akasoindustries
patreon
340 - Petals of Spring [Sturmblitz]
🕑 Added 2024-01-16 18:49:49 +0000 UTCAnd so, when he glimpsed the writhing mass of pink lightning that was Senior Lydia’s sword, Lucian ripped both his sword and fingers free, pushing off of the Kite’s wing with his feet. The dragon instinctively tried to toss him off at the sensation of pain, and in so doing, sent him flying right into a tree… And through it. The charred, stone-tough body of an old fir tree was cut in half by the young man’s body, as if his entire body was a blade. Having seen that tree as he flew, Lucian had instinctively marshaled the brunt of his aura to this purpose. He curled up to protect himself as he flew, and in the moments before impact, his entire body indeed turned into a blade. Crude bayonet-spurs even erupted from his joints and vertebrae. He half cut, half smashed through that tree, only to carve a channel into the ground with his head, completely losing that state of focused self-transmutation. With it, the majority of his strength was spent, and he barely managed to get himself far enough off the ground to witness Senior Lydia fire off her technique at the Kite’s left wing.
STORMBLOOM SIGN
ART OF KILLING BLOSSOMS: PETALS OF SPRING -HOWLING GALE-
A vast pressure erupted from Lydia, scattering the countless petals that had swirled around her.
She performed a horizontal cutting motion with her left hand, raising her right to the heavens.
Then, with a thunderous sound, the inferno of lightning around Vysaga went careening forward. Despite its chaotic nature, somehow, it created a perfectly distinct blade. As if caught in the aftershock, all the lightning-petals Lydia had scattered came rushing back in, following in the blade’s wake. It smashed into the Kite’s wing, cutting through the outermost digit and the membrane, only stopped by the middle digit. The deluge of petals that followed served to shred apart the wing’s membrane and scales, and even the main-body armor scales beyond it, and before it could dissipate, the lightning blade severed the second and third digits, leaving the limb a mangled stump useless for flight. All around its shoulder the dragon’s hide sat exposed and unprotected, and worse for the beast still, its own scales were now breaking and getting caught on tattered skin.
Perfectly synchronized with Senior Lydia, Elder Makhus hopped to a particular spot, predicting even the manner in which the dragon would reel from the pain. He dropped into a wide stance, somehow manipulating his belt in a way Lucian couldn’t make out. White light flowed up the right side of his chest and down his sword arm, and after a split-second of wait, he exploded from a standstill. With a movement faster than sight and sound, accompanied by a thunderclap, he outright severed the two outer digits of the right wing, bones, membrane and all. The only part of the technique Lucian could clearly make out was the blindingly bright flash of white light, spilling out around his sword’s blade for the length of the swing and not a moment longer.
IRON PHILOSOPHY: OPUS TWO
As torrents of boiling blood gushed freely from the Wildfire Kite’s crippled wings, the beast seemed to reach a critical point. It suddenly became far more aggressive in its usage of flame, as if it only now realized that its life was truly at risk here, that they were more than mere pests. Its singular eye blazed with a furious light, and its aura surged such that Lucian found himself cast down to the ground, barely able to breathe at all, let alone maintain a breathing technique.
Its wrath turned on the nearest reachable target: Makhus.
Fire poured wildly from the dragon’s maw and turned into countless different forms as it strived to strike him down, from spears to swords and whips, even to serpents and a whole extra neck and head made solely of flame. That second head existed for only long enough to lash out and turn into a shotgun-burst of spears. But the Prescient Swordsman, the Mad Alchemist, the Mediocre Genius, the man who had come to be known as the Evil-cleaving Sword for his acts in the Blue Moon War, was unharmed. Shielded from the heat by his divine armor, he danced amidst the flames, cutting them apart with his white-burning sword as if they were mere weeds.
Despite the appearance of a decisive, crippling blow, the loss of its wing membranes didn’t do much to impede the Kite’s ability to use its wings as bludgeoning implements, and its freakish vitality sealed its wounds long before the blood loss could catch up to it. Lydia, having swapped the fuel gem of her sword, closed the distance somewhat, maneuvering Vysaga around the dragon and harassing it while keeping her distance. She made no attempt to hide the fact that she was simply conserving her strength and building it back up for another major technique, and the Kite was too blinded by rage to think so far ahead. Makhus was nothing if not good at keeping its attention. Even when Lydia was targeted, Makhus simply brought out a bundle of modified stick grenades and threw it at the beast’s feet, causing a chain of blinding flashes and concussive blasts. They weren’t remotely sufficient to actually injure the creature, but they more than sufficed to confuse it and get its attention back onto Makhus.
The battle went on like this for several minutes, with both sides whittling eachother down and neither able to make significant progress towards the other’s demise. Lucian eventually managed to drag himself back to his feet, drinking half a bottle of Witch’s Brew in the process. He approached the dragon with caution, trying not to get in his seniors’ way, but the beast, for some accursed reason, immediately focused its attention on him the moment he got even slightly close. The kite, in its fury, threw its entire body mass into a hip check, using the motion to whip its tail Lucian’s way… And at this distance, given this speed, he didn’t know how to dodge. Even if he got out of the tail-club’s path, he would still be swept away by the tail itself, possibly even wrapped up in it or smashed anyway by the tail curling inward to hit him. In his mind, there was no avoiding this attack - only stopping it.
