Jura furrowed his brows and frowned. It was true. Not only did Alex have superb mana manipulation, but he also had a Breaker. However, he had never used it while fighting with Jura. Therefore, Jura didn’t know if Alex was telling the truth. He had never seen him use it, so he always wondered if it was a bluff. There was always something that stopped them mid-fight so they never managed to legitimately win against each other.
Jura’s breath gradually softened as the two sides stared at each other once again. The Investigator walked next to Alex with a limp as he held his stomach. The Breaker in his hand emitted a low hum, as if showing his desire to battle. He had never expected that his first real mission would turn out so horribly, but the excitement he felt superseded the pain from his healing injuries.
“Captain Alex, haah, what do we do?” The Investigator asked.
“Why are you asking me such a stupid question? Hm…”
Alex stepped closer to the Investigator and whispered a few words. Jura calmed his breathing and stood up.
If I escape, they’ll follow me. I expect the others to have made it halfway to the forest by now. If I don’t finish this up, Vars and Laxin will probably die. Since I can’t unseal it, I’ll just have to compromise.
Jura reached into his pocket and grabbed a few small stones in his left hand. He grabbed one in his right and flicked his wrist. The stone shot through the air toward Alex’s neck. A small whistling sounded out, causing Alex to instantly bring up his sword and jump backwards. The stone slammed into Alex’s sword and ricocheted off of it, which sent the stone straight through the Investigator’s shoulder. Pain filled the Investigator’s face as he took several steps back while gripping his shoulder.
“AHHHH! C-Captain, what the Hell?!”
“That was an accident! Just try to dodge his stones!”
Jura threw two more stones, one directed at Alex and the other at the Investigator. Alex was capable of barely deflecting the stone, however, the Investigator was not. The stone ripped through the front of his throat, allowing blood to spill out onto his robes. He coughed up small globs of blood as he frantically tried to stop the bleeding.
Jura saw the Investigator’s panic, so he took out two more stones and threw them at him. They shot through the air and the first one pierced into the Investigator’s stomach while the second ran through his neck. It flew out the back of his neck, causing blood to gush from both ends. He instantly fell onto the ground, the Breaker leaving his hands and following down with him. He stared wide-eyed at Jura, unable to accept his unexpected demise.
Alex instantly sprinted over to the Investigator’s body. Jura understood his intentions, so he threw out a couple more rocks to try to stall Alex. One rock smashed against Alex’s plated thigh, thoroughly crushing it. The second was barely blocked by Alex’s blade, which cut the rock in half. A small groan of pain escaped his lips as he fell to one knee.
Jura jumped forward with enough force to instantly arrive next to the Investigator’s corpse. Right when he stretched his hand out to grab the Breaker, a conflagration of fire blasted toward Jura. The intense heat caused him to jump backward before he was able to snatch the Breaker. He watched as the fire engulfed the corpse and the Breaker; the corpse was burnt to ashes while the Breaker was lifted out of the fire by a tendril of mana. Alex gripped the Breaker in his hand and dropped a small bit of blood onto it, which appeared after he lightly cut his finger. The orb faintly shined as the blood disappeared.
Jura’s frown deepened as he was basically powerless to stop Alex. As far as Jura knew, there was no limit to how many Breakers one person could hold. He’s also never encountered a person that has a Lettered Breaker, as far as he knows, so he doesn’t know if the same logic applied to Lettered. He himself held two Breakers, and that was the only time he’s engaged with someone that held two just like him. There weren’t any real increases in strength since another Breaker would only increase mana usage, but the more variables with the attacks could be one advantage.
Alex had a smug smile plastered across his face. He tightly held the Breaker in his hand and stared at Jura.
“Hahaha, nice try, Black Death. However, we both know about your heavy dislike of fire. It’s only natural that I gained this Breaker. The more I think about it, the more ironic it is. My specialty is fire magic, and your most hated element is fire. Haha! It’s quite wonderful, because I don’t have to expend as much mana as I normally would.”
“...”
