Chapter 428
With less than five meters separating them, Draco unfolded his arms and lashed his tail against the ground.
Thud! Crack!
The impact stirred up a billowing cloud of reddish brown, choking dust, obscuring his lower half. Beneath his scaly, earth-toned hide, muscles corded and bunched, humming with latent energy, vibrating as though ready to burst into a blinding sprint.
Their earlier exchange of spells had not been a clumsy contest of power, it had been a deadly waltz of reconnaissance.
It was a probing action meant to test reflexes, measure incantation speeds, and determine each other’s timing for spell activation and release.
Now, with both combatants possessing a vague grasp of the other's tempo, the reconnaissance phase was over.
It was time to get a bit more serious.
Neither of them could maintain their current high-tier combat states for very long.
The mind drain alone was astronomical, threatening to burn out, if prolonged.
Thus, a swift, brutal conclusion was inevitable.
To be sure, both held hidden cards…....but these were measures, held in reserve like loaded weapons, secrets neither was willing to expose unless one of them fell into a severe, irrecoverable disadvantage.
Draco fixed his gaze upon Alfia.
Beneath her obscuring cloak, her indifferent heterochromatic eyes stared back, giving nothing away.
He watched her expression, searching for the micro-tells of a shifting stance, a tightening jaw, a narrowing of the eyes……..anything.
And the absolute microsecond Alfia parted her lips to form a syllable, Draco exploded.
CRUNCH.
His heavy talons dug deep into the solid stone flooring, applying a crushing amount of force that cracked the it and left deep, smoking indents in the earth.
SWISH!
CRACK-BOOM!
Draco’s body tore through the air with a shriek of displaced wind.
His form blurred violently, seeming to step out of reality itself, only to materialize instantly right in front of Alfia.
His arm stretched forward, fist cocked back to deliver a devastatingly shattering punch.
At such point-blank range, conventional combat logic dictated that Alfia was at a severe disadvantage.
The physical proximity should have rendered her sluggish spellcasting vulnerable, yet she remained utterly indifferent.
‘If she casts her spell now’ Draco’s mind calculated with dizzying speed, ‘it will undoubtedly deal some damage to both of us’
It was a reckless gamble.
It was impossible to tell who would take the heavier toll; Draco had aggressively reinforced his body, while Alfia possessed her magic negating armour.
Regardless, Draco took the gamble.
If Alfia didn’t push through with her magic……if she opted to dodge or retreat instead……it would simply prove that his aggressive-close-quarters strategy was entirely viable.
But if she did fire, it would at least help to narrow down his rapidly dwindling options of counterattack.
Pelting each other with mid-range or long-range magic was a losing game for him.
Alfia possessed a terrifying combat anomaly: she could recycle the residual magic of her own attacks using a spell key.
In simpler terms, for every single unit of mind Draco expended to perform a magic attack, Alfia could counter and retaliate with between 1.5 and 2 units in return.
Unless Draco possessed more than twice as much mind to burn……which he painfully did not……a prolonged magic duel was a guaranteed defeat, and Alfia knew it.
This exact certainty was why Draco had been hyper-vigilant, deeply wary of the fact that Alfia had allowed him to close the distance so easily.
But that doubt didn't matter anymore.
He was already here.
He was inches away from her body.
‘I have you’
However, to his dismay, Draco’s fist never made contact.
Just a fraction of a second before his knuckles grazed the fabric of her cloak, Draco saw it……a terrible sight.
Alfia’s lips curved upward into a cold, mocking smile.
THROOOM!
In the next instant, he was struck point blank from the side by an invisible, blast of sound.
It felt like standing point-blank in front of a sound cannon.
The concussive blast caught him completely off guard, instantly shattering his momentum and launching his body sideways through the air.
BOOM! CRASH!
Draco’s body tore through the room with terrifying speed, bouncing violently off the stone floor like a skipped stone across water.
Dust and gravel erupted in his wake.
Yet, drawing upon his preternatural combat instincts, he forced his limbs to move, frantically digging his talons deep into the stone to arrest his flight, leaving smoking, scorched furrows in the earth.
He didn't even have time to curse.
Anticipating an immediate, ruthless follow-up attack, Draco whipped his left claw upward.
The responsive earth answered his call instantly, erupting upward to form a thick, jagged stone fist designed to catch the impact of the secondary spell hurtling his way.
KABOOM!
The improvised earth fist shattered into a million pebble-sized bullets upon impact, the concussive shockwave rippling outward and rattling Draco's scales.
But Alfia afforded him no respite.
She closed the remaining distance with terrifying speed, her footsteps silent.
"Gospel."
Draco’s ears perked up instantly upon hearing that single, dreaded word.
He didn't even bother looking to locate her.
Moving purely on the direction of her voice, he slammed his claws together in front of his chest.
RUMBLE!
A pair of massive, rocky arms violently erupted from the ground beneath him, crossing over his frame to intercept the invisible shockwave hammering down from the flank.
Without missing a beat, Draco countered.
He slammed his palms flat against the trembling ground.
SCREEECH! BOOOM!
A wave-like tsunami of rock and jagged spikes surged forward across the floor, crashing directly toward Alfia’s position.
"Lugio," Alfia chanted smoothly, her voice cutting through the cacophony.
CRACK!
With a casual word, she punched a clean, perfectly circular hole straight through the center of the advancing rock wave.
