My Bugged System Made Me Too OP!

Chapter 93: Stronger than expected

His legs gave way instantly, his knees being sent crashing to the ground with a sickening thud that echoed through the stone chamber.

He grunted in agony, his face contorting as the gravity increased tenfold.

The internal pressure was so great that a thin trail of blood began to bleed down his lips, his body struggling to keep its organs from collapsing under the Arch Magus’s spiteful display of dominance.

He tried to push himself up, his hands scraping against the floor, but he was pinned like an insect to a board.

Tara fared even worse. Already weakened and stripped of her mana, she was completely crushed to the ground, her chest hitting the stone with a dull, wet sound.

The heavy black chains that bound her were caught in the pressure, and they began to dig harder into her body, the metal links groaning as they tightened.

It looked as if the chains themselves were alive, wanting to crush her into a paste of bone and shadow.

She couldn’t even scream; the air had been forced out of her lungs, leaving her gasping for breath that simply wasn’t there.

Noah, however, remained unaffected.

He stood tall in the center of the room, his white demon mask staring directly into Lunge’s obsidian eyes.

While the floor cracked beneath the pressure and the others were being pulverized, Noah felt a surge of indignation.

"Hmph," Noah hissed under the mask, the sound sharp and chilling.

In that same instant, a powerful pressure also burst out of his body.

It radiated outward in a brilliant, invisible shockwave of pure authority.

The two auras collided in the center of the room, creating a static-filled vacuum that made the air hum with a high-pitched whine.

Noah’s mana didn’t just resist; it surged forward with a jagged, aggressive edge, instantly cancelling that of Lunge.

The crushing weight vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

Yuan and Tara let out simultaneous, ragged exhales of relief, their bodies suddenly freed from the suffocating grip of Lunge’s mana pressure.

Yuan collapsed forward, coughing and wiping the blood from his chin, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and awe as he looked at Noah’s back.

Tara lay shivering on the floor, her lungs greedily pulling in the now-thin air, her gaze fixed on the man in the mask who had just stood against an Arch Magus.

Lunge, however, was shocked.

His eyes widened, the pupils shrinking to pinpricks as he felt the recoil of his own power being swatted aside like a nuisance.

He hadn’t expected any resistance, let alone a counter-pressure that felt like a bolt of divine lightning striking his soul.

But before he could even begin to process the anomaly standing before him, he realized that Noah’s pressure hadn’t stopped at just cancelling his own.

It was now being focused entirely on him.

Lunge felt a cold, sharp sensation at the base of his neck, a weight that was far more refined and piercing than his own blunt force.

It was as if a mountain were being balanced on the tip of a needle, and that needle was pressed against his forehead.

The Arch Magus’s calm, arrogant expression crumbled into one of pure disbelief.

Before he knew it, Lunge found his knees slowly approaching the ground.

His muscles locked, his spine bending under the impossible load Noah was forcing upon him.

Someone at the top of the Magus Order, a man who had stood at the pinnacle of the world’s power for decades, was being suppressed by a masked newcomer in a dungeon basement.

The stone beneath Lunge’s boots began to spiderweb with cracks as the pressure localized around him, forcing him into the very position of humiliation he had intended for the others.

He gnashed his teeth so hard that a sharp, audible grinding sound filled the small, damp cell.

His jaw muscles stood out in rigid cords, and the veins in his temples pulsed violently as he fought against the invisible mountain pressing down on his shoulders.

Every fiber of his being was screaming in protest; his hamstrings were stretched to their breaking point, and his quads quivered uncontrollably.

To an Arch Magus of his standing, hitting the floor wasn’t just physical defeat, but a total annihilation of the prestige he had spent decades cultivating within the Magus Order.

Behind his gritted teeth and the sweat pouring down his face, his mind was a chaotic storm of disbelief and primal panic.

’What... the hell is this?’ he thought, sensing the pressure pressing aghast him was vedy difffent from what he was used to.

It felt as if he were trying to hold up the sky itself with nothing but his bare shoulders.

Noah, on the other hand, stood perfectly relaxed, his posture casual as if he were merely waiting for a friend at a street corner.

Behind the white demon mask, he chuckled—a low, melodic sound that vibrated with a touch of genuine amusement and a sharp, mocking edge.

The sound echoed off the stone walls, cutting through the heavy hum of the mana collision.

"What’s wrong..." Noah said, his voice modulated into that deep, metallic resonance that made the air shimmer. "Can’t even stand on your feet properly? For an Arch Magus of the Order, your balance seems remarkably... precarious."

Lunge didn’t respond with a shout or a curse. Instead, a strained, wry smile appeared on his face as he looked up at Noah.

It was the smile of a predator that had suddenly realized it was staring into the eyes of a much larger, more ancient beast.

Lunge was naturally taller than Noah, a man of imposing height and broad shoulders who usually looked down on everyone he met with a cold, aristocratic disdain.

But now, due to his knees being forced mere inches from the floor, he was physically lower than the boy.

He was forced to look up, his neck straining as he tilted his head back to meet the gaze of Mr white.

The power dynamic had been physically and symbolically inverted in a matter of seconds.

Noah watched him for a heartbeat longer, enjoying the sight of the arrogant Arch Magus struggling in the dirt, before he suddenly released the pressure.

The withdrawal of the mana was instantaneous, creating a sudden vacuum in the room’s atmosphere.

The abrupt disappearance of the weight was almost as violent as its application. Lunge, who had been pushing upward with every ounce of his strength to stay upright, nearly collapsed on the ground as his own upward momentum threw him off balance.

He stumbled forward, his hands flailing for a split second before he slammed his palm against the floor to steady himself.

His chest heaved as he pulled in lungfuls of the suddenly light air, his face a bright, mottled red from the exertion.

He moved with a frantic, ungraceful haste, quickly regaining his balance and smoothing out his ruffled robes with trembling fingers, desperate to reclaim some shred of his vanished dignity.

Once he was firmly back on his feet, Lunge immediately looked away, unable to maintain eye contact with the mask.

He turned his head toward the dark corner of the cell, staring intensely at a patch of mold on the wall as he coughed in embarrassment.

It was a dry, hollow sound, a clear attempt to mask the raggedness of his breathing and the fact that he had just been humbled in front of a common prisoner and a guild master he despised.

The silence that followed was thick and suffocating.

Noah frowned behind the mask, his eyes narrowing as he watched the Arch Magus’s pathetic attempt to save face.

He stepped forward, his boots clicking sharply on the stone, the sound echoing like a reprimand. "That’s not a very polite way to greet someone, you know?" Noah said, his tone shifting from mockery to a cold, teacher-like sternness. "Coming into this prison, blowing down the door, and trying to crush everyone inside with your mana pressure?

Lunge got even more embarrassed at the direct call-out. He could feel Yuan’s gaze on the side of his face, and could somehow sense the guild master’s excitement at his humiliation.

Lunge’s ears burned a bright crimson, a stark contrast against his black hair. He let out another small, forced cough and finally turned back toward Noah, playing it off with a practiced, albeit shaky, smile.

He adjusted his high collar and straightened his posture, trying to act as if the last sixty seconds had been nothing more than a minor, expected hiccup in a routine operation.

"Ah, well," Lunge said, his voice regaining some of its smooth, condescending lilt, though it lacked its previous conviction. "A minor misunderstanding of intent, I assure you. The atmosphere in these dungeons can be so... stifling. One sometimes loses track of their own output."

But behind that forced smile, his mind was racing at a terrifying speed.

’ I was just trying to test how strong he really is...’ Lunge thought, his heart still hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. ’To think he’s even stronger than I expected!’