“Do you think they’re going to be able to hold on?” Rina attempted to say something to Luna, but she was staring at the dust cloud where Solstice was launched into the wall. Rina knew at this point Luna was too busy worrying about Solstice to pay attention to anything.
Out of the corner of Rina’s view she saw Hugo go flying across the room but managed to land on his feet from the blow he just suffered. He was covered in blood from all the jabs that the burly man had launched at him.
“Just lay down and die dammit. You’re prolonging your demise shit stain!” The burly man knew that he needed to get this over with fast and decided to go all out finally and make sure he wouldn’t be captured.
All at once a huge aura washed over all the kids and made them all freeze for a split second which was enough for the man to run his spear through Hugo’s chest without any resistance. Hugo slowly looked down and saw that his sternum had be cut clean through and he felt his vision going dark before being kicked off the man’s spear and flying into a table.
“Now make this easy and come die prince.”
Ivis had been biding his time to launch an attack on the man but didn’t expect him to immediately go all out and destroy his partner. Ivis decided he should attack first and imbued himself with lightning causing him a lot of pain internally. He charged at him with his long sword and began to try and get in close hoping to counter his reach.
“You’re going to need more than that to get close!”
The burly man began to move his spear in a way that it blurred and let afterimages it was so fast, quickly holes began appearing on Ivis and he rapidly began to slow down before the man took the other end of his staff and slammed it into his gut knocking all of the air out him and knocking him out.
“Man, I’m glad all of you won’t make it out of here, especially that first kid, it’s good we nipped you all in the bud.”
Right when he tried to pierce Ivis’s skull he felt a killing intent strong enough to not belong to kids this age.
“What the fuck…” all he saw was Solstice climbing out of the crater in the wall and fixing his dislocated shoulder.
“Just so you know, you got to thank those two boys over there for giving me time to analyze. I mean I think that blue haired one is dead, so I guess that sucks? But at least now you’ll get an opportunity I didn’t get for a while, ready for your first life or death fight with a person?” Victor had been keenly watching all the fights going on since Solstice knocked out for a few minutes. The only thing that managed to bring him back was Victor intentionally causing pain to his soul.
“What are my chances here?” Solstice wasn’t optimistic here at all, this guy had turned up his dial for a split second and thoroughly trashed everyone in the room.
“Of you winning? Optimistically, 10%? But we aren’t shooting for that, I guarantee your parents should crack whatever the hell this thing is down here soon, all you got to do is survive.” Victor left out some details in order for Solstice to get real experience, you don’t get many tempering experiences like this, and he wanted Solstice to get the full benefit of it all.
Solstice just nodded before picking up his great sword he dropped and began channeling as much mana in the air as he could.
Over the course of his short training camp, his mentors taught him a lot and his control got significantly better, but you can only do so much in a month. His mom made him promise to not show his power controlling ambient mana to anyone yet, but this scenario was far beyond what he signed up for.
“By the way, I bet you could do something similar to Ivis, but on a better scale.” Victor explained what to do and all Solstice did was nod and hope he could mitigate better than Ivis.
“I guess I got to take you seriously now, you’ve earned my respect, I put all my power into that blow, and you managed to get back up.” The burly man was stupefied that Solstice wasn’t turned into a pile of mush after he hit him with all his power. This sparked his intuition, and he knew that if he didn’t finish him here, he would become a huge problem in the future.
He immediately charged at Solstice but sensed danger coming from all around him and imbued himself with mana to fortify himself for whatever was coming.
Hundreds of metal spikes and blood lances began to rain down on him like a never-ending flood. After a few seconds it stopped, and he managed to move but was immediately met by Solstice.
“How did he get here already!?”
Solstice used the few seconds he had to channel lightning into himself and start his attack.
He swung down as hard as he could and when he met the man’s spear, his feet went into the ground a little from the amount of force he put into it.
