“Unique Dominance?
What’s that?” Joshua furrowed his brows in curiosity.
Ken gestured, and the hologram paused.
“See,” Ken exclaimed, “this is the kind of question you should ask.
Finally.
Swords, lame.”
“You’re still on that?”
Joshua tilted his head, a bit astonished.
“Of course I’m on it.
You’re my student.
You should be excited about magic, not about swoooords and stuff, okay.”
Joshua rolled his eyes at the middle-aged toddler’s tantrum.
“Can you please explain the Unique Dominance thing now?”
“Ok.”
“Well, the full term is Unique Dominance Field, but I like to call it Unique Dominance.
So first of all, Unique Dominance is what makes mages like us awesome.”
Joshua rolled his eyes again.
“You see, the magic you and I can cast, normal mages can cast too.
Of course, they have to use items, incantations, runes, etcetera, and we just have to imagine it, but they still can do it.
But this is the only skill they can’t perform.
It’s something only a Unique Mana Type Holder can do.
Now you might be thinking, ‘Ok, so what does it do?’ Well, it does many things.
As much space as your Unique Dominance covers becomes like an extension of yourself.
You can feel everything that happens inside of it.
You can blink to anywhere you want inside your Dominance Field, like teleporting.
Your mana control also increases a level since all the mana around you is your own.
Just look at her.”
Ken pointed at the frozen Elizabeth in the air.
“Her mana control was at pseudo-grandmaster level, but after deploying her Dominance Field, it fully reached mid-stage Grandmaster level.”
“What’s mana control like?
It has levels?” Joshua asked curiously.
“Well, not really.
You see, normally a mage is ranked by the strongest magic they can cast, but that system doesn’t work when it comes to us Unique Mana Type Holders, since our magic is unique.
But since us humans love to put labels on things, we put names for mana control so we could rank it.”
“The rank order is Apprentice, then Scholar, then Master, then Grandmaster, then Legendary, then Mythical.
Above that would be Deity, but nobody has ever been able to reach it, as far as I know.”
“What’s your rank?” Joshua asked, interested.
“Late-stage Legendary or Mythical, I don’t know.” Ken shrugged, not concerned.
“You don’t?!” Joshua asked, stunned.
“How?”
“Well, it’s not like I have many people I can compare it with.
“Oh.”
“Anyways, as I said, it boosts your mana control, but the best and most useful ability you get from Unique Dominance is the absolute dominance over magic in this field.”
Ken grinned, while Joshua blinked.
“What?
That’s it?”
“What do you mean, that’s it?!” Ken exclaimed, frowning hard.
“Well, you get control over magic.
Is that it?”
Joshua didn’t understand what was so new about it.
Ken blinked.
“You don’t understand, huh?”
“Is that really a big deal?” Joshua was confused.
“Of course it is.
I said you get absolute dominance over magic in the field, meaning that no one other than you can cast any magic inside your Dominance Field!”
Joshua’s eyes widened with realization.
“Wait, so…?”
“Yes, and since only Unique Mana Type Holders can have Unique Dominance, it means you have an overwhelming advantage over all normal mages.”
“Oh.”
Finally getting the full picture, Joshua could understand what Ken was trying to explain.
Only one word came to his mind.
Unfair.
This was truly unfair.
“Of course, there are drawbacks.
Unique Dominance usually needs one-third of your mana to use, and even then it burns through mana extremely fast.
After that, your mana control gets downgraded at best.
If you’ve used a lot of mana before it, there’s a big chance of losing control over your mana.
That could mean you might explode or elementalize yourself.
Basically, a 40% chance of death that increases the more magic you use.
Like her.”
Pointing at Elizabeth, he continued,
“She has used pretty much all of her mana, so the chance of death for her is 80% now.”
Joshua was surprised.
“Really?
Isn’t that going too far just for a spar?
Though I think it’s more than a spar for her.
But still, is she okay now?”
“Well, you’ll have to watch the rest of it to find out.”
Ken gestured, and the hologram projection unpaused.
“If you face this, I’ll do what you asked for.”
Hologram Ken had a troubled look, as if his intentions of hiding underground for her skill to time out were exposed.
Reluctantly, Ken sighed.
“Ok, fine.
Give me your best.
Let me see what you really have.”
Elizabeth’s electric eyes flashed as she let go of the staff.
It hovered before her.
She then held both hands in front of her as if holding an invisible ball.
The clouds churned violently as bolts of lightning descended between her hands, rolling around into a ball.
Not only that, but her Unique Dominance Field was also shrinking in a vortex as it was being absorbed between her hands.
The glow kept increasing, and the lightning flashes were so continuous it felt like a light bulb—a lightning bulb with the glow of the sun.
Joshua gulped.
Even though it was just a hologram, he still felt shivers going down his back.
Ken seemed to think the same, as his playful, casual expression was gone, and instead only a solemn expression was left.
He crouched down like a runner, touching the ground with both hands.
The next second, a burst of Gray Flux mana gushed out of him, spreading through the ground.
The ground rippled like water after a stone was dropped, and then the wave swallowed Ken.
In his place was an adamantine dome, which got covered by a layer of null crystals, which got covered by rubber, which got covered by another layer of adamantine.
Joshua saw as more and more layers were covering the dome with materials he didn’t recognize.
In the sky, Elizabeth’s Unique Dominance was almost absorbed by the lightning sun between her hands.
It was the size of a football, but it shined like a second sun.
As soon as the absorption was over, Elizabeth made a pushing gesture straight towards the dome.
Ken’s dome.
The lightning sun fell, looking like it was in slow motion, yet its speed was hundreds of times faster than lightning.
As soon as it made contact with the first layer of the dome, light exploded so blindingly that Joshua had to avert his eyes.
“Hey, can’t you lower the light a little?” he complained to Ken.
“It’s already at the lowest point.
Any lower and you won’t see anything but black when the explosion ends.”
The hologram zoomed out, and Joshua saw it.
The explosion was expanding more and more.
“Wait…
how big is it going to get?” he couldn’t help but ask.
“Just watch.”
And so he did, gobsmacked, as it kept expanding for more than two minutes.
Joshua didn’t know exactly how long, but he definitely knew that it was much longer than it should have been.
The power…
Even a nuclear explosion might look like a small fire in front of it.
His body was shaking, shivering, but then he felt a hand press on his shoulder.
He turned to see Ken looking at the explosion too, yet there was no awe or surprise only nonchalance, like it was nothing special.
Subconsciously, Joshua relaxed and kept watching.