Chapter 77 Beyond

The rising aura of the berserk Zavier and his companion finally came to a halt and Kyouko was surprised to find that the both of them had managed to reach A rank based on their temporary strength boosting skill.

If there had been only one of them, Kyouko would have laid waste to him in an instant. But the two of them were enough to cause trouble for even Kyouko.

In her overconfidence, Kyouko had underestimated the two of them. If it had been a more cautious enemy, they would have put a halt to their strength boosting method as soon as they could and yet Kyouko had given them a chance to do that precisely.

She was curious to see how far Zavier could go with a forbidden technique like Blood Blade. She wanted to see if he could overcome the limitations of the technique or if he would become the next victim.

The result both surprised and disappointed her at the same time. She was surprised because both the people in front of her had managed to learn the blood blade and had activated the same strength boosting method at the same time. She could smell the blood lust and their killing intent. Fortunately for her, the two had not learnt the blood blade for a long time and could not draw out its full potential.

The cause of her disappointment was that the two were barely holding on to their insanity. She became sure that no matter how high the talent might have been, they were doomed the moment that they had decided to learn a self mutilating skill like that. None of them had managed to get over the side effects. She could feel their life burning away as soon as they activated the strength boost.

Two A rank mages with oozing strength and a time limit of three minutes against an S rank mage with an Imperial Regalia that was stronger than any weapon and any defensive armor ever built. They could only hold her back for a while longer as per their strength on paper or in theory but beating her was something that they had to acknowledge was a pipe dream with their strength.

The showdown between the two sides was about to begin once again. Zavier looked at his clone to determine if anything looked out of place and was satisfied when nothing seemed out of the ordinary. There were almost no similarities between the two of them. So, suspicion was out of the question.

"Teacher, please try to distract her while I go in for close combat. It will be harder to get close to her without your help."

Zavier had moved close to Calista and had said this to her in a low voice that no one else could have heard.

Calista nodded in return and took out her long bow that was almost taller than herself. Despite it being a wooden bow, Zavier felt that the bow was sturdier and deadlier than any projectile weapon that he had ever seen before. He wondered if it was an elven bow or some kind of ancient relic.

Whatever it was, it didn't need any kind of arrows at all. The only arrows that it shot were made up of mana of the wielder. Calista kept pulling the bow back and a trio of arrows would shoot out of the bow every time that she did.

Her deadly arrows made up of mana were even stronger than the regular metallic arrows. Their penetration power was exceptional and could have shot through anything in their path.

Calista might have been an A rank mage, but she was the master of ranged combat who had plenty of experience in wielding a bow given her ability to shoot three arrows at the same time. She not only shot the arrows at the same time, she was also able to control the arrows with her mana to adjust the target after releasing the arrows. Her skill in archery coupled with her excellent movement skills made her into the perfect distraction that Zavier wanted. She then became a headache for Kyouko who now had to deal with three A rank mages at the same time while Valerie was recovering her magic power once again at the sidelines.

Kyouko knew that she would be in trouble once Valerie recovered. Therefore she had to finish it all off as soon as she could but the problem was that Valerie was not the only one who had almost exhausted herself off. She too had cast a sacred skill that had taken quite a toll at her albeit not that much when compared to Valerie since Kyouko was a genuine S rank mage.

In such a condition, Kyouko had to take on the elusive Calista and the maddened Zavier and his clone. This was not an easy task even for her if she didn't give it all that she had.

Zavier and his clones started to ooze blood from their pores at the same time as if they had sensed what Kyouko was about to do. They too had unleashed the maximum of their power. Since Blood Blade relied on the bodily blood for the execution of the skill, both Zavier and his clone had pulled out their blood and were busy transmuting it into different shapes to counter and counter attack the skills cast by Kyouko every time.

Whenever Kyouko went after Calista who was like a buzzing fly in her ear, either Calista used her excellent mobility to dodge or Zavier and his clone would use a bloody shield to block the attack in front of her.

As a result Calista ran freely on the battlefield while Kyouko was being restrained more and more under the pressure of the three of them.

Kyouko was soon on the defensive as the situation was being controlled by her enemies at all times. They had taken the initiative to attack her and were relentlessly pestering her with their continuous attacks and distractions caused by Calista towards the same purpose. Once caught up in the deadlock, Kyouko found it more and more difficult with each passing moment to get out of it.

