Chapter 52: Overwhelming

Chapter 52: Chapter 52: Overwhelming

Aria glanced toward the center. "Darius! Felix! With me!"

"Roger!" The three highest level fighters broke through the line, and the dark elf finally stood.

He looked at the three advancing hunters and his core ignited.

Felix’s pupils contracted to needlepoints. "What is that—"

​VWOOOOM!

​A wave of pitch-black, oil-slick mana detonated outward.

​CRASH!

Aria threw up an enormous ice shield. The black shockwave tore straight through the six-foot slab of ice, shattering it into frost and hurling Aria thirty meters back.

​RUMBLE-CRACK!

Darius slammed both hands down, raising a wall of earth that the black mana tore straight through.

The dark elf vanished.

"Teleportation?!"

BOOM!

​A heavy impact slammed into Felix’s spine from his blind spot. The force drove him violently into the dirt.

​HISSSS.

He rolled to a stop, his body already healing itself. *What kind of affinity is this?*

WHAM.

​The dark elf dropped from the sky like a falling meteor, a black-coated fist slamming into the spot Felix had occupied a millisecond earlier.

​Felix launched himself skyward, twisting mid-air to meet the elf’s rising counter-strike with a mana-reinforced right punch.

​KRA-KOOM!

Dense green mana slammed against pitch-black aura. The shockwave rippled across the clearing, flattening the everything around fifty meters.

Felix’s eyes widened in genuine shock.

*He’s stronger than me physically.*

SNAP.

​The elf dissolved into black mist.

​Felix’s instincts screamed. He spun on his heel, throwing his forearm up just as a lance of black energy whistled toward his chest. He barely deflected, the dark projectile grazed his shoulder.

​SPLAT.

​A blinding, agonizing heat flared through his nervous system.

​Felix staggered, his breath hitching. His mana circulation and the energy in his channels turning sluggish and cold at the point of contact.

"What the hell?" He forced healing mana into the wound, and the foreign energy resisted. *A single graze interferes with internal mana flow.*

​CRACK.

The elf appeared beside Aria. She barely got a barrier up before his fist shattered it, and he followed with a second punch that cracked her second shield too.

​"Stone Tomb!" Darius roared, appearing from the earth behind the elf. Four jagged tectonic slabs clamped shut around the elf.

​POOF.

​Empty rock.

​THUMP.

A fist coated in black mana buried itself into Darius’s solar plexus. The massive vanguard was lifted off his feet, coughing blood as he was launched backward. Felix caught him mid-air, rolling with the momentum to absorb the crash.

"Darius!"

"I’m fine!"

Felix laid an open palm on his breastplate.

​HISSSS.

​Emerald light washed over the crushed sternum, burning away the sticky black residue that clung to his flesh.

​Darius stared at his chest, his breath trembling.

"What *is* that?"

"I don’t know!"

The dark elf hovered several meters above them, black mana rolling off him like smoke.

*Darkness.*

That was the only word that fit, but it didn’t make sense, darkness wasn’t supposed to behave like this.

This thing could fly, teleport, control monsters, enhance its own body, fire projectiles, disrupt mana, and somehow on top of everything, hit harder than any of them.

The elf raised an open palm, dozens of needle-sharp black darts coalesced above his fingers.

"Move!" They scattered as the barrage hit the ground.

BOOM, BOOM, BOOM

The clearing disappearing under explosions.

The elf teleported constantly, never committing, never staying still, always appearing, striking, and gone again before anyone could line up a response.

Felix wiped blood from his mouth. "This is ridiculous."

​"Darius, pin him!" Aria commanded, parrying an incoming dark needle with a dense ice shard.

​"On it!" Darius slammed both fists into the bedrock. "Tectonic Vise!"

​CRACK-CRUNCH!

​Four interlocking stone pillars ruptured upward, clamping down on the dark elf’s torso mid-stride. For half a heartbeat, the elf was physically arrested.

