On getting the sharp gaze from Gabel, Skullius scowled.
"What are you looking at?" he asked with a haughty sounding tone.
Gabel didn't respond immediately. Instead, he tightened the grip on his glaive, and narrowed his dark eyes which were partly covered by messy – kind of oily – bangs of like-coloured hair.
"We have unfinished business," he replied, finally.
"Speak for yourself."
Skullius then turned his attention to Rias, who also seemed to focus his gaze specifically on him, and then his Units.
"You have more than enough Units to qualify yourself for freedom. If I were you, I'd use them wisely. When that gateway closes, those Units won't be as valuable," the young man said without a shift in the contours on his face.
Skullius raised a brow.
"So the Units are good for something even after that gateway closes?" he asked.
A half smile appeared on Rias' face.
"Yes, of course. It wouldn't have done too well for us to impose harsh rules onto you contenders, so indeed, Units do serve a crucial role. For your survival," he answered.
"What role?"
Rias' smile faded, and he didn't answer as well as any inquirer would have liked. Instead...
"Since you've already picked your side, you'll find out soon enough."
"Ooo, how vague~," Vali, who stood by Skullius' side said with a radiant smile. "Are you trying to turn us against each other? Fighting for his Units?"
The question directed towards Rias received an even worse reception to the one Skullius had asked. Silence.
Vali scoffed.
Skullius screwed his head to her.
"What exactly are we trying to do here? Beating him aside, how do we even try to stop whatever he is doing?" he asked.
Skullius' <CURSED HEART> was still beating rather uncomfortably. The towering green and black flame now hidden within stacks of glass panes made him consider a lot of possibilities. It wasn't a shock that one of these were that Somanda could suddenly pop out of the flame, somehow granted access to walk among the common folk of Aigas.
That would be dreadful.
Too dreadful.
Skullius' solution towards this wasn't exactly redeeming. It only guaranteed that he wouldn't lose himself to the Lich.
"Look below the flame. Well... if you can at least perceive it," Vali said, remembering midway that Skullius couldn't see. "There's something drawn on the ground. Some magical engraving of sorts. The flame is anchored around it. My guess is that's what we need to disrupt. Our combined efforts could be enough. I'd rather not live with regrets if something especially terrible results from this."
Skullius wasn't so sure his resolve was as solid as hers. In fact, despite his somewhat resolved gripes from moments ago, the question of just leaving and abandoning his temporary partners, Tallo and Maxim here, kept swirling in his mind for some reason.
Abandoning them.
Leaving them behind.
He had to look out for himself first before others.
This was great logic – in Skullius' opinion – since he barely knew these two, but for some reason, a sentiment was growing in him about them that he hadn't had for anyone else except for... except for...
In any case...
'Damn it! I at least have to see what this is. If it really is something THAT bad, then even if I run now, it won't make a difference,' Skullius thought with a scowl.
Vali craned her neck, and with a pop coming from it, she took steps forward, heading towards Rias, who was happy to let them waste time, and take the initiative.
"I'll go ahead and get a feel of what this kid is capable of. You two can chip in whenever you feel like it," she said as her vast pool of mana which boggled Skullius to no end, burst out like the waters from behind a torn damn wall.
Skullius and Gabel watched closely.
Rias also watched Vali carefully. Despite his condescending tone, he didn't take his opponents lightly at all, most of this surprising seriousness depicted in how he held out his sword, and ran a precise stream of mana into it.
"Come," Rias said hollowly.
"Sure!" Vali responded with a grinning cheer.
Her figure swept across the distance between her and the youngster from the EverSword House cleanly... swiftly, like a ghost, and as she reached him, there was a loud boom on the ground, her and Rias having clashed their wrists heavily.
This lasted for a second, before Vali took a step back, and cocked back her arm. In an instant, from her elbow to her fingers, her skin tone turned dark, almost gleaming in a blackish grey, a massive amount of mana bubbling within it.
Rias turned cautious.
Vali's punch came at him like a dark firework, which he was more than ready to block by holding his sword out in an oblique angle with both hands. There was a crisp clash as the two met, then Vali followed up with another hook from Rias' right which he guarded against as well.
