The Extra is a Genius!?-Chapter 613: Dark Sun

Noel did not move from the high ground. That alone said enough about how serious the next five minutes were going to be.

In front of him, the black sphere of "Dark Sun" kept growing, suspended in the air like a piece of night torn loose and forced into shape by sheer will. With every passing second it became denser, darker, heavier, the black fire compressed so tightly that the surrounding mana felt warped by its presence. The air near Noel no longer behaved normally. It shivered. Pressed inward. Even from far below, people could feel that something monstrous was being prepared above the battlefield.

And those five minutes were not free.

Below, the war kept grinding forward with all its weight. Selene’s earlier spell had torn a hole through Roberto’s stronger wave, but not enough to end it. There were still Archmage creatures alive, still dragons trying to descend through smoke and frost, still massive monsters pushing ahead through the corpses of the ones that had fallen first. The line had recovered, but it was recovering under pressure, like a man trying to stand with a spear still stuck in his side.

The people below understood what they were doing, even if no one had time to say it aloud. They were buying Noel those minutes.

Marcus was still at the front, sword flashing between blood and spelllight as he cut into anything that tried to break through. Garron fought nearby like a wrecking hammer given flesh, meeting bigger creatures head-on just to keep them from pushing deeper. Laziel moved around their pressure points with tight control, his magic no longer cast for comfort or elegance, only for function. Elena, Clara, Redna, Daemar, the imperial forces, and the other Archmages held their own parts of the field the same way, not because things were under control, but because losing control now would mean those five minutes never reached their end.

It cost them. Every exchange took more mana. More blood. More breath. Wounded defenders were still being dragged back. Some of the Archmage monsters died hard enough to take people with them even when stopped. The field was holding, but only like a wall with cracks already running through it.

Above all of that, Noel kept casting. His eyes stayed on the battlefield, but his concentration never wavered. The dark sphere folded inward again, becoming more compact, more dangerous, one layer at a time. Every second it remained unfinished was another second the people below had to survive for him.

So they did. Because now there was only one thing left to do. Hold until the sun turned black enough to fall.

Roberto kept walking, but his attention shifted upward.

He felt it before he properly looked at it. The mana above the battlefield had started changing in a way no ordinary spell could explain. Heavier now, denser, wrong in the way only power at the very top could feel. When his eyes finally lifted toward Noel’s position, he saw the black sphere hanging there and understood immediately.

So that was the answer.

The dark orb had already grown far beyond the size of a normal high-rank spell. Black fire folded into itself without leaking outward, compressed so tightly that it looked less like flame and more like the idea of destruction forced into a single point. Roberto stared at it for a moment, then a faint smile touched his face.

Noel really intended to wipe out a large part of the battlefield before coming for him. Of course he did. If Noel rushed him immediately, the stronger monsters behind Roberto would tear into the lines below while the two of them clashed. But if Noel erased that pressure first, then the battlefield would breathe again and the duel could begin without that cost hanging over it.

’You really are doing it this way.’

That was exactly the sort of decision that made this cycle different. Cruel in its own way, perhaps, because it demanded the people below endure five more minutes of hell. But correct. ’Something worthy of Manacode.’

Below him, the stronger monsters kept advancing anyway. Dragons pushed lower. Massive creatures continued crashing into the frontline. Faster ones tried to break through the shifting pressure points before the cast above could ever reach completion. Roberto was not stopping them. If anything, he was letting the clash develop exactly as it wished.

He could see what Noel was preparing, and he still chose to keep walking, to let the battlefield struggle beneath that growing black sun because he wanted to witness what came next. Curiosity had already mixed too deeply into everything else. Mission, friendship, war, amusement, all of it tangled together into something he could no longer cleanly separate.

And above that whole blood-soaked field, Noel was preparing a spell that promised to carve the next answer into the world itself.

Roberto let his eyes drift back down toward the battlefield. The real confrontation was getting closer.

The five minutes ended.

