Chapter 560: Counter Attack [Bonus - ]

Chapter 560: Counter Attack [Bonus Chapter]

’It’s a direct spell, huh? That means I should move fast...’

"Hah!"

Leona burst forward and she didn’t try to summon a static water barrier to tank the assault.

In this arid desert-adjacent valley, conjuring enough liquid mass to stop three hundred cryo-needles would drain half her remaining blue-core reserves.

Instead, she leaned into her agility.

SWOOSH! SWISH!

Dense pressurized coils of jade wind-mana wrapped around Leona’s calves and waist.

She moved not in a straight line, but in a chaotic zig-zagging sprint that left afterimages across the sand.

’Her movement is so different...’ Aki thought, watching her. They both had control of wind but Leona used it much better.

The frost-needles tore into the ground behind her heels.

THWIP-THWIP-THWIP-THWIP!

They rained down, pulverizing the sand into frozen glass, but Leona was already ten feet ahead of the impact zone.

When a cluster of twelve needles dropped directly in her path, she crossed her forearms, releasing two pressurized gale-discs from her wrists.

FSSSSSH... CLANG!

The wind aggressively redirected their trajectory as the ice projectiles were violently deflected sideways, screaming past her ears and embedding themselves deep into the granite mountain wall, detonating in showers of pale sparks.

She closed the fifteen-yard gap in less than a second.

SHING!

From the small of her back, Leona drew her primary weapon... a three-foot-long, single-edged combat machete crafted from deep-sea trench-steel, its blade glowing with a sharp vibrating film of high-frequency water-mana.

Svetlana lunged forward from the rubble, thrusting her six-foot hunting spear with two hands with the glacier-crystal tip aiming straight for Leona’s sternum.

BOOM!

The weapons collided as a massive circular shockwave detonated from the point of impact, blowing the sand away from their boots in a clean, ten-yard circle.

CLANG! CLANG! SHIIING!

What followed was a terrifying high-speed exchange of close-quarters violence that rattled the surrounding canyon.

Svetlana fought with the cold perfection of the northern spear academies as every thrust was a piston-strike aimed at a lethal junction that would lead to the death of her opponent... the throat, the armpit and even the femoral artery.

The reach of her six-foot shaft gave her initial leverage, her spear spinning in icy arcs that left trails of freezing mist in the air.

CLINK!

Leona parried a low thrust with the forte of her trench-blade, the metal groaning as frost crept along the edge, but she immediately channeled a burst of scalding high-pressure water through the steel, violently melting the rime and slipping her guard forward along the shaft.

’We of the Mo—’ Svetlana began to think, her ancestral pride flaring as she prepared to shift into her clan’s signature defensive stance.

BANG!

She didn’t get to finish the thought.

Leona’s left knee drove violently upward into Svetlana’s solar plexus, bypassing the spear entirely.

"Gah!"

The breath exploded from Svetlana’s lungs, her eyes bulging as she stumbled backward, only for Leona’s left elbow to whip around in a savage horizontal smash aimed at her ear.

Svetlana barely raised the haft of her spear to block it...

CRACK!

The force of the attack rattled her teeth, forcing her to scramble three steps back across the sand.

’We of the Morozova clan are the apex of northern hand-to-hand—’ Svetlana’s internal voice snarled, her pride refusing to accept reality as she thrust her spear forward again in a three-stage feint.

WHAM!

Leona didn’t fall for the feint.

The Amazonian captain stepped directly into the attack, letting the spear tip graze the void-ivory plating on her ribcage, and drove her armored forehead straight into the bridge of Svetlana’s nose.

CRUNCH!

Blood sprayed across both their faces.

"Gah!" Svetlana shrieked, her vision flashing white with agony as she desperately tried to summon a wall of ice between them...

’We of the—’

BOOM!

A brutal spinning back-kick from Leona caught Svetlana dead in the center of her cracked breastplate, shattering the remaining metal into fragments and sending her skidding five yards across the sand on her knees.

Svetlana’s head was spinning.

Her nose was broken, her jaw was throbbing, and her chest felt like someone had driven an iron spike through her sternum.

’How?!’ Svetlana raged internally, dragging herself upright with her grip trembling on her spear. ’How is this southern dog matching me in close quarters?!’

Yet as Svetlana looked up through the blood dripping into her eyes, she noticed something... Leona was breathing hard.

The Amazonian captain’s shoulders were heaving with her footing slightly wider than before and her left arm hanging a fraction of an inch lower than her guard.

’She’s exhausted,’ Svetlana realized, a flicker of vicious triumph igniting in her chest. ’She burned through her mana trying to sprint through my needles and her guard is dropping!’

"Haah!"

Svetlana roared, gathering the very last dregs of her Purple Core into the tip of her crystal spear as she lunged forward with everything she had, committing all her momentum to a single overextended thrust aimed straight at Leona’s exposed throat.

"DIE, YOU BITCH!"

The spear point whistled through the air and Leona smiled.

