Aethernea : Soulbound [Book 1]

Episode 112 - True Agony

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. Kiel manages to recover through applying a healing ointment. Kiel and Rhur team up to attack Zor. After realizing they are no match for Zor, Rhur turns on Kiel, sneak attacking him. Rhur conjures a lot of lightning and Kiel morphs an earth shield to protect himself.

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As the earth dome covered up the light reflecting in Kiel's eyes, he concentrated on his mana sense, feeling Rhur's position.

He couldn't stay inside his earth shield for long, it lowered his mobility, making it easier for Rhur to surround him by Sparkbloom petals.

Unfortunately, earth was currently the only material he had access to that would impede the lightning.

If this lightning was conjured by an elibu, Kiel could create an area of vacuum to protect himself. The electricity conjured by an elibu wouldn't be able to pass through materials with very low conductivity.

However, the same tactic wouldn't work against Rhur, for he wasn't relying on the properties of conductivity to propagate the lightning. He was directly forcing electrons to move through Acceleration.

To him, it was easier to move the lightning if there was nothing in the way so not only would creating an area of vacuum not protect Kiel, it would actually help out Rhur.

And thus, Kiel had no other choice but to put his carefully weaved spell into action early.

Rhur's electric snakes that had been drilling into Kiel's shield abruptly stopped.

Kiel couldn't see how Rhur's diamond shaped pupils widened in shock, but he could feel him rolling to the left quite clearly. His body probably moved on instinct because the reaction was quite abrupt.

His instincts were quite correct, for a moment later, an invisible several meters wide air blade in the shape of an X passed through the place he had been previously.

Even though Rhur managed to avoid the brunt of the attack, since the size of the air blade was quite large, the leg of the X still managed to hit Rhur squarely in the chest.

For a moment, Rhur thought that Zor had managed to sneak an attack on him.

But then he realized that what he had been hit with wasn't a spatial blade, for he was able to feel the changes in the airflow just before it hit.

Kiel had used the Morph spell on the air to condense a dense X-shaped construct, then he reinforced it, locking the position of air particles to turn the air solid. Lastly, he accelerated it towards Rhur creating an airblast sharp enough to cut a person in half.

Kiel figured if Zor could control space to cut down, why couldn't he control the air to do the same?

However, concealing a spell took Kiel considerable time and effort, and this was why he aimed to buy time with his previous attacks.

The force of the slash caused Rhur to fly backward like an arrow, lacerating his entire upper body, shredding his shirt into pieces.

All of the lightning snakes attacking Kiel vanished into thin air.