Ethereal Ascendance: A Journey of Transformation(1-3VOL)

Dehydration

"Oh right, didn't Claudia knock me into the water? Where's Nicola?"

Everyone was in front of me, yet Nicola was nowhere to be seen. I couldn't help but feel nervous.

"I'm here. I'm fine," a voice suddenly called out from above. I looked up to find myself lying in Nicola's arms again. This situation seemed oddly familiar, as if something like this had happened not long ago.

"Uh..." I quickly sat up and looked around at everyone surrounding me. Nicola didn't seem injured; she was just completely drenched as if she had just been fished out of the water. Everyone else looked unharmed as well.

As for Claudia and the others, there wasn't a single creature or monster to be seen in the sky. Alfreed was standing right in front of me, meaning his battle with the dark elf must have ended too. It was as if all the enemies had vanished all of a sudden.

"Can someone tell me what happened?" This whole situation felt really bizarre. It seemed many things had occurred while I was passed out, and now everyone was silent, looking at me strangely.

My back felt heavy. I glanced behind and saw that my feathers were all drenched from the water.

I froze in surprise. Somehow I had mysteriously grown another pair of wings. I now had six wings!

"What's going on? Did I rank up again?" I shouted at Nicola, not knowing whether to feel delighted or panicked.

"Why does this keep happening while I'm asleep?"

"Looks like she doesn't know anything..." Selene murmured to Alfreed.

"Doesn't know what?" I keenly caught their conversation and anxiously asked.

"Oh, don't keep me in suspense!"

"Well...Feliciana." Adrian was the first to speak up. He thought for a bit before carefully explaining, "You fell unconscious just now... or I guess you can't call it unconsciousness. You suddenly went on a rampage and wiped out all the enemies..."

"Huh?" I was dumbfounded upon hearing this. They didn't look like they were joking. Just what had happened?

"It went like this..."

"I think it's better if I explain from the beginning," Nicola cut in before Adrian could elaborate.

"That Claudia was much more powerful than we imagined. If her hand hadn't been crippled first, things could have been far worse..."

In her brief account, I finally began to understand the full picture.

It turned out that before I had fallen into the lake, Nicola had already been knocked into the water by the gradually recovering Claudia. At first, the two seemed evenly matched, largely due to the heavy injuries Claudia had sustained right from the start. In terms of actual strength, Nicola was probably weaker than her opponent.

"That black-winged angel had at least 7th rank strength. I wouldn't have lasted a move against her," was Alfreed's evaluation of Claudia. Though he added the caveat,

"Truthfully, her own power probably wasn't above the 5th level. She mainly relied on various weird tricks."

"Weird tricks?" I asked, puzzled.

"The holy light bullets I fired out, she was able to freely manipulate them to attack me instead," Selene complained indignantly.

"Yes, the same with my water arrows," Eleanora chimed in, having suffered as well.

I could sort of understand the water arrows, but the holy light bullets seemed like a stretch. I definitely hadn't seen wrongly - Claudia was a pure dark elemental being. How could such a creature control light elemental magic like holy light bullets? It was unbelievable.