Chapter 289: Vs Gilbalar IV
Gilbalar blocked Layla’s strike with his own blade and wrestled his arm free from her grip, but she followed it with a projectile of ice that just barely grazed the side of his face.
She then coated her sword in her dark aura, delivering an upward arced slash that Gilbalar parried before retaliating with a diagonal slash towards her head.
However, Layla locked eyes with the god and activated her mystic eyes, her pupils lighting up with a green glow followed by Gilbalar’s movements instantly ceasing.
’?!’
Without hesitation, Layla pulled out the pistol in her thigh holster and fired multiple shots across the god’s body, from his legs as she pulled up the pistol until she reached his face.
Sadly, she was only able to get one bullet in towards his right eye before he broke out of her paralysis effect and released a burst of aura that knocked her down towards the ground.
As she fell back to the ground, Layla touched her face and saw the golden blood that splashed on her, evidence that her bullet had indeed gotten him in the eye.
She spread out her wings and used them to slow her fall, landing on her two feet before snapping her fingers and activating a Tier 2 spell.
Her wings served their secondary purpose as magic conductors, speeding up her energy manipulation speed and enhancing the effects of her spell.
"Crystal Wall."
The ground in front of her cracked open and five walls of light blue ice, each one about half a metre thick emerged from the earth.
Each ice wall was more than five metres tall and easily thrice in width, slanting towards Layla to protect her from attacks from the front and from above.
The second the walls reached their full height; they were bombarded with dozens of black flame-tipped earthen spears that chipped away at their durabilities very quickly.
However, the barrage suddenly stopped as the caster now had to divert his full attention to dealing with the barrage of lance thrusts coming from a certain indigo-purple-eyed Devil.
Gilbalar tried using flames against Nicole, but the girl’s water elemental manipulation capabilities were far too fast to let him do anything meaningful.
His flames were doused before they could even grow to the level of doing anything meaningful, and if he tried condensing the energy in his body, Nicole would suddenly use some dangerous attack magic that forced him to retaliate using that energy.
Things were even harder as Layla had taken out one of his eyes, forcing him to rely on the other one to be able to visually perceive where Nicole’s Lance thrusts and slashes were coming from.
’Aerial combat is risky now; I have to ground myself.’
Gilbalar coated his arm in aura as he dodged one of Nicole’s lance thrusts, wrapping his hand around the lance and locking it under his armpit.
He tossed his sword away and grabbed her arm faster than she could let go of the Lance, having expected this after seeing her previously abandon the weapon without hesitation.
"HA!"
With a shout, he spun his body around and flung Nicole towards the ground with all his strength. He then clenched his fist and pulled his hand upwards, using earth magic to generate a large spike of earth to pierce the falling Devil.
Sadly, Nicole only flipped her body in the air and used her wings to kill her momentum, before manifesting a long whip of pressurized water, extending from her hand and swinging it towards the incoming earthen spike.
With unpredictable movements, the pressurized water whip sliced the earthen spike into pieces in an instant.
But by the time she did this, Gilbalar was already back on the ground, dodging the lightning bolts that descended from the sky with the intent of electrifying him.
He created a barrier of aura above his head and used it to block the next bolt before generating another flaming sword with magic and turning around to block Layla’s sudden attack.
"Rumbling of Heaven."
Edward’s voice rang out as he didn’t send another lightning bolt like Gilbalar had expected, but instead charged in and unleashed his sword technique.
The god’s eyes went wide as everything around him seemed to be in slow motion for a moment.
Layla’s sword slash was coming right for his neck, and he could see the girl’s pistol in her left hand, ready for a follow-up.
Edward’s sword, however, was coming from behind him, and he didn’t want to know the end result of the boy’s Rumbling of Heaven technique.
’That’s the only way!’
He made his decision and moved his legs across the ground, generating a pillar of earth that shot towards Layla’s left hand the same instant he coated his arm in flames and grabbed her sword.
The girl’s aura of darkness engulfed his flames and doused them, but he gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on the blade, despite the blood that was seeping out of his palm.
He then twisted his body to the side and avoided Edwards’s upwards arching slash, however, the human boy only reversed his grip on the sword and delivered a similar arching slash downwards.
"Rumbling of Earth."
Gilbalar’s eyes widened in shock as he tried to jump backwards, but Layla activated her mystic eyes as she wrestled her sword from his grip and flew into the air, paralysing him long enough for Edward’s sword to bear down on his head.
"KAAAAA!!!!!"
The god screamed out and unleashed his flames all over his body, preparing to release a burst of black fire that threatened to burn Edward whole.
"Elemental Damage Reduction!
Elemental Breach Negative!
Elemental Ward, Fire!
Protect Energy, Flame!"
Esna instantly activated four support magic spells on Edward, the same instant that Nicole wrapped his body with a thin layer of water magic.
**BOOMMM!!!
Human and god attacked each other simultaneously.
Gilbalar’s flames blasted Edward’s body away, but not before the boy’s Rumbling of Earth managed to dig into the man’s shoulder and cut into his torso a bit diagonally, only stopping after it had sliced through a few blood vessels and right in front of his lungs.
Shockwaves spread out in all directions, knocking everyone backwards by dozens of metres, and devastating the ground around them for hundreds more.
Edward stabbed his sword into the ground to prevent his body from being sent flying, spitting out blood as the dust cleared to reveal his current appearance.
He had scalds and third-degree burns all over his body, his clothes were basically semi-rags at this point and his entire right arm was just one step short of being charred.
But the wound he had inflicted on Gilbalar was one that had the god down on one knee, and where his right collarbone, scapula and shoulder blades were supposed to be, there was a giant hole there instead.
A few of his ribs and a piece of his neck were also taken out in the attack as golden blood flowed endlessly from the wound.
If the blade had gone deeper, then his heart would have been blasted to pieces and he would have died.
However, as if to mock Edward’s efforts, the bracelet of black fire that was on his hand suddenly unclasped itself and floated to his back, returning to its original size and appearance as the ring of flames that floated behind Gilbalar’s back when he first appeared.
"Flames of life."
He muttered those three words, and the black flames turned bright red, before going to envelop the wound Edward caused.
Layla’s eyes widened in shock as she instantly realised that those flames were different from what Gilbalar had been using.
’The law of fire! He had law energy stored up!’
The girl pulled out her assault rifle and opened fire, emptying her magazine in seconds before switching to the grenade launcher and launching 5 grenades at him.
"Water Ether Technique: Water Dragon’s Roar."
Nicole also took action to prevent him from healing his wounds, activating a technique that caused waves of ether to gush forth from her body and manifest the head of a giant snake-like sea dragon with sharp teeth.
The creature blitzed towards Gilbalar, craving up the ground where it passed and closing in on him with a speed no slower than Layla’s bullets.
He had used a shield of earth magic to block the bullets and was preparing to use flame lances on the grenades, but Nicole’s water ether technique made him abandon that idea and instantly kick off the ground, jumping into the air to fly away.
Unfortunately, Nicole’s ether technique was not one that could be avoided so easily.
She pointed towards his new location and the water dragon that was about to crash into the empty ground, turned around and dashed towards Gilbalar at a faster speed than before.
"Fuck!"
The god exclaimed as he siphoned part of the little energy left of the ring of flames, gathering the law energy in his hand and creating a spear of black fire.
"HA!"
With a shout, he threw the spear towards the rapidly approaching water dragon before flying out of the way to avoid Layla’s bullet barrage.
***BOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!
