Evan stumbled, and Kuepit in front of him spun on her heel and kicked the back of his head as he fell, launching him into a tree head first at subsonic speed. His momentum caused the stems of several thick trees to explode into smithereens on impact, coming to a stop after flying almost a quarter of a mile. Disoriented, he stumbled onto his feet, attempting to regain his bearings and pick up Elara. She had been slung over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes, and the velocity he had been travelling at caused her to fall off. While this was a good thing since it meant that Elara did not have to take the brunt of being sent careening into several trees, it did mean that Evan was now distanced from her.
Kuepit watched all of this happen with a disgruntled expression. She had placed a severe debuff on him, which, though it wasn't at maximum power, was certainly still powerful enough to limit his mana reserves to a mere fraction of what it usually was. This was why Evan thought he was low on mana in the cave.
Warrior cultivation would allow mana to permanently alter the physical body of a warrior whenever they were elevated to a new level of power. Right now, this was the only thing protecting Evan. Aside from a Lord ranked body, he was unable to actively use much mana to fortify his body further. This meant that the amount of damage Evan was currently taking was not insignificant. Yet, he still prioritised Elara over himself.
Kuepit did not interfere as she watched Evan running while falling and getting up every few meters with tears streaming down his face with a determined yet desperate expression on his face to Elara, who he had located to be laying on the floor the length of half a football field away.
This was, until he was actually close to her. When he did get close, Kuepit blinked to Elara's side and delivered another kick, which sent him flying again. The damage was worse this time. A few minutes later, Evan was before her again, and this time he was bloodied and bruised. Though the sight of a lover in pain would usually bring joy to her, it didn't this time, since the pain this time was for the sake of his partner.
'What is wrong with him? His running path was circular too, did I kick his brain too hard?!’
She grinded her teeth as he got close, grabbed his collar and forced him to his knees. She then leaned close to a ear, which his head that tiredly dropped to the side helped with, and she screamed out.
"The bitch is useless! Do you hear me?! You will die here, and you would have killed her! You hear?! Bastard!"
Kuepit had actually been right in guessing that Evan had been kicked too hard. Blood leaked from his temple, and the entire side of his head she was screaming into was bloodied, with his ear on that side having gone deaf.
"...lara…"
"Is he gone? Annoying! Useless!"
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She then threw him to the ground, where he fell beside Elara like a puppet that had its strings cut. Unbeknownst to Kuepit, he grabbed a pebble on the ground and slowly clenched his palm around it.
In her lunacy, she raised both hands to the side of her face and began to furiously scratch at the sides of her head, drawing blood.
Tufts of her neck-length black hair with highlights of brown fell out, and she turned her head to the skies and screamed in a shrill voice, her grey eyes frenziedly darting about as she did so.
"Aaaaaah! Why! Why why why why why! K&#£@#@£&#"
Evan could not decipher what she was saying, and he dissociatively began to wonder if his other ear had also burst. What Evan didn't know was that her words had gone too far beyond the boundaries of what could be recognised as human speech for the translation spell he would recast on himself every few weeks to translate.
While Kuepit sank into an episode of pure, unadulterated madness, Evan subtly checked on Elara's condition with a hand in his pocket. This time, all the skin on her back had been scratched off in its entirety, and Evan, horrified, checked on her mental state. She appeared to be unconscious. At this, he released an inward sigh of relief.
If she were awake, Elara would have to grapple with the pain of being flayed alive, and this was not something he wanted her, or anyone, to experience.
Evan then drifted his eyes to Kuepit. She had been reduced to a mad beast now, still indecipherably screaming but now doing it while clawing away at a nearby tree. He couldn't help but notice that entire chunks of the tree had been gouged out, yet he only detected an Apprentice ranked body. This meant that most of her raw strength was coming from literally dumping mana by the boatloads into her muscles to reinforce them.
Considering that the extent of modification due to travel through the void was large yet random in the extent of it, this meant that she had not only received a ridiculous amount of skills but also lucked out on mana granted to her by the void.
Even in his ragged state, his brain still sent a shiver down his spine. With such power, she was basically a force of nature.
As he watched her, she suddenly froze, then relaxed, adopting her previous cadence. She then turned around to Evan and said the same thing she had already said twice before.
"Apologies. You've ruined my mood again and made me show an unsightly side of me."
She then began to slowly walk over to Evan and Elara, who were still lying on the ground.
"I've had enough of this, honestly. It wasn't as fun as I thought it would be. I suppose we can wrap this up now."
She smoothed out her hair with her bloodied nails as she spoke, then stopped once she was a metre away from them upon hearing Evan croak out some words.
"...you said you only heard…bits and pieces about me…correct?"
"Yes. Why? Are you trying to buy time? I hope not. It won't make a difference."
"...No, no. Just…it's good for me…"
‘Third Circle - Accelerate'!
'Third Circle - Accelerate!'
What followed his words was a shockwave that instantly ruptured Kuepit’s eardrums, and the formation of a crater large enough to place a small city inside. Every tree or animal unfortunate enough to be close by was turned to blasted miles away, except for the sturdy Kuepit, who had reinforced her body right after the damage to her eardrums.
She blinked. The two she had been staring at had vanished.