Chapter 386: Final Barrage

After a moment of deep contemplation, Kaela stepped forward, ready to test out her evolved ability.

"Time to finish this."

The moment she focused, the world around her seemed to slow.

No, it wasn’t the world that had slowed, but her heightened speed and sharpened perception made it seem that way. But this wasn’t the same as the old foresight she had relied on when she had no other choice.

This was even better.

It was no longer simply a matter of seeing what would happen a moment ahead. Kaela could now perceive entire sequences of events before they happened, almost as though she were skipping forward through time and witnessing the future directly.

Mark moved.

Kaela already knew what he was going to do.

He threw a punch, but Kaela wasn’t there anymore.

She had already moved before the attack had even begun, slipping away from the trajectory she had already seen.

Mark’s fist passed through empty air.

Kaela appeared beside him.

She struck him once.

Then again.

And again.

Hundreds of attacks erupted in what appeared to be a single instant.

CRACK!

KRAK!

WHAM!

Mark’s body was battered from every direction as Kaela’s fists found him over and over. His ribs broke beneath the barrage, his jaw snapped sideways, and his shoulders twisted violently under the impact. His torso was crushed by a relentless storm of attacks that gave him almost no opportunity to respond.

Mark attempted to strike back.

Kaela was already gone.

She had seen it.

Kaela knew where he would strike before he even decided to strike. She knew where he would move before the muscles in his body had even begun to move, and she wasn’t reacting to the present anymore.

With each attack, she was reaching deeper and deeper into the future.

Unlike previously, when all she could do was see what was coming, Kaela could now act on it as if skipping time itself. This wasn’t speed; it was pure and utter domination where she fought on the plane of her foresight.

Even Elara couldn’t follow what was happening.

From several dozen metres above the battlefield, with her own enhanced perception allowing her to process movements far beyond what most Titled could comprehend, the exchange had still become little more than a blur of violet destruction.

One moment, Mark and Kaela were standing across from each other.

The next, Kaela seemed to disappear.

Then, in an instant, it was over.

Kaela suddenly backed away, leaving Mark hanging motionless in the air.

His body was completely battered, barely resembling the terrifying monster that had been fighting only moments earlier. The dark green aura surrounding him flickered weakly, its once-powerful presence reduced to little more than scattered wisps.

Mark had been, for lack of a better word, crushed by dozens of attacks from every direction.

That’s when he began to fall.

Kaela fell too.

Her final barrage seemed to have taken everything out of her.

Such an attack was definitely straining, and after fighting Elara earlier and then this, she had also reached her limit.

Elara immediately moved.

She descended through the air and caught Mark with one arm, then reached out with the other and caught Kaela before she could plummet toward the collapsing landscape below.

For a moment, Elara simply hovered while holding both of them.

Then she looked toward the Gate.

Her expression changed.

There was barely anything remaining to stand on.

The red rivers below were breaking apart into streams of unstable mana, twisting and scattering through the air as the landscape itself began to lose cohesion. Chunks of land were breaking away and vanishing into the void, while flashes of crimson lightning tore through the distorted sky.

It was incredible, but equally frightening.

The entire Gate was beginning to collapse inward, and the entrance was still too far away.

Elara’s eyes narrowed.

Even with her speed, they wouldn’t make it back in time.

The Gates that had been taken over were different.

Once their cores were destroyed, a new gate would form, allowing them to leave without needing to retrace their original path. But this wasn’t one of those being controlled by that system that Ethan had spoken of.

’To think I’d want him to be in a Gate with us.’

They had entered through a specific point and had to return to that point to exit.

Elara looked down at the two unconscious monsters in her arms.

Then she looked at the collapsing Gate.

And then back at them.

’Of course they left this shit to me.’

She couldn’t help but laugh despite the situation.

This was ridiculous.

The Gate was collapsing around them, Kaela was exhausted, and Mark had finally reached his limits. His body was slowly recovering after that final barrage, but he definitely wasn’t fighting any time soon.

Elara was the only one left who could get them out.

She stared toward the distant entrance as her mind raced through every possibility she could think of.

There had to be something she could do.

She just needed to find a way.

Blink!

Elara vanished.

She instantly reappeared several dozen metres closer to the entrance, with both of them in tow.

Blink!

Another stretch of distance disappeared beneath Instant Displacement.

Elara’s eyes flicked toward the entrance.

’It’s too far...’

Blink!

And again.

Blink!

Each use carried her forward in another short burst, allowing her to bypass the space between her current position and wherever she focused her ability.

Normally, it was an incredible ability.

But this wasn’t normal.

The distance was enormous, and she was carrying two unconscious people at the same time. Even with Instant Displacement, she could only cover so much ground with each use, and it was even more straining with additional people.

Elara looked ahead.

Behind her, another massive section of the Gate broke apart.

The resulting shockwave sent fragments of floating land tumbling through the air, forcing Elara to adjust her position before another piece slammed into her.

She gritted her teeth.

’At this rate...’

Blink!

Another short stretch, but it wasn’t enough.

She couldn’t simply keep blinking forward until she reached the entrance. The Gate was collapsing far too quickly, and every second she spent moving closer was another second for the unstable space around them to deteriorate.

Her eyes narrowed.

’We’re not going to make it.’

The twisted sky twisted violently above her as countless pieces of land broke apart and fell into the endless void below.

Elara clenched her jaw.

It might be possible if she abandoned Mark and Elara, since they increased the cost and, more importantly, the activation time for Instant Displacement.

But she hadn’t even considered that.

’There has to be another way.’

Elara stopped.

For a moment, despite the destruction surrounding her, she forced herself to remain still.

Chunks of land flew past her.

Crimson lightning tore through the sky.

Streams of unstable mana twisted around her like the currents of some enormous, warped tornado, all while their only way out was closing quickly.

Elara’s eyes narrowed.

’What would Ethan do?’

The question made her laugh again.

Even in a situation like this, she could picture him perfectly.

’That lunatic would probably stare at the collapsing Gate, shrug, and somehow pull some completely ridiculous solution out of his magic hat of abilities.’

He always did.

Ethan experimented, improvised, and used abilities in ways they weren’t intended to be used. He never accepted that something was impossible simply because nobody had done it before, nor did he ever give up.

Elara smiled.

Her crimson mana began gathering around her body.

’And I need to do the same.’

The Gate trembled violently, signifying the final moments before they were trapped in this place forever, if not obliterated by it as it fell apart.

Elara tightened her grip on Mark and Kaela.

There was no time left to hesitate.

She had to gamble everything on something she hadn’t tried before...