Perhaps it was desperation, but I was forced to believe that the new weapon I was holding would turn the tide in my favour.
With a flap of my wings, I created some distance under this hole ridden ceiling.
Below me, that damn prick had an annoyed look on his face as he wound up with more rocks in his hands, his aura enveloping them.
Even before he could throw them, I rolled to the side then flapped my wings to jerk my body the other way. Zigzagging back and forth, altering my altitude within these cramped spaces I made it as difficult as possible to get hit.
Only, he did the obvious thing in retaliation: throw more rocks.
Grabbing one handful after the next, he launched the projectiles one bundle after the next.
My newly transformed wings rapidly got holes driven into them despite my best efforts to avoid the barrage. Dust and gravel rained down as the ceiling was also pockmarked from all the shots going out.
Desperate times called for desperate measures.
I fired off a set of ice lances in the slight gap between attacks, then as my sight filled with mana imbued pebbles flying towards me, I quickly pointed at one of the ice lances I had fired and channelled some mana into the stick in my hand, hoping this was how the thing was used.
The whole world flickered around me then the everything looked different.
I was further away from the ceiling, but at the same time closer to that bastard.
The look of shock was so strong on him that I couldn't help but grin as the remaining barrage of ice smashed into him and his surroundings.
Despite the success of that attack though, I couldn't get conceited. There was no way that an attack of that level would've done much damage to him even if he didn't get a chance to protect himself from it.
I continued to fire off more shots of ice lances at him, relying entirely on [Sense Presence] to aim as the entire area filled up with ice dust.
As weak as each hit was and the fact that he was probably managing to defend against most of my shots, the sheer weight of fire should chip away at his HP pool.
Of course, that wasn't something which could last forever.
There was a flicker of some sort of dark blur and the sound of an explosion. Then before I knew it, a sharp pain echoed from my right wing.
The membrane of my right wing had a large hole in it.
No, calling it a hole was understating just how bad it was. It was as if half of it was gone. Much of the bones and muscles that made up the structure had disappeared along with half of the membrane that caught the wind and mana allowing me to fly.
With this difference in lift provided by my wings and learning from my previous mistake, I grit my teeth and mostly only flapped my damaged wing to stabilize my flight before jerking my body again to avoid any followup attack.
But such a thing didn't happen. The reason was apparent. The impact that ass made to arrest his attack caused a large hole to appear in the ceiling. Through the thick cloud of dust, his body was tumbling down to the floor...along with large pieces of the ceiling!
In a panic, I shot out my aura and snagged the closest shadow before stretching it across the centre of the room and caught those large stone slabs. They were heavy and I couldn't say that I was used to using [Dark Magic] in this way, but it worked well enough and I was able to gently lower the stone slabs to the ground without letting the floor crack.
I breathed a sigh of relief. There were presences under this room, while some had moved since the beginning of the fight, many of them hadn't. If the floor were to crumble, many of those would die. Letting that happen just wasn't an option.
Of course that bastard didn't let an opportunity like this slip. Glaring at me in anger, he punched some of the debris I had set down and a shower of rock fragments flew towards me.
Bearing with the pain, I ascended as fast as I could while letting go of that shadow.
Placing one hand on the pockmarked ceiling, I arrested my momentum and redirected my motion sideways to avoid the followup attack.
Flipping on my back on my next roll, I fired off three lasers at the bastard. While hastily aimed, it managed to strike true with one of them, leaving a scorched hole in his chest. Unfortunately the damage was far from his heart, but it gave me a bit of time to raise my altitude again and increase my distance from him while I tried to come up with a way to finish him off.
More rocks came flying at me, forcing me to roll once again to avoid them.
But because of my damaged wing, I was forced to roll to my right each time, leaving my manoeuvre predictable. Another volley of rocks came at me, this time I wasn't in a posture to dodge them properly.
I folded my wings to reduce my profile, then kicking out my legs, I shattered the rocks that were on a direct course to hitting me.
While that worked and I spread my wings to stabilize my flight once again, more holes appeared in the ceiling.
I was starting to get really worried about the stability of this building.
Thanks to the fact that it was obviously created with [Earth Magic], the entire structure was formed from a single block of stone, meaning that its structural integrity was incomparable to a normal stone building. But that didn't mean it didn't have its limits either, and there was little doubt that with the way the fight has been going, we'd be hitting close to it sooner or later.
Following up with those kicks, I fired off another volley of ice lances.
More stones came my way at the same time, but with a simple wave of my wand of displacement, I bypassed the projectiles by replacing one of my lances.
But as it wasn't the first time I had done that, that prick managed to suppress his shock and reacted with a larger stone thrown my way. This one was unlike any before. Not a pebble or even some gravel, but a stone as large as my torso.
That bastard really showed off his high [Strength] by launching that projectile with a single hand. Shock waves pushed aside and swirled the ice dust that was slowly settling on the ground.
On the other hand, it wasn't like I couldn't predict such an act in the first place. It was a matter of being prepared for a variety of counters, and my own chosen counter was simply to wave my wand once again, swapping places with that large mana imbued stone and then following up with a concentrated barrage of ice lances.
I flapped my wings to gain more distance as I continued my focused bombardment. Ice fragments piled up on top of each other as the frozen dust spread out, misting the area around that pollock.
Even if I couldn't see it due to all the ice particulates, the sound alone made it obvious that this storm of ice wasn't doing significant damage.
But that wasn't the point.
Pushing [Multi-cast] to its limits, I quickly spread one of the pillar's shadows across the ground, walls, and the ceiling as a protective buffer, leaving only an opening around the large hole in the ceiling. I then generated and fired off a single, ultra-dense fireball before passing through my shadow wall.
