Cerion knew that his main advantage over me was melee combat, and the way I was floundering to respond to his assault only cemented this fact in his mind. My reluctance to use potentially lethal attacks didn’t mean I was entirely without options, however, as Cerion realised when a black dome expanded with me at its centre.
The dome grew, drawing in light and hiding me from view. When it didn’t react to Cerion’s attacks, he decided to take a risk and tried to approach me anyway, hoping to catch my bluff. As a result, he was unprepared when my essence cut off his senses and left him stranded in my domain, making him an easy target for my ranged skills, which he hurriedly defended himself against.
In truth, [Essence manifestation] wasn’t without its weaknesses. Because the dome always kept me at its centre, opponents could still aim at me with their ranged attacks, despite the fact that I was hidden from view. That weakness no longer counted, however, when that opponent was stuck inside of the dome, as I was sure to beat into Cerion by dashing around him while attacking.
At first, he was still fast and aware enough to notice my attacks and block them in time, but this didn’t last. Soon enough, he was on the back foot as I had been earlier, trying to keep up with my pace but failing.
I paid him back for every wound he had left on me earlier, until my mana core was starting to empty out. [Hollow manifestation] was an expensive skill to keep up and it was taking its toll on my reserves. If I kept going, I was bound to run out of mana for a time. Could I defeat Cerion before that happened…?
I determined that no, I couldn’t. Realising this, I made some distance and released the skill, watching the black dome fade from existence.
Cerion, relieved to be free of it, calmed down and lowered his sword a bit. He looked a bit winded and had some nasty cuts and bruises on his arms and torso, but I could tell that he had preserved quite a bit of mana during the scuffle, relying on his physical stats to empower his defence. In a way, the mana disparity could be seen as a victory for Cerion.
In any other duel, such a difference in reserves would spell the end of the person in my position. In this case, however, that wasn’t the case.
My core thrummed with power as more mana flooded into it, before being expelled through my skin, tearing open the wounds that had just closed. Before Cerion could press his advantage, I had already recovered a large part of what I had lost in overloaded mana.
The lull in the fighting was broken as quickly as it had arrived as Cerion summoned a spiralling wave of water from the lake to propel himself into the air, before crashing back down to the earth with a giant water serpent in tow.
Cerion sent a few crescent-shaped blades of water at me in a pattern, forcing me to dodge at the same rhythm, before sending the serpent at me. The life-like creature roared with fury, an odd sound combining the noise of a wave crashing into a cliff and the roar of a lion. I almost thought the beast was an elemental, but discarded the notion when I realised that this was the evolved form of Cerion’s summoned pet!
By this point it was too late to hold back, so I summoned all of the onyx chains that I could and sent them at the beast like hissing vipers. They pierced through her scaly hide and constricted her long enough for me to react to Cerion’s own attack, a water ball that rolled across the ground at frightening speeds.
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I realised that if I was going to turn the tide at all, I would need to do it now. To that end, I created five orbs and sent three at the water ball, destroying it in the explosion. The other two I sent to my feet, where they blew up right as I apparated under the dark of night. The cloud of dust and smoke they had created was enough to distract Cerion, allowing me just enough time to summon Revan. The undead lizard quickly charged out of the trees and body-checked Cerion’s summon, throwing it back into the lake. The chains that Revan had freed in the process beset Cerion instead, keeping him busy blocking their strikes.
Whenever he would try to cut them or break them, the chains would either shrug off the damage or reform, furthering the issue.
I thought about using that exact moment to summon the dark pursuer as well, which would surely win me the battle as long as I actually succeeded in doing so, but was interrupted by a puddle of water that had appeared under me, seemingly out of nowhere.
I jumped to the side, landing in a prickly bush right as the puddle erupted into a giant geyser. I looked to my right and saw Cerion still fighting the chains, though! Similarly, Alia was occupied by Cerion! Who had-
My panic was interrupted as my instincts screamed at me to get away, allowing me to react just in time to a crescent-shaped blade that cut right through where I had been earlier, felling several trees with a clean cut in the process.
As I regained my footing and looked into the forest, I realised that, sure enough, I was staring at Cerion. Behind me, the fake Cerion that had been fighting my chains was fatally pierced in the heart by one of them, before collapsing into a puddle on the ground.
I sighed, cursing myself for not having seen him retreat into the trees at some point.
“You’ve gotten a lot better.” I called out to him, hearing Cerion scoff from behind a tree.
“I needed to, as you were so far ahead.”
“So you think you’ve caught up to me, now?”
“Only one way to find out…”
Cerion jumped out from behind his cover and strung together a series of varying skills to keep me on my feet. Instinctively, I matched each of his attacks and more, sending dozens of crescent blades and orbs and normal jolts of overloaded mana in his direction.
The forest around us was quickly turned into a wasteland, which only grew as our battle took us back to the lakeside, where Cerion’s attacks increased in both scale and power.
I had no time to supervise Revan as he dragged Alia onto dry land and began shaking it, instead forced to focus on the man in front of me.
Another blade coursed right past me, drawing a deep cut in the earth as the vertical projectile travelled.
In between us, our attacks and skills kept meeting, before destroying themselves with loud bangs and showers of black and blue mana.
It took a few more minutes before both of us calmed down enough to realise that we had gotten into a stalemate.
I looked down at my tier 3 sword, realising that this was only going to end one way.
Dark mana began storming around the sword in my hands, crackling with white sparks as the blade began to crack under the pressure.
At the lakeside, Cerion began to do the same, summoning a giant ball of water overhead, which quickly grew to the size of a house, before expanding even further.
After what felt like an eternity, all of my mana had been expended to charge up this single attack. From what I could tell with [Mana sense], Cerion had done the same…
Then, with a single thrust on my end and a jab on Cerion’s… our attacks collided.
The black laser that screamed to life as it left my disintegrating weapon howled through the air before crashing into Cerion’s orb.
The water construct pushed back, continuing to float my way as if it were a planet falling from the sky. Gritting my teeth, I pushed even more of myself into my laser, feeling the blood well up from my gums as the beam became reinvigorated.
The moment stretched on for longer than it should have… but eventually the stalemate was broken. With a final push from my end, the laser pierced through the ball and scattered the water into rainfall, before ramming into Cerion at full force.