He swept his blade upward, and the dozens of bursts of blade intent combined as one, unleashing an attack even more fearsome than the second of Talan's three killing strikes that he had unleashed back in Windmetal Fort.

This was a clash between the power of a martial artist and a magician, and it was a direct exchange of blows between Talan and Erwin.

The tips of the sword and the saber collided with a dull thump, and a heatwave erupted outward in all directions. Larwood and the others were all forced back a few steps by the heatwave, while the airship in the sky swayed unsteadily in the face of the eruption of energy. Thankfully, Christine's reflexes were quite sharp, and she was able to quickly stabilize the swaying airship. Otherwise, she would've been flung off the airship by the turbulence.

Ultimately, Erwin was the one who came off second best in the wake of the clash, and the dozens of bursts of blade intent unleashed by Talan's long blade gradually devoured the giant purple sword. However, the final outcome was that neither side came out on top.

The giant sword conjured up by Erwin's ancient spell was indeed destroyed by Talan's devastating strike, but Erwin himself remained completely unharmed. Talan pressed his advantage and charged directly toward Erwin while continuing to lash out with his blade, but his attack struck the light shield that Erwin had just conjured up.

Strangely enough, even though this was an extremely powerful attack, Erwin didn't feel any of the power imbued within Talan's blade from inside the light shield. Not only was Erwin surprised by this turn of events, Talan was also staring at the blade in his own hand with a stunned expression, clearly also unable to understand why such a devastating attack had fizzled out into such a tame blow.

Erwin looked at Talan's astonished expression, and a statement that he had grappled with on many sleepless nights in futility suddenly sprang into his mind again: "Under extremely unstable conditions, rifts exist between space and time."

Time and space were entities that were intertwined with one another. As time within the light shield fell still, the matter energy in the surrounding area would surge into the light shield as if it had a mind of its own. However, under these circumstances, the matter energy was dispersed by the eruption of two bursts of enormous power. As a result, this phenomenon of natural replenishment was thrown into disarray, thereby resulting in conditions of extreme instability. According to Erwin's understanding of the concepts of space and time, once the intertwined nature of space and time was disrupted, rifts would emerge between the two entities.

No wonder his attack looked so powerful but ended up feeling so weak. All of the energy contained within his blade disappeared into a space-time rift! Erwin thought to himself as an enlightened look appeared on his face.

In that case, why hadn't something like this ever happened before? Was it because the energy that Erwin's past opponents had struck his light shield with wasn't powerful enough to create this type of situation? That wasn't the case. In the past, there had been multiple occasions where Erwin had absorbed the matter energy outside the external wall of the light shield to unleash his spells. Once this matter energy was absorbed, this state of extreme instability would cease to exist.

This was because once the condition of intertwinement between space and time was satisfied, there would be no way to generate that so-called state of extreme instability. Theoretically speaking, matter energy had a tendency to move toward spaces in which time wasn't flowing normally. However, the matter energy had no way of identifying whether it was filling the space in question or had been absorbed by a certain life form within the space.

Thus, a combination of two factors had resulted in this situation, the first of which was that the disruptive energy outside the light shield was excessively powerful, while the second factor was that Erwin had hurriedly conjured up this light shield to protect himself, and in his urgency, he had forgotten to absorb the energy outside the light shield. This was why a space-time rift had emerged.

Talan was clearly still caught in a stunned stupor, unable to comprehend why his attack had fizzled out in such a pathetic fashion.

Meanwhile, Erwin had already figured out the reason behind this, but he was only buoyed by this discovery for a brief moment. After that flash of enlightenment and joy came a sense of disappointment and loneliness. When it came to his pursuit of time and space magic, he was completely alone, with no one that he could share his insights, problems, and triumphs with. It would be like if a new subject were introduced in an academy, and the only teacher and student for that subject was Erwin. Ever since he began studying "Laws of Time and Space", he would often find himself feeling envious of the students around him, envious that Larwood and the others could discuss all types of martial techniques during their free time, envious that all of the magicians around him could discuss ways to improve their magic power. Erwin was a magician himself, but he had no interest in purely improving his own magic power, so he didn't really fit in with other magicians.

Perhaps in the eyes of others, he was always going to be a trailblazer or an innovator, or, to put it less delicately, someone who never did what they should and was a bit of a nutjob. To Erwin, the problem was that practicing magic or training martial techniques didn't allow one to grasp the fundamental power of the world, so there was no purpose to such pursuits in his eyes.

In fact, most of Erwin's confusion and rebellious nature came from his desperate desire to understand what "purpose" was. In other words, he was perplexed about why most of the people in the world didn't care about what the true nature of "purpose" was.

Maybe I caught Professor Hawk's eye because I think about all this random stuff all the time, Erwin thought to himself. He would often also wonder to himself what exactly it was that had convinced Professor Hawk to take him under his wing.

In reality, it was inevitable that Professor Hawk was going to give Erwin "Laws of Time and Space" sooner or later. That was his destiny, and it was not something that he could escape from. It wasn't because Professor Hawk had seen some type of special innate talent in him. In other words, Erwin's innate aptitude wasn't something for Professor Hawk to assess. Of course, this was something that Erwin only found quite a long time into the future.

...

While Talan was still rooted to the spot, yet to return to his senses, Erwin unleashed a space split technique to open up some distance between them, and in the blink of an eye, he had already appeared above the surface of the sea.

Talan was still unable to comprehend how Erwin had managed to withstand the second of his three killing strikes without sustaining any damage whatsoever. Even Erwin's light shield shouldn't have been able to accomplish this. After all, Talan had already used the first two of his three killing strikes on Erwin's light shield back in Windmetal Fort, and even though he hadn't managed to break through Erwin's light shield on that occasion, his attacks had caused Erwin to bleed from his nose and mouth, so it was clear that he hadn't withstood them completely unscathed.

