Chapter 233

Embers and Ashes (IV)

Bolt of thick lightning streaked past Emma’s cheek, flushing out a stream of blood that was quickly patched up with a stream of soulful energy that swept through her. She grumbled inwardly and spun, creating more force within her hips, dragging out her warhammer against the ground and heaving it at an upward angle, aiming for the armored man’s chest. The latter swiftly brought his left arm down, easily deflecting the warhammer while contorting the spear behind him to deflect Jamal’s and Daniel’s dual strike.

Elypso and Kramer tried to flank at the same time, while Senna continued to barrage him with weapons, but a single shout followed by the rough stomping of his foot released enough energy to easily clear up the fifty-sixty feet area around him.

Everyone found themselves aflight, rolling midair as to land squarely on their feet. They didn’t pause to marvel, however, Mana immediately surging into their feet as they broke into an outright sprint forward, crossing the fifty-feet distance within a flash.

The blade and the spear collided as the sparks flew off, alighting their surroundings further; Jamal found himself bounced back like a ball, flying good hundred yards into the garden and digging out a crater as his health plummeted, though quickly recovered by the attentive Yuki.

The latter hardly had a moment to catch his breath; between keeping everyone topped-off, he was also the prime target of the Lord Ayteer’s attacks. Others, rather than attempting direct attacks with some thought put into them, were mostly throwing their bodies as to prevent the spearman from breaking out of the encirclement, reaching Yuki. The closest to him were Lek and Senna, with the latter mostly responsible for deflecting the countless strikes, and the former often forcing skeletal remains to jump into the path of a bolt of lightning.

The battle itself was relentless, without a pause; even the brief one within which they reacted to the shellshock coming from the miles away was hardly enough to catch one’s breath. Yet, no matter how many times they threw themselves at the boss, the spearman’s Health was like trying to squeeze the last of the honey from a large jar.

“We need to de-armor him or something,” Kramer called out to Emma while tossing his body in front of a swift bolt of lightning aimed at Yuki; the bolt trounced him, boring a hole through his abdomen and tossing him back nearly fifty yards before the gentle energy slowed him down and caught him, healing him in the process.

“Even my most direct attacks are barely dealing any damage,” Jamal echoed the sentiment.

“My passives aren’t picking up,” Daniel complained. “They keep getting deflected or outright missing or being ignored. Only the raw damage seems to pass through.”

“We need magic damage,” Emma said with a frown; one of the more painful truths that, aside from Cain, they didn’t actually have any constant magic damage in their group. While everyone could procure some with their cooldowns, none was like a continuous stream, and were instead more like abrupt sprays. That was... except for Lek. “Elypso, go in the rear and guard Yuki,” Emma ordered abruptly. “Lek, spare no Mana and toss every magic-damage-skill you have at him!”

“Yes, Master!!” Lek yelled excitedly.

The fourteen-year-old-four-hundred-something-year-old excitedly rushed out of the rear, Mana already manifesting around him. Despite his tiny stature, he immediately drew the spearman’s attention from Yuki; Lek’s Mana, after all, was extremely different-- it was much closer to Cain’s in its make, rawness, and purity. It was dangerous.

The bolt of lightning managed to sneak past Emma, turning her face pale; this was still during the transition, with Elypso having not yet made his way to Yuki, and Lek still some ways off from the front. The bolt was aimed straight at the latter and, within the nanosecond, nobody was able to react; that was the quickest the man ever attacked, so quick that it was physically impossible to react to it. Yet, against seemingly all logic, Lek dipped his head sideways and dodged the bolt as, like a bullet, it pierced into the ground.

The boy raised both his arms, his shabby robes fluttering as the shadows began coalescing in green-and-purple bolts that, like fire, churned and burned. Bones began to emerge from beneath the boy’s feet, each like a dying’s man last grasping toward life, digging their way out of the dirt.

Within a moment, the image of the excited, yet innocent-looking fourteen-year-old kid vanished, and the group was reminded that he had nearly killed all of them combined when there were twice as many of them fighting against the boy. His expression chilled and cooled, entirely unlike that of a young boy, the pair of eyes turning into black gems exuding absolute confidence and indifference.

Space between the spearman and the boy turned frigid and static as seemingly every other part of the battle ceased to matter for that brief moment; within it, the fiery bolts flew out like missiles while forty-fifty skeletons appeared around Lek. The man ignored every other attack and thrust his massive spear forward, charring it with how much lightning he summoned.

