But before he could even process the thought, she pounced.
James moved instinctively to the side, the rush of wind beside him roaring as he narrowly avoided getting his face sliced clean off.
The air itself felt like it was actively combusting.
He licked his lips, finding them completely dry and parried by the sudden heat wave.
Mira was burning up the oxygen around them at an alarming rate.
The harder she fought, the brighter she blazed, and the closer she got to him, the harder it became to breathe.
It was a ticking clock; eventually, it would reach a point where his lungs simply wouldn't be able to pull in enough clean air to sustain him.
He forced his nerves to settle.
Looking back, he saw that the patch of dirt he had occupied just a few seconds ago was completely seared black, the earth literally smoking under the intensity of her flames.
Suddenly, the fire around her body erupted outward in a massive explosion.
James lunged away—and he meant narrowly—barely avoiding being seared alive by this absolute mad woman.
Leaping back to create some distance, he forced himself to stay calm, watching as she stood up.
She was no longer running on all fours like a wild animal.
Her aura flared violently, the flames shifting into a deeper, darker orange hue than before.
She looked thoroughly giddy. "Come on, stop holding back on me!"
James frowned.
Holding back?
As far as he was aware, he was exerting every single ounce of his physical strength.
But unlike him, she was actively channeling mana and aura to boost her power.
His raw strength in human form simply couldn't match that kind of supernatural amplification.
The fact that he could still somewhat contend with her at all told him they were at least in the same ballpark, but that was his absolute limit.
Yet, he absolutely refused to lose.
His blood was boiling under the pressure, the sheer adrenaline washing over him in a wave of pure bliss.
He didn't want to just survive this; he wanted to win.
His hand twitched. "Make me."
Mira's eyes locked onto his movement.
A massive smile split her lips as she caught his scent across the clearing.
She could smell the sudden shift in his demeanor.
"Is that a challenge I hear?"
"Yes," James fired back. "Or maybe you're too chicken to take it."
"You better be able to back up those words, pup."
Once more, she charged, dashing toward him like a meteor.
James's mind worked overtime.
He hadn't mastered aura control yet, and he wasn't about to risk getting completely wrecked by her raw physical strikes.
Instead, he decided to lean heavily into what he possessed in absolute abundance: magic.
As she rushed him, the ambient temperature skyrocketed, the suffocating heat rolling toward him like a wall.
Trusting his instincts, James leaned straight back, letting his body fall completely off-balance.
Mira launched a brutal punch aimed directly at his neck, but just as his back was about to hit the dirt, he didn't crash.
Instead, he slipped cleanly through the shadows on the ground, disappearing entirely.
Mira's eyes scanned the area instantly. "Where the hell did he go?"
She looked everywhere, certain he had to be somewhere close by.
"Up there!" Talia shouted from the sidelines.
Mira snapped her gaze upward, spotting a dark, shadowy figure rushing down at her from mid-air.
She didn't care about the trick; she simply cocked her fist back, planning to meet the attack with a heavy clash.
BAM!
The ground beneath her feet fractured under the impact as she caught the figure out of the air.
"Got you now," she grinned. Wrapping her arms around him, she lifted him up, preparing to absolutely flatten him with a brutal powerbomb.
However—
CRACK!
An unexpected force exploded from her flank, sending her flying backward.
Mira skidded heavily across the dirt, her back slamming into a nearby tree so hard the wood visibly cracked from the impact.
Confused, she looked down at the version of James she was supposedly holding, only to watch his form dissolve into nothing but pure, swirling darkness.
It was a total conjuration.
A few yards away, right where she had been standing a second prior, the real James emerged safely from the shadows.
"That was risky," he muttered to himself, letting out a breath.
He honestly hadn't been sure if the plan would work; he was completely making things up as he went, trying shit out on the fly.
The strategy had been pure experimentation.
He knew he could mold darkness into various shapes based on his current understanding, and from the knowledge he had gathered from Luna, he knew he could imbue his own will and aura into the magic to force it to take action—essentially creating a bootleg shadow clone.
Normally, because Mira was a walking ball of fire, she barely cast a shadow of her own for him to slip into, and even if she did, her senses were too sharp; she would have felt his presence immediately.
To bypass that, James had used the shadow created by his own aerial clone.
