Chapter 307: Shadow Domain [Bonus - ]
"AGHHHHHHHH!"
An agonizing blood-curdling scream of pure torture erupted from Hana’s throat.
Blood and eye fluid sprayed into the air as the bleed effect took hold inside her optical nerve.
In frantic agony, Hana brought her boot up, driving a desperate, full-force kick flat into Tasmin’s stomach.
BAM!
The heavy kick forced Tasmin to stagger three paces backward with her boot soles scraping against the dirt as she pulled her blade free.
Hana clutched her bleeding ruined eye socket with her left hand, screaming in agony, while wildly swinging her light dagger with her right hand in a blind arc.
"FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!"
Tasmin easily swayed her head to the right, dodging the wild strike.
WHOOSH!
’She’s open...’
Upon seeing the opening, Tasmin drove a swift precise kick flat into Hana’s right wrist.
THWACK!
The light dagger was forcefully knocked clean out of Hana’s hand, flying through the air and shattering into harmless light motes.
Tasmin lowered her blades with her crimson eyes looking down at the bleeding Hero with a cool smile.
"You need total mental control and emotional focus to cast high-tier spells, don’t you?" Tasmin remarked smoothly. "That’s what all mages need to maintain their spells after all..."
Tasmin didn’t use her shortswords this time. She shot forward, driving a bare, reinforced fist straight across Hana’s jaw.
’I shouldn’t even give her time to think...’
BAM!
Hana’s head snapped sideways with blood spraying from her lips.
"Ghk-!"
Hana frantically tried to ignite a light burst from her palm to blast Tasmin away, but Tasmin’s reflexes were far too fast.
WHOOSH!
Tasmin effortlessly ducked under the palm strike, stepping into Hana’s guard, and delivered a devastating brutal left hook flat into her cheekbone!
BAM!
Before Hana could regain her footing, Tasmin executed a swift spinning back-kick directly into Hana’s mouth.
CRACK!
Several broken bloody teeth flew out from Hana’s mouth, bouncing across the dirt as she stumbled backward, her vision swimming in total agony.
’I... I have to protect my sister...’ Hana thought through the blinding pain with her white eye trembling. ’I have to... protect Celeste...’
Spurred by pure desperate survival instinct, Hana forced herself into a rigid, hand-to-hand defensive stance.
She charged forward at the exact second Tasmin stepped in.
BAM! CRK! BAM!
The two women engaged in a fierce brutal hand-to-hand brawl inside the dust cloud.
Punches, elbow strikes, and knee thrusts were traded at high speed and while Tasmin dodged most of the incoming strikes with fluid grace landing heavy bone-crunching counter-punches across Hana’s ribs and face.
The same thing could not be said for Hana.
BAM!
Another tooth flew out of her mouth as her vision began to swim.
"Gah!"
Suddenly...
Hana found a tiny desperate opening in Tasmin’s forward upper-body rotation.
She didn’t hesitate after that as she channeled every remaining drop of her magic into her right hand, forming a jagged six-inch Dagger of Pure Light.
"DIE!"
Hana drove the light dagger straight into the right side of Tasmin’s neck.
The glowing white blade penetrated deep into the flesh, going three inches deep near her collarbone.
Hana’s face twisted into a maniacal blood-stained grin as she leaned in close to Tasmin’s smiling face, spitting blood as she cursed her out loud.
"DIE! DIE! I GOT YOU, YOU SMIRKING BITCH! PURGE IN HOLY LIGHT!"
Hana forcefully yanked the light dagger back out, expecting a fountain of thick red arterial blood to gush from Tasmin’s neck...
...But no red blood came out.
SWRRRRH!
From the deep wound in Tasmin’s neck... thick, murky, and pitch-black Shadow poured out like living liquid.
The physical vessel that Hana had just stabbed wasn’t flesh and blood... it was Tasmin’s primary [Shadow Strengthening] physical hull!
Tasmin’s smile didn’t fade for a single microsecond.
In fact, her smile grew even wider and her eyes had shadow coming out of them.
’Since you want to be used so badly... Let me use you as a test subject.’
