Aethernea : Soulbound [Book 1]

Episode 107 - Flashcast

Previously:

The day of the practical exams is finally here and Kiel is inside a large arena created by the Replica Dungeon. Nelaira tricks Deora into attacking the Rroda brothers, and Deora ends up pursuing Kiel with a barrage of fireballs. Kiel runs away, dodging the fireballs, however, Deora manages to hit him with an explosive airball. Kiel loses his consciousness and remembers how he got trapped inside the burning house as a child. After waking up he gets into a life and death situation that makes him overcome his fear of fire and launch a counter attack on Deora.

* * *

A glass dagger enlarged in Deora's vision, and he forcefully twisted his upper body to dodge the fatal blow aiming for his neck.

His twirl almost sprained his back, but he managed to dodge the fatal blow by a hair's width.

Deora hurriedly jumped back, too disturbed by the close call to even remember to curse.

Kiel had intentionally filled his earth dome with mana to confuse Deora's mana sense, so he wouldn't be able to tell that Kiel was no longer within the dome.

He had then concealed his own presence and dug an underground tunnel towards Deora. He even chose the perfect moment to launch a sneak attack, all for the sake of this all or nothing shot. Even Deora's explosions were used to cover up the tremors of the ground caused by Kiel's digging.

Unfortunately, although his attack could be said to be flawless, Deora's reaction time was the cream of the crop. Before his mind could catch up with the events, his body had already reflexively dodged the blow.

Deora rubbed his back with a dark face. Fury burned brightly inside his yellow eyes. "Congratulations! You've successfully pissed me off!" He spat between clenched teeth.

...haven't you been pissed off from the start? Are you saying that you've been raging the entire time without being pissed off? Deora's absurd declaration made Kiel's eyebrow twitch, but it didn't slow down his actions in the slightest.

Seeing that his attack had failed to kill Deora, Kiel didn't linger inside Deora's high-temperature field. Instead, he quickly made a split-second decision to go for Elaru's magic egg.

He darted like the wind towards the egg artifact, accelerating to the best of his ability.

Deora gave chase immediately with just as much speed, rushing towards Kiel like a rabid bloodhound in pursuit of his next meal. Conserving mana was not even in his vocabulary. All he thought about was not letting Kiel escape his heat field.

He would destroy him even if he got defeated by someone else right after.

Both men left dust in their wake as they chased each other.

Deora's eyes were getting more and more bloodshot, the muscles on his limbs occasionally twitching, clearly nearing their mana tolerance threshold.

He had stopped shooting out fireballs, concentrating his full power into his heat field, wanting nothing more than to just melt Kiel where he stood.

Kiel didn't look any better than Deora, his face was pale, and his each and every movement caused him to break out in cold sweat.

Or maybe it was just regular sweat, for the temperature around him was sharply climbing.

His cooling spell was struggling like a small ship against the stream, getting rapidly overpowered by Deora's heat field.

Just a bit more!

He was almost there!

50 meters left!

He was flying so fast that he couldn't even keep his eyes open against the violent air currents hitting his face. His protective goggles had melted in the explosion, and now they were obscuring his vision instead of protecting his eyes.