Then a torrent of Vali's punches rained over Rias who parried them away with zero difficulty, though the speed behind them was nothing short of staggering.
The clash between these two monstrosities kept digging at the ground beneath them as their mana fiercely battered against the other, then...
Rias tore from the repetitive exchange, and his sword left a moon-like curve as it set to cull Vali's incoming punch by cutting her arm from the elbow with an elegant slash. His strike was so brisk in its movement that it had bit into her skin before her fist was anywhere near Rias body.
TCHT.
However...
Biting Vali's skin was all it did.
It went no further, causing no more damage that a thin stream of blood from where it cut.
Rias' eyes showed a bit of awe before he rushed out of the way of Vali's punch, threw his sword up, and launched a heavy swing at her face from the side!
His fist travelled fast towards the woman's body which was still finishing the motions for the previous attack, but then, Rias' fist passed through Vali's face, as if she was merely an apparition.
Yet Rias wasn't surprised.
He immediately turned, and guarded – raising both his arms up – for a moment later, Vali's arm bashed against his arms powerfully, pushing him back. The blue haired woman then kept hammering her arm viciously multiple times as Rias guarded, before, in an eerie show that the onlookers were quite shaken by, shooting her other arm which became extremely thin, between Rias' guarding arms, and gripping his neck!
"Oh..." Rias could be heard surprisingly murmuring to himself as Vali's arm expanded into a bulky, thick, dark branch of a limb, which she used to heave Rias up, and then dangerous pound him into the ground!
It was as if someone had flung a massive fireball where they were battling it out. A shockwave came after the ear-rending boom that followed, only, without the fiery aftermath.
Within the obscurity, Rias gripped Vali's arm and pulled her close with both hands, and his cheeks ballooned, as though he had suddenly sucked in a vast volume of air.
...!
Vali narrowed her eyes.
Rias blew out, and the air shrieked, rings upon rings spawned by its disturbance bashing into Vali and peeling off her skin rapidly while completely ignoring the guarding layer of mana around her!
It suddenly became quite windy... actually, devastatingly so around the pillar of green flame.
As Vali took the full brunt of this attack, which was likely from a high level Auxiliary Technique she knew was probably only known to the Houses, she grinned, even as her perfect skin was ripped out, and heaved Rias from the ground.
The golden hook at the end of her French braid suddenly became drenched in an excessive volume of mana, and jutted out from behind her to pin itself on Rias' face!
It became Rias' turn to grow wary.
With a vicious twist, he broke off Vali's arm at the joint, and leapt away to stand before the pillar of flame once again.
When distance had been created between the two combatants, that was when Rias sword finally fell back into his hands.
"You should get out of your house more often. How can such a brilliant sparring expert be so introverted. I'd welcome you home for some action any day," Vali said with a gentle smile. Her skin rapidly healed, and a new arm grew from elbow like it was nothing.
"I'll pass. I appreciate the offer though," Rias said.
Skullius was baffled.
The sheer speed, precision and relaxedness of both parties, where he would have been taking every blow seriously, made him feel a little out of place. But he didn't let this haunt him for long.
'Calm down. I'm not fighting alone here,' Skullius convinced himself.
But then again, if all that was like a simple spar....
"Get ready introvert," Vali said, as her eyes narrowed into shiver-inducing slits.
Rias prepared.
But...
By the time he heard Vali's voice, she had already reached him.
But...
For a brief moment, he didn't see or sense her because, as the trail of light from where she had stood blinks before spelled out, the daring woman had used a speed-enhancing Auxiliary Technique!
But that wasn't all...
Rias hadn't seen her coming for just that micro moment, because she had ducked down quickly, and swept her foot across the ground!
Rias saw the attack right before it got him, and would have dodged.
But...
Gabel strangled his glaive fondly.
...!
Rias, from nowhere, turned still, very still, like a block.
Vali noticed this too, but it didn't stop her from sending the young man spinning in the air – his body rigidly retaining its previous stance – with her sweep, and flinging a heavy punch loaded with ferocious mana right at Rias' chest!
On impact, Rias' armour exploded like a balloon, flying from his body, and he shot like shooting star towards the green flame, slamming heavily into the stacks of glass that guarded it!
Updated from fr𝒆ewebnov𝒆l.(c)om