Immediately after the block Solstice channeled blood below the man in hopes of rooting him and slowing him down for a second longer. This bought him enough time to follow up his attack with a kickoff the man’s chest and separated the two.
After this first clash the man was terrified, no kid should have that amount of speed and power, it was insane! This kid could hold his ground against most A ranked people, luckily, he was at the top of A rank and was soon to break through the wall of S rank.
Immediately after the man charged at Solstice but right when Solstice went to cleave down again, a huge wall of earth sprouted up and caught his sword, using this the man opened up a small hole in the wall and punctured his leg.
“Ah so that’s his affinity, no wonder he hasn’t used it.” Victor had been wondering why the man hadn’t used his magic the entire time and it just showed. Each element had a specialty, Earth was mainly used for defense and seeing as how he was just killing teens, he didn’t need to truly use it. Each base element excelled in one aspect except one, Earth was defense, Wind for mobility, Fire for power, and water was the all-rounder. It didn’t excel in anything but could make up for that with its ability to be decent at anything.
When you get to the rarer types of magic is when it gets more complicated and comes down to mostly control and how you wish to use it.
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Lightning for example was arguably the best for self-augmentation and piercing, it just took a sturdy body. Blood was a lot like water but better than it because its density made it more usable in any type of scenario. Metal was a lot like earth but was the embodiment of the best defense is the best offense. It could block a lot more than earth could and could also dish out a lot more damage than its counterpart.
Nature was in its own category in the fact that it was the absolute best support attribute there was, it allowed you to slow down and root enemies whenever you wanted, and it let you heal to a certain degree.
The best healer hands down was light, it could purify and cure wounds if you had it, and it coupled with impressive speed to make you an incredibly annoying healer.
Dark was a bit different than everything else, it had many branches you could pursue, and each was many times different than the last. You could curse people and kill them from far away if you met the right conditions, you could become one of the best assassins if you went the shadow route and meld with shadows or control shadows even. The most frowned upon profession in the world though was the necromancy branch, raising the dead and controlling souls wasn’t the most popular but was one of, if not the strongest aspect in the world.
The burly man clearly had a good sense of control for his magic, being able to erect a wall that fast and anticipating where Solstice was going to appear was beyond impressive.
“I think it’s time to switch up on power, let’s go with speed and precision Solstice.” Victor knew that he had no chance in breaking through any of his magic so it would come down to openings and being defensive now.
Solstice nodded and backed up which made the burly man frown.
“Did he catch on that fast? How?” A kid at merely 13 years old shouldn’t be able to catch onto things this fast, something was up.
As the fight progressed the burly man noticed that Solstice was slowly getting faster and more precise with his blocks and counterattacks. He decided that his magic was almost useless here and decided to go straight for a brawl, he couldn’t waste any more time.
He charged at Solstice and imbued what mana he had into his body to increase his power and speed to end him quickly. For the next thirty seconds Solstice weathered blow after blow, stab after stab, and finally he felt like he could see the man’s entire style. It was almost like clockwork for him. It was as if he was an open book to him now.
Victor saw how the fight got much closer than it was and smiled, slowly the one ring in Solstice’s eye turned into two rings. With this experience he had evolved his gift from Victor and broken through to a new level. Sadly, this still wasn’t enough for him to win, all the blood he had lost from the entire fight was catching up to him and he started to stagnate and slow down.
The burly man saw this and pressed his attack, he began to launch a flurry of stabs at him and every other one now was cutting him. Finally, after another few seconds Solstice collapsed to his knees and dropped his great sword.
“I need to end this quickly.” The amount of time it took him to defeat the last of the kids took almost 15 minutes, but he finally got it done, he just needed to execute the rest.
Luna saw that Solstice collapsed and was crossing her way to him. She had no idea what she was going to do but she had to act now, or it would be too late. The moment she saw the man thrust down she broke mentally; the entire world froze.
“Come out you bitch!” Victor yelled, everyone in this space was completely frozen except him.
