As the dust settled, Anthem and Aria looked at the destru they had caused. They had unleashed an attack meant to kill someone of S rank caliber. But the only person they hit with it was the one person they swore o use it against.
And as the two of them fell to their khe rest of the rest illusion was lifted.
Standing behind a cracked shield were Elijah and the two others who had attacked Zenith and Aria at the festival. The older woman walked over to Zenith’s unscious body and poured a potion into his mouth. Very quickly the wounds on him started to heal.
But with that dohe women started to pick up Zenith and carry him away.
?
After seeing the aftermath, time slows for Aria. She had do again.
She hurt him again.
She worked so hard, done so muake sure this never happened.
In the beginning, she hurt him so much. He loved seeing her skill, but after the i she had stopped showing it to him. Now this did make it so he wasn’t injured again, but the hurt in his eyes wheold him no was heartbreaking to her.
But after a while he stopped asking to see it, which also hurt her. This time also cided with Zenith being closer to his friends at school.
Aria’s jealousy for those friends was different from the form she would have for Mia, for she loved Zenith in a different way back then.
But, her single light was the i Zenith eventually took in her just being a hunter, not her skill. She was so excited about this, she told him anything he wao know.
She also noticed that Zenith did the same thing with Ahey both realized what this meant.
Zenith wao be a Hunter.
And over the 6 years they waited for the time when he could bee one.
They khey would have to wait a little longer before they could actually hunt together, but they were closer now than ever.
But in one night, in one instant, that was about to be taken from them, from her.
She was looking right at what she thought was Zeniths dead body.
In her mind, she had just killed him
But then that woman gave him a potion aarted to heal. He was alive.
And 30 seds ter when she picked him up her immediate thought was ‘This bitch is trying to steal him’
And any relief she felt knowih had somehow lived through the attack, was instantly repced with an all ing hatred and rage directed at the woman.
?
The whole building shook. Inside of the training room, a huge amount of magic power started p out of Aria as she stood up. The power swelling inside of her was different from anything the kings end members had ever seen.
Around one of her arms, Aria created a rge cw-like struct using dark magic. Then, using full ford pushing more energy into the cw, she leaps at Lucy, who still had Zenith in her arms.
Elijah barely had enough time to move to defend her.
He khat his magic would not have been able to defend against this previously, but now he had absolute light.
Absolute Light and Darkness had two effects. One was the stronger form of Light and dark magic they gave the user, or its active power. But it also had a passive effect.
They boosted the strength of Light and dark skills respectively.
The reflect magic was light magic, so it got boosted from absolute light, and should be able to defend against Aria’s attack.
So he moved iween Aria and Lud erected a reflect shield between them.
The shield sted less than one sed.
Elijah had miscalcuted.
He fot to take into at Absolute Darkness boost dark skills.
Elijah only had 1 light based skill with reflect magic right now, but Aria had several dark based skills.
And with that oack, she had used 2 at once, on top of her dark magic.
?
There was a fual limitation to a person being a pure martial artist.
That is the damage limit.
When using non-magical attacks, the damage limit is based on the orike. The damage you do was your strength stat plus on stats and any other modifiers you have.
But fical attacks, it is based on Mp spent, your intelligeat, and skill level, with on modifiers and other modifiers as well. This did not increase in a strictly linear fashion.
This meant that magic was always strohan physical attacks.
That is until you obtain an aura skill, and why they are so important.
These were a css of skills unlocked in the skill store around level 200.
They basically boosted the power of physical attacks, letting material fighters deal with higher level monsters on an equal field with magic users, sihey scale damage the same way.
?
Magic skills had 2 innate versions. Base elements and advanced elements.
Base elements were fire, water, wind , ice, lightnih, light and dark.
And from there, there are the advanced magic’s. Each advanced magic was an offset of one of the base elements.
Some of them are upgrades like ice to freeze magie are new forms like reflect from light, or nature from earth. And some were binations like bck fme from both fire and dark magic.
?
Aria’s attacluded 2 other skills outside of Absolute Darkness.
Demon’s Bde Dance Lv.10 - +300% proficy with bded ons. Dark in nature
Demon kings Aura Lv.10 - Embodiment of the energy once used by the first demon king, a servant of the bck queen. Dark in nature
Both of these skills, dark in nature, were boosted by Absolute Darkness. And in unison with a dark struct she creates, the attack power was insane.
It shattered the boosted level 10 reflect shield ihan a sed. And si broke, the reflected damage was celed.
Staggered by the explosive damage his shield took, Elijah almost fell down.
“Lucy, you o run now!” He yelled towards his panion. Lucy then quickly started to run away with Zenith, only to quickly be stopped iracks, and forced onto the ground.
Just below her is a magic circle Aria had cast seeirying to run.
This was an advanced form of dark magic, gravity magic.
“And where in the hell do you think yoing?” Aria said, walking over to Lucy, who was being forced into the ground.
The Aria’s cw disappeared. Outside of the normal sound of the room, nobody made a sound as Aria walked over to Lud Zenith, the sound of her heels emphasizing her power with every step.
Zenith was currently lying right in front of Lucy. Knowing she o run quickly, Lucy tried to get up before Aria reached her.
But uhe strength of the gravity magic. She was eventually able to get onto her hands and knees.
But right when she did, bck spots appeared right under where her hands a were. And bck bdes shoot up from the bck spots, stabbing right through Lucy’s hands and ankles, pinning her permaly to the ground.
Aria eventually makes it right in front of Lu the ground. She then picks up Zenith and pces him on a bed made from her skill.