It was an incredibly high-stakes gamble; if she had noticed the duplicate shadow for even a fraction of a second, he would have been completely trapped.
Fortunately, the natural vacuum property of his darkness magic ensured the clone maintained a tight enough grip that she couldn't let go in time.
James wiped the sweat from his forehead, a genuine smile breaking across his face.
He was having absolute fun with this shit.
He was having the fucking time of his life.
James wondered what else he could possibly pull off with darkness magic—what exactly were the upper limits of this power?
Mira pushed herself up from the shattered bark of the tree. Her ass would definitely have to replant that later. She stood up slowly, acknowledging that it had been a genuinely hard blow.
"That kinda stung," she said calmly. A moment later, a warm droplet rolled down her lip.
Touching it, she saw it was blood. But the crimson smear didn't last long; the flames engulfing her body instantly evaporated it.
"Nice." The excitement in her eyes burned brighter than ever. She was bleeding, and to her, that only meant one thing: things were finally starting to get interesting.
While she was basking in the thrill of the injury, James was running on pure adrenaline.
He knew darkness possessed a vacuum property, but that didn't mean it was strictly limited to soaking up damage or adding extra weight to his punches.
It could be used in far more creative ways.
"Let's see what this stuff can do," he muttered, raising his hands.
Mira launched herself forward again.
This time, she was actively transitioning into her werewolf form, her speed and physical strength instantly doubling past their previous peaks. She turned into a roaring, blazing meteor of kinetic heat.
James didn't dodge. Instead of diving into a nearby shadow, he intentionally called upon the vacuum and pulling attributes of his native element.
"Get over here!" he growled, making a sharp pulling motion toward himself.
A localized vortex of absolute shadow erupted directly beneath Mira's descending foot.
The compressed vacuum didn't just tug at her—it violently yanked her gravity off-center, dragging her forward faster than her muscle memory could calculate.
Her blazing punch swung completely wide, her balance utterly compromised as she stumbled through the empty air.
Seizing the micro-window, James pivoted hard on his heel. With the wind rushing against his face and his fist heavily coated in darkness, he unleashed the meanest, most brutal gut punch straight into her midsection.
BAM!
The air was violently driven from her lungs.
Combined with her own forward momentum and the sheer weight of a punch that felt like it came from an ancient ogre, Mira felt her insides shatter under the force.
Because of the darkness attribute, her body absorbed the entirety of the kinetic impact.
The exact millisecond she began to fly backward from the punch, James allowed his magic to flow freely out of his body.
He released a massive surge of dark wind straight into her gut, accelerating her trajectory and sending her crashing away.
James was fully in the zone now, completely detached from any care in the world.
He sprinted toward Mira at full speed, leaping into the air to stamp his heel directly onto her head.
Mira managed to raise her hands just in time to block the incoming kick. "I'm not that easy!" she roared, shoving his leg away.
James immediately countered with his hands, attempting a double hammer-fist to crush her guard into next Monday, but she blocked that too.
Their palms clashed and locked together.
His fists were coated in swirling darkness; hers were wreathed in roaring flames.
Both of them strained, trying to utterly overpower the other through sheer, unadulterated strength.
Slowly, Mira felt herself being outmuscled.
The newbie was actually forcing her backward. It excited her to her core, but her pride refused to let her lose a contest of pure power.
Her muscles began to bulge violently as she initiated a full transformation into her werewolf form.
Her strength skyrocketed—surging from two times her base, to six, to ten, to forty, to eighty times stronger, and it kept climbing.
James felt the sudden shift and found himself being pushed back.
He hated it. Gritting his teeth, he forced his body to output even more raw power.
He was stronger than this.
He wouldn't lose. He couldn't lose.
He absolutely refused to lose.
His eyes glowed with a predatory light.
Suddenly, Mira's transformation halted. Her strength began to rapidly wane, and she gritted her teeth in frustration as her body reverted toward its human form.
She couldn't transform. Looking up at James, her mind didn't see a human—she saw a towering, twelve-foot majestic beast staring down at her, forcing her instincts to bow.
The pup was unknowingly using will domination on her.
Realizing she couldn't win a contest of strength under the pressure of his gaze, Mira subtly gave way.
