Two domains landed on Percy with crushing force, causing him to sink deeper into the snow, his feet stepping on the bedrock beneath. Rather than panic, he merely grinned, however.
‘As expected, one of them is much weaker than the other… Micky, do you think you can take him down by yourself?’
Between the man’s pure affinity, his relative inexperience and weaker domain, Percy was confident his familiar could win without help this time, even while having to resist a second domain.
To nobody’s surprise, the bird sent him a mental nod a second later, already gathering some ice mana to his wings. Trusting Micky to handle things on his end, Percy shifted his attention to the woman. Contrary to his friend, he understood he had his own work cut out for him.
Before the two sides even clashed, Percy felt a strange wave of drowsiness slam into his brain. It nearly caused him to stumble, though he shrugged it off the very next second.
‘There it is… Just as useless against my trait as we thought…’
The woman’s expression lit up with shock, probably not used to her bloodline failing. Certainly not against Yellows. But she pressed the emotion down quickly enough. Releasing a lot of earth mana from her core, she sent it beneath Percy’s feet. A massive pit opened right where he was standing, as the very landscape flipped, trying to flatten him.
Having seen the attack coming well in advance, Percy stepped on a pair of scythes, shooting to the sky just in time. Ironically, his Winding Corridortechnique had already made him a better fighter in the air than he was on the ground, as he could move much faster with his platforms helping him.
The shockwave still caused him to sway, the earth mage capitalizing on what she perceived as an opportunity. She shot over a dozen pillar-sized spears in an attempt to skewer him – or rather, pulverize him – as each construct was even wider than he was tall.
Sadly for her, Percy didn’t have much trouble evading those either.
The woman wasn’t exactly weak, but she was definitely at a disadvantage against him. Her domain was as powerful as those of Percy’s previous opponents, and having another stacked on top of it certainly helped. Her earth mana, on the other hand, made her attacks even slower than the water mage’s serpents, so Percy didn’t see her landing a hit anytime soon.
Putting some distance from her, he continued to leisurely dodge her attacks, sparing Micky some of his attention.
To his relief, his familiar was holding his own just fine. Even better, he was actually dominating his opponent. Countless cyan needles constantly pelted the bird’s location, but not many of them connected. Between Micky’s superior agility and the frigid gales of wind revolving around him, most of the attacks either missed or got shredded to harmless motes. Even the few that reached him didn’t do much damage.
At the same time, the crow found many opportunities to strike back. He didn’t even spend much of his mana, as his opponent was neither fast enough to dodge his Frozen Shards, nor strong enough to block them. Several projectiles found their mark every few seconds, leaving the man’s body full of holes.
In fact, Micky would have won already, if not for his opponent’s bloodline. Apparently, the man had one too – at least, Percy didn’t think it could have been anything else. And this one wasn’t countered by their traits.
Every time the crow landed a hit, the man’s wounds rapidly closed by themselves. A rather handy ability. Percy could hardly fathom how many times it had saved the Blue’s life – in this battle alone. Most curiously, he couldn’t spot a single drop of life mana in the man’s body.
‘How does it even work? Is it fuelled by ambient mana, or is his body just built different from everyone else’s?’
Percy shook his head the next moment, reminding himself that the inner workings of a bloodline were something that even gods struggled to comprehend. Besides, this was neither the time nor the place.
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Admittedly, he did feel a little envious of the man’s ability. Then again, he understood he was the last person on Remior – probably in the entire universe – who had the right to feel that way about another’s bloodline.
‘At least, it’s more annoying than downright dangerous…’
The crow would have to inflict a lot of damage in a short amount of time to win, but that wasn’t that big of a problem.
Everything considered, Percy was quite happy with both of their opponents. Neither of them possessed the means to truly threaten them. That was not to say they would be easy to take down, however.
Leaving aside the man’s high-speed regeneration, Percy wouldn’t underestimate the woman’s defences either. While her speed was sorely lacking, it was clear he would have a tough time putting a scratch on her.
Happy to test that theory, he hurled several of his spare scythes at her, turning a few of them invisible.
The earth mage noticed all of them without exception – even the ones spinning towards her from below. She didn’t even bother using her mana, or much of her domain, really. She merely retracted a sliver of her willpower – so minuscule that Percy barely felt its absence, forming a protective layer around her body. The ethereal weapons shattered harmlessly against her skin, not even nicking her clothes. The most update n0vels are published on novel★fire.net
Percy clicked his tongue.
It was entirely predictable, of course, but she was clearly an even tougher nut to crack than the water mage, thanks to her affinity.
‘Well, if all else fails, we can always just leave…’
It wouldn’t be ideal – especially now that they’d shown themselves and even revealed so many of their spells. But it was better than dying or wasting days fighting these people. At least, Percy didn’t think that the Blues had the means to stop them if it came to that.
However, he did want to try overcoming the woman’s defences. After all, this was part of a broader issue he was facing – one that he’d inevitably have to deal with, sooner rather than later. During the previous fight, his familiar had risked his life and endured a lot of pain to make up for Percy’s shortcomings and give him an opening to attack.
Percy wasn’t satisfied with that in the slightest. There was no way they would survive the coming months if he struggled to injure half the Blues they fought. His movement technique was great, but speed alone wouldn’t win him every battle.
He sighed, dodging another sluggish wave of attacks shooting toward him. The woman seemed to have realized her spells weren’t getting her anything, so she’d started being more conservative with her mana at some point, prioritizing her safety above all else. She was probably betting on Percy eventually making a mistake.
‘Improving my attacks won’t be easy…’
Over the past couple of weeks, Percy had spent some time reflecting on the issue. One obvious solution that he’d considered had been to upgrade his Soul Harvesters, to increase their offensive power. The problem was that his runecrafting hadn’t really improved all that much since he crafted the latest iteration of his constructs. If he went all out, he might be able to sneak a couple more sharpness runes on their blades, but that wouldn’t change the situation all that much.
Yet, elevating the quality of his weapons wasn’t the only way to increase his offensive power. As the saying went, quantity had a quality of its own. And if there was one thing Percy’s attacks had in spades, it was quantity.
Against the water mage, he hadn’t felt confident in coming up with a suitable technique in the heat of battle, as he estimated this to be a much more ambitious project than his movement skill. However, there was something else that had changed since then.
He currently had a magical pyramid full of Wiseman’s Murmurs floating inside his soul. In fact, the priceless substance had already filled his head with over a dozen ideas on how to proceed.
‘No harm in trying, I suppose…’
Their opponents this time were the perfect – if somewhat unwilling – sparring partners. Both he and Micky could take as long as they needed to hone their magic against them. Even if they failed, they could just flee without losing much, other than revealing a few more of their tricks than they were comfortable with.
But it didn’t have to come to that, as Percy fully intended to win.
Overall, he had three separate goals for this fight, two of which he had already started working on. The first, was to learn how to better endure the stacked domains. They messed with both his movements and his constructs, the immense pressure causing his bones to creak and groan. But it was manageable, and a valuable experience to go through. Even if nothing else went according to plan, this alone would make the fight worth it.
The second goal was to fight with his connection to Micky fully open. They wouldn’t attempt to cooperate today – simply handling the excess information without getting in each other’s way was a victory in his book. This was also going okay for now, though Percy expected to struggle more once he focused on his new project.
Finally, there was the very tool he intended to crack the woman’s defences with. Percy didn’t have a complete name for it yet. That would come later, once he saw what the technique ended up looking like. But he did know one thing…
It was time for the Carnival of the Savage Gods to gain its Second Parade.