Chapter 299 – Opening Ceremony [6]
"Angel is a Palatine," Aminata said, her hair tied tightly back, the mole beneath her eye setting her sharply apart from her twin sister, "he’s not just anyone."
"But do you really think he can win against all six of us? In three strikes? Fine, a bined attack counts as one, but still...highly unlikely." One of them said, a short man with dark skin, wearing a necklace made of bones.
"I don’t know about you," Awa said, standing beside her sister, "but Angel doesn’t strike me as someone clueless or arrogant. After Sky’s defeat, the fact he still dared to do this means he genuinely believes he can pull it off."
"Anyone can believe they’ll bee Palatine." The man replied, "Doesn’t mean they actually will."
Awa didn’t respond to him. Instead, she turned toward a girl with sweet features, fair white skin, golden hair, and green eyes, methodically cleaning her zither.
"What do you think, Musician?"
"I think...we’ve talked enough." She lifted her head, looking past the twins toward the island where Team Angel stood, "They’re about to attack."
All six of them snapped their heads toward the island and saw Cassius seated in a chair in front of their crystal, white fire flickering before him, motionless.
His four panions, however, were readying themselves.
"Tactic?" Natasha muttered.
"Defense." Awa said, "That’s the most reasonable call here. We just need to survive three attacks from them. Only three, and we win outright. So..."
She looked at each of them, "...do whatever it takes to protect the crystal. Forget offense entirely unless it’s a counter. Except in special situations."
The second-years exchanged glances, then nodded, resolute.
At that exact moment, Team Angel launched their attack.
"Stay back for now, William." Cassius ordered, glancing at the three women, "Ladies first, isn’t that right?"
No words were wasted.
Laya crouched, the muscles in her legs coiling and tensing, veins bulging visibly, before she exploded forward, launching herself into the air.
Given their battlefield’s terrain, she was severely limited — no plants, no trees. But that wasn’t nearly enough to stop her.
She pulled five seeds from her storage ring and activated her Second Skill: Growth, causing four of them to sprout at an abnormally rapid rate.
Within seconds, vines slithered out of two seeds, green and black, wrapping around her body before winding around her twin axes.
Tree roots sprouted from the others too, but she snapped them apart, transforming the fragments into splinters she flung down toward the opposing team’s island.
At the same time, she crushed the fifth seed and smeared its remains along the edges of her axes.
Meanwhile, the roots tore through the air with howling force, closing in on the second-year students within seconds.
The short, dark-skinned man reacted immediately. He stepped forward, positioning himself in front of his team, short sword drawn.
He didn’t wait for the attack to reach them. He leapt lightly, and just then Awa and Aminata snapped their fingers, summoning a pact pillar of frost that erupted from the ground, launching him straight into the ining barrage.
His grip on his sword tightened. He drew his arm back and swung, dozens of strikes lashing out in every direction, his movements so blindingly fast his hands blurred pletely.
He shredded every last splinter of wood with nothing but pure skill.
But then Laya was on him.
She raised her twin axes overhead, then, with a burst of strength and speed that shook the very air around her, brought them down on the man.
His expression didn’t waver. He met the strike head-on with his short sword, grinning widely.
But just before impact, he murmured under his breath:
"Second Skill: Full Counter."
Laya’s eyes widened the instant the attack landed, and she felt every ounce of strength she’d poured into her swing e flying back at her, doubled.
Her body shook violently, insides rattling, a groan tearing from her lips as blood gushed out.
On the ground, Awa manipulated frost, weaving a tight rope around the man and yanking him back toward their island before he could fall.
Simultaneously, Aminata unleashed her First Skill, Ice Meteor, sending dozens of ice meteors raining down directly on Laya.
But before the short man could reach the island, Laya hurled one of her axes at him.
He ducked left, dodging just enough to take only a cut across his cheek, before landing safely on the island.
Musician joined Aminata’s assault, activating her own First Skill.
However, a crimson portal materialized just behind Laya, chains bursting forth to form a protective barrier in front of her.
Then another portal opened above, the chains catching Laya and hauling her back toward Team Angel’s island.
Aminata’s attack missed its mark entirely, crashing harmlessly into the ground.
No one needed to say it, this was Team Angel’s first attack. Two remained.
None of them looked worried, though.
While Laya retreated to her island, Meadow and Diaila used the distraction her stunt provided to slip swiftly onto the second-years’ island, traveling via Cassius’s chain portals, which formed a bridge of crimson links connecting the two islands.
Spotting the intrusion, Aminata and Awa immediately rushed toward their crystal. bining their power, they encased it in a dome of frost.
As if that weren’t enough, Natasha channeled her metal affinity to raise two additional walls of metal around it.
Meanwhile, Musician deployed her Skill, playing a song of madness aimed at unraveling the minds of both Meadow and Diaila.
The short, dark-skinned man was already sprinting toward the two women, intent on finishing them off.
