While Jin-Woo had his eyes closed to focus all of his attention on searching for the escaped beast, the Sovereign of Frost had intuitively sensed it. It was an opening left by the Shadow Sovereign.
Such an opportunity would not come around a second time. Even if there was a huge gap in individual strength, how dare he take his eyes off his enemy?
Avoiding death would be impossible if this chance was left ungrasped.
It was facing unavoidable death right now. In order to struggle free from the shadow of death taking large strides towards itself, the Sovereign of Frost decided to bet everything on one final move.
'I must end everything with this one hit.'
Its right arm slipped behind its back and Mana began gathering there in a large lump. It then proceeded to create the most powerful spear of ice it had ever created.
Every ounce of energy dragged up by the desperation it felt would be contained within this attack!
A terrifying amount of magical energy was being forcibly concentrated on the ice spear. The power gathered was so great that the ground beneath the Sovereign wielding the spear froze up in pure white while issuing cracking noises.
Just before one would be tempted to wonder whether the Sovereign's right arm grasping the spear had expanded far too much or not...
The spear was fired out with the velocity of a bullet and tore straight through the air.
Whoooosh-!!
At the same time, the ice humanoids received orders from their master and pounced on Jin-Woo like a nest of enraged fire ants.
Whoooosh-!
Moments before the spear aiming at his forehead could penetrate into his face...
....Jin-Woo opened his eyes.
"Found you."
Simultaneously, the time flow of the surroundings came to a standstill as if the 'pause' button had been pressed on the playback. No, actually, the time had slowed down to such an extent that it almost looked as if it had come to a standstill.
The ice spear's shaft spinning at a scarcely-believable speed was definitely getting closer, albeit only an inch at a time. And behind that, he could see the Sovereign of Frost's rather deeply distorted face glaring in his direction.
Was that all, though?
He even could see the faces of every single ice humanoid surrounding him from all sides pouncing on him.
This was the scope of the Shadow Sovereign's vision once he got ready for battle. His ability to perceive that had reached the realm that no other human being could ever hope to touch upon, and made it as if everything around him had come to a dead stop.
Jin-Woo was like an alien invading the world of a paused video and relaxedly scanned his surroundings.
This feeling...
'Haven't I felt something similar to this before....?'
When could that have been?
He slowly combed through his memories and eventually recalled that moment when he was about to die from the assaults of the stone statues.
Indeed.
Back then, time had come to a standstill as if everything had been paused, too.
'Ah, so I had already possessed the power of the Shadow Sovereign in me, even then.'