Downtown, atop a high-rise building.
The short Black-Robed Cultist who had once spoken with Professor Victor in the alternate space stood at the edge of the rooftop. The wind blew back his hood, revealing a face whose age was impossible to discern.
Both hands rested on the railing as he leaned forward slightly, his gaze passing through the thin mist slowly gathering again above Mist City and falling upon that enormous circular hole in the clouds.
The edge of the cloud hole was smooth as a mirror, exposing the azure sky within like a perfect blue disc cut from a gray canvas with a compass.
He watched it for a long time.
Then, suddenly, he laughed, his eyes filled with heartfelt admiration.
His eyes curved into crescents, and two shallow dimples even appeared on his round face.
"Truly exquisite control of power," he said softly. Most of his voice was scattered by the wind atop the building. "To perfectly reach the upper limit of power output permitted by that Level 8 Wizard, while ensuring that none of the power affected the surroundings at all."
He quietly watched the hole in the clouds as though admiring a work of art.
His admiration had good reason behind it.
As the total amount of power increased, the harder it became to keep that power within a certain threshold.
If one merely released scattered traces of power, any wizard could control it precisely.
But to do what had just been done—to precisely keep the power capable of blasting an entire building away and dispersing the thick fog blanketing the whole city below a certain limit, ensuring it did not exceed that threshold by even the slightest fraction—
The computational power and energy required might even surpass that needed to release the power itself.
"The