The clash between the shadowy bolts and the lightning stilled the world for a breath before exploding, blinding everyone. The shockwave erupted, kicking everyone into the air uncontrollably, their HP plummeting like a rapid. Yuki panicked and used one of his big cooldowns, Wellspring Totem, in conjunction to swiftly casting all of his short-term healing abilities, burning through his Mana like wildfires through dry forests.

The shockwave itself ripped out the earth itself, the bricked pavement, tossing out the debris like a machine-gun firing off a slew of bullets. The energy itself coalesced into a pillar that shoot upward toward the sky, like a hand reaching out toward the heaven, the gray pillar surging with the bolts of azure lightning.

Both the boy and the spearman remained stationary, their wills alone dictating their feet to make their stand; winds blew against them, shredding their skins and causing both thousands of wounds per second. The spearman’s armor began to gave in under the sheer onslaught of raw, chaotic energy, while Lek repeatedly used skeletons to shield his front. Each skeleton had its bones shredded within a few seconds, ground into ash itself that vanished in the insane winds.

Good two hundred yards surrounding the two were a death zone, inapproachable by anyone, including Emma and Kramer. The chaotic winds and streams of energy that turned into a genuine tornado shredded through their armor as though it was made of paper, while taking a single step inland was physically impossible. Even attempts consumed so much Mana that they nearly ran dry on it within the first one.

The two at the epicenter, immovable statues, continued to stare at one another, their eyes empty and hollow; Emma and others were slowly beginning to realize within that scope how far behind they still were. However, it hardly put them down, but rather inspired them. The truth was that only Cain, of millions that were fighting for their fortunes within the Towers, could possibly tangle himself with the ranks of those two.

This was also the peak, the absolute maximum output that the two could procure-- and though it was beyond deadly, it was not sustainable.

All the same, it was a sight to behold -- a tornado wound of winds and raw Mana surged good several miles into the sky, whipping up winds blowing at hundreds of miles per hour, but it was still not like a tornado on Earth -- namely, it wasn’t sucking them in, but pushing them out.

None, however, had the mind to raptly burn their brain power on trying to discover why-- they were too busy being in awe at the sight that left them speechless. There stood a boy, and opposite of him towered a man good three-four times the boy’s size, the clashes between them suddenly resuming.

Lek summoned hundreds of bolts in addition to further hundred skeletons, using them as shields while Ayteer speared forward, bolts of lightning crackling and booming out as thunder even through the ripping winds. Black shadows emerged and corraled the lightning, and the latter fought, ripping out as though through cloth; Manas intertwined in a disharmonious dance, in a penultimate expression of duality. Back and forth, like tides, the two pushed their prowess to their limits. The winds began to speed, the tornado began to rise further, kicking up every last brick, every last inch of the plaza into the air, the dust beginning to hide the innermost goings of the battle.

“We need to break inside,” Yuki said suddenly. “Lek’s gonna lose!”

“... break inside?” Daniel swallowed a mouthful. “Fuck that.”

“If we pool together, it should be doable,” Senna said calmly, her voice tranquilizing the heated atmosphere. “You’ll have to heal constantly,” she turned toward Yuki. “And Emma, Kramer, Elypso, and one more will have to be shredded to their bones over and over again.”

“She says some really fuckin’ horrifying stuff with such a straight expression,” Sigmund said with a strange look in his eyes. “But, heck, that sounds badass. I’m in.”

“We’ll cut through like a knife,” Emma said. “Due to the tornado’s inverted nature, things are likely to get much, much worse the closer we are to the two of them.”

“Only get to about fifty feet of distance,” Senna said. “That should be close enough for me to reach the big dude and, if nothing else, distract him so that Lek can deal a devastating blow in the meantime.”

“... alright,” Emma took a deep breath and said, steeling her nerves. “Sigmund take the rear, I’ll take the front, Kramer and Elypso on the flanks. Use all your defensives, and don’t let yourselves lag whatsoever. Yuki... keep us alive.”

“Are you sure with taking the front?” Kramer asked, knowing full-well that whoever was the ‘spear’s tip’ would be taking almost 80% of the entire pressure.

“Of course,” she winked at him playfully, her lips stretching out into a smile. “Cain may not have mentioned this, but I’m a bit of a masochist---”

“Aaaaalright, skippin’ all that nonsense,” Senna quickly cut in. “Into positions. We don’t have much time left. From the looks of it, Lek will be able to last a minute tops.”

“... the distance we have to cover,” Jamal sighed. “It’s like those last hundred yards before summitting Everest. So close... yet so fuckin’ far.”