Tasmin reached out both of her bare hands, placing them flat and firmly onto Hana’s trembling shoulders, locking the Hero in an inescapable vice-like grip.
Tasmin leaned her head down with her lips hovering right next to Hana’s ear, and whispered in a low chilling voice.
"Tch... I didn’t really want to do this to you... but you leave me no choice."
’What does she mea—’
"Drown in darkness."
HUMMMMMMMMM!
The exact second the words left Tasmin’s lips—
The entire world around the two of them... the clearing, the dust cloud, the sky, the sun, and the distant battlefield was completely erased.
WHOOSH!
An impenetrable sphere of pure pitch-black Darkness consumed the space, swallowing Hana, Tasmin, and the surrounding terrain in endless night.
...
Inside the dense suffocating sphere of pure void darkness, the world had ceased to exist.
There was no sky, no ground, no wind, and no sound from the ongoing battle outside.
There was only a pitch-black abyss that felt unnatural, unnatural in a way that made the skin crawl and the stomach turn.
The air inside the dome wasn’t just dark... It was unnaturally cold.
’It’s not normal cold though...’
It was a creeping frost that seeped straight through skin and cloth, settling deep inside the bones like liquid ice.
Hana stood in the center of the pitch-black void, her chest heaving violently as cold sweat poured down her pale blood-stained face.
Her single remaining eye widened in horror, staring wildly into the endless blackness around her.
"W-What is this...?" Hana choked out, her voice sounding muffled and distorted as if the darkness itself was swallowing her words right out of her mouth. "Light... I need light...!"
Hana reached into her spiritual core, desperately trying to pull forth even a microscopic spark of light magic.
She raised her trembling right hand, willing her light magic to ignite, to form a torch, a dagger, a needle... anything to pierce the suffocating gloom.
HISSS...
Nothing happened.
A hollow empty ache throbbed inside her chest. Her mana pool was completely dry.
The high-tier light spells, the giant Greatsword of Holy Light, the rain of light weapons, and the final dagger strike had completely drained every single drop of magic from her body.
Her spiritual pathways were exhausted, bone-dry, and flickering on the edge of total collapse.
TAP... TAP... TAP...
A chilling sound echoed from directly behind her.
Hana’s spine went rigid.
The hair on her arms stood straight up as an icy, spine-chilling wave of dread washed over her neck.
The temperature inside the dome dropped another ten degrees with the air becoming so frigid that her ragged breath misted in white clouds before her face.
Slowly, terrifyingly, Hana turned her head.
Standing less than three feet behind her in the pitch-black void was a towering ghostly silhouette.
It was composed entirely of writhing, unnatural shadow smoke, its form indistinct and shifting like a specter born from a nightmare.
It had no face, no eyes, and no features... only two burning, crimson pinpricks of light where its eyes should be, staring down at her with cold hunger.
It was like a predator looking down on its prey and it made her scared... as the shadow stalked her silently, gliding across the non-existent floor like a phantom in the dark.
"STAY AWAY FROM ME!" Hana shrieked with panic overriding her exhaustion!
She threw her body forward, swinging her right fist with all the physical strength left in her body.
Her knuckles cut through the chilly air, striking the ghostly shadow figure squarely in the center of its chest.
THWIP!
Her fist passed straight through the smoky silhouette as if striking thin air.
The shadow figure didn’t flinch, nor did it bleed... it simply dissolved into a cloud of harmless dark mist, swirling away into the surrounding gloom.
Hana stumbled forward from her own momentum, panting heavily as her boots scraped against the unseen ground.
She spun around wildly with her single eye searching the pitch-black void.
TAP... TAP... TAP...
The sound echoed again and this time from her left.
The ghostly shadow figure materialized once more out of the dark, towering over her, its burning crimson eyes locking onto her face with that same eerie silent judgment.
"DIE! GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" Hana screamed, her mind fraying at the edges.
She lashed out with a desperate full-force side kick with her boot whistling through the chilly air toward the phantom’s neck.
SWISH!
The shadow figure phased out of existence a split second before her foot made contact making her leg swing uselessly through empty space.
Frustration, fear, and exhaustion boiled over inside Hana’s chest.
