197 New Approach
"What will you say that will help me?" He asked her as the crack on the Shadow Dome enlarged.
"Your aura is more than strong enough to beat the beast. The problem is the aura technique. It doesn't use the full potential of your aura, so you aren't as powerful as you are supposed to be. Based on what I've seen, I can help you improve it," she said.
"What?" Leo asked with shock.
"I know this might be surprising to hear, but the technique you have is just garbage. There is no efficiency and it doesn't even give power. It's made just to make infinite copies of a weak blade as long as you have enough aura," she explained to him.
He already knew it was very aura hungry as a technique, but he didn't think it could be stronger.
"What can you do in the few seconds we have?" He asked her.
"Not a lot. All I can do is give you tips to just make it a little stronger so that it will be helpful to you," she said.
Just as she said that the dome finally broke open. Leo immediately took a few steps to the side to dodge the incoming attack. Once the barrier shattered, the wolf leaped at the center of the dome, missing him by inches.
"Now attack it with your normal Shadow Blade," Nefrati said.
"I was going to do that anyway," he said as he quickly formed the blade and threw it at the beast. The blade broke into the wolf's hide, making it jump back a little. It got rid of the blade by hitting it away with its claw. The blade had barely grazed the body, but it still affected it and drained a little energy. Meanwhile, Nefrati was giving him further instructions.
"Now make a new blade, but using the same aura, make it smaller," she said.
"You mean compress the aura?" He asked her.
"Yes. Exactly that," she said.
He did as she told and created a blade like that. The problem with it was that it was a lot heavier and harder to control. He told her what he faced and she laughed.
"You are trying so hard to control it when that isn't the goal of a blade like this. When a blade is made for power, it should only focus on power. If you want speed, focus on speed. Now make a blade that is the same size as this one, but with a lot less aura," she said.
He did as she told him and got a second blade that was the same size as the compressed one. Now he had two blades, one that was very powerful and one that probably wouldn't even break the wolf's skin.
But what he realized was that the second blade was a lot easier to control. He could maneuver it unlike before and make it go faster too. This meant it had a lot more applications.
"So why I made you do this is-"
"I know. The second one is a decoy. This is brilliant! How have I never thought of this?" He shouted while throwing the first blade at the wolf.
It shot forward with a lot of speed, surprising it so much that it couldn't even block it. However, even though the blade was fast initially, it slowed down. While its paws were too slow to claw it out of the air, the speed decreased so much that it could try to bite the blade.
When it tried to do that, the blade suddenly flew back a little faster than it had come and the wolf missed its bite. It looked up and saw the blade still within its range. It tried to claw it out but missed again. The one blade seemed untouchable to it.
However, the blade was not doing any damage to it. So after missing it a few times, it ignored it and just went toward Leo. By this time, Leo had four blades surrounding him. When it started charging toward him, all the blades save for one shot toward it.
It stopped its charge and pounded the ground. Immediately, the aura around it solidified and became a blood claw. The claw, which was 2 meters tall, slammed down onto the incoming weapons. All three of them swerved out of the way and went past the beast.
They all turned around and shot for it again, it turned around and knocked two of the blades out of the way. The other two blades shot toward its head, forcing it to defend against them with its claws.
The blades hit the claws and were knocked back like they were toys. This momentarily confused the wolf but it turned around since it got rid of the four blades. However, as it turned around, a blade pierced through the back of its neck and came out of the other side.
While it was busy dealing with the blades, Leo had sent the most powerful one that he had kept beside him. Since it was a lot slower than the others, he wanted the wolf to be completely occupied with the first three.
Since its back was turned to him, it didn't even realize that there was another blade coming its way. In its mind, all of them were equally powerful, so it paid more attention to the decoys.
Once the blade pierced the neck, the wolf slowly slumped to the ground before dissolving into aura. Leo also slumped to the ground and released his control over the blades. They all dissolved into aura as he started to recover his breath.
With this fight, he only had a fourth of his aura capacity left. He was also a little tired from his previous fights and was now considering what to do after this one.
"Good fight. You learned how to do it a lot quicker than I thought," Nefrati commented.
"Thanks for giving me the idea. It helped me a lot," Leo replied. "But I don't know if it will be enough for the next fight."
"It won't," she said. "If you go in as you were in this fight, you will probably win, but at the cost of a limb. I'm sure that is not what you are intending to do, am I right?"
"Yes, I want all my limbs intact," he replied.
"The only way to do that is to get a strategy for the next fight," she said.
"Why are you so sure that the next tile will be a fight?" Leo asked.
"Well, what is it? You know how to read it," she responded. He looked at the tile across him and saw what was written on it.
"Knight," he read out.
"Like I thought. So the goal will be to finish the fight as quickly as possible even if it means using all of your aura. That means you need to have a good strategy," she said.
"And you know the best one for me?" He asked skeptically.
"I have years of experience compared to you who is going by instinct. It went well for you because you are pretty talented, but my way will be better."
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