The next laser that attempted to strike Noah was met by a blood laser which was vaporized in place of Noah. And the next. And the next. With the regeneration of a nymph in the forest and the blood control of a vampire, Noah had infinite ammo as long as he bled.
The man landed on the ground and immediately launched dozens of lasers simultaneously every second, which Noah matched. What followed was a bloody light show where blood and light arced in a slight curve and fiercely collided between Noah and the man. Long trenches were left on the ground as the man on the slightly higher ground due to the incline of the crater, as well as Noah, were pushed backwards by the recoil of their lasers.
However, the man clearly outmatched Noah in the strength of the lasers, thus pushing the convergence points of the dozens of lasers and blood lasers closer and closer to Noah.
Though the convergence of the two lasers was still a ways away from actually being close to Noah, he suddenly decided to abandon firing his blood lasers.
He was out of blood to freely deplete. His wounds had fully healed.
Without hesitation, he lunged forward explosively and began weaving through the lasers on their way to him and appeared in front of the man, ready to deliver a devastating cross punch. The man dodged it by a hair’s breadth, then turned his back to Noah while grabbing Noah's forearm, which was now above the man's shoulder, before pulling and throwing Noah to the ground in front of him. He then pointed a finger right at Noah’s chest.
Watching the finger approach his chest, Noah liquified his wood armor and coagulated it in front of the man’s finger.
The air crackled, burst, and wood sizzled.
Despite Noah's protective efforts, the laser still seared through him, leaving a hole in his chest that left one even in his full-length black cloak, which had been interwoven with mithril strings and extended several metres underground.
‘This is why I didn't wear the cloak to the leviathan fight. It's not meant to withstand such power. Also, this guy really loves leaving holes in my torso, doesn't he?'
Grimacing, he rapidly coalesced the blood that poured out of his chest hole and immediately fired back a blood laser from its centre, which seemed to catch the guy by genuine surprise, chipping the man’s ear. Noah sprouted mini trees from below his feet and used them to grab his own ankles to fling himself a few metres away. The man did not seem to have a regenerative technique like Noah did. They then stood straight, and looked at each other.
Slowly, the man raised a hand to his ear and felt the missing presence of his earlobe. The blood that dripped out of his chipped ear stained his hand with his own blood, and he moved this hand in front of his face to look at the blood on his fingertips. For a few tense moments, the man just rubbed his blood-stained index finger and thumb together while Noah watched with a defensive stance, before the man abruptly fired several lasers into the sky without looking up, which instantly caused the blood on the fingers he shot out of to evaporate. Watching this, Noah’s eyes widened. He could fire lasers from more than his index finger? Then why had he not used it in their fight?
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“Alright. It was fun until you did that. Since you played with me, I’ll let you in on some info that Medeus gathered. You’re frolicking around in Haldor, expecting to slowly gain power again in safety granted to the minor nations by the military power stalemate that none of the major nations would let any one of their own break, I believe? It's a good plan, certainly. It's just that you seem to have forgotten that the Demonic forest lies even further westward of Haldor. See, the demons seem to be preparing a strike force. I’ll leave you at that.”
'I guess he doesn't know about the Spirit queen's ability to heal Emma. Or does he just not think that I had moved primarily to heal her?'
“Are you suggesting that an invasion might be coming? When will it happen? How large will the force be? Do you have any oth-”
“If you survive this, you’re home free.”
Noah hadn't even had time to blink when a dome of sparkling lights surrounded him.
“By the way, I can actually fire my lasers from anywhere within my sight, not just my fingers. I just thought I should mention.”
Noah hadn't even had time to fully comprehend what the man had said when each and every sparkling light turned into an eviscerating beam, baptising Noah in heat and light. The light was like the arrival of the sun on Earth, and nature surged to protect him. Along with trees that sprouted from the ground, the ones from the forest were pulled into the dome of light that was assaulting Noah. In the centre, Noah stood with his arms glued to the floor, sweat oozing out of every pore on his body. He had encased himself in a smaller dome of wood and earth, but the beams of destruction rapidly melted through the regenerating wood to reach him. Trees were uprooted at a greater and greater pace, and the light grew brighter and brighter.
However, nature could only hold out so long against the might of a Hero.
Holes began to appear in the protective dome Noah had built to protect himself, and small streams of light began to penetrate it, like how rays of sunlight might fall on low-lying vegetation in a forest.
‘Damn it. I have no choice. This fight is over. If he could do this from the start, there never was a serious fight in the first place.’
Reluctantly, Noah dissipated Cyrene, realising that stubbornly holding on in his current form would doom him.
‘Mimicry - Lich!’
The problem with Noah's spirit splitting was that each use of the skill consumed the same amount of mana. This meant that using a mimic form with 8 monsters would consume 8 times the amount of mana. Even with his increased spirit now, he could only use eight simultaneous uses of mimic up to three times.
What this meant was that he could no longer fight like he used to, where he would fluidly change monsters all the time, and instead would need to choose a form and stick to it throughout the fight.
With his use of Zephyr and eight stacked unicorns earlier to heal Evan, and now his use of Cyrene, transforming out of Cyrene now meant he could no longer really fight as an SSS-ranked, and would drop down to his previous SS-ranked. And the gulf between the two was huge. Back when he was SS-rank, he had previously struggled to even escape against this Hero. Fighting was out of the question.
For a full minute, the spectre stood in the heat, its ghostly teeth clenched in reluctant acceptance, watching the wood around it be completely reduced to atoms immediately now that it no longer regenerated. Noah did nothing as the lasers struck him, annihilating the semi-corporeal matter he was currently comprised of, only to return like nothing had ever happened to it.
‘It looks like I’m still far away from this bastard's level. But it's alright. I know for a fact that I've gotten a lot closer to that peak. Even if it's far off, all that matters for now is that I've moved forward. I'll keep trudging forward, and eventually, I'll get there. There's no reason for it to be a sprint rather than a marathon, is there? It certainly is still fucking annoying, though, that he is so overwhelming.’
He sighed as the laser beams finally died down to reveal an empty crater, a decimated forest as far as the eye could see, but no Hero. And once again, Noah hadn't even gotten his name.