But Draco had anticipated this exact counter.
Hiding directly behind the rocky barrier were several coiled earth spikes, spinning with devastating rotational force at his sides, primed and ready to launch.
SWISH-SWISH-SWISH!
Through the gaping hole she had just punched in the rock wave, Alfia’s body became briefly visible.
The spinning earth spikes screamed through the air toward her vitals, and Draco immediately surged forward in their wake, hoping to smother her options.
Logic dictated that Alfia would now be forced to launch at least two spells simultaneously…..one to neutralize the incoming barrage of earth spikes, and another as a defensive measure to halt his physical advance.
Yet, Alfia did neither.
She merely stood her ground, her heterochromatic eyes locking onto his with chilling serenity. She waited patiently for him to cross an invisible threshold.
And the absolute moment Draco crossed the five-meter mark, she parted her lips.
"Gospel."
WHOOSH! THUD!
A wave of sound erupted not from her location, but from directly above him.
The invisible, crushing weight slammed downward like the hand of an angry god, instantly shattering the incoming earth spikes into gray dust and driving Draco’s body violently down into the stone floor.
It felt as though he were suddenly carrying the weight of an entire mountain range upon his shoulders.
His knees buckled, his scales groaned, and his entire frame sank inches into the fractured ground.
The pressure lasted barely a fraction of a second…..just enough to pin him in place…..but it was more than enough time for Alfia to pivot and prime yet another spell.
In that agonizingly brief window, Draco’s mind churned at maximum velocity, and the horrifying truth finally clicked into place.
‘Around the five-meter radius… she isn't casting from her direction anymore.’
Alfia had expanded her combat domain.
Within that critical five-meter dead zone, she could apparently conjure and launch her sound-based spells from any direction……. from behind, from the left, from the right, directly overhead, or even bubbling up from the earth beneath his feet.
Orientation no longer mattered to her.
The realization sent a cold spike of dread straight down his spine.
This was exceedingly, overwhelmingly troublesome.
Sound magic was fundamentally invisible to the naked eye.
Up until now, Draco had only been able to successfully dodge, parry, or anticipate her attacks based on three major factors: his own preternaturally heightened senses, Alfia’s stationary physical position relative to his own, and his acute sensitivity to magic flow.
Normally, whenever Alfia launched her spells, the origin point was tethered to her exact location, traveling toward her target.
That meant his brain only had to calculate a trajectory originating from a visible enemy.
But now?
The spell could literally materialize out of thin air, surrounding him in a sphere of absolute unpredictability.
This meant he would now have to divide his precious attention toward every single direction simultaneously…….an act that was going to drain his physical stamina and mind at an exponential rate.
So far, he had only taken two direct hits from her magic.
Thanks to his heavily fortified earth dragon spirit transformation defenses, the damage had been mitigated from lethal to merely bruising.
But he knew: cumulative damage is a silent killer.
If he kept absorbing these concussive waves, his internal organs would eventually turn to mush, armor or not.
Worse yet, he was trapped in a agonizingly reactive loop.
He had to wait for Alfia to finish her agonizingly short chant of "Gospel" before he could even begin to determine the angle of the attack, and by then, the spell was already detonating.
Trying to conjure a countermeasure after the chant finished, without knowing the origin direction, was nothing more than a guaranteed waste of precious mind.
This also meant that the tiny advantage his chantless magic held, was mute………. only within that five-meter range though.
His options were rapidly narrowing down.
He could attempt to forcefully create distance, abandoning close-quarters entirely to force a pure, long-range magic battle……knowing full well she would out pace him with her spell-key recycling.
Or he could drop his heavy earth dragon spirit transformation entirely, purging the dense armor in favor of the blinding, evasive speed of his wind dragon spirit transformation.
There was also the option of cycling through more volatile, destructive elements like blistering fire or crackling lightning to overwhelm her senses.
But those paths were fraught with peril; her magic-negating armor would render elemental attacks vastly less effective, turning his high-tier spells into damp squibs.
‘And the gods forbid that she can also extend the range of that damn magic-negating armor…’ Draco winced internally at the terrifying absurdity of the thought.
Regardless of his mounting anxieties, hesitation was a luxury reserved for the dead.
Right now, he needed to break the cycle, neutralize her immediate follow-up, and manufacture some distance until he could formulate a coherent way out of this trap.
With a light grunt, Draco stomped his talon violently into the trembling stone.
CRACK!
RUMBLE!
As soon as his heightened senses caught the subtle shift indicating the direction of her incoming sound canon, he conjured thick, overlapping layers of dense earth walls to take the brunt of the blast.
THROOOM!
The stone barriers splintered into flying shrapnel, but the momentary obstruction bought him the microsecond he needed.
Draco unfurled his wings, catching the turbulent updrafts, and launched himself vertically into the upper reaches of the cavern.
The distance between the stone floor and ceiling was substantial.
Up there, suspended in the dark abyss of the ceiling, he was finally outside the dreaded radius of her directionless sound manipulation.
Hovering in the gloom, his chest heaving as he gulped in air, Draco stared down at the small, cloaked figure standing alone in the dust below.
He bought himself a few precious seconds to catch his breath, wipe the blood from his lip, and think.
‘She's a really troublesome opponent’ Draco thought, his fist tightening as he stared down at the smiling prodigy.
‘Now... how do I break her guard?’
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