Chapter 298: A Familiar Scene
Chapter 298: A Familiar Scene
It appeared that the parts of the symbiote he was up against could live outside a host, at least for a while.
Then, Felix came back to life, and his head grew anew.
\'Huh... Dega vu... It\'s the salamander all over again... And why did this happen? He just died in the novel, no second try. Is it \'cause of me? Again?... Whatever.\'
Emir activated his Temporal Perception ability and glanced at Amon, who remained sitting near the entrance, staring at him with a blank face.
He didn\'t need nor want to ask for help from Amon, but he wouldn\'t get any in the first place. As most could judge by his looks alone, Amon would not provide any, even if Emir was close to death. Although that seemed unlikely, no matter the unnatural, almost strange, increase in strength, this was \'written\' to be a challenge for those not Seraphim but Ascendant.
It was \'written\' for the students who had no intention of helping as well.
In fact, after Felix\'s \'dead\' body flinched, they immediately sprang out of their seats and ran behind Amon, wanting to watch the fight from a distance. While afraid, they didn\'t want to miss out on witnessing a Seraphim\'s strength firsthand.
Max, though a young master, still possessed a brain and he showcased it now as he did in the \'novel.\'
They were supposed to gradually figure out Felix as the serial kidnapper and take him down, with Arthur leading the charge, taking Max\'s credit. Yet, their professor snatched away that entire \'plot point\' from them, as if taking candy from a child.
\'Of course it got stronger... The novel be damned, cheats or not they can never win against this thing.\'
A chuckle couldn\'t help but escape Emir as he returned his attention to the now-fully revived Felix or rather monster, as \'Felix\' seemed to have already died.
It wasn\'t moving, and it appeared to be waiting for him to attack.
\'I gotta be clean.\'
Emir, who noticed that, had his hands tied.
He couldn\'t damage the place too much; though Aether Infused, the building still couldn\'t handle him going all out, so Aether Blast wasn\'t allowed-well, not indoors, outside was fine. Neither could he use destructive Aether Constructs.
So his only remaining option was to slice, bash, and then squeeze it to death, leaving nothing behind.
Snap.
Small randomly shaped Aether constructs materialized around Emir as he flicked his fingers. They didn\'t attack the monster but rather, they pushed all the tables around them, clearing out the area, and creating an arena perfect for battle.
After their purpose was achieved, they disappeared, his Aether returning to the origin. \'...Let\'s begin.\'
With a single step forward, he reached it and held its bubbling body by the neck. Crack!
Its neck crunched beneath Emir\'s grasp as he seized its body, hauling it and flinging it to the ground with force.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om
The monster retaliated with several protruding spikes aimed directly at Emir\'s chest. "Aetheric Blades."
He dodged that attack with a step to the left, then struck back, his right sword cutting the monster\'s head again.
Blood immediately left the neck, almost like a string, and pulled the flying head back, returning it to its place.
By then, Emir was already in the process of slicing its chest open as he swung in an X-like motion. But just as its body was cut, it reattached itself, not taking a moment longer to attack as well, spitting out spikes.
Emir cut off the spikes that tried to reach him and threw them away from them, intending to delay its regeneration.
Strings tracked what he threw, attempting to bring them back, yet he cut those off as well.
"Time waste... you no kill me..."
He chuckled at the monster\'s attempt at making conversation, and threw his left sword, targeting its eyes.
"We\'ll see about that."
The monster couldn\'t react in time, taking his sword head-on, in the literal sense of the phrase.
Emir then swung down his right, slicing the monster from its shoulder to its thigh.
It tried to reattach itself but it couldn\'t in time as he kicked off its upper body, flinging it away.
Strings chased, yet he was faster, slicing it up while it flew in the air, heading straight towards a wall.
It didn\'t last long enough to hit the wall however, Emir\'s attacks proved too fatal.
What remained was limb-mixed blood, yet that blood wasn\'t harmless, it attacked him like a snake, threatening to crush his arm as it tried to coil around it.
But he didn\'t give it a chance, shaking it off to delay it for moments, as a wide-faced hammer construct materialized to their left.
It swung itself down, hitting Emir away and crushing the semi-solid blood into the ground.
Yet that blood wasn\'t down for long, it escaped like an eel and \'pulled\' on the string, finally
forming a whole body.
"Flash Step."
Emir appeared.
"Flash Step."
They disappeared and reappeared above, nearing a few chandeliers.
Spikes, trapped in the monster\'s skin, lunged out at him as if it were a terrified puffer fish.
