“You can’t even grasp the extent of my ability.” Maleko laughed violently, slashing with his hand as Talia approached. To Talia’s great surprise, flickers of superheated magma flew her way out of thin air. It was as if Maleko hadn’t even needed to conjure the spell like a normal caster would have. She rolled on the ground, raising her blade when a second wave of magma tried to fry her alive while falling on her as a large blanket. Talia, pumping as much Mana as she could inside the glaive, released an enormous sickle of Blood Water that slashed through the magma and allowed her to jump away from the encroaching death, the blazing death.
More wary than before, Talia looked around the domain and activated [Eyes of the Abyss]. She saw that a large portion of the terrain where they were staying was covered in Mana that came from Maleko. It was a scary amount of Mana. But if Maleko was indeed the chosen of the Kanaloa family, the same family of Elder Krakatoa, the man who had been her mother’s shield, then it didn’t surprise her that he had such tremendous reserves. Nobles like him were born with a silver spoon in their mouth and all the best resources and environment in order to grow as strong as possible. And she knew now that the dominance of the Great Families tracked back a thousand years and more, possibly even before the appearance of the Kraken.
“Is that all?” Maleko taunted, expanding his [Soul Domain] and collapsing the two warehouse structures beside them. “You said you would take the Skill from my dead body, you little monster. Show me what you’re capable of.”
Pillars of flame erupted from the ground around Talia, forcing her on the move. She tried anticipating where the attacks would appear with [Eyes of the Abyss], trying to guess where the flows of Mana came from in Maleko’s [Soul Domain]. But not even her Skill could guess where his next attack would come from. One moment, there was no indication that an attack was on the way. The next, the Mana would coalesce from the domain into an attack. It was perhaps even more terrifying than the Sword Demon’s signature Skill, [Silver Mist].
Maleko could not only draw upon magma and flames. Talia felt a whip of scorching air hitting her right in the chest, searing her abdomen and making her scream in pain. Keanu balled his fists, but he could do nothing. He could feel that even just entering the [Soul Domain] of Maleko would have killed him. In fact, if Talia didn’t have her vitality, she would have died seconds into this fight.
Maleko raised both his hands and summoned a rain of fireballs in the sky, the barrage peppering the ground where Talia stood. There were so many that Talia knew unless she did something, she would be killed. So she activated the Skill that she had gotten from fighting the Slashing Crusher Boss, [Tailwind]. Even though she didn’t have Wind Water as an affinity, she was still able to draw on the incredible power of the Skill, and she felt her own Mana opening up the air and pulling her forward as her speed increased dramatically.
Now with her speed increased and her ability to release larger Mana attacks after putting herself through excruciating pain during Professor Iakopo’s lesson, she managed to, at the very least, stay alive.
“Is this all?” Maleko repeated. “I heard that the whore’s daughter can wield Dark Water. Why don’t you show me?”
Talia was tempted to immediately activate the [Cursed Form]. She knew that she would have been likely able to make a run for Maleko and cut him down before he realized what had happened. However, tendrils of blood from [Ravenous Wounds] sneaked around her skin like tentacles, hungry for flesh. The only thing that allowed her to keep her mind clear and straight was the great number of Charisma Attributes she had gotten it the Abyssal Jaw Dungeon.
Talia knew that [Soul Domain] was too powerful, she couldn’t let it go. She needed to become as strong as she could before she found the full truth about her mother. Any level, any attributes, any Skill would have made the difference between life and death. And even though Talia had never consumed a human before, this felt the exact moment when to change her eating habits.
And even though she knew this was going to soon turn ugly, she embraced the gory solution she had just thought of. She kept dodging, relying on [Tailwind] and [Blood Confluence] to empower her speed and constitution. But most importantly, she slowly made her way to the side of the domain where the two goons were watching with crossed arms, observing the attacks that Maleko was unleashing upon Talia, knowing that it was just a matter of time before the auburn-haired girl would die.
