The leaner alien’s face remained still and emotionless at the challenge, but his body finally moved. His left arm rose, and trails of the rising tide of smoke behind him flew forward to condense above his figure.
The smoke didn’t only condense. It also morphed into more physical objects that Rodney was almost worried would turn into sothing similar to the alien-lover’s spell he had seen everywhere on the network.
Luckily, the alien evolved warrior had enough decency not to create spears. His trails of smoke took circular shapes, which pulsated as if they were beating hearts before releasing bullets made of raw True Chaos.
’Shield,’ Rodney thought as the rain of bullets crashed on him.
Nothing appeared, but none of the whooshing, pitch-black bullets hit Rodney. They all landed on sothing invisible before him, releasing their smoke and power on a non-existent surface that kept him safe.
The alien evolved warrior wasn’t dumb enough to limit his offensive to Rodney’s front. His fuming circles spread out, surrounding Rodney and raining fire on him from every direction. Yet, that invisible barrier kept blocking them.
That invasive, annihilating smoke spread all around Rodney, encircling and trapping him in pitch-black darkness. Still, his vertical pupils stared back at that abyss, relying on his new alien vision to study as many details as possible.
The Scarlet Eyes’ capabilities were still a mystery. Their True Chaos was indeed troubleso, but the allied front also had to account for each of their evolved troops’ fighting thods.
It would have been easier if those invaders all shared the sa fighting patterns, but Rodney had to crush those hopes himself. To that day, he had only seen four of those evolved warriors in action, and they all relied on different abilities on top of their troubleso elent.
Of the two scouts the alien-lover had fought, one relied more on imitating his opponents’ abilities, creating stronger replicas through the True Chaos.
anwhile, the other scout had a more primal battle style, resembling a clawed and fanged beast rather than an existence at the peak of the known power classification.
The two evolved warriors who had invaded Aynor followed that trend. One summoned and wielded swords, while the other seed to rely on his control of the pitch-black smoke to create all sorts of attacks.
The only similarities Rodney could spot involved the Scarlet Eyes’ sex and their ability to warp through vast patches of space. After all, both attacks had only involved what looked like males, and they could all rely on those ellipse-shaped teleports to a certain extent.
Nevertheless, those apparent similarities were closer to hypotheses than actual conclusions. Four evolved warriors were too small a poll to obtain clear answers and draw precise rules about that universal threat.
Also, one hypothesis was relatively useless. Even if the Scarlet Eyes only featured males, the allied front wouldn’t be able to do much with that information.
As for the other hypothesis, Rodney was more inclined to believe that the ellipse-shaped teleports ca from the True Chaos rather than the Scarlet Eyes’ individual skills. So might be better than others in that ability, but that would change little in the enemy’s profiling.
The barrage of black bullets was short-lived. The long-haired evolved warrior sensed its inability to hit its target and stopped wasting energy, retrieving the pulsating circles, making them rest above his figure.
Tongues of flickering smoke kept surrounding Rondey, but he softly exhaled when he felt he had seen enough, thinking about sothing and fueling that process with his modified mana to cast a spell.
The soft whisp of air Rodney had released turned into a gale that blew away the surrounding black smoke, freeing him from its encirclent. His spell also cleared a piece of the street, but his vertical eyes promptly went back to his alien opponent.
"Why circles?" Rodney asked, relying on the alien language he had gone out of his way to learn after seeing the footage with the two black scouts. "Wasn’t your species fond of ellipses?"
The long-haired alien remained impassible, but his following attack acted as a reply to Rodney’s question. The pulsating circles above his figure lted and fused into a long black line that opened as if imitating eyelids.
A large ellipse took shape above the evolved warrior, featuring nothing but distant, inscrutable darkness within. Still, glowing blackness soon approached that threshold from the other side, releasing a beam-like attack that dimd the surrounding light.
The beam was too fast to allow any aningful inspection. Rodney had to thank his mutated eyes for giving him the chance to notice and react to it.
However, Rodney didn’t summon his shield again nor deploy an evasive maneuver. He only had enough ti for a single thought, so he used that chance to expand his window.
’Overdrive,’ Rodney thought, adding mana to the idea he had trained and tested countless tis, succeeding in casting it before the beam could wash over his defenseless figure.
The world in Rodney’s reptilian eyes slowed down, almost coming to a halt. Except for his brain, his body matched that slow-motion, only allowing him to brainstorm at an unfathomable pace.
The beam was almost upon Rodney, slowly advancing toward his head. Its denser, bright blackness tried to erode his mana, depleting his reserves. It also added pressure on his ntal technique, making his brain burn. The scorching sensation was so intense that his head would release grey smoke if it could.
Nevertheless, Rodney pushed the pain aside and kept inspecting the attack. He couldn’t point his reptilian eyes at the beam in that state, but his peripheral vision was enough to study its fabric.
The beam was obviously stronger than the previous rain of bullets. It was a superior attack, but it shared features with the weakest version of the Scarlet Eyes’ True Chaos.
Besides, Rodney was half-convinced the beam and the bullets hadn’t suited his opponent’s inclinations.
’Break,’ Rodney thought when he felt his ntal limits approaching, and the world in his eyes resud flowing at a normal pace.
The dark but bright beam crashed on Rodney, only for its fabric to split and shatter, turning into a harmless black gale that blew over him before dispersing on the lted street.
Rodney reached for his nose when he felt sothing warm flowing down his nostrils. He wiped off the few drops of blood descending toward his upper lip, but didn’t forget to add another tactical challenge.
"You must have a deeper degree of control over the True Chaos," Rodney announced, still relying on the Nak’s language. "But your real abilities exist to create quasi-alive beings through it, don’t they?"
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