Aladdin was unable to move his head or body. He looked at her and smiled. "He's dead. Since you're a necromancer, you probably want to revive him, right? I don't think that will be possible. I erased him to ensure that his soul wouldn't make it to the other side or get the opportunity to be revived by anyone…"
The rampaging mass around Aladdin descended upon him with explosive force.
"Booomm!! Booomm!!"
The ground sank deeper, forming a vast crater.
Dust rose into the air, clouding the entire area.
Nasira said, "I don't believe you. You find this amusing? I'll make it even more entertaining." She sensed his magical signature and knew he wasn't dead yet. Surviving her beams meant this attack wouldn't kill him.
She waved her hand in the air.
Instantly, the undead, mummies and ghouls that had begun manifesting after the initial wave turned away from the Agrabah and Ababwa forces they had been attacking and began marching toward her.
Aladdin looked at the monsters closing in on him. However, there wasn't any fear in his eyes. Instead, he held his gaze at Nasira.
"You're not going to believe me when I say that your brother is dead, are you?" Aladdin asked.
"No, I won't. You might be powerful, but you're not powerful enough to destroy a soul. I can't even do that myself without external help," Nasira responded with a snort.
"What if I had the help of Genie?" Aladdin smirked.
Nasira froze. Her expression twisted with emotion, from disbelief, to realisation, then doubt. She slowly descended and narrowed her gaze at Aladdin. "That's impossible. A genie cannot kill. That is one of their codes of conduct. To break it is to lose the ability to continue existing freely. Unless…"
She clenched her teeth in anger.
"Where is my brother?"
She stretched her hand forward, and a powerful beam of dark energy erupted from her palm and shot toward Aladdin.
Golden sand gathered around Aladdin, halting the dark energy beam. The beam tore through the sand and slammed into his chest.
BANGG!! BOOMM!!
The impact drove him back-first into the earth, carving a long crater from his previous position. His internal organs reeled from the blow. His clothes looked burnt and torn, but otherwise remained intact.
The force of the attack was also enough to push back the approaching monsters, who were just about to lunge at him.
"That's some nice clothing. I'll make sure to add it to my collection, along with the rest of your loved ones," Nasira remarked, taking note of Aladdin's attire.
Any normal clothing would have been vaporised upon contact with her dark energy beams, yet even after sustaining multiple attacks, aside from a few burnt patches and tears, his clothes remained intact.
BANGG!! BOOMM!!
Another dark energy beam erupted from her palm and slammed into Aladdin.
Aladdin was driven deeper into the earth.
Fissures spread across the ground as the crater widened.
The undead monsters stopped advancing and remained at a distance, afraid of being caught within the range of their mistress's attacks.
BAANGG!! BBOMM!!
BAANGG!! BOOMM!!
Nasira didn't stop. She continued launching dark energy beams at Aladdin without stopping.
Suddenly, she paused and turned her head to the side, narrowing her gaze into the distance. She sensed the steady, rapid depletion of dark energy in the air and immediately realised that someone had tampered with her magic circle.
Nasira quickly understood that Aladdin had kept her distracted long enough for someone else to interfere with it. As for who that someone was…
She already had a guess.
Focusing her magical senses through the circle, she pinpointed the area that had been tampered with.
"Found you," she smiled.
"I should thank you for delivering the genie to my doorstep. I'll make good use of him," she said, glancing at the immense pit before her.
Although she didn't know how to seal a freed genie back into a lamp, she knew of powerful banishment spells that could imprison it, at least until she could learn a proper sealing spell and force it to grant her wishes.
"Play with them while I get back. Don't die. I'll be disappointed if you do," Nasira said.
She didn't see Aladdin as a threat, only as an extremely talented sorcerer. Given room to grow, he would naturally reach her level of strength, or possibly even surpass it. She was glad that she had come to seek revenge for her brother's death early rather than wait, or it might have become dangerous.
Receiving the orders from their mistress, the undead monsters roared as they charged forward, leaping into the immense fissure in the ground.
BANGG!! BANGG!!
Sounds of battle echoed from within the crater.
Battles from across the city still echoed in the air, carried by the wind throughout the kingdom.
Nasira took one last look at the crater with a snort before vanishing into thin air. Reappearing within an alley, she immediately spotted the tampered magic circle.
"Where are you, genie? Come out, or I'll crush this kingdom and everyone in it," Nasira said, narrowing her gaze across the empty, desolate alleyway.
Magic circles were unique in that attempting to erase or scatter them by hand after being drawn by a skilled sorcerer was useless, as they would always return to their original form unless the opposing sorcerer possessed immense magical energy surpassing that of the one who created them.
Since battles between sorcerers of equal strength were common, and no sorcerer was foolish enough to challenge one far more powerful, this method rarely occurred.
As such, the only reliable way to destroy a magic circle was through an innate understanding of magic circles themselves, or specific knowledge of that particular circle.
The larger and more detailed a magic circle was, the more complex it became. The more complex it was, the deeper the understanding, or greater the power required to break or destroy it.
For a magic circle large enough to cover the entire Kingdom of Agrabah, and complex enough to gather dark magical energy and summon undead monsters, tampering with or destroying it required either profound knowledge of its structure or magical power surpassing that of its creator.
This was why magic circles were preferred by sorcerers, for defence, attack, and auxiliary methods, and why decades of study were devoted to mastering them alongside spellcasting.
It was also why Nasira had been confident enough to leave her magic circle unguarded, and why she had immediately assumed that the one who tampered with it was a genie.
Unfortunately, Nasira was wrong.
Within the Kingdom of Agrabah, there was someone else capable of tampering with her magic circle.
In fact, he was capable of mastering any form of magic in existence.
Suddenly, the air instantly grew hot.
A bright crimson glow emanated from the ground beneath the structure of the tampered magic circle.
Nasira's eyes widened, a mixture of shock and surprise flashing across her face. She tried to teleport away, but it was already too late. Before her body could slip into space, in that fraction of a second, a blazing orange flare erupted from the ground like a cannon blast and consumed her.
BOOOMM!!!
A bright, sizzling orange beam of light shot out of the alley and into the sky.
A burst of orange flames erupted from the detonation, spreading outward like a wave and lighting up the surrounding area.
From a distance, Aladdin looked at the fiery waves from the detonation as he emerged from the fixtures in the ground.
He grinned.
After discovering that there were no intruders in the palace except for the Forty Thieves, he had created a clone, tearing a page out of Genie's multi-clone shenanigans.
The purpose of the clone was to disarm the magic circle at his command after he had studied and learned how to control it.
That was one of the reasons why Aladdin had gone searching around the city himself. It was like killing two birds with one stone.
While Genie could control numerous clones simultaneously or allow them to act independently, yet still remain linked to him or split his magical reserves among them, Aladdin couldn't because he didn't possess the mental capacity or magical reserves to do so.
Even if he succeeded, the clone would possess such low fighting capability that it would hardly be worth creating.
But how could Aladdin let go of such a life-saving technique that he had deduced while fighting Genie?
Instead of recreating Genie's exact clone spell, he developed his own using his repertoire of spells. He created a being of fire of himself through transmutation and stored a portion of his magical energy within it.
This way, it could defend and protect itself by expelling its fiery body. And in a life-or-death situation, it could detonate, compressing and then releasing all its energy at once, either against an enemy or as a means of cover for escape.
It was like throwing a matchstick into a dormant yet active volcano.
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