Chapter 203: The aftermath of the Elemental Quartet
***KAAAABOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The resulting explosion was large enough to easily engulf everything within a radius of five to six thousand square kilometres, with shockwaves decimating anything in about a thousand more kilometres.
A giant mushroom cloud large enough to make an onlooker think that multiple atomic bombs were dropped in the same place and exploded simultaneously could be seen.
If one was to calculate the blast yield of that explosion, one should expect nothing less than 40 megatons.
This brings one to the question, although Aurora was a deity and could survive such an explosion with ease, what about the four who launched it in the first place?
Such an attack used up most of their energy reserves and they would be left with nothing to defend themselves from the explosion, so how would they survive it?
The answer was the woman with sea-blue eyes and skin floating in the middle of the explosion beside Aurora. She possessed luxurious long curly sea blue hair that flowed down to her waist and wore a loose white gown adorned with various pearls of unknown worth.
The bodies of the quartet could be seen inside large spheres of whirling water that floated around her.
The woman, Undine, face-palmed while sighing as she thought about the reckless action of the quartet.
◇ ◇ ◇
Before the moment Nicole charged at Aurora with her water lance, Undine was no longer above her head and was instead tending to the wounded Layla.
Aurora’s Explosion blasted a small hole in her torso but cauterized the wound so she would not bleed out to death. As a pure breed devil, she was incredibly resilient as such she was able to survive long enough for her regeneration to kick in.
The real problem, however, came from her fall. Due to the force at which she fell, she shattered a good number of bones and was unable to heal those bones as her body judged the hole in her torso to be a greater threat and was focused on it.
However, wounds dealt by Aurora’s flames were not so easy to heal as such it was taking a while to heal completely.
This is where Undine came in, she was able to utilize high-level water-healing magic to heal Layla’s wounds.
Although Layla was surprised at the appearance of undine whom she was seeing for the first time, she was in no position to do anything as Undine was helping her get back into the fight.
Undine introduced herself to be something along the lines of Nicole’s guardian and that Nicole sent her to check on Layla because she was worried.
Layla felt happy that her best friend still had the time to be worried about her mid-fight but understood that was not the time for such feelings.
She instantly crafted a plan of action after getting a rundown of everyone’s current states from Undine, which she told Undine to send as thought transmissions to the other three.
It was around this time that Nicole stabbed Aurora’s face with the lance, one that undine created and gave her before moving over to Layla’s location. The reason it was even able to pierce Aurora was because it was created by the much stronger Undine and not Nicole.
She then sensed the connection between her, Nicole and the lance get cut off and sent a message to Nicole telling her to back away.
Coincidentally, Esna was kicked away in the same direction and Undine healed her wounds instantly before hiding both her and Edward who joined up with them with the power of the law of trickery.
Layla dashed towards Aurora and fired two bullets at her eyes while partially hidden, and Edward came out of hiding to stab Aurora in the gut.
He knew fully well his attack would not connect, however, his aim was to temporarily cover her vision with the lightning bolt that dropped from above.
When she used the earth dome to block it, he knew his mission was accomplished and backed away before readying himself to cast Paladin’s judgement.
Layla’s ’Now’, was the command to execute their plan, Nicole, with the help of Undine, freed herself from the giant flame hand that held her in place, before launching the ice arrows towards Aurora.
Next, the quartet cast their spells simultaneously and activated the combination magic to drop the elemental quartet on Aurora.
As the spells used up all their remaining energy, Layla told Undine to protect them from the resulting explosion, which explains the current situation.
◇ ◇ ◇
Aurora stamped her foot against the ground and a giant five-ringed green wind magic circle spread out underneath their feet, next a giant tornado was generated around them. The tornado then increased in size and cleared up the giant mushroom cloud around them before dissipating.
Undine then flicked her fingers and doused the flames that came out as a result of the earlier explosion. She then reduced the temperature of the shattered earth by flooding the area with water, causing the temperature of the water to increase and that of the earth to decrease.
Reabsorbing the water into her body, she dropped the four on the ground before dusting her hands with a proud expression on her face.
Unfortunately, that expression was wiped off in the next second when Aurora’s hands coated in flames grabbed the sides of her head.
"OW!!!! HOT! HOT! HOT!!!!!!"
"If you help them too much, they won’t be able to grow."
"Huh? Your training is way too dangerous you know? That fire rune you left on her stomach could have killed her if you had put a bit more energy into it."
Hearing that she had almost died sent chills down Layla’s spine as she shot Aurora a fear-filled gaze which aurora ignored in favour of arguing with undine.
"I know that, which is why I didn’t put ’that’ much energy into creating the rune."
The two continued arguing while Nicole hurriedly looked Layla over to be sure she was fine. Seeing Nicole’s obvious worry for her, a smile blossomed on Layla’s face as she hugged Nicole.
"You worry too much for them, if they’re babied so much they won’t improve. Besides, your true body is that of a deity is it not? How do you not notice the authority of life that is cast here?
Even if I went crazy and tried to kill them, they wouldn’t die unless I deactivated the authority!"
Aurora’s loud voice broke the sweet atmosphere between the two. Undine on the other hand looked around and noticed that it was as aurora said.
The first thing she did was to utilize her authority of life to create an area where it was basically impossible for the quartet to die, unless something happened to Aurora first.
"Oh...."
"Tsk...Idiot."
Aurora dissed undine before taking a deep breath to calm herself.
’I am not usually like this, why am I feeling the need to vent out my stress? Why am I even stressed in the first place?!’
Aurora went through her memory for anything that had happened in the past few days that would cause her to feel stressed out and she found her answer.
’Hades!’
Long ago, when Aurora was much younger and weaker, a few of her family members had been murdered by Hades right before her eyes. The Olympian god was enraged at the fact that they tried to save a phoenix deity’s soul from the underworld and had personally taken action.
It left her some sort of trauma for Hades as such she had been avoiding him every time he came to hell. Now that she had to deal with being in the same spacecraft with him for three days, it was only natural she would not be feeling well afterwards.
One might ask why Aurora never considered revenge but there were a variety of reasons.
One; she admits that her family was in the wrong, and two; attacking Hades could be taken as a deceleration of war against Olympus by the Olympian gods and their allies.
Lastly, she was weaker than he was.
As much as she hated to admit it, it was impossible for her to defeat hades in a one-on-one battle.
’Don’t think about depressing things!’
While aurora was trying to calm herself down, Layla and the other three were busy chatting with each other.
"I really wanted to bring out the big guns..."
Layla spoke in a whiny tone as she pulled out something from her inter-spatial ring and placed it on her shoulder.
Seeing what she pulled out, Edward could not help but retort.
"That ain’t a gun! That’s a fucking bazooka!!"
Esna chuckled at his wild reaction, while Nicole forced Layla to put away the bazooka, lest she accidentally fires it.
"I’m not that careless."
"Put. It. Back."
"...Yes."
Although Layla tried to resist, Nicole exuded a silent pressure that made her reflexively comply. Aurora’s voice then rang out as she decided to grade them.
"Alright, the lot of you. I am gonna give you a 7/10."
