Chapter 168: Striking Back (2)
"Did you hear? Someone said that a Lesser Angel passed the Blood Rite; can you believe it?"
"Huh...? It’s already impossible enough to pass the second stage, as every Angel was granted a weapon, but he actually passed the final stage? Must be an over-exaggeration. It must be an Angel with only two Divine Locks who was basically a Lesser Angel."
"No, I’m serious! His name is Kai from class 1-A, and he’s an actual Lesser Angel!"
"Wow... Did he become a boy-toy for a High Angel or something?"
"Right? I was thinking the same thing."
"How did he pass? He only has one Divine Lock, and to pass, one would need at least two."
"That’s the weird part; I think his only Divine Lock is a mutated one—so it can contain more mana than normal. I’m not quite sure."
Barbara heard about the Lesser Angel the first time in her class—from two students bantering a few seats away. She was also surprised, as Angels and High Angels were bestowed immense advantages by the academy.
A Lesser Angel beating an Angel is already hard enough.
Beating an Angel with an advantage would be harder, so this came as a surprise.
Regardless, the surprise was only fleeting.
’He will die soon enough,’ Barbara crossed her arms, reclined on her seat, and closed her eyes.
At that point, she was convinced that the next time she heard about the Lesser Angel, if there was a next time, would be about his death. The academy and its rules are cruel, and it’s harder for a Lesser Angel to survive within it.
But she was wrong.
"For Zeus’ sake! That Lesser Angel actually claimed all three titles from the Blood Rite!"
"What the fuck?! All three?!"
"Yes! I heard a few students from the Ichor Legions were sent by Chester to steal his vials."
"Nah... That can’t be right."
Barbara stood in front of the door to a training chamber, wiping the beads of sweat on her forehead when she heard the passing banter. She was about to take her Crystalline Teardrop of Argus, two vials of them, and she overheard this.
A frown creased on her forehead.
"All three titles? That’s impossible. They’re talking rubbish," She shook her head.
Among the three titles, there are the Prime Exemplar—and the Blooded Vanguard. Both titles cannot be claimed through luck, so there’s no way the Lesser Angel could claim all three titles. It simply doesn’t make sense.
She placed those thoughts at the back of her mind.
No use thinking about rubbish.
But she started to feel something was wrong soon enough.
"Chester was the one who took down the Star Beast, but he’s had help from Matilda, Bree, and the Lesser Angel..."
"The Lesser Angel? What can he even do?"
"Don’t... Talk about him like that."
"Huh? What are you saying? Are you actually scared of the Lesser Angel?"
"Earlier, he challenged Chester to a duel. I don’t think he’s someone normal."
Barbara overheard her group members talking about the Lesser Angel again in the hive. She was busy protecting her family that she hadn’t had the time to help fight the Star Beast— To think the Lesser Angel helped was astonishing.
But she was even more surprised that the Lesser Angel actually challenged Chester to a duel.
Chester is someone equal to her.
It would’ve been suicide for the Lesser Angel to challenge Chester, but he did.
And when she heard the creation of the sixth group, the Ambrosia Pact, which was led by the Lesser Angel with Bree as one of its members, Barbara’s world shattered. Anger rose from the deepest part of her as the Lesser Angel was going too far.
So, when she saw the Lesser Angel inside her territory, she was ecstatic.
However, deep inside, she approached this battle with mixed feelings.
On one side, she was extremely confident in her own strength. No way for a Lesser Angel to harm her. She had her pet, the Vambraces of Linka, and also her superior strength. It was clear that she was the stronger force. And yet, on the other side, something about this Lesser Angel gnawed at her.
He wasn’t simple.
Hearing him constantly in passing made her subconsciously wary of him.
But mouth-to-mouth word tends to be exaggerated.
Barbara fervently believed that there was nothing to fear. But when her eyes watched her steel vambrace shattered into pieces—that belief disappeared from her mind completely. What she believed to be an exaggerated rumour was true; the Lesser Angel was not simple.
Not simple at all.
’His strength is abnormal!’
Barbara blinked hard, snapping her mind clear of the initial shock.
Her teeth ground together.
No more; it’s enough of her underestimating the Lesser Angel. He had demanded her strength without holding back, and she would give it. Seeing him with Bree made her angry—but she was going to let it go after punching him once.
But since it came to this, she decided to finish him for good.
No grey-masked Angels or the academy to stop them here. She could kill him.
Above her basilic vein, two fang-shaped symbols blazed pale brown. She kicked in retaliation; her boot slammed into Kai’s chest and pushed him away to buy a heartbeat of space, then she somersaulted backward.
"Hunt Trophies!" Barbara chanted, activating her imprint.
