Chapter 140
The thirty elites who broke toward Ethan did not rush him all at once. They had seen what happened to the first wave that attacked the silver-haired agent, and they had learned from the corpses that now littered the pathway.
These were not mindless soldiers throwing themselves at an enemy they did not understand. They were cultivators of the Hidden City of Lightning, trained in coordinated assault, and they approached Ethan with the measured precision of hunters surrounding dangerous prey.
Ethan's sword was already drawn, the wind coiling around the blade in visible spirals that hummed with contained pressure.
He had been watching Lucas fight while he held his own position, and he had seen the way his teammate moved through the enemy ranks like a scythe through wheat.
But Lucas was taking damage in return, each kill costing him blood and mana, and Ethan could not afford to let his own battle drag on.
The first attack came from his left flank. A Six Star with a pair of hooked swords lunged at him with both blades extended, aiming to catch him between the crossing arcs and shear through his guard.
Ethan sidestepped the primary thrust and brought his sword up to deflect the second, and the impact sent a shower of sparks across the darkened pathway.
Before the Six Star could recover, Ethan's free hand came up, and wind gathered at his palm with a sound like tearing silk.
[Wind Spell: Razor Cyclone]
A spinning disc of compressed air shot from his hand, three meters wide and rotating at a speed that made the edges shimmer with barely visible distortion.
The disc caught the Six Star across the chest and carried him backward, his body tumbling through the air as the wind blades carved through his armor and into the flesh beneath.
He hit the ground twenty meters away and did not rise.
The other elites did not pause to mourn him.
Three more attacked simultaneously from different angles a Five Star with a spear thrusting toward Ethan's spine, a Seven Star with a great axe swinging in a horizontal arc that would cleave him in two, and a Six Star whose hands were already forming the signs for a lightning spell.
Ethan's senses tracked all three threats with the honed awareness of someone who had survived wars and assassinations and the training grounds of Logan himself.
He moved.
[Wind Spell: Gale Step]
Air exploded beneath his feet, launching him upward and backward in a spiral that carried him over the spear thrust and above the axe swing.
At the apex of his ascent, he twisted his body and brought his sword down in a vertical slash.
[Wind Spell: Pressure Blade]
The wind around his blade compressed to an edge thinner than paper and harder than steel, and the crescent of force that erupted from the strike cut through the lightning spell before it could fully form.
The Six Star who had been casting fell backward, his hands smoking, his spell disrupted by the shockwave that followed the blade's passage.
Ethan landed behind the Seven Star with the great axe and drove his sword toward the man's spine.
The Seven Star spun, his weapon coming around in a desperate parry that caught Ethan's blade and deflected it just enough to save his life.
The axe's haft cracked under the impact, and the Seven Star stumbled backward, his arms shaking from the force of the blow.
The pathway shuddered.
Another explosion ripped through the night behind them as more of the bombs detonated in the wreckage of the weapon warehouse, and the orange glow of the flames cast long, dancing shadows across the combatants.
Fifteen elites remained standing. The rest were dead or dying, their bodies scattered across the cracked stone of the pathway.
But these fifteen were the strongest of the group, the ones who had weathered the initial exchange and adjusted their tactics accordingly.
They spread out in a semicircle, cutting off his escape routes, and their mana flared in unison as they prepared a coordinated assault.
Ethan's chest was heaving. Blood ran from a cut above his eye where a stone shard had caught him during one of the earlier explosions.
His mana reserves were dipping lower than he wanted, and he could feel the strain of maintaining his enhancement spells beginning to wear on his muscles.
He raised his sword, and the wind answered.
[Wind Spell: Tempest Barrier]
A wall of rotating air erupted around him, spinning so fast that the debris on the pathway stones, dust, fragments of broken weapons was caught in its current and flung outward.
The elites who had been advancing toward him were forced back, their weapons raised to shield their faces from the hail of projectiles.
One of them, a Five Star who had been too slow to retreat, was caught by a chunk of concrete the size of his head.
The impact shattered his shoulder and sent him spinning to the ground.
The barrier held for five seconds, then six. Ethan used the time to reposition himself, planting his back against the remains of a collapsed supply cart that offered some protection from flanking attacks.
When the barrier finally dissipated, the remaining elites were already moving.
Two Seven Stars charged him simultaneously.
The first wielded a longsword that crackled with lightning, and the second had abandoned his weapon entirely in favor of lightning wreathed fists that left glowing trails in the air as he moved.
They attacked in tandem, the swordsman striking high while the pugilist struck low, forcing Ethan to defend on two fronts at once.
His sword met the longsword in a shower of sparks, and he used the impact to launch himself backward, away from the pugilist's sweeping kick.
But the swordsman was already pressing forward, his blade a blur of lightning steel that tested Ethan's guard with a relentless sequence of thrusts and slashes.
