417 Chapter 417: Dragons and Curses (1/2)
Miura watched me warily, and raised an eyebrow when she saw a chibi Green Dragon appear instead of the usual giant Constellation spirits that I had been unleashing upon her. She held back a laugh and shook her head.
\”I didn't think you were serious when you said you would shrink your Soul Beasts for me. You're really sweet.\”
\”Uh, thanks?\”
I doubted she would thank me once she saw what I planned to do. Not that she was going to wait for me to execute my schemes – she was already drawing cryptic runes in the air and casting some new curse or spell at me. Replicating her attitude, I also moved because I had no intention of getting hit by whatever she was manifesting.
Swinging my swords, I conjured a storm of razor-sharp petals and directed it in Miura's direction. Her eyes widened briefly and she jumped back, hastily erecting a fresh barrier to deflect the blizzard of pink petals that relentlessly battered against the black screen. While she cowered uner her barrier, swiftly drawing up more runes, I closed in and sliced it apart directly with both of my swords. Cursing, Miura raised her staff to block my blades, but the trailing petals cut deeply into her, causing her to shriek in pain. She staggered back, blood dripping from her arms, but she somehow mustered the will to retaliate fiercely with her scythe, forcing me to withdraw.
As I took a step back, she threw her runes at me, which transformed into black orbs that detonated at pointblank range. Despite her efforts, I had gathered azure flowers to blanket myself, which protected me from the deadly blasts.
As the scorched petals withered away, I unleashed another maelstrom of petals in Miura's direction. She twirled her scythe around to slice them apart, and was relieved to see that these weren't as sharp as the ones before.
\”Your magic is weakening,\” she remarked, and then smiled sinisterly. \”It's only natural. You've been expending so much mana throughout the last three matches. I'm honestly surprised you're still able to fight. Your stamina and mana reserves are really impressive.\”
I didn't respond verbally, and instead directed another onslaught of petals. Vines whipped out to ensnare her, but Miura cleaved them apart with her spinning scythe. Raising her hand, she drew another script of runes before bombarding my position with a barrage of shadow bolts.
This time, I conjured up a shower of black flowers to absorb the shadow bolts, and they split apart, dispersing into even more razor-sharp petals that flew at her. Miura slammed the blunt end of her scythe's shaft onto the ground and summoned another barrier that protected her from the ferocious assault. Panting, she scribbled a fresh wave of runes with her finger, only to add them to existing ones.
A curse. No doubt she was trying to buy herself enough time to cast a curse upon me. I couldn't afford to let her succeed, or I would no doubt suffer an agonizing end like my poor Constellation spirits and Celestial Guardians.
\”Ugh!\”
However, Miura wasn't able to finish inscribing her runes. Blood dribbled out of her nose, mouth and eyes and she doubled over, dropping her scythe and clutching her chest. She glared at me with bloodshot eyes, not comprehending.
\”What…what did you do to me?!\”
She then widened her eyes when she realized something. Picking up her scythe, she leaned against it to support herself up, but she wasn't able to get any higher than her knees. Gritting her teeth, she continued to glower at me.
\”This is wood magic…?\”
I said nothing, but inwardly I was impressed. Miura certainly was sharp, having picked up that her new injury was due to my Pollen of the Fragrant Wind. Earlier, the \”blunt\” flower petals had been a cover – she had thought my magic was weakening, but she hadn't realized that she had inhaled a large amount of pollen while swatting those \”feeble\” petals away.
Not that I was going to tell her that. The less she knew, the better, but honestly she had already figured it out so there was little point in hiding the fact. Whatever the case, I decided not to waste any time and lunged forward to finish her off.
Despite her heavy internal injuries, Miura was still far from down. Tightening her grip on her scythe, she fended me off, and then kicked from below. I took a step back to avoid her desperate kick, and then retaliated with two strikes from opposite directions. Miura ducked the first one and parried the second one before rolling on the floor and trying to kick my legs out from under me. I jumped above her sweeping leg and swung both swords down, but she blocked them with the shaft of her scythe.
The ground beneath her split from the impact. Miura muttered something, and two shadowy bolts materiailized on either side of her betore streaking toward me. I attempted to deflect them with both swords, but they detonated upon impact with enough force to send me staggering backward.
\”Phew…\”
I righted myself up and assumed a new offensive stance. Wielding two swords meant that you were forgoing defense for attack, so it was natural that I favore more aggressive tactics. Which was odd, considering that I was supposed to protect myself long enough to summon something. However, I could also use my summons in an offensive manner.
\”Flower Frenzy: Green Dragon Overgrowth Maelstrom!\”
I launched a blurring maelstrom of vivid and dizzying colors, the countless petals whirling about in a violent vortex that swept across the stage and sliced through concrete and debris alike. Miura backed away instinctively, desperately calling up a new defensive enchantment, but she found herself engulfed by the destructive spell.
Then a formation circle appeared below her and ripped the blizzard of deadly petals apart.
\”Huff…huff…\”
Panting, Miura leaned on her scythe. She was still heavily injured and slightly drained from the sheer effort, but I could see plenty of formation circles appearing all around her. She grinned triumphantly – even without looking around she knew that the entire arena was now under her control.
\”I see…so that's how your magic works.\” She nodded at my chibi Green Dragon. \”You draw whatever specific elemental magic you get from your Soul Beast…using it as a conduit to cast advanced elemental spells that you otherwise couldn't use. An encyclopedia of sorts.\”
Wow…she even understood my magic to this extent. That was right – in order to summon all these different Celestial Guardians, I needed to first learn the basic elemental spells (like fireball, icicles, razor leaf, earth spikes and lightning bolt) before I could conceptualize and create them within my soul sea (or whatever you call that internal spiritual dimension). However, I only had time to learn basic spells, other than wood magic. But because I had invested all my time and efforts into summoning magic, that had stunted whatever progress I made with elemental magic. Meaning, no matter how much I learned advanced wood magic, for example, I would find it extremely difficult to cast, because most of my memory space or the operating system of my brain was occupied by summoing magic. Think of my brain as a computer – most of the computing power was dedicated to running summoning programs, and if I tried to run anything higher than a simple elemental program, my mind was going to lag. A lot…
To circumvent this weakness, I crystalized my knowledge of advanced wood magic in the form of Green Dragon, and I summoned him as an encyclopedia, as Miura put it. A spiritual reference from which I could more easily draw my knowledge of wood magic from – think of it as me summoning an external hard drive to help get free memory space from somewhere, a separate hard drive that boosted my computing power. Of course, when linked in this way, Green Dragon could only exist in his chibi form, and it would be difficult for him to separate out and attack in his original, monstrous form. The upside, however, is that I had total access to his full power.
And I planned to use it…except that now I was in quite a predicament.
\”That's…\”
\”Yup. You're not the only one with an encyclopedia.\”
Miura held up a grimoire with her free hand, grinning insidiously. Now I understood why she comprehended my complex magic so easily. She also had something similar, requiring a spiritual grimoire to assist her in casting her advanced black magic. Raising her hand, she allowed the ominous, black grimoire hover above her palm and open up, shadowy trendrils of dark mana spilling from its cursed pages.
\”Grimoire Del Diablos.\”