Triiffic-Soul: Can I Be In Control?

Chapter 219 – Conflict in Motion

Anlesa felt energy burn through their body. After the success of Eva’s potion, crafted from infusing the essence of the Redux Crystal into a liquid and the trial run they performed when they operated as Rose to search the royal manor. Eva had improved her concoction. The crystal itself wasn’t enough to strengthen Anlesa when they simply held it, but having it on their person did improve their healing abilities, so Eva had developed methods to extract the energy and mix it into potions that would increase their power.

Version Four of her Redux Potion was to be taken in a much smaller portion than the previous versions, and the power was weaker than Version Three, but Eva found this version far more stable. A big issue Eva found with her last attempt was that the effect duration was short, couldn’t be extended, and the power granted varied.

This newest version lowered the variance and only had a slightly longer duration, but the biggest difference was the ability to take follow up potions. This new version could be taken up to four times in succession without any decrease in the potion’s effects. This meant Syrus could use her Enhanced Blood Attribute state for longer combat and could pace the potion consumption for lulls in a fight.

The downside of actually needing to consume additional potions meant there was a risk of the bottles breaking, and they couldn’t take more than four, as their body had a bad reaction the last time they tried the fifth potion, and Syrus explained it was almost as if the blood within their body began to slow down. There was also one more issue: the more they used the enhanced power, the quicker the energy drained.

[The second round of the company has arrived.] (Syrus)

[Wonderful.] Luna stared at the bastards who had been ruining their walks for ages at this point. [A final nail in the coffin.]

[...I don’t see the man we met in the hallway yet.] (Eva)

[He will show up if he wants to.] (Syrus)

Rose continued to walk towards the building with complete confidence, as if the fights earlier meant nothing to her. Many guards who had watched what happened to the first wave were scared by the violent display. They saw people on the ground with broken limbs or just dead. Some convinced themselves that the woman was beginning to strain herself, as she must have used a good portion of her mana to perform those feats.

Anlesa, on the other hand, was mostly fine. She did use a bit of mana to enhance and create more Moonlight shielding around her for when the explosion happened, but all the Blood strengthening Syrus was doing was using negligible mana.

The fighting continued, and Syrus continued with her almost lethal blows. Each attack carried so much power that no one stayed standing.

The masked crew decided to start helping, pulling out their weapons, and they began shooting from the building. Syrus pulled their coat to block the bolts. The coat was coated with Moonlight, which Luna hardened when attacks came.

After receiving some messages, a few of the individuals jumped down to engage in the close-range combat. They were called the ‘special ops’ by other members of the guard, from what Syrus could hear, but from the shock and confusion from the normal guards, many seemed to have no clue about the existence of these people. The special ops was just a label thrown onto them so they could appear in this public conflict.

Deflecting the weapons, they noticed the familiar poison that coated the boats and blades. “Trying this again…” Rose looked down coldly. “I have faced your kind before, and last time the performance at least had points to critique, but this…” Rose grabbed an arm and completely snapped it. “Is so pathetic it doesn’t even warrant criticism."

Syrus flung the woman onto the ground, and the poisoned blade stabbed into the arm of another one of the assassins. The poison was as quick as expected, and the friendly stab resulted in a quick death.

[That poison is sure frightening.] Syrus let out a pained laugh. She had faced numerous poisons in combat before, but none killed people this quickly. It was abnormal and, dare she say, actually monstrous. The speed and lethality were absurd and honestly scared her.

[If we get our way, then there will be no trace of this poison in this country again.] (Luna)

[Ideally.] (Syrus)

Fighting against the group, Rose continued her walk to the parliament’s entrance. Despite the men trying to defeat her, her progress wasn’t interrupted.

[See Eva, he has revealed himself.] Syrus's eyes pointed for a moment at the newest person to have joined the combat.

There was the guard who stood on top of the building, who was the same familiar face who attacked them during their spying fun.

The guard looked down almost solemnly. Syrus could tell he was thinking she was an idiot. Her instincts could tell it from his annoying expression.

The man said, “I’m surprised you revealed yourself.”

“Oh, why is that?” Syrus deflected the throwing knives and leapt over a guard's head before kicking the guard to the ground.

“You have given us plenty of time to set up and for your supposed target to escape.”

They figured from their prior trip that there were secret passages in the parliament building, so by that logic, Abea's escape seemed plenty possible. If he did, then they just needed to chase him down, but they figured he hadn’t run away yet. He hadn’t lost after all. Escaping now meant losing everything as evidence existed, and if he hid instead of trying to counter the slander, then people would assume his guilt.

Luna figured that would happen since Mary appeared willing to end this man’s career by revealing herself, and if Mary was mentioned in the paper, then Abea also knew she would be revealing herself to the public soon.

Of course, they could be mistaken, and Abea did run away, but Syrus said to the other two if that happened, ‘we just need to just chase the rat’.

“You know, the fact that you are saying that aloud doesn’t really help your story of Abea leaving.” Syrus laughed. “And you're all here to fight me? Child, how is that bad for me? I get the opportunity to kill you all.”

“Your friend might have broken in before, but that won’t happen again.” The man kept his air of confidence, which was annoying Anlesa. His confidence seemed greatly misplaced. “You are only human. No man or woman can fight against a country.”

Syrus smirked, and she increased her violent performance by rapidly crashing three heads in quick succession.

“Someone earlier called me a Monster.”

The phantom appearance of a full moon appeared behind Rose’s back.

“So who can really say?”

Luna focused her magic into a new spell. The thin circle of Moonlight behind their back served two main purposes. One, it basically acted as a backshield. Not too important compared to the other one, but it was a benefit. The second use was to act as a platform to accelerate the casting of Moonlight spells. Similar to how Syrus used her weapons to channel her Fire Attribute through, the moon projection was created to follow a similar purpose.

[I am ready to commence the long-range attacks.] (Luna)

[Good, fire at the ready or my command.] (Syrus)

Luna was a little disappointed with the end result. The effectiveness was incomparable to what Syrus could perform, and the spells Luna could manifest with the quick cast time were only simpler spells. So her Moonlight Star Prism was impossible to create at faster speeds. Syrus had felt the disappointment when Luna first created the technique and almost wanted to laugh. If Luna had actually managed to create an ability that matched her fire sword in mana effectiveness, then she would stop making fun of her little sister.

[Syrus, can you hear anything from inside the building?] Luna deflected a bolt with the coat of Moonlight.

[Barely, I am trying to sort out some of the noise, but I can’t really tell, and focusing on my hearing kind of hurts when there are explosions going off.] (Syrus)

Upon reaching the entrance of the building, Syrus could tell the inside of the place was a mess. A bunch of guards inside were ready and scared, and the wait for reinforcements was slow and painful. Despite the time Anlesa had given them to prepare–which bolstered the enemies' confidence–they weren’t able to actually bring everyone to defend.

Bringing a whole country's military power to defend against a potential attack wasn’t possible. Most guards lived in their own homes so contacting them would have to wait until they were on duty; taking people away from the gate would create all kinds of trouble; and moving the entire military personnel in a morning was impossible since there was no process for that to happen.

Anlesa was only fighting the people Abea could get his hands on, which was a fair number of people. Currently, there were forty-eight people on the ground with something broken, and a number of those people weren’t pushovers. The continent didn’t understand the absurdity that was the Crimson Lion that the continent to the southeast had years to experience.

Drinking another Redux potion caused the moon to be dyed red as the energies within Anlesa mixed as the external energy entered Anlesa’s body. For the people she was fighting, it felt like an ominous sign of what was to come.