Chapter 373: Duskhand Day 3
’So that’s the secret to his speed! Gravity magic!!’
Rachel thought this as she jumped back to escape from Arthur’s melee range, and the gleaming silver sword was swung towards her neck with precision.
She flicked her fingers and generated a two-ringed magic circle in front of her, conjuring a powerful gust of wind that acted as a defensive shield to deflect Arthur’s sword from its original trajectory.
Following up, she created a sturdy barrier with earth magic to absorb the force of Arthur’s next attack.
The boy pulled his weapon back, tightening his grip on it before executing a series of rapid and unpredictable slashes with gravity magic wrapped around the divinity-constructed sword, increasing its speed and impact.
This forced Rachel to wrap her body with wind magic to increase her own speed so she could keep up with Arthur’s strikes.
She weaved between the slashes, using multiple wind currents and earthen barriers to parry and evade the onslaught.
’I need to take him down in one fell swoop.’
As that line of thought crossed her mind, Rachel channelled her earthen elemental magic power through her right arm, but before she could begin sending magic power to her left arm, the soil around her feet suddenly turned soft and she lost her footing.
Arthur grinned and deactivated the ’Grave Soil’ spell, intensifying the density of his divinity and unleashing a ’full-powered’ strike.
Yet, despite being off balance, Rachel still managed to counter, merging wind and earth magic to form razor-sharp blades around her and creating a series of floating shields to accompany each blade.
The divinity blade was met with the combined defence of the wind blades and earth shields upon its descent, their collision releasing a shockwave that knocked both combatants away.
This bought Rachel the few seconds she needed to unleash the spell she had planned to do earlier.
Earth magic in her right hand and fire magic in her left. She clasped both hands together and chanted a spell under her breath, pushing forth her right palm to unleash a beam of searing hot molten rock that beelined straight towards Arthur.
"You play with fire too?"
Arthur’s question and the grin he had on his face when he asked it unnerved Rachel, but before she could even take any action in reply, her whole body screamed ’danger’.
Obeying her instincts, she cancelled her molten rock beam and jumped to the side, barely avoiding the pillar of spiralling flames that erupted on the ground where she stood half a second ago.
"Tsk!"
Even so, her elbow was still burned by the flames, with the pain shooting straight to her brain and making her body flinch reflexively.
Arthur naturally didn’t just stand back and watch her, kicking off the ground and dashing towards her with ’full force’, all whilst unleashing slashes of divinity towards her.
She moved her left good arm and weaved a magic circle, sending projectiles erupting to block his slashes, but Arthur used gravity magic to send them off course the moment they got into range of him.
Rachel used wind magic to throw her body backwards, pulling her out of Arthur’s melee range as she moved her left hand over her injured elbow.
A bright light shone from within the gaps of her fingers and when she removed her left hand her right hand looked good as new.
With that right hand, she conjured a spell and sent a volley of projectiles towards Arthur from his blind spot, but the boy simply held out his free arm and created a gravity field that made them fall to the ground the moment they entered it.
He then reabsorbed the divinity that constituted his weapon back into his other arm and filled the arm with gravity-attributed magic power.
Arthur threw a punch to the ground, sending waves of shock radiating outward, accompanied by massive clouds of thick dust, dirt and debris that obscured Rachel’s vision.
Though she stood her ground against the shockwaves, she wasn’t fast enough at blowing away the dust and Arthur used this opening to close the distance and deliver a clean hit to her torso.
Rachel’s body was sent tumbling through the air, however, she flipped around mid-air and landed on the ground, letting everyone see that there was a cracked barrier of earth in front of her stomach.
Nevertheless, when they turned their attention back to where Arthur was, the boy had vanished once more, blitzing into Rachel’s side and delivering a wide slash towards her neck.
She tried moving away, but she was well within Arthur’s range already so his localized gravity field increased the pressure she felt and rooted her to the ground.
Arthur’s sword, which he reconstructed in an instant, cut through her wind barrier and stopped a few centimetres away from her neck, while the two of them locked gazes in the silence that followed.
The boy then heaved a soft sigh and pulled the blade back, before looking up at the sword of molten rock coated in swirling wind above his head.
"I see...so that’s why you were sending those rocks flying."
He nodded to himself as he spoke, his voice snapping the Second Lieutenant officiating the duel out of his daze.
"Time Up! Draw!"
The recruits around applauded both of them while the First Lieutenant scribbled some things in his notebook.
’So, I made them believe I can use Fire and Gravity magic. And they also believed that my gravity magic has a limited range of effects around me, gotta remember that so I don’t accidentally use something else.’
Arthur thought that to himself as he heard them call out the next set of twelve, returning to his seat where he and Rachel spectated the other matches while making small talk with each other.
"That gravity manipulation you just used...it was a ’technique’, wasn’t it?"
When Rachel asked him that question, Arthur was momentarily confused about what she was insinuating, however, when he remembered the level system of this world, it clicked.
"Indeed. Except for my weapon projection, everything else I used was just techniques."
Extinction Slash, Dragon Breath Rune, Strength Enhancement, Partial-Appraisal, Subspace, Energy Weapon Projection, Cataclysmic Divide.
Those were Arthur’s abilities that the system of Valmone had detected which fit the category of ’Skills’.
He used Energy Weapon Projection to generate the divinity sword he used, and everything else he used after were techniques that he could use simply because of how much he had comprehended the laws of the respective elements.
The boy did have a feeling that this ’Localized Gravitational Field’ he used would be categorized as a skill if he refined the technique a lot though.
"You also didn’t use a skill, didn’t you?"
Though he asked this, Arthur was sure the girl did not. He could sense skill activations, after all.
The only skill activations he sensed were those of the Lieutenants supervising, most likely appraisal-type skills.
"Mhmm. It’s just a duel.
No need to go all out, and no need to show all my cards."
Rachel spoke as she watched the Recruit 812 whom Arthur arm-wrestled with dominating his opponent with relative ease.
The battle was quite boring from Arthur’s POV, however, and he yawned lightly before suddenly raising a brow in light surprise.
"Need a quick trip to the white house."
"White House?"
"The toilet."
"..."
Rachel wanted to retort at Arthur’s words but when she recalled that the toilets were indeed in white buildings, she couldn’t help but go silent.
Not knowing her little dilemma, Arthur excused himself and moved over to where the outdoor restrooms were located, walking right past the buildings and to the space between them and the fence.
’No one in sight, good.’
With that thought, he held his hand up and drew upon the law of gravity’s power.
"I know that I’m quite the catch, but aren’t I a little too young for you, Miss?"
Right after he spoke, a black-clothed figure was pulled out from the shadow of the clock tower and flew above the roofs of the buildings in between them and right into Arthur’s open palm.
He grabbed onto their neck and slammed them on the wall of the Convenience building, tightening his hold and choking them as he asked.
"I’m short on time so I’m gonna need you to state your affiliation..."
Destruction energy seeped out of his hand and slowly, the red tendrils snaked their way towards the neck of the figure he was holding.
"...or die. Easy choice, right?"