Noel opened his eyes fully, and the battlefield seemed to notice before anyone actually saw him move. In front of him, "Dark Sun" had grown into something that no longer resembled an ordinary spell. The sphere hung in the air like a piece of dead sky, enormous now, black fire compressed so far beyond reason that it had stopped looking like flame and started looking like a small star that had died angry. Its surface shifted without truly moving, held together by force so absolute that it felt more frightening than if it had been raging openly.

Below, monsters were still advancing. Archmage beasts crashed into the lines. Dragons beat their wings through smoke and frost. Giant creatures kept trampling over corpses, broken wagons, and shattered defenses. The people on Noel’s side were still holding, still buying him those minutes with blood and mana and stubbornness.

Now they had reached the end of what they could buy.

Noel raised one hand. Then he released it.

"Dark Sun" fell toward the largest concentration of Roberto’s forces. It did not descend like a fireball. It sank through the air with the heavy inevitability of something that had already decided what would die beneath it. The moment it reached the center of that monstrous mass, the world seemed to fold inward around it. Black fire imploded into itself with a violent pull, dragging heat, air, dust, flesh, scales, and bone toward one burning center. Monsters nearest to it were crushed inward before they even had time to scream, their bodies folding toward the point of impact as if the battlefield itself had become a dying star.

Then the release came.

The implosion broke apart into catastrophic black fire. Heat burst outward in a devouring wave, dark and terrible, the kind of fire that looked like it was consuming light instead of giving it. Dragons vanished in it. Archmage beasts were erased in packs. Giant monsters over ten meters tall were swallowed, burned through, and reduced to collapsing shadows inside the blast. Faster predators tried to leap away and were caught anyway, their bodies torn apart by heat so dense it looked almost solid. Entire sections of Roberto’s advancing force disappeared beneath that release, black fire rolling through them in expanding ruin until a massive part of the battlefield had simply stopped containing living enemies.

Everyone felt it. The defenders closest to the blast were thrown backward by the pressure. Those farther away stopped fighting for one impossible instant, heads turning toward the eruption of black fire that had just carved through Roberto’s side of the war. Even Roberto’s monsters staggered, slowing, recoiling from the sudden absence where thousands of their own should still have been.

When the black fire finally began to thin, what remained was a scar. A huge empty zone carved into Roberto’s army, an unnatural stretch of scorched earth and dying heat where monsters had stood a moment before. Bodies still burned at the edges. Some did not even resemble bodies anymore. The air above twisted from the leftover force, and even the mana in that area felt damaged, as though "Dark Sun" had not merely killed what it touched but wounded the battlefield itself.

Then the reaction came. It struck the defenders almost physically. Soldiers who had been close to breaking felt courage rush back into them. Mages whose hands had been trembling tightened their grip and cast again with sharper focus. The Archmages at the front pushed into the opening immediately. Marcus advanced harder. Garron roared something wordless and violent. Redna’s side pressed forward. The imperial forces of Alveron IV moved with new force through the space that had just been won.

The line did not merely hold now. It surged.

Roberto’s army had not been broken entirely. There were still too many monsters left for that. But a devastating part of his stronger reinforcements had just been erased in one cast, and everyone on the battlefield understood what that meant. The war had changed again.

Far above the field, Noel exhaled once, slower than before. Below, Selene and Noir were still moving through the surviving pressure, but now the battle around them no longer looked like something on the verge of collapse. It looked like something that had been given room to breathe, room to strike, room to survive the next exchange.

Noel’s gaze shifted across the scar he had just carved into Roberto’s forces, then farther beyond it. Toward Roberto.

Now he could move.

Shadow gathered around his feet. For the briefest instant, the battlefield still held the image of Noel on that high ground with the dying heat of "Dark Sun" still twisting through the air below him.

Noel said "Shadow Step" and it swallowed him.

Far ahead, Roberto lifted his eyes just in time to see the shadow open and Noel begin to come for him.