Everything unfolded with perfect coordination, Awa pounding the pressure by raining down icicle shards on Meadow and Diaila.
And there was a sixth member, a bulky, brawny man wielding a massive club, already swinging it toward the two women, essence wrapped so thick around the weapon the whole island seemed to tremble.
The bined weight of these attacks, and the essence being thrown around, bore down heavily on both Meadow’s and Diaila’s minds and bodies...Diaila especially.
She was struggling just to stay upright, her head feeling as though it might split apart under the assaulting sound.
Still, they had roles to play. And play them they did, despite everything.
Meadow moved first, activating her Third Skill, Sweet Lie, using a Tier 5 artifact to enhance both her mind and her essence, targeting everyone present.
If her First Skill let her sense who was lying in her presence, then her Third Skill let her provoke others into lying while under it.
At the same moment, Diaila activated her own First Skill, Rule Under the Law, declaring her rule aloud:
"Rule:" she called out, loud enough for everyone to hear, "no one lies in my presence!"
A hum of power rippled through the air, acpanied by the faint rattle of chains.
The short, dark-skinned man and the burly man reached them just then, striking — but a crimson portal opened directly behind them, chains pouring out in a cascade, wrapping around them, tightening with every attempted movement.
That was when Meadow posed her question, using her Second Skill, The Right of an Answer.
"Do you trust every person standing beside you right now?"
The world seemed to pause at the question. Every face twisted, each of them feeling pelled to respond, despite not wanting to.
They glanced at one another, and knew, without question, the truth.
They didn’t trust each other. They’d always known this, deep down, and had long since learned to accept it, occasionally even exploiting it themselves.
But in that moment of desperate cohesion, fighting for the win, they reasoned that a lie holding them steady and united would serve them better than a truth that might unravel everything.
Without even pausing to consider the consequences, the burly man answered first:
"I trust them!"
The short man hesitated, his heart urging him toward honesty, while his mind, louder and more insistent, screamed at him to lie.
He lied.
"I...trust my rades."
Natasha, watching this, let out a disbelieving sigh. The longer she resisted answering, the harder a headache began pounding against her skull.
She tried to reason her way toward the truth, but every "why" she considered felt as though it would carry devastating consequences.
Lying felt easier. So she lied:
"I do."
Aminata and Awa followed suit, unable to withstand the headache any longer. Musician cracked too, struggling against the dissonance splitting her mind from her heart — a lethal state for a musician, one that could weaken her permanently.
They all cursed under their breath, mouths opening, hearts pounding, and answered together:
"We trust each other."
Meadow’s sweat-drenched face broke into a trembling smile, "How sweet." She whispered, and Diaila’s eyes blazed with an intense, blinding golden light.
She spoke then, her voice no longer entirely her own:
"The Rule has been broken. The Law has been defied. Punishment falls within my right to deliver, as the Scion born of Law!" Diaila said, and weighing the gravity of their lies against the circumstances, she delivered her judgment, "The essence of the guilty is sealed for ten seconds!"
The second-years’ eyes dilated in shock. In an instant, the frost and metal walls guarding the crystal crumbled away.
Musician’s melody of madness died out.
All of them felt a profound weakness dragging them toward the ground.
That was the second attack from the first-years.
And the third came immediately, with no time to recover.
It began with Laya, standing beside Cassius, drawing on her essence and activating her Second Skill, Growth, once more.
Before the results of her Skill even manifested, Cassius wrapped his crimson chains harmlessly around William’s body and hurled him high above the opposing island.
That was when Laya’s attack took shape.
Blood-red vines erupted from the wound she’d inflicted earlier on the short black man’s cheek, vines that lashed out and wrapped around the legs of every second-year student present, pinning them to the ground.
The man shrieked in disgust and horror as thorny, blood-red vines sprouted through the flesh of his cheek and pushed their way out.
Only 5 seconds remained for Diaila’s Skill.
But William was already positioned above the second-years’ island, eyes locked on the crystal. He raised his right hand and closed his fist around the empty air.
Power surged and coalesced, acpanied by a severing essence so sharp and piercing that a chill ran down the spine of everyone on the island.
The clouds around him dissolved simply from that motion alone.
William then gripped his Severing Sword — invisible to everyone but himself — raised it overhead, and,
"Second Skill..." his eyes flared, his pupils reshaping into the outline of a blade. Behind him, the illusion of a sword materialized, flickering, unstable.
Only one second left.
"...The Blade Itself."
He brought it down.
Diaila’s power ran out at that exact moment, but before the second-years could regroup, the vines around their legs burst into sharp thorns, driving deep into their flesh, the sudden pain distracting them just long enough.
That gave William’s attack the opening it needed to reach the island. The force was so overwhelming, so piercing, that both the crystal and the entire island were cleanly cut in two.
That was Team Angel’s third and final attack.
DING! DING! DING!
—End of Chapter 299—
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