Emir blocked that attack with his swords as he was flung off into the distance.
But he stopped himself midair, forming a construct beneath his feet, and pushed himself back towards the monster.
Its spikes had retracted by the time he reached it, so without further ado, he swung down and cut it in two halves.
The four slices of Felix had their blood jolt out, attacking Emir with their whip-like forms.
Emir wanted to hide his shield ability until it was time for the performance\'s closure, so he had to make do with dodging for the time being and that was what he did, as the whips continuously grazed his augmented suit, never truly hitting him even as he fell.
A whip crackled to his left, and as he twisted his body out of the way, it spurted out another whip, a smaller one, heading directly towards the space between his eyes.
Knowing that there was no dodging this attack while in freefall, he halted his decedent, courtesy of the newly conjured platform beneath his feet.
Then he began to dance, his eyes experiencing the world in a state close to complete stillness.
Whips of blood hit the air all around him as he dodged them with nimble steps and subtle
feints of his body.
He would bait out its attacks, stepping off a construct and forming another, only to return to the first, creating more and more platforms to dodge its attacks with.
During that time, the monster continued to fall, and its body returned to form a complete
Felix once more.
"Talk! Talk-"
It couldn\'t complete its sentence as Emir\'s sword construct tore through its throat, cutting its
body in half again.
"We will... After you die."
Boom!
The platforms he stood on combined into a massive one and joined him in his fall, squashing
the monster down to its feet.
But as if no damage was done, its coagulated blood, mixed with remnants of organs and limbs, attempted to entrap him in a bubble of gore, escaping the platform above it. However, Emir wasn\'t about to stand there waiting for it to happen, but instead of running away as most would, he doubled down.
A circle-shaped platform materialized around him and crushed the monster once more, tightening the trap, yet it couldn\'t push it back completely, as Emir\'s weight was not attached
to it.
The monster managed to find its way through, due to the small cracks that it created. Emir wasn\'t worried by such news. He welcomed it, as he only pushed it down to make time
for his true attack.
A large and wide box made of many interconnected small wires appeared above the two,
draining him of a lot of Aether.
"Flash Step."
The construct fell at the same moment he left.
Squelching and whatever else that could be called unholy resounded as the semisolid got cut
down even further.
It tried to push back at first, but he didn\'t give it a chance, clutching his hand and causing the
wires to flex together even more, not giving it any bit of space to get out of the trap.
The fight slowed down, almost halting, yet it wasn\'t over, the monster wasn\'t dead.
\'Hm... those types sure are annoying.\'
Monsters that required the elements to be dispatched were quite a weakness for Emir as the
only thing he could do to kill them was extinguish or squash them completely, like he did to
the Zerathar.
However, as he didn\'t want to use his Aether Blast, it became much harder to complete this
performance.
Squelch...
With every grasp of his hand, the wires flexed, twisted, and writhed like living things, cutting
the monster over and over again.
His thoughts churned in a slow world as he tried to think of a way to kill the monster cleanly,
he couldn\'t keep this up for long.
\'Ah, baseball sounds good.\'
Emir rushed to the nearest balcony and opened it.
Another few steps took him back behind the trapped monster.
He then raised and released his clutched hand as a bat construct formed atop it.
This bat wasn\'t cylindrical; instead it was very wide and flat, almost the size of a fully grown
man.
Emir relaxed that massive bat on his shoulder, acting as if he was a normal baseball batter,
and then he raised his left hand, causing the trap to disappear.
The monster immediately sprang up and tried to reattach itself, but, once again, he didn\'t
give it a chance.
Bang!
A swing of the bat caused it to fly off, directly towards the now-open balcony.
Strings spurted out of its body, spreading in every direction, their intentions obvious.
"Aetheric Shield."
But this was the moment Emir was waiting for.
"Flash Step."
Allowing the monster to stay inside would have rendered all his planning for naught.
BANG!
His shielded body collided with the monster, immediately melting much of it just by the
impact.
What remained blasted off to the outside ahead of him as it struggled to heal itself due to the
sheer power behind the attack.
"I\'m not done yet!"
A smiling Emir flicked his right pointing finger, aiming it at the monster as he flew after it.
"AETHER BLAST!"
Aether was unleashed like lighting bathing the remains with pure might, extinguishing it
entirely, and tearing through the clouds of the setting sky.
Oh... how terrifyingly beautiful.
It was a thought that was shared by all the students who heard his roar and saw his might.
And that brought an end to this familiar scene.