A sphere of super heated plasma comprised of pure carbon condensed to the size of a baseball wrapped in a thin but ultra dense membrane of pure oxygen flew like a bullet into the mass of chilled air before the payload was released.
The rapid use of [Terranian Magic] then [Blaze Magic] followed up with [Tempest Magic] to create such a projectile immediately after such an intense barrage while laying a protective layer of shadows through the room put a significant burden on my mind and mana supply, but that was nothing compared to what happened next.
There was a flash of pure white as the the boundary layers between the parts of the orb were released and the materials were allowed to mix. The super heated carbon reacted to the more ambient temperature oxygen. The reaction, in turn caused greater expansion than what the solid piece of carbon tried to commit to, which in turn made the orb even hotter though compression. The imperfections of the orb caused uneven expansion, and parts of the orb pushed out, mixing with the surroundings, reacting to the dense and cold air, then causing further expansion.
Part of that expansion pushed against the original core, causing it to further deform and more parts are ejected, mixing with the surrounding air, reacting, then expanding. The cycle repeats over and over until the whole sphere disperses and reacts with the chilled air around it.
All of that happened within the measurements of milliseconds. At least that's what I imagined, as I didn't have the ability to actually witness such a thing, nor did I want to.
All I knew for sure, was that even through the pitch black magical shadows, enough light was forced through them that I was blinded, and the resulting shock wave caused my protective shadows to buckle and warp, along with making my ears bleed despite being behind the black walls.
Following all that, was a giant pressure wave and heat.
The shadow walls that rebounded from the initial shock wave was pushed to their limits as the intense heat and pressure of super heated gasses. The roaring gasses as they ejected up into the sky caused tremors to pass through my body.
Of course, I couldn't hear any of it. My eardrums had ruptured from the initial shock wave and would take a bit of time to recover as I didn't have the leisure to magically heal something so unimportant in the middle of battle.
I blinked away the spots fro my vision, and the moment the pressure wave abated, I diffused the protective shadow barrier.
What greeted me was, of course, a blast of hot air to my face.
But after that, when I managed to open my eyes, was a scene of carnage.
Everything inside of the shadow barrier had been thrown around all over the place, and entirely broken apart. There was very little that was larger than grains of sand. There wasn't even any signs of anything being melted, due to how quickly the intense heat had passed through.
Although, despite all the damage, there was a conspicuous mound near the middle.
Not taking any chances, in addition to the fact that [Sense Presence] had continued to get a hit at that spot, I fired off a laser, much stronger than before, at the middle of that mound.
The sand burst away as some of it vaporized upon contact with my thicker, stronger beam, at the cost of my hand.
Moments later, there was a small explosion from under the sand along with a small shock wave that penetrated through my body. Yet unlike a normal shock wave, the vibrations continued for a second or two.
It seemed like my eardrums really had burst, as there was nothing but a high pitched ringing in my head.
It was times like this that made me really glad I chose to be born as a vampire in this world. Losing my hearing, losing my hand, or even my whole arm, it was simply a matter of taking in some blood to regenerate it all. And in this world, I even had healing magic to fall back on if blood wasn't available.
As troublesome as the detriments were, the benefits really more than made up for them.
But what emerged as the sand dispersed and fell was a blackened figure, one with most of its left leg, along with its right arm missing to the point that there was a hole where the shoulder joint was supposed to be.
The status screen updated as Alicia got line of sight on the bastard.
681,223/2,737,554.
My own was 601,828/1,892,501.
My HP was still lower than his, but thanks to that last two attacks, his had fallen to a pretty critical point. It should only take one or two more pushes to finish him off.
At least I hoped.
Pointing the stub of an arm at him I fired off another beam.
But as if in anticipation of it, or more probably exactly for that reason, he rushed to the side with an explosion of shattered stone, completely avoiding the laser.
Zigzagging back and forth, he closed the gap between us, occasionally throwing handful of sand or whole stones he managed to find at me.
I flapped my wings as hard as I could, my flight skewing to the side due to the uneven lift caused by my damaged wing.
Looking down, that prick moved faster than ever. I had trouble leading his movements and was forced to give up using [Light Magic] and instead started another bombardment of ice lances in the hopes that it would at least slow him down enough to get a proper shot off of something stronger.
But even that wasn't working well.
Spread out barrages of ice fired rapidly as I rose up to create distance hadn't manged to do much to slow him down at all.
Instead, he just made aiming even harder by using the remaining pillars or puffs of rock and ice dust as cover. Even if I could sense his presence without issue, my accuracy dropped significantly when I couldn't see his exact location. It seemed like he figured that out already.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, with a puff of rock dust, he rushed up towards me.
I furiously flapped my wings to avoid the speeding bullet, but losing my balance due to the uneven lift from my wings, I flipped end over my axis instead.
But perhaps fortunate in some small way, it seemed like the chaotic nature of my manoeuvre meant that he had problems aiming me as well.
A sharp pain drove up from my right leg, then a dull impact hit my back.
My frantic wing movements caused my left wing to catch on something.
Most of my momentum had been killed from the impact, but that wasn't the end of my immediate concerns.
Even before I could do anything about my new situation, something started to painfully scorch my left wing.
Considering how badly damaged the ceiling was, I was hesitant to violently pull my wing free and forced myself to look at what was going on.
But what I saw did nothing but fill me with dread.
My left wing was stuck in a crack made in the ceiling and I was hanging from that position. But that was hardly what made me want to panic.
The source of the burning sensation was the sun.
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