It wasn’t a panicked grimace at all, instead all that was on her face was a cruel smirk.

’Fell for it,’ Leona thought.

The exhaustion was a complete fabrication and the dropped guard was bait.

At the exact second Svetlana committed her weight past the point of recovery, Leona didn’t try to block.

She tilted her head by a mere two inches, letting the icy spear tip graze the skin of her cheek, and stepped inside the reach of the long shaft.

Her left hand shot out like an iron vice, clamping shut around Svetlana’s right wrist, locking the northern champion in place.

"Your form is sloppy when you’re angry," Leona whispered.

SHLICK... CRACK!

"That’s why they teach us not to succumb to anger... that much."

Leona drove the blunt steel pommel of her trench-machete straight into the side of Svetlana’s skull.

BOOM!

A sickening wet concussive crack echoed through the canyon.

Svetlana’s eyes rolled back into her head, the spear slipping from her paralyzed fingers as her nervous system completely short-circuited.

She collapsed forward onto the sand like a severed puppet, completely motionless with her breath coming in shallow unconscious rattles.

Leona stood over her, breathing heavily and wiping the blood from her cheek with the back of her sleeve.

’I managed to defeat her...’ Leona thought, well it was because of the fact that Aki had been the one to damage and weaken her to that level. ’If the Princess didn’t use that spell, then most certainly, I wouldn’t have been able to finish this so easily.’

The reputation of this woman preceded her... compared to her, Leona was far much weaker.

She opened her mouth to call out to Aki—

SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

A high-pitched atmospheric scream tore through the sky above them as Leona and Aki snapped their heads upward.

Plummeting through the low clouds at the speed of sound, descending from the mountain peaks like a rogue ballistic missile, was a mass of tumbling bodies and sheared rock.

It was Yuri Volkov and he wasn’t alone.

The scarred northern berserker was locked in a brutal mutual strangulation with Lieutenant Maya Da Silva.

Yuri’s two massive calloused hands were wrapped like iron vices around Maya’s throat, his thick veins bulging with dark-blue mana as he snarled through bloody broken teeth.

"I’LL SNAP YOUR PRETTY LITTLE SOUTHERN NECK BEFORE WE HIT THE GROUND, YOU JUNGLE WHORE!"

Maya didn’t panic.

Her dark face was turning purple from the lack of oxygen, but her amber-brown eyes were burning with cold venomous disgust.

"I told you on the mountain," Maya choked out through gritted teeth, her lips peeling back in a savage snarl. "...I’m not into choking, you ugly bastard!"

WHAM!

Maya drove both her armored knees violently into Yuri’s solar plexus.

"Ggh–!"

Yuri spat a geyser of blood, his grip loosening for a fraction of a second and Maya didn’t waste the window.

She grabbed both of his wrists, twisted her hips with terrifying core strength then completely inverted their positions in mid-air.

She pulled her legs free, planted both heavy combat boots squarely onto Yuri’s broad chest, and pushed off with everything she had.

BOOM!

The concussive shove sent Yuri rocketing toward the earth at twice his original velocity, while Maya used the backward kinetic momentum to vault horizontally toward the face of the mountain.

CRASH!

Yuri Volkov slammed into the desert floor like an artillery shell as the sandstone bedrock ruptured into a thirty-yard-wide five-foot-deep crater, sending plumes of sand and shattered stone roaring into the sky.

Fifty feet above, Maya hit the vertical granite wall of the mountain feet-first.

Her void-ivory greaves groaned under the impact, but she didn’t stop as her hands slapped the bare rock.

’Not yet... I doubt he would die from just that...’

RUMBLE!

She seized control of the mountain’s tectonic grain and the stone beneath her boots liquefied for a microsecond before hardening into a massive forty-five-degree launch ramp that propelled her forward like a fired missile.

WHOOOOOOOSH!

Down in the crater, Yuri was already pushing himself up through the debris.

His nose was broken, his chest armor was dented concave against his ribs, and blood was pouring freely from his scalp, soaking his blonde hair into a crimson mess.

He reached down, grabbing his massive two-handed star-steel greathammer from the rubble, his laughter echoing through the dust like a barking hyena.

"HA! HAHAHA! IS THAT ALL—"

BOOM!

Maya zipped through the air like a streak of black-and-gold lightning as her void-ivory-armored boot slammed directly into Yuri’s scarred nose with the full force of her accelerated momentum.

CRACK!

Yuri was blasted backward twenty yards with his boots tearing two deep, jagged trenches through the sandstone floor.

Yet... he didn’t fall.

Against all logic, against every law of physical concussive trauma, the massive northern berserker dug his heels into the stone and forcefully ground his momentum to a halt.

’Again and again... he keeps coming back. I want to be durable like him.’

He stood there, hunched forward with his arms hanging loose and his greathammer resting point-down in the dirt.

"Guh–!"

A thick dark stream of blood dripped from his shattered nose, splattering against the sand.

Drip! Drip!

Yuri slowly lifted his head.