Slowly from the darkness, an elf who had similar features to Ariel and Shael appeared, this was Estel, but she looked many times older than Victor remembered.
“You still have the dirty mouth of yours Victor, I’m glad.” Estel smiled warmly at Victor but was only met with pure hatred.
“All of this? It’s your fucking fault, you knew all of this would happen. So why did you do it? It’s been years and I just can't figure out why the hell you did this.” Estel was the reason that the massacre all those years ago turned out the way it did.
“Victor…. My love…. I’m so sorry. There truly was no other way, do you think I would really sacrifice you if there was any other way?” Estel was very proficient with time and had explored many ways to use it. What she quickly learned was that messing with time had a lot of consequences, depending on how she affected the timeline she would lose lifespan for it. If it was a big event, she could lose thousands of years, if it was small then it would only take days or months.
“I know, but just why…. We were so close to our ending, and then this…” Victor had planned to be with Estel but clearly, she had left out some things.
“I had to do this, I planned all of this specifically for this moment.” Estel truly felt bad for all she had done but she hoped this sliver of time she bought was enough to give them both true closure.
“You need to be his light Victor; this is only the beginning. I’ve seen the future and it’s incredibly bleak, most of it I couldn’t truly decipher. I saw men traveling across the universe looking for something, so much death and misery. And you know the saddest part? That poor child right there is at the center of the whole thing, the amount of anguish and misery he is going to experience is nothing compared to us. So, promise me that you’ll become his light, show him the way and don’t let him lose his humanity, I beg of you.” Estel at this point was crying profusely, everything she had seen was too much even for her to bear. She had much more compassion than both of her sisters and this led to her exerting the rest of her life for this one moment.
“Since you’re begging I guess I got to.” Victor replied with a smile and began to tear up and proceeded to hug her. All that was left of Estel was her soul, and this moment would extinguish what was left of her.
Slowly she turned more and more transparent, and finally vanished out of sight. With that time returned to normal and you could hear the echo of Luna’s scream. But as soon as the spear got within inches of Solstice’s heart, a portal appeared in the room and a black blur entered the room heading straight for the burly man.
The burly man senses this and erected the thickest wall he could but it turned into rubble as soon as it got up. Through it Telarion appeared and grabbed the man, completely disregarding the spear he had in his hand.
“You almost went and did it, didn't ya, looks like he made you take him seriously.” Telarion saw how beat up the man's body was, and it matched up with how his son fought. Internally he was proud but looking at the horrific scene around dampened his mood.
Across the room laid over 400 dead bodies of teens who had just started their lives, their lives just snuffed out like that. Telarion wasn’t at the level of primordials who didn’t care for the loss of life but being a warrior had numbed him somewhat.
Luna had finally registered that Telarion showed and slowly passed out, the only people who were still conscious were Rina and Lily.
“I’ll get Bela to deal with you.” Right when Telarion went to knock the man out, he chomped down and exploded into meat paste.
“Fuck! Just like the elves, can we not just get one lead.” Telarion had been attempting to keep prisoners alive but everyone they captured had some sort of failsafe that prevented them from getting any type of information.
In the distance Telarion picked up clapping and looked to his side to see a man in the same attire as the man from the massacre. He had white armor with some sort of energy flowing through the seams of it, and a helmet with a clear visor on it.
“Telarion, Husband of Ariel, Father of Solstice. Not much is known about you, but I do know you gave my counterpart some problems. Let’s take this somewhere more private.” Alpha 2 reached into his pocket to activate something and Telarion unleashed his wings and rushed towards him as fast as he could, his warrior's intuition was screaming at him that if he let this happen, he would be in trouble.
“Gotta be faster than that.” Right before Telarion met Alpha 2, Cinder appeared between them to block him.
“My best friend Telarion! Who would’ve thought we’d run into each other here?” Right after he said this, they all got sucked into a vortex and disappeared.