Dance with the Nightingale-Chapter 125 - 120: Team Play II

Both, me and Serina were the heavy-lifters of our respective teams. Covering for our teammates and attacking the other team at the same time.

We were also the ones facing off against each other the most, and that was on purpose. Unlike our team, Serina’s team was more than just sum of their parts, that is, if Serina is one of those parts.

Yes, without her, her teammates could still collaborate at a good level, but so could mine! They are also mercenaries famous in this region and had fought side by side many times. So, without us, the teams were nearly at the same level, with ours being at a slight disadvantage because of Elowen, as Druids were essentially superior than elves at nature manipulation, though elves compensated by being more versatile.

But, if both of us joined our respective teams, then yeah, everyone other than myself would be beaten down. And while, I could defeat them all by myself exploiting my ’Perpetual Equilibrium’ and turning it into a fight of mana reserves, or by using all sorts of artefacts in my bracelet – that wouldn’t be a true, acceptable, win by any means. Which would defeat the purpose of this match.

This arrangement meant I had to keep Serina busy enough that she couldn’t help her teammates at all. Which was tough since her attribute made her very versatile in all – attack, defense and support.

But I was holding her off well, because she only had limited resources – her mana pool, versatile attribute and intermediate affinity with basic elements – if I remember correctly. While, I had virtually unlimited resources.

Using potions was not allowed – a basic rule of any duel, unless you have a class that basically revolves around potions, like the Earl.

So, while I was fit as a fiddle, not a hint on exhaustion on my face, Serina was sweating heavily, her breathing labored as she used those mana panels of hers to hold of my sword. Before creating another one that stuck my knee from behind, making me lose my footing for second.

A second, which she exploited by striking my face with her a powerful kick.

-Bam!

Unarming my sword, I somehow blocked the kick with both of my hands, a smile creeping on my face as I did.

"Oh, finally getting tired?"

"You wish!"

Serina cried out, while stepping on a mana panel to attack me from above. With my sword back in my hand, I deflected the brunt of the blow on the ground, which turned out to be a mistake – rubble flew at me at breakneck speed, not harming but disrupting me from reacting optimally to Serina’s next move.

Through the dust cloud, I saw a flicker of cyan. Expecting a big move, I created some distance and braced myself.

"Urgh.", grunting, I parried the move and glanced back, to make sure I hadn’t entered Serina’s teammates attack zones while sliding back.

But to my surprise, none of her teammates were near me.

Elowen was in the air, standing on a beanstalk bombarding Ruhr and Liora in tandem with Garren, while Zera was sniffing around for Haze, in the corner of the arena.

Under my gaze, Serina’s blade of cyan went past me, but instead of slicing through Elowen’s beanstalk it split into thousands of small cyan panels! They easily slipped past the beanstalk and aimed for Ruhr who stood in the middle of the battlefield.

As Ruhr wondered why Garren suddenly disengaged and jumped up, performing cycles in mid-air to accumulate power, he saw it – an arena wide storm cyan panels quickly condensing into a single point coming at him.

"Oh, shit!", he cried out, his whole body taking on a crimson hue with veins popping and muscles tense. A blood colored mist suddenly emitting from him it was as if his blood was on fire!

The crimson mist turned tangible, swirling around his fist like a tornado and then-

-BAM!

The crimson and cyan crashed violently, but my focus was on Serina instead of the clash.

She had already launched herself towards the other end of the arena, and though my teammates had handled her attack just now, they would be overwhelmed soon if this continued.

Needless to say, I chased after Serina. Zera and Elowen tried their best to interrupt me but they simply couldn’t catch up.

Now, on the other end of the arena, I saw Serina and Garren taking turns as they attacked while, Ruhr and Liora took turns defending. From what I saw, their defenses were being broken after every single attack, but they were still barely able to remake them before the next attack landed. They were beaten but not broken.

’It looks like they can keep this up for another 15-20 seconds. So… change of plans!’

I turned around immediately and gathered the light element, meeting Elowen and Zera with a blinding flash of light.

"Now Haze!", simultaneously I yelled, stretching my muscles taught and cranking the enchantments of my sword to the maximum. As seven acceleration circles appeared before me, I threw my sword at Zera at hypersonic speeds.

-Bang!

With the bang and the light, I perfectly emulated a flash bang’s concept and even surpassed it by a few levels, though I didn’t expect my opponents to be dazed for long, for they were magic users as well.

As soon as Zera heard my voice, though blinded she unleashed her spell, creating a ball of fire and punching out. Her punch sent a torrent of fire towards my sword, which quickly transmuted into a huge fire wolf and clashed with my sword.