His eyes were not dazed like Maya expected, instead they were wide and burning with a terrifying luminescence that seemed completely disconnected from reality.

A low chuckle rumbled in his throat, building into a full chest-heaving cackle.

"More..." Yuri whispered, his voice trembling with ecstasy. "...more... give me MORE!"

WHOOSH!

From the bruised battered flesh of his chest, a visible azure aura erupted into the air.

’Is he insane...?’

It wasn’t ordinary mana.

It was thick, boiling, and unstable, crackling around his limbs like liquid electricity, actively knitting the fractured bone in his nose and setting his cracked ribs back into alignment with audible sickening pops.

Maya was caught off guard by this, after all...

’I never heard that he had a healing factor.’

Maya landed ten paces away, dropping into a defensive crouch with her breath coming in ragged gasps as her eyes widened in revulsion.

"What kind of sick freak..." Maya muttered, her teeth clenching.

The volume of mana radiating off the man was staggering.

It wasn’t depleting at all even while he was healing, instead it was multiplying!

Every single blow she had landed on him... from the kick on the mountain cliff to the drop-smash into the crater hadn’t weakened him.

His soul pathways were gorging on the trauma, converting physical impact directly into raw spiritual reserves.

’A Bide ability...’ Maya realized with a cold sweat breaking out beneath her void-ivory cuirass. ’He has a conversion trait...? That wasn’t in his information at all.’

People with Bide spells like this were the most annoying group of people to deal with, the more trauma their body endured, the denser their output became.

Yuri lifted his massive star-steel greathammer with one hand, resting the diamond-spiked head against his shoulder.

The boiling blue aura around his frame was now so dense that the yellow sand beneath his boots was vitrifying into dark sheets of scorched glass.

"You like it, Amazon?!" Yuri roared, his voice booming like rolling thunder. "This is the Frost-Borealis Crucible! Our ancestral gift! The soft weaklings in Europa think defense is about hiding behind shields! In the Tsardom, we let you hit us! We let you break our bones! Because every drop of blood I lose becomes a hammer to cave your skull in!"

He stepped forward, the earth shaking beneath his boots.

"Come on, little girl! Let’s see if you can break me before I turn your spine into kindling!"

Maya didn’t answer him with words.

She reached behind her back with her right hand finding a compact eight-inch cylinder of polished star-iron strapped to her waist.

CLICK!

’Do not falter... Big sis is watching...’

She pressed the runic release catch.

SHSHSH-CLACK!

The cylinder violently expanded as four telescoping sections of void-forged steel shot outward with mechanical precision, locking into a heavy eight-foot-long combat spear tipped with a leaf-shaped blade of dark volcanic quartz.

"You talk too much," Maya said. "Let’s see how much energy your soul can eat when I put a foot of steel through your throat."

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

The two titans rushed at each other simultaneously and the clash was apocalyptic.

Yuri swung his greathammer in massive sweeping horizontal arcs that tore the air apart with high-pressure shockwaves.

WHOOOOOOSH... SLAM!

Every swing carried the concussive force of an explosive shell and once again, Maya didn’t dare to parry the spiked head directly... Even with her void-ivory armor, taking the blunt force of that Bide-enhanced hammer would have shattered her forearms.

Instead, she fought with the mastery of an elite Amazonian earth-shaper.

THUD!

As Yuri’s hammer descended in a vertical overhead strike meant to cleave her in two, Maya’s left boot stomped the ground.

CRACK!

A five-foot slab of solid granite shot out of the sand at a sixty-degree angle!

The hammer struck the stone slab...

BOOOOM!

That single attack pulverized it into powder, but the second delay gave Maya the exact opening she needed.

She slid beneath the shattered debris, her volcanic quartz spear thrusting upward like a striking viper, aiming straight for the soft junction between Yuri’s neck and shoulder.

SKR-SHLICK!

The spear blade pierced the flesh and blood sprayed.

"YES!" Yuri bellowed, not even flinching!

He didn’t pull away from the blade as he stepped forward, driving Maya’s spear deeper into his own shoulder just to close the distance.

His free left hand shot out, grabbing the quartz blade with his bare, bleeding palm, locking Maya’s weapon in place.

"MY TURN!"

Yuri’s right arm coiled back with his fist glowing with blinding, superheated blue mana, aiming a concussive haymaker straight for Maya’s face.

Maya let go of the spear shaft instantly.

She dropped low, her hands slapping the ground on either side of Yuri’s planted boots.

"Terra Maw!"

SNAP!

The sandstone beneath Yuri’s feet liquefied into quicksand for half a heartbeat, swallowing his boots up to his calves, and then instantly petrified back into solid granite.

Yuri’s momentum violently stalled with his haymaker whistling harmlessly through empty air above Maya’s ducking head.

"What the—?!" Yuri snarled, struggling against the stone cuffs locking his legs as Maya sprang up from the ground like an uncoiling spring.

...

[Author’s Note]

Thanks for the castle and the support too! Every single bit matters... Phew~ Let’s get more GT! Also make sure to join the Discord.

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