Before her feet touched the ground, twin streams of mana shot from the glowing symbols.
Each struck the stone on either side of her.
In an instant, they swelled, morphed into a shape, and solidified. A massive bear erupted from the left; twice the size of the biggest bear on the surface. On the right, a serpent uncoiled, long and thick as a column, with a scorpion tail arcing overhead with a barb.
Just these two beasts made entirely of mana alone would make any Angel stop.
Hesitant to approach, as each one has the power beyond a normal Awakened Monster.
In fact, they were close in strength to Barbara.
But not Kai. He didn’t stop.
Instead, his abyssal eyes flickered with an even more intense murderous intent as he pointed his scimitar at Barbara and licked his lips. The sight of Barbara finally fighting back—with all her seemed to ignite something dark and eager within him.
"Foul Demon!" His voice dripped with hatred—shredding the air between them. Beneath him, the stone floor sank as the Inner Strength of Stone took hold; sinking him deeper, anchoring him like a mountain settling into the earth. "Now you die!"
Kai’s muscles bulged before he dashed with explosive speed.
Beside him, Perion also surged forward—a golem of living shadow.
Perion should have been heavy, slow, and earth-shaking. But he was none of that. He glided across the stone in utter silence, and was able to match Kai’s pace perfectly. And soon, the two hit Barbara and her summons together.
It was the mana serpent that lunged first; fangs aimed at Kai’s face.
Swiftly, Perion caught its head with one hand and wrenched it aside, away from Kai’s path.
The mana serpent’s body whipped almost instantly and coiled around Perion’s arm, while the rest lashed around his neck—binding him in tight, crushing loops. And before he could even attempt to struggle, the mana bear barreled into him.
Its claws raked across his torso in a blue of savage strokes, gouging deep, before the full weight of the beast smashed him flat.
All three giants crashed aside and wrestled, rolling across the stone.
Despite Perion’s superior physique, two-against-one is a bad matchup. But it was still not a problem. He dissolved suddenly; his body unravelled into smoke and shadow as the serpent’s coils snapped shut on empty air.
He reformed beside the bear, already mid-swing.
Crack—!
Brutally, his flat rock fist cratered the mana bear’s jaw with a crack that echoed across the area.
The mana bear’s skull snapped sideways as it dropped unconscious.
Perion then stomped down on the serpent’s body before it could recoil, pinning it flat against the stone. His weight was immense, like a small hill, and under it the mana serpent couldn’t do anything but hiss and try to bite Perion’s leg.
But his rock skin is stronger than the mana serpent’s fangs.
It couldn’t do anything under the weight.
Besides this clash of giants, Kai and Barbara met.
Her left vambrace was shattered, which should make it harder for her t o defend herself from the flurry of attacks coming her way. But her speed compensated. She slipped through each slash like water through fingers, ducked and weaved with an eerie prescience; her body read the arc of the blade before the steel even finished its path.
Seeing an opening, Barbara dropped low under a heavy horizontal swing.
And then she exploded upward; shin scything in a perfect roundhouse kick that buried itself in Kai’s liver. The impact was sickening. Despite the hatred, his body seized. Even in the state he was in, even with the Pyre Overload, he still stumbled in pain.
A direct hit to that spot shut down the body regardless of madness.
Kai’s breath was caught in his throat as he choked.
It was a reaction that crossed a grin on Barbara’s face, but she celebrated too early.
Out of nowhere, Kai’s hand clamped around her toned thigh. Dark mana shot from his palm into her flesh, bypassing muscle and bone, and raced up her spine. It went straight to her mind, and when it did, the grin on her face died.
Barbara’s eyelids stuttered, ’What...? What is this?’
She was suddenly struck by a wave of forced sleepiness that crashed over her consciousness.
A drowsy hand that tugged her mind, attempting to pull her into the dreamland.
Gritting her teeth, she freed her leg with a twist and spun her body, landing a rough spinning back kick into Kai’s liver for the second time. It was a wobbly kick, but it did the job as it sent Kai flying away.
Barbara shook her head hard, trying to push away the sleepiness.
But she wasn’t given any time.
Kai never touched the ground. Instead, he landed sideways against Perion’s massive arm—a living platform braced and waiting. Perion swung with everything he had, and Kai launched from it like an arrow from a war bow, hurtling toward Barbara at a speed far beyond anything he’d shown before.
He swung his scimitar hard.
And the tip of the blade sliced through the mask and cut Barbara’s cheek.
She tilted her head at the last second, avoiding the fatal blow.
Not too far away, Bree stared at the fight with rounded eyes. She couldn’t take her gaze away from it. But when she saw the blood arcing through the air, drawn from Barbara’s cheek, she blinked and snapped out of her daze.
’I need to stop them!’
