Hiro grit his teeth at the pain of losing his arm and right eye. The golden giant forme from his mana collapsed and the mana gathered towards his shoulder forming a golden arm.

Despite all the mana present, Hiro was incapable of regenerating his missing arm, all he could do was close the wound and form a fake arm in the meantime. He could have formed a false eye, but at the moment he thought it simply wasn’t worth the effort.

Hiro roared his body shooting forward closing the gap between him and Pandora. Pandora lowered her arm and pointed it towards Hiro’s head, “You just don’t learn.”

However, as a faint black thread gathered at the palm of her hands Hiro disappeared.

“Eh?”, Pandora looked around confused, “Where did he go?”

Suddenly as Pandora searched the area for Hiro she noticed that several dozen cracks began to appear around her. These cracks appeared on the ceiling, the ground, and all the walls around her. A white light shone through these cracks and suddenly Pandora’s face paled.

“That madman!”

~

Hiro realized after fatally wounding Pandora numerous times she possessed some inexplicable means of recovering. It didn’t matter if he ripped out her heart and blew up her head she could simply escape unscathed.

Hiro thought about it and going off of how Karen previously acted it was likely Pandora’s powers had to do with space and time. Though he wasn’t entirely sure what was the extent of her powers, but after she altered the space inside the sphere into that of a garden he realized that not only had Pandora recovered but so had he. All the mana he had expended recovered instantaneously.

So while this was only his conjecture, Hiro felt it was also quite likely. However, this presented a rather troublesome problem for Hiro. Currently, as he is he possesses neither time nor strength to deal with Pandora, while Pandora had easily taken one of his arms and his eye.

So in the moment shortly after receiving such a devastating blow Hiro had immediately decided to retreat. After closing in on Pandora, Hiro quickly exited the sphere. He located the sphere lying on his bed and using as much strength as he could muster threw it out of the window.

The quickly soared over the academy and as soon as it was far enough away Hiro ordered the sphere to self-destruct.

Hiro was worried that Pandora would just use her powers to reverse time, or just force her way out of the sphere, but at the moment he simply couldn’t think of any other options. At the very least even if it doesn’t kill her or injure her, as long as Pandora doesn’t reverse time Hiro would have bought himself a sufficient amount of time to escape.

Not only that but the explosion from an independent space imploding in on itself was more than enough to catch the teachers and most students attention. While this may result in some sacrifice, Hiro was certain that under the combined might of the academy even Pandora would be forced to retreat.

However, as a few more seconds passed Hiro’s widened. There was no explosion, in fact, he suddenly felt his connection with the sphere simply disappear. Time wasn’t reversed, and he didn’t feel as if someone tore space apart. He didn’t even feel a single trace of mana from the sphere like he did with the first sphere Pandora destroyed. It was almost like the sphere just disappeared.

Hiro slammed his fist on the wall in frustration. However, his complexion grew even paler as he felt himself grow even weaker. His golden arm began to flicker before slowly disappearing, and Hiro fell to his knees.

“A complete defeat…”

Hiro suddenly coughed up a mouthful of blood and tried to keep himself upright with his only arm. He turned to the replica he left in his room and got it to help him back up. The replica slowly moved over and picked Hiro up and put him on his bed.

Hiro looked at the replica and released his spell causing the replica to collapse into a pile of black goo. The goo climbed up his bed and gathered around his right shoulder. Hiro raised his left hand and cast a short spell causing several bottles to fly over from the shelf.

He quickly downed a few of the bottles, and then commanded the goo. In response, the part of the goo transformed into needles and hardened piercing his skin. It slowly began sucking up a large quantity of blood causing the goo to go from a pitch black to a dark red.

After sucking up enough blood the goo moved over to where his arm used to be and Hiro released the magic keeping his wound sealed. The goo quickly covered the wound making sure Hiro wouldn’t lose any more blood and slowly the goo began to fuse with his bones and blood vessels.

As Hiro turned to the black goo on his arm he let out a sigh of relief before downing the last of the potions. He raised his left hand and slowly another black sphere formed in his hand. This black sphere, however, was especially small, less than a quarter of the size of the previous spheres.

This was the fourth sphere that was in the works and Hiro had yet to even complete it, however for what he intended it was more than enough. Hiro slowly held the black sphere over his missing right eye before lowering it down.

As the sphere made contact with his blinded eye it suddenly jumped forward and engulfed the eye as if it were devouring it. Hiro felt an immense surge of pain as the sphere wriggled in his eye socket severing nerves and blood vessels before forming new ones that the black sphere connected to itself.

Soon enough Hiro opened his black right eye and part of his vision was restored. Though it was a relatively incomplete replacement. As he closed his left eye and only looked around with his right eye he noticed that everything was red, it seems there was a slight problem with the procedure.

Hiro looked down at his right arm which was now a black stump and sighed. He sat back up and raised his hands pointing it to one of the walls. A sword and a shield slowly flew off the wall and towards Hiro.

He looked up at the ceiling and thought to himself, “This is problematic…”

He began weighing his options, “On one hand I can flee right now, however, I have no clue where Pandora is or how powerful she is. I won’t be able to enlist my father’s help, and I’m in no condition to fight…”

Then Hiro looked at the black stump that was his right arm that was slowly transforming into the shape of a hand and thought, “Or I can try that…”