Chapter Ninety-Two: My suffering has already grown greater than my strength.

Joyful moments are always brief. Cassilius spent the whole day glowing with the surging fullness of power within him, but his happiness did not last long. Only the next morning, he discovered that Gu Yi, whom he had thought would not return for at least another month, had already come back to the monastery.

"Why? Why did she come back so soon!" Cassilius paced in his room, as frantic as an ant on a hot pan. "Right! Did you report me? Was it you?!"

Mephelisto, the one Cassilius was pointing at, did not know what to say. This mage's temperament was utterly unfit; Gu Yi had done nothing at all, merely returned, and he was already terrified out of his wits.

As for the "report" accusation... Mephelisto rather wanted to ask Cassilius this: when I met Gu Yi, was there any possibility that we would not end up fighting?

In his panicked state, Cassilius also sensed something was wrong. He squatted down on the spot, clutching his head, trembling all over.

Mephelisto shook his head. It seemed he would have to add a little something extra to Cassilius. Without some added pressure, this man could not even stand up.

But just as Mephelisto was about to make his move, Cassilius suddenly whipped around to stare at the little statue he possessed. His eyes were bloodshot, and black lines edged in red slithered across his face.

"You're right. You're right. It was her fault. It was her fault!" Cassilius snatched up the statue and muttered to it, now much like someone in the throes of madness.

"What did I say? Hey, don't pin your own thoughts on me." Mephelisto immediately retorted. He, a mighty lord of hell, being made the scapegoat for a petty mage? He could not afford such humiliation.

"Yes! If she had been willing to hand everything over to me, I would never have needed to seek power from you! If she had been willing to help me make contact with that mage from the Clock Tower, I would not have come to this point!"

Cassilius kept talking to himself, and heavy demonic power seeped from his deranged movements, warping the entire room.

"I finally found a path to strength, and now she has deliberately returned to block it. It is too much, far too much." Little by little, Cassilius raised the statue before his eyes.

Mephelisto could see Cassilius's madness and resolve directly in his gaze. He had seen many such humans over the years, but it was still rare to find one who could, with just a few words, twist his own heart into such a state.

"Kill her. Kill her. As long as she dies, everything will be solved. I will be the next Sorcerer Supreme. I will protect the Earth in her place..."

As he spoke, Cassilius suddenly began to laugh. He seemed to feel as though he had found the truth of the world.

"You should think carefully. She is your teacher, and without the Eye of Agamotto now, attacking her would be taking advantage of the helpless."

Mephelisto stoked the fire calmly, and as he spoke, his senses never remained fixed on Cassilius.

As an old adversary of Gu Yi, Mephelisto felt that the proper turn of events would be for Cassilius to push open the door, only to find Gu Yi standing right there.

"What do you know! My pain already outweighs the power I possess!" Cassilius roared. In his frenzy, he had forgotten about keeping quiet and staying hidden.

"Then go deal with your own pain. What are you shouting about here?" Mephelisto's contemptuous tone pierced deeply into Cassilius's heart.

Suddenly, Cassilius grinned. His right hand pulled through the air, tearing open a portal steeped in the aura of hell. His body quivered again and again, and no one could tell whether it was excitement or fear.

Could this be Gu Yi's room behind it... This man truly has a problem with his head. It seems I chose the wrong one...

Mephelisto remained calm and collected. He was already prepared for Gu Yi to suddenly leap out and send him back to hell.

Cassilius clenched both hands in the air, and two blood-red longswords appeared in his grasp. The next moment, he lifted his chin and strode boldly into the portal.

Beyond the portal lay, just as Mephelisto had expected, Gu Yi's room.

Yet unlike what Mephelisto had expected, Gu Yi stood there as though afflicted by senility, her back to Cassilius, seemingly not noticing the slightest fluctuation of magic.

Seeing this, Mephelisto immediately triggered the contingency he had left within Cassilius's body, ready to blow apart Cassilius's head along with his soul.

This was practically deceiving a ghost! No—deceiving a demon!

As the saying goes, the one who knows you best is your enemy.

After hundreds of years entangled with Gu Yi, Mephelisto could be one hundred percent certain that with such a commotion, not only would Gu Yi not fail to notice it if she were uninjured, but even if she were so badly hurt she could not get out of bed, she still could not possibly have missed it.

And yet she was acting as though nothing was wrong, standing with her back to Cassilius. Wasn't that blatantly giving him the chance to attack?

There was definitely a problem. With so many abnormalities stacked together, Mephelisto knew without needing to be told that he had been set up.

Maybe from the very beginning, Gu Yi had been hiding in some seam of time, watching him tempt Cassilius, like one watching a clown perform onstage. Mephelisto would never accept that!

However one looked at it, he was still a dignified lord of hell. How could he endure such humiliation?

Mephelisto really wanted to ask: why not leave things as they had been for the past several hundred years? He would spring out to cause trouble, and Gu Yi would come out to clean up the mess and send him back to hell. That was an "agreement" they had long since made—why change it?

In an instant, Mephelisto also understood where he had gone wrong this time.

That mage burdened with debt had stopped thinking about repayment and started studying military strategy instead, even dabbling in schemes and conspiracies!

No matter what, Mephelisto could not allow Gu Yi to get what she wanted. Blowing up the villain on the stage was his form of resistance. With the great villain gone, he wanted to see how this play could possibly continue!

Crack. Suddenly, Cassilius, who had been halfway through exploding, stopped. Not only did he stop, the entire world stopped as well.

Mephelisto sensed the freezing of time around him and, for the first time, felt a trace of helplessness.

Who exactly said that Gu Yi had handed over the Eye of Agamotto?

If she had truly given it away, then what was the thing stopping time now?

Tick-tock, tick-tock. Time flowed in reverse, returning to the very instant Cassilius had just stepped inside.

Mephelisto, paying no heed to anything else, continued trying to kill Cassilius. Today, no matter who came, Cassilius was doomed. He said so.