Chapter 94: Leveling the playing field
Sereth watched the fist get close. There was nowhere to run or escape to in that moment but to face the attack of Ren, or so Ren thought.
BAM!
Crack!
His fist collided with her face at full strength, only for her entire body to shatter into ice.
"What the hell?" Ren was stunned for a solid second as he watched the ice hit the floor, his eyes widened. Then, he sensed her presence from above. He did not bother to look up and very quickly dove to the side. A massive ice lance fell from the sky and stabbed the ground where he had just been.
He looked up after evading the attack, now knowing that killing her would not be easy at all. It was the type of realization that set in after facing it. The ice clone was not something he would think was even possible, and yet it was.
He thrust his fist forward in a punch-like motion. Lightning crackled around the fist and surged through the air. She made motions and created a shield mid-air that tanked the attack, but she played right into Ren’s book. He flapped his wings and shot into the air fast while she blocked the attack, flanking her right from behind.
He got a clear opening, but rather than charge in and attack, he knew that she would most likely have a route to escape, so he decided to block out every means of escape.
"I hope this works," he muttered and then unleashed over two hundred energy spheres, each one humming like a bee, low and heavy. Her attention was pulled when she sensed the attack, her eyes widened under the hat, but she managed to keep her cool and get ready for it.
The spheres moved through the air, each trajectory vastly different from the last, an intentional choice to ensure that she was unable to get away.
"Seems I underestimated you," she muttered as her fingers began to move extremely fast, each motion casting an ice ball that flew through the air and slammed into the spheres, creating explosions all through the air that blocked their visibility.
’She is too efficient when it comes to magic. I have to take her down soon or I’ll run out of mana and stamina. I’ve been fighting for hours now.’
While she blocked the attack, Ren shifted gears. He activated his chaos energy. The energy that he had been gathering from consuming monsters, this was the last resort to ensure that he took her down.
[Chaos Energy activated]
The system chimed in. It was the first time that he had tried to use it, but based on what he knew, it had a potency more than double that of mana, and that was what he used to attack with more force.
He pulled his head back and took a deep breath, his chest rising to the max and glowing as he did.
Sereth managed to block all the spheres. She looked confident, well, up until the explosions in the sky faded away and she saw Ren. She could immediately tell something was different, so she moved very quickly to draw a spell to defend.
Ren’s head snapped forward like it was a catapult, the crimson red flames exploded from his mouth, ripping through the air and causing a sonic boom, travelling in a compressed beam.
Sereth saw the attack coming and poured what remained of her mana into the defense that she was making. A magical circle took form at the last moment. The flames slammed into it. The explosion that followed caused the mountain to shake and a rockslide to start.
Her defense shattered and she was hurled back, slamming into the ground hard. She rolled until suddenly bringing out ice claws that she dug into the ground and stopped herself from rolling.
She looked up as the dust cleared and saw Ren standing there. He was looking right at her, already prepared to come in with his next attack.
"It seems I cannot do this while holding back," she spoke in a low voice, yet somehow it carried across the distance and reached Ren, and for some reason the statement made his back crawl. He gritted his teeth and got ready. He knew that something worse was going to come, but he still had something under his belt that he was yet to use.
She got on her feet and placed one hand over the other. A blue ball of energy formed between both hands and continued to grow and grow. She took a deep breath as if trying to control something too powerful. The fog twirled around her like a vortex, it kept going and going until it soon turned into a terrifying tornado.
Ren looked at the top of the tornado, and there she was, but her entire body was now covered in ice scale armor and a dragon wing made of ice was behind her, not connected to her back physically but via magic.
Her hat and dress were all gone in this form, but even then he could not see her face as it was covered by an ice helmet.
"Oh come on, you have to be joking," Ren muttered. All of them on the mountain just had an unreasonable phase two after he knocked them down.
Regardless, he was still going to take her down.
"When I killed Aragath, I had a taste of his flesh, it allowed me to gain his stats for a limited time," Ren said.
"His stats were almost as good as mine, so right now, for a limited time, I am twice as strong."
He closed his eyes for a second, and as he opened them, he transformed back to his true form and immediately shot into the air.
"Do you plan on flying up? The mountain does not allow you to reach the top via flight," Sereth pointed out.
"I figured there would be such a rule already. I’m not trying to fly up, just leveling out the playing field."