As I didn’t have much time to imbue my sword with spells, her wolf came out on top and chased after me, but that was okay, because she was never the target to begin with.

Instead, it was the unsuspecting druid who had encased herself within a sphere green vines.

She was completely alone, with no one to help her, blinded and disoriented, even if only for a second. Meaning, she was the perfect target to be assassinated.

Without missing a single beat, Haze climbed above sphere of vines. Using the bloodline ability of his race, he created tangible illusions with little to no power to trigger the trap spells. Then before the druid completely recovered, he unleashed his original intermediate rank spell, [Haze].

It was much less powerful than normal illusion spells but it was much less susceptible as well. It showed the confused druid that she had completely recovered and was battling it out with him, an Illusionary Bunny, who was hiding behind his bloodline ability.

A pretty credible scenario that wasn’t hard to believe.

In the illusion, an annoyed Elowen used her full power omnidirectional attack of thorns to find Haze’s real body, but in reality, she had used it on thin air.

As soon as the attacked receded and she didn’t have built up mana, Haze jumped in, using the path that his illusions had cleared. Perhaps her instincts would have warned her had she been a Lycan but druids were not as acute and there was no danger to her life as well in this scenario. So, by the time she snapped back into reality it was too late.

"Don’t move.", placing a dagger on her neck, flowing with a distinct dark blue energy, Haze drew a small amount of her colorless blood as he stated, "This match is over for you."

Knowing that she would’ve been dead if this was a real fight, the druid nodded and announced, "I have lost."

Meanwhile, outside the sphere made of vines, I was completely outmaching Zera.

If I had to guess she had a streamlined attribute that granted her a high affinity with fire element. And while that wasn’t a bad thing, it was even a good thing from a certain point as her future path and selection of spells were already laid out for her with so many predecessors. She didn’t need to experiment to find her way up.

But that also had some adverse effects, since she was so standard, she was too easy to read and lacked the element of surprise.

Also, she was not very suited to battle me.

Her physical powers were enhanced by her bloodline, but mine were even higher. She had high affinity with fire, but I had a better affinity with it and more.

In fact, with my build there were very few people suited to fight me.

So, she couldn’t top me in any field and hence was getting beaten quite bad.

But I was in a hurry, so you can’t blame me.

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Her fire wolf was already weakened so powerful stomp engulfed in fire was enough to put it down. Then, before she recovered from the flash bang, I lunged at her, via accelerations.

She avoided the kick to her face with sheer instinct but couldn’t avoid the next one whose direction I had changed with another acceleration.

Even with her hands blocking it, she was planted on the ground.

With a roar, Zera invoked her bloodline ability, becoming more powerful as well as feral with a bright orange aura flaming from her.

’I guess Amy is the only one who can look beautiful even when using her bloodline ability…’, I sighed and activated [Attribute Infusion] that I had saved till now, while facing the feral dog that was coming to punch me.

There was no change in my appearance except for a subtle purple glow in my armor, but the sensitive Zera noticed it and suddenly jumped back, opting to land a spell instead of hand to hand combat.

Obliging her choice, I had my sword fly back to me before moving around with acceleration to dodge her spells, bombarding her with a few of my own.

As I got closer, I saw Zera preparing a quite powerful AOE spell, in the form of two highly compressed fireballs with runes lingering around them.

Of course, the first few spells of hers were decoys, I knew that. Still, I didn’t expect her to slam one of those balls into the ground and throw one into the sky.

Needless to say, it was a powerful spell, even though I didn’t know its name. The fire went through the holes opened in the ground by Elowen’s beanstalk’s roots covering almost the entire area near us, while the ball pointed towards the sky blanketed it in fire.

Thankfully, I was prepared.

In my right hand, were three droplets of pure elemental essence: fire, wind and lightning. Adding them to the runery of my sword, I quickly achieved an incomplete version of Lore of Elements.

As for why I didn’t add light element? I’ll simply ask you: Is there a need to?

Before the red earth could explode and the flaming sky could touch me, the wind picked up, carrying scorching winds that quickly turned into a flaming tornado with lightning flashing at the particularly hot parts.

But that was not all that lightning did. Honestly, below B rank, Lightning Magic couldn’t actually compare to natural lightning. Instead, I used the lightning element in a very crude way to increase both my physical and mental speed.

And with my ongoing speed, I was so fast that Zera could barely react to the punch in the gut that I hit her with before she was electrified and lost consciousness.

In fact if I didn’t hold back the punch would’ve pierced through her gut.

Around the same time, I heard Elowen’s announced and rushed towards Serina.

Two down, two to go.