Jura’s body tensed up immediately. The heat from the flames before still lingered on his body. If he had known Alex’s main element was fire, he would’ve installed a Fire Cell instead of a Darkness Cell. He only used a Darkness Cell because he was pursuing a runaway Darkness Mage at the time and the only way he could defeat him was by bolstering his Darkness defense. Although it would take a shorter amount of time to craft a new suit, it would still take several months.
He still hadn’t discovered the method to install more than one Elemental Cell in equipment, mostly because he didn’t have the time nor the resources to create experiments pertaining to the subject. If he had a few more people that had his same level of understanding, he would probably wouldn’t have to worry about such problems. He had kind of winged it on most of the technology he built based on his father’s numerous research papers, because the Elemental Cells were capable of replacing certain energy sources otherwise impossible to obtain or build.
The hologram, for example, used a Light Cell as the energy source. Without the Light Cell, Jura’s version of the hologram wouldn’t work. The most complicated calculations his father created were much too difficult for Jura to understand with his mathematical prowess, so he wasn’t capable of recreating several ideas his father wrote down. Therefore, he substituted some of the unobtainable items with Elemental Cells, which are created by the Elemental Spheres.
Jura lightly chewed the inside of his cheek as he took one step back. Alex pointed the staff at Jura and created several blasts of fire that surged toward him. Jura jumped into the air high above the fire blasts. Several more manifested from Alex’s Breaker and shot toward Jura. He exploded energy to his left side, forcing his body to the right in order to dodge the fire magic. He created a ball of lightning before shooting it toward Alex. A giant fireball crashed into the lightning ball, causing both to burst into a large eruption of wild energy. The shock wave blasted Jura back several meters before he fell.
Jura stumbled backward after he roughly landed on the ground. Alex calmly strode forward, Breaker in hand, as he smugly smiled once again.
“Hey, is this really all you have? All those other encounters we’ve had; you really haven’t been hiding anything. I expected more from you, somehow.”
Jura was once again breathing heavily as he took a few steps back. Sweat dripped down his cheek before it fell to the ground. He grit his teeth and glared at Alex with his tired eyes. A blast of fire manifested from Alex’s Breaker and flew directly at Jura. He jumped to the right, however, the right half of his body was engulfed by the flames. An intense burning sensation enveloped his right half, causing him to involuntarily yell out in pain. Images of a flaming village flashed through his mind as the similar heat covered his body.
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Jura crashed onto the ground, bouncing a couple times before coming to a stop. Smoke rose from his right half as he struggled to his feet; half of his face was burned off, including his hair. His breathing turned ragged as he stood up; his chest heaved as the muscles in his jaw were contracting. Jura grit his teeth and opened his mouth, revealing guttural words from his throat:
“I...will FUCKING KILL YOU!-”
Jura turned his body toward Alex and glared at him with his remaining eye.
“You asked me...if this is all I have?! Hahaha! Guess what you fucking bitch, IT’S NOT!”
A small cracking sound spread throughout Jura’s head. His body slightly vibrated as an incredible surge of energy manifested within it. Instantly, the healing speed of his injuries increased by over three times. An invisible wave of energy wafted off Jura’s body; his Breaker emitted a low hum as the lightning coming forth from it explosively increased.
Jura’s figure slightly flickered before it appeared directly in-front of Alex. Jura smashed his fist against Alex’s chest, completely destroying the plated steel. Alex flew back at least one hundred meters and bounced several times off the ground before coming to a stop. He puked blood as he tried to breath in precious oxygen. He was completely caught off-guard. Jura’s entire movement happened within a split second; Alex had no chance of blocking. Disbelief covered Alex’s face as he looked around for Jura’s figure, all the while frantically trying to heal his severe wound.
Suddenly, a black figure smashed into the ground before Alex.The ground was completely crushed underneath Jura’s feet and, by this time, his injuries had almost all healed. Jura reached down and, despite his resistance, grabbed Alex’s undershirt. Jura instantly shot into the air, destroying the earth beneath his feet even more.