She leaned back as if she were falling, deliberately pulling him with her.
James, expecting resistance, fell forward into her trap.
Using his own momentum against him now that she was positioned beneath him, Mira drove a powerful kick straight into his chest, launching him away.
James's body flew across the clearing and slammed hard into a tree.
Dammit, he thought, this place has a lot of trees.
Mira wiped the fresh blood leaking from her nose.
The lingering effects of his will domination had seriously messed with her head; even though the pup had no clue what he was doing, she had been a fraction of a second away from complete subjugation.
She blinked, and suddenly he was gone. She spun around, but he was already right behind her.
BAM!
If her body hadn't been heavily coated in defensive aura alongside her flames, that punch to the gut would have knocked her out cold.
The pain was excruciating, but she didn't care.
She smiled a bloody smile.
Instead of pulling away to catch her breath, she grabbed his invading fist, pulling him even closer to deliver a brutal right hook straight to his face.
From there, all semblance of form disintegrated.
It was pure, unadulterated violence.
A left hook to her jaw was met with a right jab to his throat; a spinning kick to her head was answered with a heavy axe-kick to his spine.
There was no blocking, no parrying, and absolutely no defense.
It was just straight, devastating attacks.
Mira caught his arm mid-swing and violently hurled him into the air.
While he was airborne, she gathered a massive, highly condensed ball of pure fire in her left hand, cocking her arm back to unleash it.
Sitting nearby, Caius finally stopped reading his book.
Okay, this is getting into deadly territory.
High in the air, James flipped his body, rapidly manifesting thick strings of darkness.
He anchored the magical constructs to two nearby trees, using them as a massive slingshot to halt his momentum and launch himself back toward Mira at terrifying speed.
"Come on! Give me your best!" Mira screamed, unleashing the torrent of concentrated flame directly at the descending teenager, who had completely coated his entire body in a shroud of pure darkness.
James raised his hand, preparing to make a massive sweeping motion to cleave through the incoming fire.
But before either of their attacks could connect—
{Root Bind}
Instantly, both James and Mira were frozen dead in their tracks.
Thick, massive roots erupted from the earth, wrapping tightly around their limbs, completely restraining their movements, and actively absorbing their magical signatures.
The two devastating attacks never met.
Mira's torrent of flame was forcefully redirected high into the sky, while James's sweeping motion was deflected far to the opposite side of the clearing.
James couldn't move an inch. The roots anchoring him to the ground were incredibly tight, squeezing every single ounce of magic straight out of his system until his shroud vanished.
Enraged and securely encased in her own wooden cage, Mira bared her fangs.
She was thoroughly annoyed that the fight had been cut short right when it was finally getting to the fun part.
"Why the hell did you stop it, Caius?!" Mira barked, glaring at the vice captain.
Caius closed his book with a quiet thud.
"I stopped it because it was becoming deadly."
Mira scoffed, shaking her head.
"My attack wouldn't have killed him! At worst, the newbie would have been heavily injured, but that's it. You think I don't know how to hold back?"
Caius sighed softly, adjusting his posture.
"You misunderstand, Mira. I wasn't saving the newbie from your flames."
He looked at her directly. "I was saving you from him."
Mira blinked, her expression shifting into utter confusion. "What?"
"Look for yourself," Caius said, gesturing to the area behind her.
Mira slowly turned her head, looking back at the exact trajectory where James's deflected attack had been sent.
The breath completely caught in her throat, and her blood ran ice-cold.
Every single tree behind her for the next four hundred yards had a clean, razor-sharp horizontal cut running perfectly through the center of its trunk.
If Caius hadn't intervened and altered the trajectory at the last possible microsecond, James's darkness would have sliced straight through her fire, through her aura, and taken her head clean off.
A/N: I am still iffy on how the werewolf power boost should work. I am jumping between two ideas.
Option 1: A Multiplicative Boost. A basic human who can lift 100 pounds normally would be able to lift 6 to 9 tons in werewolf form. This would showcase just how much of a monstrous entity the form truly is.
Option 2: An Additive Boost. This would focus more on the human side. The stronger you are in your human form, the stronger your wolf form becomes.
I don't know which one would be more interesting for the story.
Chapter wasnt out yesterday cause work been fucking me over, but friday will also have a chapter.