Chapter 335 Victory
'Let's not make any mistakes this time,' Alex thought as he strengthened his grip on his sword while he looked ahead, awaiting his perfect clone to manifest.
"Darkness Dome," Alex said as his clone appeared in the distance and met his gaze with his emotionless, cold eyes.
In response to Alex's command, a sweeping expanse of darkness materialized out of thin air, swiftly spreading across tens of meters of land between him and his clone in the blink of an eye.
The Clone, like always, did not waste a moment to see what Alex had planned and instead moved like a ghost ripping through the shrouding darkness as he covered the distance between them in a single instance, ready to bring the battle to a swift conclusion.
'Chaos Wings' 'Soul Shield'
Alex used a skill of his own creation as chaotic energy sprouted from back, swiftly condemning to take the form of wings that, unlike traditional wing structures, unfold with an unconventional grace.
Rather than spreading perpendicularly, the chaos wings stretch outwards linearly, creating a mesmerizing spectacle and taking the form of a streamlined and sharp silhouette reminiscent of serrated blades.
The wings feature multiple sinuous curves ending in sharp, pointy edges, resembling a collection of numerous unevenly serrated blades cloaked in dense energy that was an ever-shifting symphony of shades of Iridescent dark colors.
The winges moved at an astonishing speed as they sliced the incoming spikes of darkness and stopped the barrage of chaotic energy slashes simultaneously made by the clone as Alex stepped back to avoid the attacks to rip his body to ribbons.
The damaged portion of the wings mended in an instant, transitioning from an intangible energy state to a solid, but this offered little help, as the clone was relentlessly barraging Alex with attacks from every possible angle.
Soul attacks phased through the defense of his chaotic wings, assaulting his soul shield, while chaotic slashes ripped apart his wings like paper.
All the while, Alex grappled with the dual challenge of defending against the onslaught of darkness and chaos strikes from multiple directions and struggling to maintain control over the surrounding darkness he had manifested.
Alex moved his sword, sending slashes of darkness to defend against the barrage of attacks, his face emotionless and cold.
It was clear that Alex was losing the battle as with every passing moment, he was struggling to defend himself, as his wings were receiving more damage than they could recover, and so was his soul shield.
Alex's soul shield crumbled eight seconds into the battle, and immediately, he created another one, but in that short window, two soul bullets slipped past, hitting their mark and making him flinch in pain.
Alex was bombarded with spikes of darkness and chaos energy in a moment of vulnerability, with only two of them making it past his defense and piercing through his body.
Yet, even with agonizing soul pain and his left arm turned useless with his left shoulder having a hole in it, his eyes stayed focused even though it was clear that at any moment, his defense would crumble and he would lose his life.
'10 Seconds,' Alex thought, with a smile spreading on his face.
"I won," Alex said, and with his words, a reverberating hum echoed through the space, and in an instant, a small point of concentrated darkness expanded at astonishing speed, erasing anything it came in contact with.
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'Now I can happily use my new skills in the real world and, hopefully, advance to fourth Rank,' Alex thought, a radiant smile illuminating his face as he enjoyed his victory.
Alex had used a new skill he named 'Mana Nova' to end his own and his perfect clone's life, which worked by him gathering and concentrating all his mana within their mana heart, creating a volatile energy core.
After the preparations were completed, Alex made the energy core rapidly expand from the inside out, unleashing a devastating explosion of pure darkness that erased everything in the surroundings tens of meters radius.
The skill was simple, with the only requirement being having exceptional control over mana and understanding the nature of darkness.
But to concentrate the same amount of mana that Alex did, one needed a truly strong heart to handle the pressure because a normal heart would collapse, killing the user before he could even complete the preparation.
The Mana Nova was a double-edged sword, capable of wiping out multiple adversaries and leaving a wide area in ruins, but at the cost of user life.
The drawback lay in the fact that the skill's damage was directly proportional to the amount of mana invested, so even a flawlessly executed Mana Nova by a third Rank individual with an average mana reserve would inflict minimal harm on an early fifth Rank opponent.
But mana was least for Alex's concerns, and once he advanced to the Fourth Rank, he would have a trump card strong enough to even kill a Sixth Rank individual if he took them by surprise.
As for how he won against his perfect clone, it was by giving him a bit of handicap, as the clone didn't have the new skills because if he did, he wouldn't have succumbed to the strategic maneuver he executed.
But Alex still considered his victory an achievement because he knew how much of a monster he was up against, and he learned after many deaths that without some handicap, no plan he could create that would give him close to a minute of battle time, let alone a victory.
'It's time I achieve another one of my greatest desires and break free from the shackles of being a mortal that confined me for much of my previous life,' Alex thought as an emotional expression replaced his smile.
"Lady Luculia, Give me Ten Fifth Rank individuals, The best ones available," Alex said, adjusting his neck with a deliberate crack as he stretched his limbs, prepared to put everything he had learned in the last two months into the next battle.
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