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When Maleko raised a giant wave of magma, trying to smother Talia and fry her alive, he temporarily lost sight of her. And when the avalanche of magma dispersed, his eyes went wide. Talia had gotten close enough to the two goons that she had unleashed two swift sickles of Blood Water, much larger and stronger than they could ever hope to survive. Immediately after, as their bodies were cut down, [Ravenous Wounds] had latched onto them, pumping their Stamina, vitality, and Mana through [Magic Funnel] into her body.
But most importantly, one of Talia’s strongest Skills was finally getting its dues. Talia felt [Ika Toto - Blood Tide] surge with power as the corpses of the two goons were torn to shreds by the tendrils of blood. All of that counted toward the Skill, which suddenly made Talia’s muscles swell. Her blood pumped faster. Her heart beat stronger.
Maleko clearly cared about the two, who might have even been either his shield or strike team. Their loss made him crazed. He started gathering a much larger amount of Mana than Talia had seen before. He started swirling his hands, generating an immense ring of fire that threatened to encompass the whole [Soul Domain].
“You’re about to die, you wretched monster. You Kraken-loving bitch,” Maleko snarled. “No one has ever survived this.”
The swirling ring of fire suddenly took the shape of a massive drake, and Maleko shouted the Skill out loud.
“[Ahi Manu]!” Maleko screamed, and the giant ring of fire fully coalesced into a snake-like mythical dragon, whose eyes shone like resplendent rubies. The attack made a beeline for Talia, and it was several times taller than her, impossible to dodge.
Maleko watched as the giant attack swallowed Talia alive and melted the stone beneath her. [Ahi Manu] was the strongest Skill besides [Soul Domain], and the two could be combined since [Soul Domain] enhanced the power of all its other attacks on top of acting like a reality distortion where all Mana was at his service.
What happened next made the scream of victory die in his throat. A black flash broke through the [Ahi Manu]’s body. More and more projections of dark light came through the giant dragon-like construct until it shattered into a million pieces, consumed as if the sun itself had been devoured by Talia’s attack.
When Maleko blinked next, he saw many runes over the girl’s body and tremendous power brimming from her. He kept attacking, knowing that she had just used her own trump card, and it had somehow obliterated his. But now the attacks just evaporated when they touched her skin, and Talia walked almost slowly up to him.
Maleko tried everything. Magma, superheated air, flames hotter than anyone could have survived. But it did nothing to Talia, who was trembling with the instinct to consume Maleko through her Dark Water. When she came up to him and clamped her hand on his throat, raising him into the air, Maleko saw a struggle behind her pupils.
“The Skill,” Talia growled with a voice that didn’t sound like hers. “The Skill,” she snarled like a feral beast.
Dark Water had sucked all the Mana out of Maleko’s body, and he couldn’t even move. He felt the steel grip of the girl about to snap his neck. Then, however, he saw the runes on Talia’s skin starting to recede, slowly gathering around her eyes. Only now he noticed that her hair had changed color. It had become white. And now slowly but surely, it was regaining its auburn and reddish accents.
After perhaps a minute, all the runes had been sucked into Talia’s eyes as she stood, still holding Maleko in a sure grip. He breathed in relief. She could have maybe killed his shield, but she couldn’t kill him without creating a major political incident. No sane person would have ever done something like that. If she did, she was as good as dead. Not even Professor Iakopo would be able to protect her.
Therefore, he reasoned, she must have stopped whatever evil power she had because she knew she couldn’t deliver the final blow to him. Despite the fact that he had been about to kill her and mock her mother, this was the real difference between being a noble and a commoner. He had an entire family behind him ready to go to war over his death. What did Talia have?
But then Talia, whose glaive she had left on the ground behind after dispelling the [Ahi Manu], extended her hand to the side.
“[Recall],” she said, and the glaive appeared in her hand. Before Maleko could understand what was happening, Talia had pierced his chest and his heart with the large blade.
“Great Skill,” she whispered in his ear, still breathing heavily. “I’ll take it.”
And then she called forth her Skill.
“[Ravenous Wounds].”