he seen anyone catch one of his empowered spears mid-flight. The shock and brief moment of hesitation robbed him of the chance to launch the second spear. Instead, he dove to the side, barely avoiding the returning projectile as it buried itself deep into the sand where he’d just stood.

Where the creature had touched the shaft, a black, festering handprint remained, searing into the weapon and slowly dissolving it like acid through steel. Fury surged through Nathaniel as he snarled and hurled the second spear with brutal precision. Simultaneously, he summoned a blade of wind high above the creature, slicing downward to coincide with the impact.

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The creature barely reacted.

Two tendrils burst from its body—one intercepted the spear, triggering a thunderous explosion. The other met the windblade and consumed it entirely, the magic simply vanishing into the depths of the darkness.

Nathaniel had no time to analyze the exchange. From the shadows near his feet, more tendrils erupted—black, writhing serpents—snapping toward him. He dodged hard, the air humming with malevolent energy as the darkness expanded outward, inch by inch, from the creature’s body.

He gritted his teeth and funneled more mana into the sandstorm, forcing the storm’s boundary outward, trying to hold back the encroaching. But was that even worth it? The creature moved through the sandstorm unhindered, as if it weren’t there. It sensed Nathaniel’s location effortlessly, reacted to his attacks with precision, and suffered no damage from the storm's cutting gales. Meanwhile, the effort drained his mana with every passing second.

Still, he kept it active—for now. Once he unleashed his true strength, he would abandon it. Let the beast think it was winning. Let it grow arrogant. It hadn't yet faced his full power.

Behind the scenes, he had already sent out a call to the nearby elementals. Reinforcements would arrive soon. Perhaps the sandstorm could help obscure their approach—though he doubted it. The creature always seemed to know more than it should, always one step ahead.

Nathaniel switched tactics and conjured a sweeping wind wall, sending it crashing toward the monster. Yet again, the black tendrils met the magic and devoured it, unraveling the spell on contact. The swirling mist and flickering black flames were partially scattered by the storm, but it hardly mattered—the darkness was spreading, slow and relentless, as the creature’s power mounted.

Then came the counterattack.

Dark spikes erupted from the shadows at the creature’s feet, hurtling toward Nathaniel at blistering speed. He sidestepped and retaliated with a barrage of sand needles—small, fast, and sharp enough to pierce skin if they found a weak spot. They cost almost no mana to create, so even if they were blocked, he’d lose little.

But the creature didn’t bother defending.

The needles vanished into the black mist, consumed instantly. Nathaniel could only guess—they hadn’t been blocked. They had been converted, absorbed and twisted into the same corrupted darkness that surrounded his foe. It was an extraordinary ability. If his own sandstorm could do something like that, the mana cost would be astronomical.

He shuddered at the thought of how much power it must require to sustain such a spell—black fire, thick mist, and endless tendrils all held together and replenished whenever they were torn away by the storm. This was no ordinary battle anymore. It had turned into a war of attrition between domains. Long-range magic clashed in the air, each trying to unravel the other’s footing.

Nathaniel wasn’t a mage in the traditional sense—but he held the upper hand. He shaped the sand into deadly weapons, launching them in creative bursts. The creature responded with spikes of shadow, but they lacked force. Perhaps it was already running low on energy.

Calling in the elementals might have been overkill.

He grinned slightly as he watched the black tendrils struggle to intercept his faster spells. This was starting to get fun. The larger spikes were too slow to strike him, and the smaller, quicker ones were easily blasted aside by wind or blocked with sand walls.

He was winning.

The monster’s tactics had begun to fray—erratic movements, mismatched attacks. It was panicking. Its arrogance was finally crumbling.

Then pain exploded across his back.

A strangled cry escaped his lips as he unleashed a wind-based shockwave in all directions, shattering whatever had struck him. He spun around, heart racing. A blackened scorch mark burned on his skin where his tunic had once been, now crumbling into flakes of shadow. The strike had come from behind—inside his own sandstorm.

Impossible.

Or so he had thought.

Then he saw them—small tendrils of black mist floating through the storm, carried by its wind. His eyes widened. The creature hadn’t tried to suppress his domain—it had weaponized it.

By letting the cursed mist be swept up and dispersed by the storm, the abomination had turned Nathaniel’s own terrain into a minefield of death. His assumption—that the mist would dissipate at a distance from its origin—had just proven fatal.

Cursing under his breath, Nathaniel acted fast. He dispelled the sandstorm entirely, even spending mana to quell the winds faster than natural. At the same time, he leapt back, widening the distance between himself and the corrupted zone.

As the last grains of sand settled and the air stilled, the creature finally seemed to realize the danger it was in.

The sand elementals had answerd his call. They towering figures had just been waiting for the sandstorm to calm down and his command to attack of course.

A grin spread across his face.

"All part of the plan," he declared, his voice amplified with mana, reverberating across the valley. "And since you beasts don’t have escape tokens... you’re going to die here."

The creature only grinned back, revealing a mouth with two rows full of sharp needle like teeth.

"You should have called more."

And then its aura detonated, a shockwave of darkness rippling outward with such force that even Nathaniel felt the chill pierce deep into his core.