Aethernea : Soulbound [Book 1]

Episode 108 - Rhur's greatest fear

Previously:

The day of the practical exams is finally here and Kiel is inside a large arena created by the Replica Dungeon. Nelaira tricks Deora into attacking the Rroda brothers, and Deora ends up pursuing Kiel with a barrage of fireballs. Kiel runs away, dodging the fireballs, however, Deora manages to hit him with an explosive airball. Kiel loses his consciousness and remembers how he got trapped inside the burning house as a child. After waking up he gets into a life and death situation that makes him overcome his fear of fire and launch a counter attack on Deora. He manages to poison Deora, knocking him out of the competition. Seeing Kiel win his fight, Rhur finished Nelaira off in a fit of rage.

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Initially, Rhur intended to drag out the fight until Kiel's fight was over, and then finish Nelaira off with an onslaught of razorblood petals. He was saving his trump cards for his battle with Zor.

However, after seeing Kiel's fight, in a fit of rage, he changed his mind, revealing both his magic specialty...

...and his divine artifact.

Rhur Rroda, as the Rroda family heir, had been given one of the sparse mana purifying artifacts Rroda family possessed as soon as he mastered using Augmentation magic.

After tinkering with Transmutation magic for a while, Rhur Rroda finally managed to find a magic which suited him the best – conjuring electricity.

Usually, although Transmutation magic could be used to conjure the elements, its usage in battle was rather limited, for elibu couldn't "move" the conjured elements, they could only Morph them around.

However, for Rhur, who could use acceleration magic to control the movement of the conjured elements, the result was a force to be reckoned with.

Since particles of light and electricity were the lightest, they could reach the highest movement speed, and as such, Lightning and Light attacks were the fastest.

Rhur Rroda took that speed even further, trading attack power for casting speed, managing to reach almost instantaneous casting, which made his lightning near impossible to dodge.

His speedy lightning attacks caused little direct damage, however, they were very painful and disruptive to his opponent.

And this disruptiveness perfectly complemented Rhur's one-shot-kill battle style.

Rhur Rroda was a person who caused a lot of controversies, however, no matter how much the people's opinions of him varied, there was one thing everyone agreed on – Rhur Rroda had high battle capabilities.

In fact, the only reason why he didn't get full points in his practical exam one year ago, was because he was unlucky enough to run into an opponent who perfectly countered him.

His opponent had specialized in impregnable defense, rendering all Rhur's attacks ineffective. If he had been given enough time, Rhur would certainly have found a way to break through the defense. Unfortunately, when he finally clashed with the tricky fellow, the time remaining in the hourglass was not enough for him to turn the situation around.

* * *

After Deora and Nelaira had gotten knocked out of the competition, there were only three participants left on the battlefield.

Zor Arite, who was still sitting leisurely with his eyes closed, seemingly completely disinterested in this exam.

Rhur Rroda, who swiped his sword left and right to clean off Nelaira's blood.