Anthony and Aurelia's battle raged on, their clash relentless.
Anthony, however, made no attempt to strike.
Instead, he observed her every movent with unwavering focus.
Her steps, the subtle contractions of her muscles, the fluidity of her strikes, and the precision of her retractions, each motion was analyzed, dissected.
He didn't have to do this, but he wanted to play along for a while.
Aurelia's spear trembled with intense vibration as mana surged from her body, flowing into the weapon with relentless force.
Her balance shifted seamlessly as she unleashed another devastating strike.
[Aurelia Spear Technique: Combination Order: Crimson Night Stab]
Aurelia called forth dark blood from the earth, shaping it into an elongated shadow spear.
With a swift thrust, she drove it forward, imbued with a fusion of cursed blood and dark energy that drained life force and sapped vitality from her target.
As the attack neared Anthony, he stood motionless, watching it approach in slow motion.
He couldn't help but marvel at the finesse of her combination technique.
Aurelia's talent and years of hard work had forged such a technique, a seamless blend of the Blood and Darkness elents.
She was the first of her kind to achieve this remarkable feat.
No vampire had ever thought of achieving this, yet she had done it entirely on her own.
Blood wasn't an elent; it was an ability exclusive to the vampire race.
Though occasionally, individuals were born with the innate talent to manipulate blood, they ultimately paled in comparison to vampires, the true rulers of blood.
This enhanced her combat strength, making her attacks far more devastating.
Anthony's All-Seeing Eyes granted him a ridiculous set of abilities, allowing him to see exactly how she had achieved this.
But even as he marveled at the attack, he knew he still had to make a move.
His hand rose, his katana held low, as mana surged through him.
Anthony prepared his counter to Aurelia's strike.
The water elent ca to life as he willed it into his katana, rging seamlessly with the aura that enveloped the blade.
[Endless Technique: Katana Series: Moonlit Tidal Surge]
A graceful yet devastating vertical strike unleashed a beam of water, shaped like a crescent moon, swiftly cutting through the air.
The energy mirrored the nonexistent moonlight as it sliced through Aurelia's attack with pinpoint precision, creating an ethereal, shimring arc of water.
Destruction followed as Anthony effortlessly matched her power, his response flawless and without hesitation.
Vines and trees were instantly hurled backward as chaos swept through everything in its path.
The soggy ground trembled beneath their force, and the swamp's waters surged, growing even more turbulent as additional waves crashed into the mix.
Aurelia remained motionless, her eyes gleaming through the chaos as she fixed her gaze on her enemy.
Her muscles coiled, readying her for the next move in their battle.
But before she could even take a step, her instincts erupted, warning her to move, and she froze, caught in the sharp urgency of the mont.
She imdiately attempted to shift her body, her instincts screaming for her to dodge, but the attack ca too swiftly.
The enemy, his movents a blur, 'seed' to surpass her own speed.
In the blink of an eye, his hand pierced through her body from behind, erging at the front in a sickening motion.
Aurelia's blood poured relentlessly, spilling from her body like a shattered dam.
Her shock was evident, eyes wide with disbelief.
As she looked down, her heart was gripped tightly in the enemy's hand, its rhythmic pounding slowing with each passing mont.
She turned, her vision clouded by the shock of her own blood loss, and her gaze locked onto the figure who had dared to interrupt her fight.
A being stood before her, its presence as unnerving as it was captivating.
Fox-like ears twitched atop its head, while a long, elegant tail swayed with dangerous intent.
Claws glimred with a deadly sheen, each one seeming to shimr with an unspoken power.
It was Rylis.
He stood behind Aurelia, a wide grin spread across his face, her heart firmly gripped in his hand.
Rylis was a hunter, a predator whose instincts never missed a mont.
He pounced the instant his enemy's guard dropped, even if only for a fraction of a second.
His sharp claws glistened with the blood of his prey, and his very being radiated the chilling satisfaction of a perfect ambush.
Throughout the fight with the Dragon Champion, Kaelthar, Rylis's gaze remained unblinking, always scanning, always calculating.
Everyone around him was prey in his eyes, vulnerable, waiting to be struck down at the perfect mont.
As Kaelthar prepared his final attack, Rylis's instincts flared, sending a sharp, undeniable feedback.
One of his prey had dropped its guard.
His body moved before his mind could fully process, and in that instant, he found his target, Aurelia.
The rest of the world seed to pause, the air thick with the tension of his impending strike.
Rylis's affinity for the shadow elent granted him a unique and deadly ability.
Shadow Dive
This power allowed him to ld with any shadow, moving through it with absolute fluidity, his form vanishing and reappearing in an instant as long as his senses could reach.
The mont Aurelia's guard faltered, Rylis vanished into the darkness, his body dissolving into the very shadows around them.
In the blink of an eye, he erged from Aurelia's shadow, his movents so swift and fluid that she had no chance to react.
Rylis's eyes locked with Anthony's, and for a fleeting mont, ti seed to stretch.
Anthony stood still, his gaze calm and unyielding, as though he had expected this turn of events all along.
There was no hint of surprise or alarm in his deanor, only a quiet, composed focus.
But in that mont, sothing shifted in Rylis.
It was a primal instinct, sothing deep within him that scread to avoid this human at all costs.
There was a weight to Anthony's gaze, sothing profound, sothing that made Rylis feel... insignificant, like a re shadow in comparison.
The hunter, who had never known fear, felt an unsettling chill run through him.
Rylis' instinct had never been wrong, not even once since the day he was born.
Yet, this ti, things felt different.
The battlefield was a bloodbath, and despite the chaos around him, this human, Anthony, was a force unlike any other.
How could he possibly avoid such a presence in the midst of this carnage?