Felix and Aria surged forward simultaneously—

​The elf smiled.

​VZZZT.

​He phased through the stone like smoke.

​"Again?!" Felix barked, pivoting on his heel just in time to catch a black-sheathed fist square in the chest.

​CRACK.

​His few ribs fractured under the blow, launching him fifteen meters across the stone. Before he could touch the ground, the elf materialized directly above him in the descent, a broadsword of condensed black glass materializing in his grip.

​Felix crossed his forearms, flooding his skin with a dense, pressurized layer of healing mana.

​SHRRR-SPLAT!

​The dark blade sheared straight through the mana barrier, biting two inches deep into Felix’s forearms. Blood sprayed across the dust as Felix hit the earth hard.

The elf landed smoothly, flipping his free hand outward.

​TWIP-TWIP-TWIP.

​Five black needles condensed between his fingertips.

*That’s like Vesper’s technique.* Felix dodged several, but one caught his arm and his circulation faltered again. "Dammit!"

He ripped it out and flooded the wound with healing mana.

The dark elf paused, his crimson irises narrowing as he watched the wound close in seconds. His tactical intelligence caught the pattern: The black-haired human is the engine.

As long as the healer breathes, the frontline cannot collapse.

ZIP.

​The elf vanished.

​Felix felt the displacement spike behind Aria.

"Aria, twelve o’clock blind!"

​Too late.

​THWACK.

​A black needle pierced Aria’s rear shoulder blade. Her mana instantly destabilized, her ice lances crumbled.

The elf followed with a brutal sweep that kicked her twenty meters into the trees, then spun to drive a second needle through Darius’s knee.

Darius collapsed with a roar of agony, his stone armor disintegrating.

Felix sprinted toward them, but the dark elf materialized directly in his path, arms crossed, smiling with cold, predatory amusement.

*He’s buying time. He wants Aria and Darius down long enough to finish me.*

Felix’s easy demeanor stripped away, leaving only the feral, battle-starved grin underneath.

"Think you’ve cornered me?"

​BOOM!

​They both blurred.

​Fist met fist.

​KRA-KOOM!

Felix buried a heavy left hook into the elf’s ribs; the elf answered with an open-palm strike to Felix’s chest that caved the bone inward.

​HISSSS.

​Healing mana stitched the fracture back together in the exact same microsecond.

​CLANG—WHAM—CRACK!

​A savage, unrelenting exchange of pure attrition. Felix traded blow for blow, damage for damage but the dark elf’s core reserves felt bottomless, while Felix’s A-rank mana pool was burning at an unsustainable rate.

Every severed muscle and cracked rib demanded a heavy toll of mana to reconstruct.

​Felix slipped beneath a wild black hook, driving a counter-elbow flush into the elf’s jaw.

​THUD.

​The elf barely flinched. He countered with a rising knee that detonated against Felix’s forearm.

​CRACK!

​"Tough bastard..." Felix hissed through blood-stained teeth.

​The elf took a single step back.

​VWOOOOM.

​The ambient shadows across the clearing conversed into his right hand, condensing into an enormous, two-handed executioner’s greatsword forged of pure, abyssal glass.

​Felix braced his footing, his eyes narrowing.

​The elf swung.

​SHRRRK!

​Felix threw up both arms to deflect, but the sheer mass of the greatsword cleaved through his guard, smashing into his abdomen.

​BOOOM!

​Felix was blasted horizontally across fifty meters of open terrain. He crashed through a two-hundred-year-old ironwood trunk, slammed into a granite boulder, and collapsed into the rubble.

​Cough.

​Dark blood gushed from his lips. His abdominal wall was torn open, two organs lacerated, his internal mana channels screaming under the shock. His restorative reserves flared, desperately rebuilding the shattered tissue, but his speed had finally dropped.

​Footsteps crunched over the gravel.

​The dark elf stood over him, the black greatsword raised in a two-handed executioner’s grip, crimson eyes utterly devoid of emotion.