Chapter 284: Layla, Edward, Nicole, Inferior Stage Epic
Despite her looking so defenceless, the monsters around Nicole hesitated to come closer as they instinctively sensed something ’off’ about her.
However, she wasn’t going to let them figure out what it was as she tapped her foot on the floor and cast a spell.
A gigantic magic circle spread out across the ground, covering a distance with a diameter of over a hundred metres.
From the centre to the circumference, were the elemental mark representing the element of the spell, the magic letters describing the type of magic being invoked and the rings that completed the circle, showing the flow of magic.
Surrounding all this, were three rings indicating the tier of magic that was being used.
Nicole was casually casting third-tier magic, with only just a gesture and no chant.
’Ice Magic: Ice Nova.’
She called out the name of the spell in her mind, right before a blinding flash of light that disoriented the senses of all the monsters within the spell’s range was released.
In that same instant, waves of ice surged forward omnidirectionally with Nicole as the centre point.
When the ice finally died down, all the monsters within a hundred metres of Nicole were encased in layer upon layer of ice.
Fifty feet high chunks of spiked and jagged ice filled the area, and all the monsters nearby, be they orcs, goblins, whip wolves, tentacle abominations, blade wraiths or even one giant salamander, regardless of elemental affinity, were all frozen solid.
The temperature of the surrounding area plummeted down to somewhere below 5 degrees Celsius, and the fire mages nearby had a hard time activating their magic.
"Shatter."
Nicole gave the command word and cracks began to spread rapidly across the ice around her until every single piece of ice nearby was filled with cracks.
Immediately after, all the large ice chunks simultaneously shattered into tiny shards of ice, along with the corpses of the monsters that were frozen within them.
Such a display of power left everyone on the battlefield, human or monster, dumbfounded as they stared at the large clearing around Nicole that had nothing but pieces of ice on the floor.
As for the one responsible for this, she was still casually playing with the cat in her arms, while many water spirits floated around her as if standing guard.
"How kind of you all to set yourselves as perfect targets."
Edward, someone who already knew that Nicole was capable of unleashing such a spell, spoke up towards the monsters who had stopped in shock AND fear.
He stabbed his shield into the ground and held up his long sword with both hands, infusing both lighting and light magic power into the sword.
"White Lightning."
His sword glowed with a white light as tendrils of similar coloured lightning snaked down the blade. Next, he decided to try out one of the sword techniques that Aurora had thought him and Layla during their training.
"First of Sword: Crescent Moon."
The boy’s hands moved faster than the monsters who sensed the coalescing magic power could react.
He unleashed a powerful curved horizontal slash of white lightning that severed the bodies of dozens of monsters, regardless of their realms.
Their bodies were either cleanly torn in two if they were lucky, or outright blasted to pieces by the devastating power of the lighting slash.
After releasing this slash, he took another stance and called out.
"Second of Swo-huh? What’s up, Esna?"
The godslayer girl tapped his shoulder and stopped him from releasing the second attack. Like others, she had seen a breakthrough of her own, reaching the superior stage of the grandmaster realm, but she had not reached the required level to break through to the Epic realm.
Ever since they came out, she had been strangely silent, and now she had stopped Edward from releasing his technique and was looking in the direction he attacked with a strange gaze.
"Call Layla, tell her to pull back a bit."
She told Edward while keeping her eyes on that location, a light frown adorning her face as she said so.
While Edward would have liked to comply with her words, he simply didn’t know how he was going to call out to the current Layla.
After all, she looked like she was having the time of her life shooting monsters to death.
***PAPAPAPAPAPA!!!!
The girl’s assault rifle was spitting out hundreds of bullets per minute, with each either being a fatal shot or hitting the monsters in a body part that left them immobilized.
Her green eyes darted around rapidly as she took aim and fired at a different monster each second, unleashing multiple bullets to either their heads, chests, or legs.
She was taking into account the type of monster and accurately determining what spot to shoot before pulling the trigger in the same instant.
For monsters she did not give instant fatal shots, she infused her bullets with different kinds of status effects and debuffs.
For example, an unfortunate troll who had arms as thick as Layla’s whole body, coated said arms in magic power and used them to cover his head so she instantly infused poison, paralysis and anti-regeneration respectively into the three bullets she fired towards it.
She then immediately turned towards another gryphon in the air and shot at its eyes before it could react, going on to shoot the next one in the chest right after.
By the time she had moved on to the next monster, the bullet in the torso of the gryphon had exploded, along with the creature’s body.
One of the monsters with armoured scales tried to block her bullets but she fired three bullets infused with an armour-piercing attribute, explosion and poison respectively, all in the same spot, giving the poor creature a deadly combination that killed it within seconds.
Despite all this, what scared the monsters the most, however, was the fact that she had a smile on her face as she continuously fired bullets, depleting magazine after magazine.
At one point she had switched out the rifle to one that could support both normal bullets and bullets generated with her energies.
Naturally, Layla was also capable of generating bullets with her magic, aura, or ether, and infusing them with any element or status effect she wished.
"GROOAARRRR!!!!"
A loud roar resounded across the battlefield, attracting Layla’s attention as she turned to see a giant red salamander roaring as it charged towards her.
It was one of the Superior stage grandmaster realm monsters, and this one was particularly strong, about to reach the Epic Realm.
"Layla!"
"Hold on, lemme use one of the ’big guns’ to kill this thing."
She casually replied to Edward’s words as she tossed her assault rifle in the air, before pulling out something that Nicole always told her to put back into her spatial ring.
"Once again, Layla. That ain’t a gun! That’s a fucking bazooka!!"
Edward gave the exact same retort he had during their crystal realm training trip, but the girl paid him no mind as she placed the weapon on her shoulder and infused it with the water element, and a few poisonous status effects.
"GROAARR!!"
The salamander opened its mouth and condensed a great amount of magic power, before launching an enormous blaze of flames right towards the devil girl.
In response, Layla only dropped to one knee and took aim, casually firing the ’enhanced’ Bazooka right after.
The large rocket shot out of the projectile weapon, travelling through the air at breakneck speeds before piercing right through the ball of flames the salamander fired.
Naturally, such flames would have caused the rocket to explode already, but the water magic infusion protected it and prevented it from getting too hot, just enough to allow it to shoot straight into the still-open mouth of the poor salamander.
"Boom."
***BOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!!
Layla tossed the bazooka back into her inter-spatial ring and grabbed her Assault rifle before turning around to Edward and asking.
"So? What did you call me for?"
"Don’t casually ask me that after murdering that poor salamander like that!"
The boy couldn’t help but retort reflexively, but he calmed himself down and told her that Esna was the one requesting her attention.
While she flew over to where Esna was, Nicole looked at the remaining monsters in silence, before deciding that Layla had had enough fun and it was time to end things.
She slowly floated up into the air with her wings and looked at the remaining monsters, of which were grandmaster realms and held up one hand.
Firstly, she created hundreds of water droplets with her control over water and then had the ever-so-eager to help spirits shape them to create lenses.
She then added a few smaller water droplets underneath each of these ’lenses’, and right above the heads of each of her targets.
"Physics Magic."
With that small mutter, she channelled magic power through the lenses and water droplets to focus the light of the sun into deadly laser beams that pierced through the bodies of the monsters faster than they could react.