Neither Calista nor Zavier and his clone relented whenever she tried to escape out of her predicament. They would start to attack with more fervour and suppress her once again.

Despite what it looked like, Kyouko was not injured at all. The Yasakani no Magatama lived up to its name. Even though the offensive skills of Zavier and his clone had increased a thousand fold due to their berserk power at the cost of their blood, the defence produced by the Yasakani no Magatama was flexible and mobile enough to defend against each and every one of their attacks.

They had yet to land an attack on Kyouko herself. But to deny that they did not have the upper hand in the confrontation would have been a lie. That much was evident from the expressions of Kyouko. She was not only shocked but there was disbelief on her face.

She was unable to accept the fact that despite having given it her all, she was unable to handle three weak A rank mages; two of which had only boosted their strength for a small duration of time.

At the same time her mind had been running at the pace of a tiger on a hunt. She found that the attacks of the two maddened individuals were a little strange. There was uncanny coordination between the two. It was at the level that was difficult to achieve even for siblings born from the same womb or for that matter even twins were hardly capable of such a thing.

The masked man was able to exploit every opportunity that Zavier created with his attacks without the delay of even a single millisecond. It was as if the two could read each other's minds or had been training together since their birth. The pattern of the attack was indecipherable for Kyouko who was unable to handle the cooperative attack method and the cumbersome meddling of Calista who herself was shocked at the offensive power that Zavier had unleashed.

It had to be known that even Valerie and herself with their strength of original A rank mages had been unable to gain the upper hand over Kyouko and yet Zavier and his friend were doing just that without a cinch or a frown on their brow.

The sparks produced with each clash of the Yasakani no Magatama and the blood blades started to increase as the coordinated attacks started to breach the defences of Kyouko. The Magatamas started to gather behind each other to prevent the blood blade from penetrating the defence.

Kyouko sensed the crisis and tried to back off but the unrelenting attacks didn't give her an option at all. She was dead set on getting out of the deadlock so she could fight back with all her strength.

As soon as she found a hole in the offensive, she used all her strength to gather up her dark flames and began to counter attack.

The result; her attacks were devoured as if they were a nice and tasty snack.

Her earlier lustre and strength were nowhere to be seen. Every move that she made was blocked by the bloody walls, or a bloody sword or a bloody pillar. The blood had the ability to change into all and everything that the user could imagine. At one point it even formed a cocoon around Zavier to protect him from attacks.

Moreover, Zavier had cast a layer of the white flames over the blood blade. The blood itself had been infused with the ability of the cold white flame.

Now that he was an A rank mage for a short amount of time, the prowess that his cold flame could deliver was not to be scoffed at.

Kyouko was unable to breach their offensive even with the help of the Magatamas. Instead her Magatamas were pushed back until they could defend no longer.

Her defences had been breached and she had yet to draw blood from her enemies. Two puny A rank mages had brought her into such a crisis. She could only look on as the injuries on her started to grow while her own attacks felt as if they had been falling into an abyss and had no effect at all whatsoever.

Even Zavier had been shocked by what he had pulled off by coordinating his attacks with that of the clone. He had not left the shared mode on voluntarily but the battle had come so suddenly that he never had the chance to turn back to individual mode to avoid distractions.

Now that he thought about it, it was better that he didn't. Only now did he see what the benefits of a shared consciousness were. He had only seen it now as a headache but the collective consciousness of the main body let the clones act as if they were all parts of a single body.

Despite their advantage, it didn't mean that the strength of the clone and Zavier combined was greater than that of Kyouko. She was undoubtedly still the strongest of them all but for a short duration; the excellent cooperative attacks had given Zavier an edge over her.

Valerie was dumbfounded at the display put forward by Zavier and the masked man with him. She was unable to comprehend who the masked man was but one thing that she was sure about was that Zavier had known this masked man for a long while considering how easily they had been cooperating with each other under the duress of such a battle against an impossible to beat enemy.

She found that despite having lived with Zavier all this time, she had yet to understand him at all. Had she extended a helping hand to him instead of giving him the cold shoulder all that time, she wondered if she would have been able to draw out all his worries that forced him to go to such an extent to hide from her.