Jura reached a new height of three hundred meters before he slowed to a stop. He tightly gripped Alex’s shirt as he started to spin his body faster and faster. After several rotations, Jura used all the strength in his arm to throw Alex toward the ground. The air vibrated from the force of Jura’s throw and the remaining pieces of steel on Alex’s body were ripped off by the wind resistance alone.
Alex instantly used his Breaker staff to created a giant pillar of fire to try to slow his descent. He suddenly felt an incredibly dangerous feeling above him, so he turned and saw a gigantic bolt of lightning striking down toward him. He mustered all of his strength to create an incredibly thick wall of Darkness energy. The lightning pierced through the barrier, however, roughly a third of its power was depleted. That didn’t stop its descent, though.
Alex pulled the cape off his back and waved it in-front of him. His cape was actually his first Breaker, and it was given to him when he was promoted to Knight Captain. It folded in on itself multiple times before it was about two feet wide and long. The lightning smashed down directly on the folded cape, unable to pierce through it. However, the force behind the lightning caused Alex to crash into the ground at an incredible speed. Cracks rolled several meters outward and a large cloud of dirt billowed up.
Alex uncovered himself from his Breaker, which he wrapped around himself before he fell to the ground. He eyes were filled with fear as he looked up into the sky.
The lightning manifested from Jura’s Breaker continually increased. It was like a river of electricity that surrounded him, and he gathered all of it behind him. He controlled it to strike down on his body, causing his falling speed to dramatically increase. After a few seconds, all of that electricity exploded; the energy created from the blast visibly shook the air as a shock wave spread outward, completely flattening the ground and casting away the clouds high in the sky. The force created by the explosion made Jura shoot down to the ground with incredible speed. He outstretched his sword and gathered lightning at the tip of it.
Alex blasted fire out from his feet to move him out of the large crater that formed from his impact. He had barely moved just outside the crater when a flash of black, which was followed by white, enveloped his vision. He had managed to fold his Breaker two times to protect him from the attack, however, the energy was just too powerful.
A split second after Jura collided with the ground, a gigantic wave of lightning surged outward to cover the landscape for several hundred meters. It wasn’t smooth energy but rather individual lightning bolts that arced outward across the ground; several bolts charged into the sky, snaking their way through the air with incredible ferocity.
Alex’s Breaker barely held on for a couple seconds before a lightning bolt pierced through it. The bolt severed Alex’s right arm from his body while instantly cauterizing the injury. An entire second later, the lightning storm dissipated into nothing. Intense pain covered Alex’s body, especially his severed arm. Despite his harsh training to become a Knight, the pain of having his arm torn from his body was on a completely different level.
He instantly covered his entire body with his Breaker, using the hole in it for his eyes. He looked around for Jura’s figure, however, he was unable to discover him.
Meanwhile, Jura had the Life Magician slumped over his shoulder as he soared through the air. He was still in his unlocked mode because he had to enter the forest before Alex caught sight of him.
His unlocked mode wasn’t exactly an ‘unlocked mode’. Basically, because of certain events in his past, the limiter in his brain which protected his muscles from being overused was destroyed. Before he encountered Vilis, his Captain, he was unable to leave the broken limiter state. Because of that, he always used literally one hundred percent of his strength at all times. This caused Jura incredible amounts of pain and suffering, however, because he had Breaker Z, his body healed over and over again until he eventually got used to the feeling of incredible power. Vilis created a way to repair his broken limiter as a type of safeguard.
Breaker Z made Jura’s real power insanely high, so high in fact that Jura wasn’t capable of controlling it even after several months of no limiter. He continually increased in strength because his muscles would always tear, his bones would always shatter, and he would hear absolutely everything around him down to the movements of worms in the dirt.
When Jura asked Vilis about other Lettered Breaker holders, Vilis told him that Jura’s Breaker Z wasn’t even the strongest. He could potentially become the strongest after a long time, however, several other Lettered Breakers already had power far greater than Jura’s.
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Chapter 5. Yes, this is the true extent of Jura's current ability. Of course, he can't just use it willy-nilly, because it over-exhausts his mana and physical endurance.
Any questions, just ask. If the answer isn't a spoiler, I will answer to the best of my ability.