However, there wasn't any time for him to ponder this on a deeper level as Erwin's second spell had already arrived.

The sea had been quite tranquil just a moment ago, but a fierce dragon formed by seawater suddenly emerged before pouncing directly toward Talan.

"Is that all of you've got?" Talan scoffed with a derisive sneer, not expecting Erwin to use such an elementary spell. He raised his long blade before slashing it toward the dragon's head, yet as soon as his blade came into contact with the scales of the watery dragon, he caught a faint glimpse of purple light glowing within the seawater.

Initially, Talan paid no heed to this. As he exerted more force into the attack, his blade was driven deeper and deeper into the watery dragon, inflicting a long gash that stretched all the way from the top of the dragon's head to its belly. Violent purple magic energy immediately erupted out of the dragon's body through the gash before striking Talan head-on, seeping through his armor while carrying all types of negative status conditions. Due to the fact that all of the spells had been cast through the use of Erwin's Shaved Purple Gem staff, they were all imbued with darkness-attribute magic energy, which unleashed a direct assault on Talan's mind.

With Talan's powers, he should've definitely been able to evade this eruption of magic energy before it reached, but much to his astonishment, his own body refused to obey his brain in that split second, thereby rendering him unable to move.

The reason for this was the whip strike that Luphen had managed to land on Talan. It seemed that his whip had only managed to inflict a shallow gash onto Talan's leg, but unbeknownst to Talan, Luphen had hatched a sinister plan, which involved smearing a special type of magic potion along the entire length of his silver whip. In Luphen's eyes, it was clear that Talan had to be dealt with if they wanted to eradicate the entire Wolf Moon mercenary legion. It was also clear to him that Talan was too powerful for them to defeat through conventional means, so he would have to resort to some shady tactics. The magic potion that he had used was brewed from myriad peach blossoms, cotton rose roots, and skyfall south stars. If either one of Onean or Lana were present, they would've been able to give the uneducated Erwin a quick crash course on what these ingredients did. Myriad peach blossoms accelerated one's blood flow, cotton rose roots were a mental stimulant, while the skyfall south star had a strong paralysis effect.

Due to the psychoactive effects of the cotton rose root, Talan was completely unable to sense the paralysis effect of the skyfall south star spreading through his body, a process that was accelerated by the myriad peach blossoms. His mind was entirely fixated on killing Erwin, and since sustaining that gash on his leg, his blood had already circulated through his entire body countless times. Only then did he realize that his own bodily control was beginning to fade, thereby resulting in his inability to evade Erwin's Magic Explosion.

Even Erwin himself was quite surprised that Talan hadn't managed to evade the attack, and he also realized that there had to be something wrong with Talan's body. However, he certainly wasn't going to pity his opponent, particularly a heinous opponent like Talan. He had no sympathy for a brazen convict like Talan, and mercy was the last thing on his mind.

Larwood and the others could also see what was happening from the shore, and Luphen was naturally aware of why Talan had suddenly become so inept in his movement, but Larwood and Kaiba were very much taken aback to see how slow and sluggish Talan had become.

"What are you all waiting for? Hurry up and get over here!" Erwin yelled toward the shore.

Larwood's trio immediately sprang into the air above the sea without any hesitation, and the battle once again turned into a four-on-one fight. Erwin and the others were trying to take advantage of his physical condition to take him down as quickly as possible.

Talan was naturally struggling to weather such a ferocious storm. In his current physical condition, he was only just barely able to ward off attacks from one or two of his adversaries at once, but with all four of them attacking him in a concerted effort, it didn't take long before he sustained several severe injuries. However, credit truly had to be given to his incredible physical constitution, and it was clear that he took his physical training very seriously.

Even though he was accumulating more and more wounds on his body, Talan was becoming more and more alert. After all, the wounds were causing him great pain, and that pain allowed him to fight through the paralyzing effect of the skyfall south star.

"You think this'll be enough to kill me? I can keep this up for days," Talan roared as his long blade slashed a dazzling arc through the air. It was as if a ray of bright sunlight had shone through the dark clouds, piercing through the dim and overcast sky.

The glimmer of light was so radiant that even the mercenaries locked in battle in the distance had their attention drawn to it. Sherry and the mercenaries of the Four Winds mercenary legion all turned their eyes toward the flash of radiance, as did Lanyon and everyone on the airship.

"I didn't think little cowards like you would be able to push me this far, but so be it. I'll give you the honor of seeing my third killing strike!" A fierce look appeared in Talan's eyes, and the ferocious killing intent in his body sprang forth like a leopard pouncing on its prey.

Erwin and the others were extremely apprehensive to hear this. The first two of Talan's three killing strikes were already extremely fearsome, and they were struggling to imagine just how formidable the third strike was going to be. For a brief instant, the thought of fleeing the battle occurred to all four of them, but they knew that this was something that they couldn't run away from. If Talan were to overcome the four of them and win this battle, then everyone in the Four Winds mercenary legion and the Heavenly Star mercenary legion would be slain by him.

Larwood's sword was about to reach Talan's throat, Kaiba's spear was piercing directly toward the arteries on his leg, while Luphen's silver whip was slashing viciously toward the wounds on his back, but Talan paid no heed to any of that as he dedicated himself fully to unleashing his own attack with single-minded focus.

Finally, the attack was unleashed with earth-shattering force.

Several dozen tornadoes of seawater instantly erupted from the surface of the sea, and it was as if the entire ocean had instantly been churned up into a frenzy. The scene created by Talan's attack was far more spectacular than Erwin's water dragon spell.

All of a sudden, Erwin and the others were struck by the feeling that there were sharp blades brimming with killing intent all around them like an omnipresent force of nature.