The arrogant laughter from the ice dragon was particularly infuriating to Erwin, and he turned to face the dragon with a cold expression, upon which its mocking laughter immediately drew to an abrupt halt.

The dragon was completely rooted to the spot, and it was as if it had never seen such an expression before. In that instant, its derision toward the pair of weak humans before it suddenly turned into an inexplicable sense of fury.

Looking at the young man standing before it, the dragon didn't know whether it was infuriated by his arrogance, or if it were enraged by the fact that it felt a flutter of panic in its heart in the instant that Erwin had directed his cold glare toward it.

Erwin raised a hand, then thrust his palm toward the pillar of light. A miniature spherical light shield detached itself from his palm, then adhered itself to the outer wall of the pillar of light.

Immediately thereafter, Erwin let loose a furious roar, and his hair began to rise up around his face. He could feel Onean's magic power surging toward him incessantly, but the spherical light shield on his palm wasn't able to advance any further.

However, this was already enough, and he began to rapidly inject his magic power into the miniature ball of light.

As a result, the spherical light shield began to slowly expand, and in the blink of an eye, it had already swelled from the size of a sesame seed to the same size as Erwin's hand.

Erwin didn't know if his theory that space could be altered in environments where time stood still was correct, but there was no time to hesitate, and he could only give it a try.

As it turned out, his theory was correct, after all. With the injection of his magic power, the form of the light shield on his palm was beginning to change. The same thing applied to the purple pillar of light. It...