While escaping the last attack for the sect leader was a good thing in itself, I had no way to return the same way that I moved away from the top of the stage. Just like before, the height difference between our positions would give that man too big of an advantage, meaning that I had to either turn crafty with my next turn or just rely on my brute strength and resistance while hoping it will be enough.

Yet just the single clash with this opponent of mine proved that the second option rather than being risky would just be a suicide. The same applied with any attempts to open up a new hole in the fighting ring. Even if I could do it with just one hit, by the time I could reach its other side, my enemy would already be there, waiting for me to show myself in a vulnerable position!

At first, I thought about punching a lot of the holes so that the sect elder would be unable to predict which I would use to regain my footing, yet since the process of climbing would take a bit of time itself, as long as he would ignore all the new explosions in the stone and keep a position where he could watch all the openings, then this plan would be foiled as well.

Using the flight ability and few shockwaves to loose my downward momentum and keep myself in the air, I even went as far as holding my chin while in the deep thought, trying to figure out a way to combat someone without approaching him.

Only when I started hearing gasps and shouts from below, did I realise that my position wasn't that bad in the first place!

Why should I go back on the stage in the first place? Who told that in order to defeat my enemy, I had to do it with my own hands?

With a devious plan forming in my head, I instantly started working.

At first, I placed a huge array of weak fireballs in a vegetative state in over seventy different places under the rocks, adding a set of several basic shockwaves beneath them in order to supply the explosion of fire with an ample amount of air.

Considering how used I already was to casting both the shields and shockwaves, using this third spell of mine that I manage to bring to its second level felt as if I went to clean the basement of my house only to find a lot of forgotten toys!

As this new joy rekindled the fire of discovery in me, I couldn't help myself when figuring out the next steps of my plan. In the end, forming all the skills that I still held inactive took me less than just a few seconds, as I only had to look in the desired place to rig it with the unactive magic explosives.

Then all at once, all my skills turned active!

CRACABOOM!

Making sure to swipe my hand as I activated my spells, I used yet another shockwave which volume was gone amongst all the other explosions going off to propel myself upward. With my long-forgotten skill of 'cutting palm' paving my way through the stone, I finally erupted on the proper side of the stone stage, instantly locating the place where the air was strangely still and calm despite the onslaught of fires everywhere around!

Completely disregarding the physical body that stood just a few meters aside, I used yet another shockwave to push myself towards this strange abomination, while covering my movement with an illusion on my own.

As my fake body moved towards the physical body of my opponent with its hands stretched forward in the childish pose of a Supraman(intentional), I made sure to take a proper aim with my snakebite with a huge, weak fireball forming at its very top followed by a set of directed shockwaves.

SLAM!

With my illusion body slamming into the body of my opponent, the sect leader didn't dare to waste such a great opportunity, slapping my head away only to watch as it disintegrated into a mist of shrinking particles.

Almost at the same time, I finally released the spells aimed to attack this peculiar place when the air behaved way too calmly considering what was going on. With all the explosions from below the stage only now starting to die out, no one of the audience could be any wiser about what I was up to.

"ACTIVATE!"

Unable to hold myself back from shouting this word, all the spells harnessed at the tip of my weapon suddenly came alive.

Blink.

The sound of the explosion this time was simply too great for me. With an insane ball of fire erupting right in front of my head and instantly pushed by the spreading shockwave of the propelling spell, it turned out so loud that my ears simply gave up.

Yet it was worth the cost.

As the fire reached the place where the anomaly begun, rather than passing through it, they instantly enveloped the entire place.

At first, the size of the fireball only continued to grow as the air pushed by the shockwave continued to feed it, but with every split of a second, their volume was constantly decreasing, as if something was consuming it.

Unwilling to just stay and watch as my spell turned to be ineffective, I gathered all the strength I had in my body, crashlanded on the stone right beside the air anomaly now covered with fires and pushed my fist forward!

To me, those fires were nothing but a warm trickle on the skin, unable to penetrate through my maxed out resistance. Yet when my hand finally felt the first bit of resistance, I realised that rather than giving a feel of healthy skin, it was… crispy?

Yet it didn't matter at all, because as soon as the smallest bit of my energy smashed a hole through whatever was opposing my knuckles movement, this feeling disappeared as if it never existed.