"Tsk! Alright, I get it! You're a dangerous opponent, but even so, I refuse to surrender!" I back up a little further away from the man as I deploy multiple layers of protection around me while I wait for the healing magic I learned to kick in and heal my wounds.
"You think I will let you heal in peace!? Take this! And this!" Corolla doesn't take things lightly and continues coming after me while I am licking my wounds, which was a smart move from the offensive side; not letting me heal in peace was a clever tactic, albeit a bit annoying.
The letters the man throws at me are in a language I can't understand, and sometimes, they are so small that I can barely even see them. Hence, the effects of the attacks were unpredictable since I didn't know the meaning of most of the letters he kept throwing at me until they were so close to me that they cause damage.
Sometimes, the letters would explode. Sometimes, they would suck the air around me, forcing me to a particular location. At the same time, another letter traveled near the sucking letter, usually an explosive one, as I had begun to catch on the fire letter, which was easy to distinguish.
"BAHH!" It only takes a few more strikes for Corolla to get me with a direct attack, this time shattering the bones in my left arm with a strange letter that forces my arm to twist absurdly, causing a tremendous amount of pain in a short amount of time.
"You're not the only one with unfair magic powers, kid!" Corolla exclaims while writing another letter that somehow gets me closer to his as the world makes a weird sound. The ground I stand on doesn't seem to change, yet I get closer and closer to Corolla forcing me to jump back.
"That's exactly what I wanted you to do! LOOK BENEATH YOU, MORON!" I notice the incredible amount of explosive letters waiting for me when my feet touch the ground. Yet, luckily for me, because Corolla was dumb enough to warn me about it, I avoided the bombs with a spatial platform that lets me hover all the letters.
"Your attacks are rather powerful, but I have noticed you have to write the letters before throwing them; perhaps I should disable those hands of yours," Corolla doesn't look happy once I mention the possibility of turning things around with a counter-offensive attack from my side.
Yet, to Corolla's credit, he now does slow down attacking me as he also starts playing the defensive game while slowly continuing with his barrage of attacks, but that was exactly what I wanted. While I don't have as much experience fighting in the little time I've been fighting, I've noticed that my enemies always seem to consume their MP way faster than me, so I planned to wait him out.
My MP and overall power are much more compressed and efficient than most; therefore, if I play for a stamina run, I will always most likely win. Corolla, however, seems to also pick up on this strategy as well, as he now focuses more on direct attacks rather than broad, pointless attacks all at random.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
"You're a rather strategic fighter despite being so young and powerful; why aren't you overconfident like you should?" Corolla stops attacking me for a hot second, and while I am tempted to put my guard down, I answer his question while holding my dark shield directly before me.
"No threat should ever be taken lightly, no matter how insignificant it may seem. Isn't that why Julius wants me dead? Because I will eventually beat his ass to a pulp? What a cowardly loser you have for a master." I provocatively respond to Corolla, and my bait seems to work as he angrily responds to my offensive language against his master.
"Don't be naive! A Bratt like you will never be as great as Master Julius! You'll regret saying that!" Shit! I tell myself as I notice the power of the attacks increasing with every letter coming my way, growing more and more potent until I can barely dodge out of harm's way with spatial hooks.
The most annoying attack is absolutely one that sucks the air into itself as it pulls me back every single time. Since explosives accompany it, I have less than the blink of an eye to pull away from the area of attack with a spatial hook, but if my timing was to be off, then the damage was no joke.
Those little explosive letters could do severe damage if taken directly since they seem to reach temperatures high enough to melt metal based on how hot and scorched the trees got whenever they burst into flames. "Full counter!" I try to use my signature move against one of the letters, but it only creates another explosion on top of the initial one.
Because my full counter doesn't seem able to hurt me, the damage to my body is minimal, as Corolla laughs at my attempt to use Full counter against him. "You fool! My word magic is infallible! You'll explode near it even if you use your Full Counter! I am cheat-proof!"
I keep my cool as I keep jumping away with spatial hooks. In contrast, Corolla kept chasing me with his flight skills, which was part of my plan to drain him even faster as I realized that flying was less efficient than pulling yourself with spatial magic in the long run.
Sure, the flight skill is slightly faster and pulls upward faster. Still, spatial hooks were more efficient at traveling forward and gave you a much better range of flexible movement as I could pull myself in any direction I wanted.
In retrospect, the mere deployment of intense dark energy around me was all on purpose while draining me of MP. This also allowed for the use of my newest addition of cheat skills I learned over the past few days, exploring my abilities and their effects.
The corrosion skill granted by dark energy was quite the skill when it came to draining your opponent even faster without having to do much; all I had to do was irradiate enough dark energy so that some of it continuously touched Corolla for it to take effect slowly chunking away at his MP bar which he doesn't seem to notice for the time being.
"You're cheat-proof, uh? How about you cheat-proof this? Fallen down!" Finally, after waiting to attack, I wait for the perfect moment when I have some reasonable distance between me and Corolla to use a controlled version of my Hope Skill called 'Fallen down,' which is a massive barrage of hole energy attack beams that will track down the marked enemies nearby until they hit their target an incredibly annoying attack as well.
"TSK! HOW IS ARE THEY STILL COMING AFTER ME! I'VE DODGED THEM TWICE ALREADY!" Corolla annoyedly screams while trying his best to dodge as many of my light beams as he can, but in the end, a fair number of them eventually land on him, leaving him with several cuts and bruises, which seems to piss him off even more.
"You hurt me! How dare you!"
"Did you expect a hug or something? It's called a fight not a beatdown!"