As Rylis' thoughts raced, his instincts flared, sending a surge of urgency through him.
As Rylis tried to retract his hand from Aurelia's chest to vanish as his instincts had ordered, her hand shot out with lightning speed.
In an instant, she grasped his hand, the one that held her heart.
A smile spread across her face the mont she locked her grip on him.
Rylis' instincts flared with even more intensity.
Before Rylis could even react, Aurelia began to swell, and in the next mont, she exploded into pieces.
But instead of blood pouring forth, a deafening explosion erupted, consuming the entire swamp.
The land, the water, the trees, the vines, nothing was spared.
The blast devoured everything in its path, spreading across kiloters, leaving nothing but silence in its wake.
'Aurelia' had self-destructed in her final mont, just before losing consciousness.
A few kiloters away from the explosion, Rylis appeared unscathed.
As for how he had dodged, he had simply used another skill.
Phantom Form
This ability allowed him to phase through any physical attack.
He combined this skill with his Shadow Dive to escape uninjured.
As for Anthony, he didn't even move.
His Infinity stopped everything within a 10-ter radius from approaching him.
A few pieces of debris hung suspended in space, as if frozen in ti, this was the power of Infinity at work.
After a few seconds, the debris fell, returning to the remains of the now nonexistent swamp.
Anthony shook his head, turning his gaze in another direction.
"Do you plan to hide forever?"
The atmosphere grew heavy with silence for a few seconds before a figure materialized into existence.
It was Aurelia.
The real Aurelia.
The one Anthony had been battling all this ti had been nothing but a blood clone, a re creation she had fashioned to deceive him.
She had used the clone in order to drain Anthony's stamina and mana, all while preserving her own.
But how could she expect to fool Anthony's eyes?
From the very start of their battle, Anthony had given no room for conversation.
He had no ti for words with a re imitation.
He had only parried and blocked, never taking the initiative, because he knew the truth.
He had simply been playing around.
Aurelia had used a blood skill called;
Blood Veil
Allowing her to hide herself in the fabric of space, remaining undetected.
She had further enhanced the illusion by using another blood skill, making herself appear dead, with no life presence detectable.
This ensured that anyone attempting to sense her would be unable to detect her true location or even feel her presence.
From her hidden position, Aurelia watched the entire scene unfold.
It wasn't that Rylis had caught her clone off guard with his sneak attack, no, she had allowed it.
She had feigned being caught unawares, intentionally setting herself up for the perfect mont.
As Rylis struck, she had triggered the self-destruction of her blood clone, in order to deal damage to both him and Anthony at the sa ti.
One clone, two champions.
She floated down gracefully, her landing soft as a whisper against the desolation.
Her gaze was steady, unwavering, as she looked at Anthony, a calm smile playing at her lips.
With a voice as soft as the wind, she spoke.
"So you knew all along but decided to say nothing?"
Anthony looked at her with a smile of his own.
"Who am I to question the skills and decisions of a beauty"
"Then I hope you will let this beauty have your head"
"Well, what can I say, I'm quite good at giving head if you ask "
Anthony watched her movents, his eyes calm yet sharp, as the air around them thickened with tension.
Aurelia's expression darkened, her once graceful deanor transforming into one of cold, unwavering intent.
In the blink of an eye, her movents beca sharp, deliberate, each motion carrying the weight of her deadly purpose.
Without any warning, she disappeared from her position, vanishing as though the very air had swallowed her whole.
The ground beneath Anthony's feet trembled, cracking under the sheer force of her sudden movent.
Before his mind could even register her disappearance, Aurelia materialized once more, this ti, directly before him.
Her spear, a blur of lethal precision, was aid squarely at his neck.
The speed of her strike was so explosive that it seed to warp the air itself, leaving behind a crackling resonance that reverberated through the battlefield.
Anthony's senses sharpened as the pace of the battle escalated.
The sudden shift in tempo was no surprise, but it was the mark of a seasoned warrior, and it did not hinder his movents.
With an effortless grace, he sidestepped Aurelia's assault, his body moving with precision, as though the real Aurelia were no different from the clone he had faced earlier.
In the blink of an eye, her spear flashed past him, a blur of lethal intent.
Without a mont's hesitation, Anthony's katana quivered in his grasp, his hand moving with uncanny speed and fluidity.
With a swift and precise upward strike, his blade cleaved through the air towards Aurelia's neck.
But she, ever perceptive, reacted in an instant.
Mid-motion, she shifted her position, launching herself into the air, narrowly evading the fatal blow with an almost imperceptible movent.
However, Anthony's strike had found its mark, though her neck remained unhard, Aurelia's left arm was severed at the shoulder, its detached form spiraling through the air.
A crimson spray of blood stained the atmosphere, the severed limb falling uselessly to the ground.
Yet, even as Aurelia shot into the sky with incredible speed, her resolve remained unbroken.
A fierce determination burned in her eyes.
[Blood Explosion]
In a single, fluid motion, Aurelia controlled the blood from her severed hand, commanding it to erupt in a violent burst of raw power.
The very air trembled as the explosion tore through the space around them, a blinding shockwave cascading outward, leaving destruction in its wake.
Despite the chaos, Aurelia remained unyielding.
Vampires, with their regenerative abilities, were undaunted by such wounds.
The blood that spilled from her arm was already knitting itself together, the severed limb regenerating within a heartbeat, whole once more.
Anthony, undeterred by the devastation unfolding around him, bent his knees, pushing against the earth as though it had beco his ally.
The ground beneath him buckled and sank further as he propelled himself skyward like a missile locked on its target.
His katana glead as it surged forward, aiming for Aurelia's waist with deadly intent.
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