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766 - Elara's Fighter I
🕑 Added 2024-10-22 01:00:33 +0000 UTCAnyone watching the fight from the Terran Empire who was familiar with anime couldn’t shake the feeling of déjà vu, certain they had seen their emperor replicate a moment straight out of those iconic animes.
Though Aron’s downward swing radiated immense power behind its graceful motion, there was seemingly nothing in front of him to strike. Yet, that was irrelevant. By the time the motion was complete, a golden, crescent-shaped wave of energy materialized, surging toward the unsuspecting Elara fighter.
Mid-flight and focused on transporting his spells toward Aron for an attack, the Elara fighter remained unaware of the incoming assault. He placed full trust in his layered shields to withstand any counter from the emperor—unaware that something far beyond ordinary resistance was now heading his way.
Just as he was mere meters above the ground, what began as a faint tingling sensation rapidly intensified into a wave of goosebumps. A chilling realization washed over him—he had been caught entirely off guard by the sheer speed of the golden crescent hurtling toward him.
In that fleeting moment, every instinct screamed at him to react, but the attack was already upon him, faster than he could channel any defensive spells or maneuver his flight path. His shields, though formidable, were about to meet a force unlike anything he had anticipated.
‘The shields will hold, right?’ The Elara fighter tried to reassure himself, but the words felt hollow.
‘Fuck no, look at the size of that thing,’ he answered his own thought in a flash of panic. ‘That thing looks like it carries more mana than the reserves of a sage-level fighter.’
The realization struck hard, and with it, clarity. This wasn’t just an attack—it was a death sentence.
‘I can't dodge it fully,’ he admitted, his body twisting and jerking mid-flight in desperate evasive maneuvers. His mind raced, now operating at a pace he didn’t even think was possible, fueled by pure survival instinct and hormones. Every thought was colored by fear and duty: ‘I can't die like this. Not like some helpless fool caught off guard.’
If he failed here like that, the repercussions would be devastating. His civilization's pride in their magic capabilities and their belief in being the mana’s chosen ones would be ridiculed by the rest of the Conclave. The promised rewards would fall into enemy hands, and worse, his family—his children, wife, and future descendants—would carry the shame of his failure. He couldn’t let that happen.
His mind screamed for a solution, every hormone in his body surging to push his thoughts into overdrive. And just as the golden crescent neared, only meters away, he saw it—his only way out. A risky, borderline insane move, but the odds of survival were higher than doing nothing.
“Now. Do it now, or you’re dead.”
Without hesitation, he committed. There was no time to reconsider. The glowing arc was nearly upon him, and every fraction of a second counted. If this worked, he'd live. If not... well, at least he would have tried.
He activated one of his pre-cast spells without hesitation—a powerful explosion spell that had been absorbing ambient mana since the beginning of his preparation. It was filled to the brim, ready to unleash a devastating blast.
BOOOOOOOM!
The explosion detonated instantly, sending shockwaves rippling outward, slamming into his shields, and forcefully propelling him out of the path of the incoming golden slash. The timing was razor-thin, the slash arriving just microseconds behind the explosion.
SLASH!!!!!!!!
The crescent-shaped attack sliced through the aftermath of the explosion, barely slowed by the blast. Its size had diminished slightly, but its deadly momentum remained unchecked, continuing its journey until the mana sustaining it finally depleted.
At normal speed, it seemed as if the explosion and the slash reached the Elara fighter simultaneously, creating a chaotic blur of action. But viewed in slow motion, the sequence revealed much more.
The instant the fighter triggered his explosive spell, sending shockwaves that pushed him aside, the golden crescent slash was already slicing through his first shield—gliding through it like a hot knife through butter. By the time the shockwave pushed him out of the path, the slash had already started to penetrate his defenses. The explosion had merely saved him by the narrowest of margins, just moments before he would have been caught in its devastating arc.
A few hundred meters away, a man could be seen rising from the ground, appearing as if he were in the process of rebooting his system. “ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” he screamed, his voice echoing in agony as he realized that half of his arm was missing—not in a horizontal manner, but sliced vertically, leaving behind a mangled remnant that only served as a painful reminder of his injury.
Though he considered himself quite tolerant of pain, the addition of mana into the equation transformed his perception entirely. If anyone had a microscope and looked closely at the severed area of his arm, they would see remnants of mana from the slash infiltrating his body, engaging in a fierce battle against his own cells. The mana was advancing rapidly, indicating that, despite his efforts to mitigate damage, he was still receiving some of it.
In a desperate bid to reduce the pain, he realized the source of his suffering. SLASH. Without wasting another moment, he swiftly severed the remaining part of his arm cleanly at the shoulder, hoping to halt the advancing mana before it could do any further damage.
The conviction that had once filled his face began to waver, teetering on the edge of sheer horror as he watched the hand he had severed being consumed and decaying at an alarming rate. Goosebumps crawled across his body, a visceral reminder of the fate that awaited him had he not acted with urgency and determination.
His resolve shattered further when he realized that all of his carefully prepared spells had dissipated as a consequence of activating one of them. The explosion had destabilized the others within its effective range, leaving him not only devoid of his five minutes of preparation but also reduced to a one-handed mage. To make matters worse, one of his shields had been sliced through by the crescent slash, while the second was at half integrity due to the blast he had triggered to save himself. Now, he was left with only one and a half shields to fend off the impending attacks from the terrifying emperor before him.
“The detour was merely temporary; I’m still in the fight,” he thought to himself, trying to cast aside the fear that threatened to overwhelm him. He focused on gathering his thoughts, attempting to rally his spirits against the formidable opponent before him. But just as he felt he was regaining his composure, a voice sliced through his concentration, shattering the fragile progress he had made in those fleeting seconds.
“Are you willing to surrender?”
