First Light of a New Age

Chapter 116: How Truly Unfortunate

A/n: I'm very surprised myself that I managed to finish two chapters within 4 days. Must be that I got a lot of free time before my 2nd Semester begins.

But at long last, we can see Fenrir flex on the arrogant masked man! Should be fun!

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Inside an empty library, a Mercenary Gang member was seen reading in a book, splitting his focus between its pages and the music playing through his magical headphone-like device.

The quiet was abruptly shattered when Riley crashed through one of the library walls and landed in a heap before quickly scrambling to his feet. A moment later, Fenrir, in his feral beast form, smashed through another wall as his eyes blazed with predatory rage.

"I’ll bathe in your blood!" Fenrir snarled as he lunged at Riley, who instinctively retreated and quickly formed an invisible mana blade. With a clean vertical slash, he aimed to cleave Fenrir’s chest, a technique that had ended hundreds of lives before.

But to Riley’s surprise, Fenrir seemed to sense that invisible attack and deflect it with a single slash of his claws, scattering the mana blade into harmless particles.

‘It seemed his senses were heightened to the point where he can feel the faintest disturbance in the mana around him,’ Riley realized.

Before he could analyze further, Fenrir spun like a whirlwind and delivered a devastating 360-degree kick aimed squarely at Riley’s chest. The impact sent shockwaves through the air, but Riley’s first-layer mana filter activated and reflected the force back onto Fenrir, who howled in pain as his own attack snapped his leg.

Wasting no time, Riley retaliated with a crushing punch to Fenrir’s chest, launching the beast through several bookshelves and into an empty desk.

From the debris, Fenrir burst out with an enraged roar. He crouched and prepared to charge, but Riley raised his hand and surgically manipulated the surrounding mana particles. Above Fenrir, he condensed the mana into a dense invisible platform, bending light around it to mask its presence.

With a fast downward swipe, the platform fell toward Fenrir at mach speed in an intent on crushing him into paste.

BOOM!

The impact obliterated the ground beneath Fenrir, pinning him with immense force.

"RAHHHHHH!"

But with a roar that seemed to shake the very air, Fenrir braced himself and tore the platform apart with sheer brute strength, scattering it back into mana particles before launching himself at Riley with blinding speed.

“Oh shi—”

Riley’s expletive was silenced when Fenrir delivered a ferocious kick, throwing him clean out of the library through a shattered window. Luckily, Riley’s second-layer filter activated that redirect the force just in time to propel him away like a bullet.

Fenrir didn’t hesitate and leaped through the destroyed wall to chase his prey down.

While this was happening, the Mercenary Gang member, entirely oblivious to the ferocious battle raging behind him, finally turned around, and his jaw dropped as he took in the wreckage before his book slipped from his hands.

“What the fuck?”

Meanwhile, the battle between Riley and Fenrir raged on as Fenrir lunged, claws extended, and the two exchanged a storm of blows that seemed to resonate through the air. Their strikes were evenly matched, each hit generating gusts of wind that whipped through the crumbling battlefield.