Ethan parried the first three strikes, deflected the fourth, and took the fifth across his forearm when his defense faltered for a fraction of a second.
The wound was shallow, but the lightning that accompanied it sent a jolt of pain through his arm that made his fingers spasm around his sword hilt. The pugilist saw the opening and lunged.
Ethan's free hand came up.
[Wind Spell: Concussive Palm]
A blast of compressed air erupted from his palm, striking the pugilist in the chest with enough force to crack ribs and send him flying backward into the remnants of the supply cart.
The man hit the wood with a sound like a thunderclap and slumped to the ground, unconscious.
The swordsman did not retreat. He pressed his advantage, his lightning blade coming around in a horizontal slash aimed at Ethan's throat.
Ethan ducked, felt the blade pass close enough to singe his hair, and drove his shoulder into the swordsman's chest.
The man stumbled, and Ethan brought his sword up in a rising slash that cut through armor and flesh from hip to shoulder.
The swordsman fell. Two of the fifteen were dead. Thirteen remained.
Ethan took a step back, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
The wound on his arm was still tingling with residual lightning, and his fingers were only now beginning to respond properly to his commands.
He could see the remaining elites regrouping, their eyes calculating and cold as they assessed the damage he had done to their numbers.
A Six Star with a bow stepped forward from the semicircle, his arrow already nocked and drawn.
The shaft was fletched with feathers that glowed faintly blue in the darkness mana-sensitive arrows, designed to track their target's energy signature.
[Lightning Spell: Seeking Bolt]
The arrow left the bowstring with a crack that split the night air.
Ethan raised his sword to deflect it, but the arrow curved in mid-flight, adjusting its trajectory to follow the movement of his mana signature.
It was too fast to dodge and too precise to parry.
[Wind Spell: Aegis Shell]
A dome of rotating wind materialized around him, its surface rippling with the concentrated pressure of a localized hurricane.
The arrow struck the shell and detonated in a burst of lightning that spider-webbed across the dome's surface but failed to penetrate.
The shell held for three seconds before dispersing, and by the time it faded, Ethan was already moving.
He crossed the distance to the archer in a single Gale Step, his sword already descending.
The archer tried to retreat, but Ethan's blade caught him across the chest before he could escape.
The man crumpled, his bow clattering to the stone beside him.
Twelve remained.
But the brief engagement had cost Ethan his positioning. The semicircle had tightened while he dealt with the archer, and now the elites were closer than they had been before.
He could see the killing intent in their eyes, could feel the synchronized pulse of their mana as they prepared for the final assault.
Three Seven Stars stepped forward from the group. They moved as one unit, their mana signatures overlapping and reinforcing each other in a way that spoke of years of training together.
The first raised his hand, and lightning gathered in his palm.
The second drew a sword that crackled with static discharge.
The third began to chant, his fingers moving through a sequence of signs that Ethan recognized as the precursor to a high-level binding spell.
They attacked together.
The lightning bolt came first—a spear of white-hot lightning that screamed through the air with enough force to vaporize stone. Ethan raised his blade and channeled wind through it in a deflecting arc.
[Wind Spell: Current Redirect]
The lightning struck the wind-wreathed blade and bent, its trajectory shifting ninety degrees to slam into the ground beside him rather than his chest.
The impact carved a crater in the pathway and sent molten stone spraying in all directions, but Ethan was already turning to face the second attacker.
The swordsman's blade caught him across the ribs.
It was not a deep cut. The wind reinforcement around Ethan's body had absorbed most of the force, and the blade slid across his skin rather than biting into it.
But the lightning that accompanied the strike sent another jolt through his system, and his muscles seized for a crucial half-second.
The binding spell activated.
[Lightning Spell: Static Shackles]
Chains of solid lightning erupted from the ground around Ethan's feet, wrapping around his ankles, his knees, his wrists.
They did not burn or rather, they burned with a cold fire that seemed to drain the strength from his limbs rather than searing his flesh.
He felt his mana flow constrict, felt the wind around his body begin to dissipate as the chains tightened.
He could only watch as the three Seven Stars closed in for the kill.
The swordsman raised his blade. The lightning user gathered another bolt in his palm.
The binder maintained his concentration on the chains, his eyes blank with the focus of someone who had done this many times before.
Ethan's mind raced through the possibilities. He could try to break the chains with raw mana output, but that would take time he did not have.
He could try to use a wind spell without moving his hands, but the chains were disrupting his mana flow too thoroughly for that. He could—
The swordsman's blade came down.
And stopped.
Kaya appeared between them like a bolt of lightning given human form, her kunai crossed above her head to catch the descending sword. The impact sent shockwaves across ground.
Her lightning body crackled around her, arcs of blue-white energy jumping from her shoulders and arms. Her Pure Eyes glowed with faint luminescence as she shifted her stance, her body positioned between Ethan and the three Seven Stars.