Theurns back to look at Lucy. She thees another sword strud charges it with her demon king aura and holds it right above her head.
Having to think quickly, Elijah es up with a pn. He had already uimated them ond it had happened again. They had overused the illusion magi Ava so she was out of MP. He had loads to spare, so as a distra, he sets off a massive inferno magic spell, right under Aria learning from her attacks.
The fire plete engulfed her. While he was using the magic he opened his status. He then poured 1,023,000 SP into both Absolute Darkness and Light. This was a substantial amount, but well worth it for the pn, and he had a rge stockpile of SP. Normally it would have been cheaper but he lent SP cost redu to another person.
He also quickly obtained Bck magiother advanced form of dark magic, from the skill store as a backup pn. It cost him a total of 45,500 SP to obtain the skill and level it up to level 10.
NamelessAlter
Bck magic was used for debuffs and curses. At max level, the basic weakening debuff would nearly kill ahin 30 seds, though it couldn’t kill them by itself. For an absolute darkness user, it would be half that time.
And as the fire dissipated, Aria was kneeling on the ground, her dress burning, her abaster skin peaking through the holes in the bd red dress.
But her burns were quickly being covered with bergy from the demon king's Aura.
“Are you done?” she said, standing up from the attack.
“Not yet” Elijah said, pg the weakening debuff on Aria and charging attacks from both Absolute Light and Darkness at once.
Aria looked at him unamused at his attack, almost as if she wasn’t afraid at all. She didn’t even have a ent at her copied skill.
And Elijah fired the energy bst right at her. In order to save Lucy, the only person he ever viewed as a mother, as a parent, he drained almost all of his MP into this oack. It even damaged the building, blowing a hole in the side and showing the night sky to them.
But as the bst and dust clears, Aria is standing pletely unharmed, ah had been moved out of the way.
Looking at this in plete disbelief, Elijah could only ask, “How?”
“Easy, I am immuo all attacks that bear the dark element. That would include Absolute Eclipse, even if it’s your bootleg version of it.”
NamelessAlter
Elijah was dumbstruck. With all his prep for these two, he had not only uimated them twice, but never had he known how truly terrifying Aria could be. If it was her he faced at the festival, he wasn’t sure he would have survived.
And so his st ditch effort pn was all he had left. Quickly pg a hand on his chest, an insignia appeared there for a brief instant. He then pulled a sword from his iory.
“Well, If that's what you want” Aria said, then eled her magid spoke the name of a spell, “Demon Swraveyard” and the whole floor turned bck. And much like the bdes that still were pierg Lucy, dozens of swrew out of the ground.
This was a fusion of Demon’s Bde Dand Dark and Bck Magic. A domain where Aria was in absolute trol of all of the swords.
The sword fight started from there, but Elijah was at a severe disadvantage. He also had a powerful sword skill, equal to demon's bde dance, but it was ral in nature, so it gained no boost from either absolute skills. In terms of strength, they were about even, but she had much more stamina then he did.
He would break one of her swords a few times, but she would always have another. She would just piother from the graveyard.
Nothing he did would end up having him win this fight fairly.
But that was never his goal.
What he o do was finish the spell he put on himself at the start of the sword fight. He o pce the other insignia on someone else, ahought he had the perfe.
This whole time, Anthem roteg Madison from the shock waves of Aria’s attacks. If he could pce the other insignia on Anthem, he thought he could pull though.
So while they were fighting, he tried to get Aria to knock him into Anthem, so he could pce the insignia on him.
Aually, it worked. Aria got a good ki Eligh and knocked onto the ground near Anthem. He had taken severe damage already in this fight already, so if he didn’t finish it now, he would probably die.
So wheood up from the kick he moved quickly and pced a hand on Anthem while getting bato the fight. Both insignia were now glowing so others would be able to see them.
Aria quickly prepared for atack but this time Elijah didn’t try to defend. He just let the attae.
And right before it made tact, Aria noticed the insignia. She stopped her attack less than an inch from Elijah’s head.
SHe quickly started to look around to see where the other insignia was. And when she spotted it on Anthem, she brought her sword back to her side.
“Talk” She said, aill filling her voice.
But before Elijah could say anything, Anthem yelled out, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING! KILL HIM!”
“She ’t” Elijah said. “Not without killing you”
“What are you talking about?” Anthem said back.
“The insignia on his chest and y. It’s called shared fate. Basically whatever happens to one person happens to the other, and vice versa. If I kill him, you die as well” Aria said.
It was quiet for a moment, but quickly Anthem yelled again, “I don’t care! Just stop him!”
“WELL I DO CARE” Aria yelled back.
She knew how Zenith would feel about Anthem dying, and she couldn't have him go though that.
“So, what do you want? I’m willing to let you live today”
“That's it, just let us leave, and I’ll dispel shared fate” Elijah said.
“Well, you and y and the silent one leave” Aria said, still pissed at all of this.
She quickly removed the bdes pinning Lucy to the ground. She quickly got up and moved to Elijah, while pulling out and drinking a potion. But before they left, she pushed their luck a little too far.
“We're also takih with us” Lucy said.
“You touch him again, I’ll kill all of you, no matter the sequences” Aria said, once again activating gravity magi the whole room, as a sign of intimidation. She might not be happy with this ending, but she would not let them have him, no matter the cost. “Now, run along”
Elijah, uanding what they have been given, quickly moves them all out and leaves.
But with that, Anthem moves quickly to talk to Aria.
But before he could say anything, she dispelled all of the energy arouhe dark energy c her wounds from the inferno magic dissipates. And Aria faints, from exhaustion.
