Affinity: Chaos

Chapter 2202: Entering The Magical Beasts’ Forest II

Grey spun, light elemental energy flaring around his body. The pure light burned through several of the wind chains and weakened the rest. He still took two shallow cuts from the earth arrows across his back and side. The stinging pain was minor, but it showed the three were coordinating better now.

”He’s tougher than the reports,” the Wind Elementalist muttered.

”Shut up and keep the pressure,” the Dual Elementalist growled. ”Don’t give him room to use those multi-colored orbs freely.” He had faced the attack and realized it was very dangerous. He only faced a three-colored fusion orb, and according to the information they had, Grey had a five-colored one in his arsenal. He only managed to defend against the three-colored fusion orb, he didn’t dare to imagine how strong a five-colored one would be.

They attacked again without pause.

The clearing turned chaotic. Earth spikes, wind blades, and waves of darkness and fire elemental attacks filled the air. Grey moved between them with short, precise spatial blinks, never staying in one place longer than a breath. Each time he found an opening he answered with his own strikes: fusion orbs, spatial blades, and sudden bursts of lightning or fire.

The Earth Elementalist tried to lock the entire clearing down once more, raising an enormous stone dome. Grey did not wait for it to close. He formed two fusion orbs at once and slammed them into the base of the dome. The explosion blew a massive hole through the stone and sent the Earth Elementalist flying out of the smoke, his chest armor cracked and blood running freely down his torso.

The Dual Elementalist seized the moment. His body was suddenly covered in black flames as he charged in close, a blade of pure darkness aimed at Grey’s heart. At the same time the Wind Elementalist created a powerful suction force, trying to hold Grey in place for the killing blow.

Grey’s expression turned cold.

He activated his gravitational force field as well as his earth domain for a brief instant. The suction force twisted and collapsed. The Dual Elementalist’s charge slowed by a fraction of a second, due to the sudden change in gravity. Grey used that fraction to step in and drive an open palm covered in lightning and blue flames into the Dual Elementalist’s midsection.

The impact sounded like a muffled thunderclap. The Dual Elementalist’s eyes widened. He flew backward like a broken doll, smashing through two trees before hitting the ground hard. The black flames around him flickered wildly.

The Wind Elementalist cursed and tried to retreat. Grey did not allow it. A spatial lock snapped around the man’s legs for a single breath. That was enough. A wind blade of Grey’s own creation, denser and sharper than anything the assassin had used, cut across the Wind Elementalist’s chest. Blood sprayed. The man staggered, his aura turning unstable.

Grey did not give any of them time to recover.

He raised both hands. Four inscriptions lit up behind him, each one a different element. They spun once and then fused into a single, larger four-colored orb that radiated dangerous pressure. The three assassins felt the power and their faces finally showed real fear.

”Stop him!” the Dual Elementalist shouted, still struggling to rise.

The Earth Elementalist and Wind Elementalist forced themselves forward despite their injuries, throwing out every remaining technique they had. A forest of stone spears and a storm of cutting wind rushed toward Grey.

The four-colored orb left Grey’s hand.

It tore through the stone spears and wind storm as if they were paper. The Dual Elementalist managed to throw up one last layered defense of darkness and fire. The orb punched through it and exploded.

The blast lit up the entire clearing in a violent flash of multicolored light. When the light faded, the Dual Elementalist lay in a deep crater, his body broken and his aura completely gone. The Earth Elementalist had been thrown against a large tree, his chest caved in, barely breathing. The Wind Elementalist was on his knees, a large hole burned through his shoulder and side, blood pooling beneath him.

Grey landed lightly on the ground, his breathing steady. A few cuts marked his clothes and skin, but none of them were serious.

He walked first to the Wind Elementalist and ended him with a clean spatial blade. The Earth Elementalist followed a moment later. When he reached the crater, he confirmed the Dual Elementalist was already dead.

Only then did Grey look toward the far side of the clearing, where lightning still flashed and thunder rolled. Reynolds’s fight was still ongoing, but the aura of his opponent was already weakening.

On the other side of the clearing, Reynolds and his opponent had already torn up a wide stretch of forest. The masked assassin was also a Ninth-stage Sovereign, and his control over lightning was sharp and aggressive. From the first exchange he had tried to keep Reynolds under constant pressure, throwing dense bolts and forming spears of compressed thunder one after another.

Reynolds met them head-on. After fully merging with his Elemental Warrior, his speed and power rose sharply. Lightning armor covered his body, and every movement left lingering arcs in the air. He knocked aside a thick thunder spear, stepped in, and drove his own lightning blade toward the assassin’s chest. The man twisted away, but a shallow cut still opened across his ribs.

The assassin clicked his tongue under the mask. ”You’re more troublesome than expected.”

Reynolds did not waste breath answering. He pressed forward again, his blade moving in short, heavy arcs. Each clash sent out loud cracks of thunder that echoed through the trees. The assassin tried to create distance by exploding a burst of lightning beneath his feet, launching himself backward. Reynolds followed without pause, his figure turning into a streak of blue-white light.

They exchanged more than twenty blows in a few breaths. The assassin’s style was cunning. He mixed feints with sudden directional changes, twice managing to land solid hits on Reynolds’s shoulder and side. The lightning armor absorbed most of the damage, but the impacts still forced Reynolds to adjust.

Reynolds’s eyes stayed calm. He had fought stronger opponents beside Grey. This level of pressure was not enough to shake him.

He suddenly changed rhythm. Instead of matching the assassin’s speed, he slowed for a fraction of a second and then exploded forward with even greater force. The Elemental Warrior’s power surged. His lightning blade became thicker and denser, carrying a heavy pressure that made the air hum.

The assassin’s pupils shrank. He crossed both arms and poured lightning into a defensive barrier. Reynolds’s blade smashed into it. The barrier held for only an instant before cracking. The remaining force slammed into the assassin’s chest and sent him crashing through a thick tree trunk.

Blood sprayed inside the mask. The man staggered back to his feet, breathing hard. One of his arms hung lower than before, the bones clearly damaged.

Reynolds did not give him time to recover. He raised his free hand and formed a dense spear of lightning above his shoulder. The moment it solidified he threw it. At the same time he shot forward himself, blade ready for the finishing strike.

The assassin tried to dodge, but his injured arm slowed him. The lightning spear pierced through his left thigh, pinning him for a critical moment. Reynolds arrived right after. His blade cut in a clean horizontal arc.

The masked man’s head flew from his shoulders. The body stood upright for a second longer before collapsing. The lingering lightning on the corpse slowly faded.

Reynolds stood over the dead assassin and exhaled. The glow of his Elemental Warrior dimmed as he released the merge. Sweat ran down the side of his face, and the two hits he had taken earlier still ached, but none of the injuries were serious.

He turned his head toward the center of the clearing. The violent multicolored light from Grey’s final attack had already faded. Three corpses lay scattered across the broken ground, and Grey stood among them with his usual calm expression.

Reynolds clicked his tongue and started walking over.

”You finished already?” he called out.

Grey glanced at him. ”You took longer than I expected.”

Reynolds snorted. ”My opponent actually knew how to fight. Yours just died in a hole.”

Grey did not bother answering. He looked once more at the three bodies, then at the fourth one Reynolds had left behind.

The black smoke that had clung to the clearing was completely gone. The forest around them slowly returned to silence, broken only by the soft crackle of residual lightning and the faint smell of burned air.

Reynolds stopped beside Grey and rolled his sore shoulder. ”So much for a quiet visit to the Dragons.”

Grey’s eyes stayed cold as he looked in the direction the four assassins had first appeared from.

”They won’t be the last,” he said.