She clutched her bleeding eye socket with one hand, her teeth grinding together so hard her jaw ached as she screamed into the empty darkness.
"YOU COWARD! STOP HIDING IN THE DARK! FIGHT ME LIKE A REAL HERO, YOU SHADOW DEMON! SHOW YOURSELF AND FIGHT!"
Her hysterical voice echoed through the chilly void, bouncing off the invisible walls of the dome in distorted overlapping reverberations.
Then, out of the silent blackness... a single chillingly calm voice answered her.
"Okay."
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
Before Hana’s mind could even register the sound, a bare shadow-infused fist exploded out from the dark, striking her squarely across her jaw.
The staggering force behind the strike was catastrophic.
CRACK!
Hana’s jawbone shattered instantly... The impact was so immense that it didn’t just throw her body as it generated a violent shockwave that blasted outward in a thirty-foot radius.
KABAGHHH!
The force of the punch literally burst a massive, twenty-foot hole through the thick wall of the dark dome itself.
Sunbeams and battlefield dust poured through the jagged breach as Hana’s body was launched out of the shadow domain like a cannonball.
She shot across the open air, crashing hard onto the damp grass, and skidded backward for forty yards across the dirt before tumbling head-over-heels into the crater where her twin sister lay.
Hana’s body crashed heavily beside Celeste’s broken form, her single remaining eye rolling back into her head as total sweet unconsciousness claimed her mind.
Both of Lord Sky’s elite Light Specialists lay completely out of it, battered, broken, and defeated in the pit.
Out on the open clearing, the massive, chilly dome of darkness began to crack, fracture, and dissolve into thin air.
The thick void smoke dissipated into the atmosphere, revealing Tasmin standing in the center of the trampled grass.
Her dark pigtails fluttered in the morning breeze, and her dark tunic was torn at the collar where Hana had stabbed her earlier.
Her chest rose and fell in heavy deliberate rhythms as she let out a slow, deep breath, wiping a tiny trickle of sweat from her forehead with the back of her gloved hand.
"Huuuuh..."
’Maintaining that domain is no joke. The strain on the core is completely different from basic shadow usage.’
Despite her heavy breathing, a bright satisfied grin broke across Tasmin’s face.
’I’m actually getting the hang of this domain stuff,’ she thought proudly, looking down at her hands as dark residual shadow sparks danced across her fingertips.
Ever since she had watched Brida deploy her [Domain Barrier: Bastion Ground] during their earlier team drills, Tasmin had been obsessed with the concept of expanding her own shadow aura into a territory, like a Domain.
Brida’s barrier was a solid bedrock-anchored defensive dome, but Tasmin had realized that if she inverted the structural principle... turning the barrier inside out to trap an enemy in total elemental isolation... she could create a pocket realm of darkness.
And this one was quite different from the one she used against those people of Unmovable Wall earlier.
’It’s incredible,’ Tasmin reflected internally, analyzing the technique’s mechanics. ’Brida makes it look so effortless because her Vitality pool is ridiculous, but keeping a closed shadow domain going while simultaneously attempting to construct high-tier offensive spells inside it... that is a nightmare for mana management. If I had tried to cast a shadow spell inside there while maintaining the wall’s integrity, my pathways would have overloaded...’
Still, the results spoke for themselves.
She had completely dismantled two high-tier Light-Specialist Classic Heroes without suffering a single point of serious damage.
Tasmin turned her boots, slowly approaching the crater where the twin sisters lay unconscious and bleeding.
Her twin shortswords hung idly at her hips with the Eclipse-Thread chains rattling softly against her armor.
Originally, when this fight had started, Tasmin’s instincts as a hunter had dictated a simple conclusion: slit their throats, destroy their cores, and ensure two of Lord Sky’s valuable Heroes were permanently removed from the war board.
...But as the fight had progressed, Tasmin had actually gotten a massive kick out of the chaotic challenge of it.
’To be honest...’ Tasmin admitted in her internal thoughts with a hidden smirk touching her heart, ’...that was actually fun. Fighting two Heroes who specifically counter my element... there were at least three separate occasions where I could have been seriously injured if I had miscalculated my timing by a second.’