Bang!
A rock pillar rose from the ground and slamd into the ceiling. It was ant to turn a human into a stain on the roof, but it missed its original target.
The pillar took with it only a single arm that exploded into a shower of blood that spilled down on its owner.
There were four enemies being faced by Gio’s three party mbers. The four of them had originally split with two facing Shiro, but that changed after only a few monts. The enemies realized that Neriah was the strongest of the three just in ti to save their comrade from her blades.
The result was the loss of a single arm.
Bang!
She slamd forward with a massive battle axe drawn. When she was within so feet of her enemies, she swept it horizontally, supporting herself with a huge amount of power that made the atmosphere vibrate.
Boooom!
The axe slamd into the wall and made the whole room shake.
Neriah had no idea who these people were. They wore tan clothes and their faces didn’t look special in any way. They were quicker than the average person, but their power wasn’t anything surprising.
’Their Sequences, though...’
Boom! Boom! Boom!
As golden flas crossed her eyes, Neriah suddenly ducked down, avoiding a scythe made of energy that swept over her head.
Swoosh!
As she twisted herself, the scythe slashed again. She brought a spear up and swung it wildly into the air before her, pushing deeper in one direction when she finally heard a hint of a screech.
The holographic form of a reaper revealed itself in the air.
Boom!
Neriah speared it with a chunk of sharpened stone and slamd her foot down. The ground vibrated, sending signals back to her mind that showed her where everything and everyone was located.
The man and woman facing her were no longer together. The man was already missing an arm, so he must’ve been the one standing at a distance and observing her. The woman was circling around and looking for her blind spots.
The man was the one who controlled the reaper. Neriah didn’t know how it worked, but it had been tornting her from every angle, appearing and disappearing as it pleased.
The woman, on the other hand, controlled a dark purple energy that she used to empower the knives in her hands. Neriah didn’t want to know what would happen if they struck her.
She hadn’t allowed them to touch her yet, and she had no plans to let it happen. Her opponents were strong, but not to a worrying extent.
She thought back to her ti as a growing Sequencer.
"This is your first test, girl."
She’d been treated like nothing at that ti.
"Survive here and return to us. If you cannot do even that much, then you’re better off dying in the snow."
Those words were spoken to her when she was eight years old. She was now double that age. She would not bend or break easily.
Shiro and Serene were a bit different. They didn’t have the sa kind of training, but their performance wasn’t any worse.
They were only facing a single opponent each, giving them more freedom. Their battles were much slower than Neriah’s, and while she kept to herself, the two of them often crossed paths and helped each other.
Bang!
Shiro was much less hesitant than last ti. Previously, they’d been fighting against random enemies, but it was different this ti.
His golden flas filled the air as much as they possibly could without harming his teammates.
His enemy gritted his teeth and crossed his arms to walk through it. His body turned into steel, which kept him safe from the burning energy, but he still felt every ounce of the pain.
Boom!
He pushed his foot into the ground and barrelled forward. Shiro’s eyes widened as he hastily jumped into the air. The man passed under him, but he wasn’t blind. As he rushed by, he stretched his arm out and grabbed Shiro’s leg.
Bang!
In the next second, he’d been slamd into the ground.
"Keugh...!"
Shiro coughed as the wind was knocked out of his lungs. He rushed to roll to the side, barely dodging two fists that crushed the ground next to him into dust.
Voom!
Shiro shot a plu of flas into the man’s eyes to blind him. At the sa ti, he pressed his hands into the ground and activated all of his energy.
[Golden Burst]
It was a move inspired by Gio. Shiro couldn’t believe he’d never thought of it before.
All it did was make his body explode with flas, forcing anyone in his vicinity away. The mont he let his energy loose, it flew into the world with hostility towards everything. The golden light they produced burned the air itself and hardened the soft clay of the walls into a thick crust.
Shiro’s opponent was thrown backwards directly into a bubble that popped on impact, spreading purple gas into the air around him. The man was forced to breathe the poison into his lungs and cope with it. He wasn’t the only one.
They arrived as two n and two won who followed Raven. The two n were currently in bad positions. The woman Neriah was facing would soon find that close combat was the worst possible choice when it ca to fighting her.
As for the woman facing Serene...well, she experienced sothing strangely more tortuous than any of the others.
Bubbles filled the air in a multitude of colors. So of them exploded with poison, while so of them held volatile energy that exploded against her robes and ripped apart the skin beneath. Sotis, she’d run into bubbles that slowed her mind and body, while other tis she’d find herself hallucinating strange things for monts before returning to sanity.
Serene hadn’t ever used the real extent of her power in the outside world, but all of her comrades had seen it already.
Her Original Gene was [Bubble Creation], and she supported it with an alchemist’s imbuent Sequence that gave her access to a multitude of effects.
Serene’s enemy had no way of reaching her. Even as Serene stopped to help Shiro, the woman was stuck in a stew of negative status effects. Every ti one ran out, another started.
If she had close combat capabilities, it might’ve been easier for her to do sothing about it. However, she was also a ranged combatant, and in her current state, it was impossible for her to aim and fire her power in any aningful way.
The VNGRD mbers traveling with Raven this ti were handpicked by her to be people who would be forced to listen to her orders. They weren’t weak, but they weren’t strong either.
They had the benefit of being a part of VNGRD, which gave them access to much better Sequences and training than the average person, but what did it matter if they weren’t allowed to use any of their advantages?
Neriah, Shiro, and Serene had received a Giovanni Atmos crash course in strength. Sure, if it was a matter of prolonged battles or battles against craftier opponents, they would start to show their flaws imdiately.
But when the topic was performance in the first several minutes of battle, they’d already learned well what to do. They’d learned exactly how to push and corner their opponents so they could gain no advantages in the slightest.
Now that they’d beco more comfortable in the catacombs and with their situation as a whole, the results of their training were starting to show themselves.
Like Gio told Serene earlier, she was quickly realizing that the unknowns of the real world could almost always be related back to things she’d learned.
The three of them had been preparing for battles like this one for a long ti.
They were not going to disappoint Gio’s expectations at the most crucial point.
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