Elio found his attack options increasingly limited. Each attempt to reach Zahyla's neck was deflected, countered, or intercepted by perfectly positioned artromus.
His advantage in perception remained overwhelming, but the space to exploit it constantly shrank.
"Can you feel it too?" Zahyla asked, her voice mixing amusent and concentration while dodging another attack. "How the body rembers, how each cell awakens to its true potential… How we adapt."
A burst of combined magic forced Elio into an evasive maneuver, canceling his attack. Three artromus seized the opening, their claws tracing deadly arcs that required all his control to avoid.
"Fascinating how even at this limited level..." Zahyla interwove more elents in impossible patterns that Elio couldn't counter in ti, "true control finds its way."
The pressure on Elio increased. Each passing instant, Zahyla seed more comfortable, more fluid, more lethal.
Her attacks, though still unable to match his speed or precision, began closing the windows of opportunity.
The artromus moved like extensions of her will, each anticipating and complenting her movents with millitric precision. The space shrank as Zahyla's control over the battlefield expanded.
Finally, an artromus managed to cut Elio's side, stealing 320 resistance points.
The smile began growing on Zahyla's lips as Elio was forced into a defensive position. The wound in her neck, though still bleeding, was closing and no longer seed to concern her.
"It's only a matter of ti," she declared, her elents dancing in increasingly complex patterns. "Your initial onslaught was impressive, but now..."
The phrase remained unfinished.
Elio's attack ca from an impossible angle, completely ignoring her exposed neck. The blade ignored the elental defenses in her upper body as if they didn't exist, opening a deep cut in her chest.
Zahyla's eyes widened in surprise. Before she could process what had happened, another cut found her abdon.
The realization hit her like lightning: Elio had never truly been trapped.
While she concentrated on protecting her neck, she had ignored dozens of other vulnerable points.
"Did you think," Elio's voice cut through her surprise, "that I needed to attack the sa point when I only need 15 more hits?"
Each cut found a new weak point, each attack exploited a different opening. The precision of his strikes hadn't diminished at all; he had simply changed to a larger target.
The artromus tried to intervene, but the tactical advantage had evaporated.
Without the need to focus on a specific point, Elio's freedom of movent multiplied exponentially.
Attacks from all angles, targeting any part of the body... Elio even reached from behind while dodging a succession of attacks and cut Zahyla's back.
Zahyla's blood began flowing from multiple wounds, each as precise and devastating as the cuts in her neck. Her adaptation to level 10, which monts before had seed a decisive advantage, now revealed itself as an illusion.
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The smile had disappeared from her face, replaced by an expression of late understanding. She hadn't been turning the battle around. She had simply forced her opponent to stop underestimating her and change strategies.
And this new strategy was proving infinitely more dangerous than the previous one.
She only had 5 hits left before death.
♢♢♢♢
The chamber had beco an apocalyptic battlefield.
The remains of almost 80 artromus created a supernatural mist that floated as a silent reminder of the massacre.
Many were already simple transparent cores.
Only twenty survived, grouped protectively around a Zahyla who bled from multiple devastating wounds.
Elio moved in a deadly dance, his sword tracing perfect arcs while cutting through increasingly desperate defenses. The elents roared around him, each attack a perfectly orchestrated symphony of destruction.
Ten artromus fell in a brutal sequence.
The first didn't even see the blow that shattered its cores coming. The second and third attempted a coordinated defense that Elio cut through as if it were mist.
The next seven were eliminated in choreography so swift their bodies had barely begun to vanish when the last one fell, only managing to take another 320 points from him.
But at this rate...
Elio had already won.
Then, sothing changed again.
The remaining artromus retreated as a single entity. It wasn't cowardice; their movents were too coordinated, too precise.
Zahyla had ordered them to retreat.
The smile that ford on Elio's face contained a deadly promise as he understood Zahyla's intention.
They wouldn't escape; it was ti to reveal all his cards.
Power began accumulating around him, the air itself vibrating with an intensity that made even Zahyla step back. Ten different elents began resonating in perfect harmony: hydrogen, helium, lithium, nickel, iron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, neon.
Summon Amplification Rune (Sacred Sequence) H 2He 3Li* 4Ni* 5Fe* 6C* 7N* 8O* 9F* 10Ne* Mana
The last formula the god had left to increase power ca to life for the first ti.
Emberg, his winged salamander, answered the call. Its form grew, wrapped in an aureole of pure power as the ten elents fused with its being. Fire and wind swirled around Elio, creating a whirlwind of devastating energy.
"No..." whispered Zahyla, recognizing too late what was happening.
Elio launched forward with a speed that defied comprehension. The first artromus in his path didn't even have ti to register its death. The second couldn't blink before its cores were shattered.
Zahyla interposed her magic in a desperate attempt, but Elio moved like smoke between her defenses. A third artromus fell, then a fourth, each death another demonstration of impossible speed and precision.
The survivors tried to disperse, seeking the chamber's exit.
It was useless.
The elental combination had taken Elio's speed to levels that made their escape attempts look like slow-motion movents.
Zahyla shouted orders in their mind, trying to coordinate the escape of at least one, but Elio was unstoppable. Where she blocked, he was already gone.
Five artromus had fallen in a sequence so fluid it seed like a single continuous movent. Zahyla reached the survivors, desperately trying to protect them, but it was like trying to catch wind with bare hands.
The elental whirlwind around Elio intensified.
Four more fell before Zahyla could blink. Each death a perfect note in the symphony of devastation Elio had unleashed.
Only one remained.
Zahyla saw her opportunity when Elio launched toward the last survivor. Her magic concentrated in a single point, all her focus channeled into a devastating attack. It was a desperate move, sacrificing defense for total offensive power.
The impact found Elio's back with brutal force. Eight hundred and eighty resistance points disappeared in an instant of pure agony, his body shooting toward the chamber wall.
But even as he flew through the air, he threw his sword.
The blade cut through the air toward the last artromus. Zahyla interposed herself, her elental barrier ready to deflect the blow...
And then the sword changed direction.
Elio's magnetic control curved the weapon's trajectory in an impossible arc. The blade dodged Zahyla's defense as if it had been planned from the beginning, finding the last artromus's cores with surgical precision.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Elio rose slowly, his body protesting the punishnt received. The elental whirlwind around him began to intensify.
In the chamber's center, Zahyla remained floating, alone for the first ti since the battle began. Blood flowed from her multiple wounds, each a testimony to her opponent's lethal precision.
The remains of her army floated like mist around her, a silent reminder of what she had lost.
"So," she said, her voice mixing exhaustion and what might have been respect, "this is how it ends."
In her hands, she held Elio's elental sword.
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