For the first time since the battle started, Amber showed a reaction by frowning as she gazed at the shark bite mark that had appeared on top of her upper hand, there was no wound, in fact the mark wasn't even touching her directly but was floating a few millimeters above her skin.
'Is it etched onto my aura?', she thought to herself.
Amber dispelled the aura armor with which she had covered her entire body, to see if the mark would disappear alongside it, but it didn't, even if it wasn't applied directly on her body, it seemed like the curse was stuck to her.
"Ridiculous, you really thought that a curse from the White family could be dispelled with such a barbaric method, I recommend you to not let go of your defenses though", mockingly said Bryan
Amber saw the shark bite mark suddenly getting brighter and she reconstructed the aura armor from before in a hurry.
"Crack!", not even a second later, the aura armor on her arm started cracking, but stopped when the shark bite mark stopped glowing, which were around two seconds after the curse activated.
"Heh, so your aura could armor actually withstand the effect of the "White Mark" curse, if anything you have quite a tough physique, as expected of a defense type knight, but...", the ground below Bryan's feet exploded and the next thing that Amber could see was a barrage of pressure thrusts coming at her from every direction.
With a "swoosh", the tanned girl flashed out of the way of the incoming attacks, appearing a few hundreds of meters away from her original position, but then at the same time she felt danger coming from above and looked upwards just to see Bryan pointing her palms in her direction while smirking at her.
"Pressure Rain!", mana accumulated at the tips of Bryan's fingers before being shot in the form of ten water streams accompanied by currents of pressure, which accelerated the speed of the previous.
Knowing that she wasn't going to be able to dodge them all in time, Amber reinforced her armor and cladded her fists with aura to then punch the first seven or so attacks, deflecting them to the side while she dodged the eighth one.
Unfortunately, the last two attacks bypassed Amber's reaction time and then actually separated into two different spells, the first was the "pressure thrust", which Amber already knew about, but the second one was new.
It consisted in the water streams compressing themselves into a water ball, the pressure currents landed on her right leg and stomach, while the water balls exploded on the air at the same time.
"Booom!", the water which had been compressed gained so much pressure that the resulting countless drops of water that scattered when the water balls exploded, actually pierced through the solid ground in the vicinity, creating a sieve pattern around Amber, alongside countless of bullet-like drops of water.
Most of them were punched away by her with her aura cladded fists, but some still managed to land on her, resulting in continuous clinking sounds as they were blocked by her armor.
But that wasn't all, the pressure currents also sent Amber flying backwards, her aura armor cracked in both locations forcing her to slap them away, the result is that even before she managed to stop herself, her aura armor crumbled apart as a whole.
"Humph", with a soft snort, Amber applied strength on her legs to stop her fall back, then she cladded herself in aura armor once again, which made Bryan smirk.
"Your armor alongside the extra defense of rooks made it possible for you to resist the effect of one bite mark, but how about three of them", he said, as he snapped his fingers, next another two shark bite marks appeared on Amber's body, one on her left leg and the other was on her shoulder.
The three marks shone at the same time and the newly created aura armor started cracking overall, forcing Amber to inject more aura into it, unlike before two seconds fully passed and the effect of the bite marks was still ongoing.
Of course, after arrogantly looking at Amber for a moment, Bryan resumed his attacks by turning into a water stream that moved around Amber like a snake surrounding its prey.
"Come in, let's see how much will it take for you to be devoured!", he shouted as he shot multiple barrages of "pressure rain, making it virtually impossible for Amber to dodge unless she used the teleportation ability of rooks, but even then, it wasn't something that could be used continuously, so that wasn't a viable option in the long run and she knew it.
Up in the sky, Sheilla was smiling from ear to ear due to the scene of one of her team members finally getting the upper hand in a fight, though it wasn't a subordinate of her Lord.
'Whatever, even if he isn't bound to obey the Lord, in order to gain the power, he wants, he will still have to side with us at the end', she thought to then glare at Daimon who seemed to be lost in his thoughts while observing the current fight.
"What, no reaction at all, I guess those "colorful" girls aren't as important to you as those winged bitches, or maybe you need to see some blood first", she viciously said, just to see Daimon being completely unaffected by her words.
Unfortunately for Sheilla, Daimon is a man of action, why wasting time on arguing when you can break your opponent's neck at the first given chance, that was Aura's contribution to his formation.
Of course, there are times when he allows himself to participate in such activities are situations when mental games, such as taunts and provocations are helpful, like when dealing with system users, that was by the cunning twilight fox Erin's contribution.
Of course, it's not like there was no retaliation to Sheilla's words, since insulting and provoking others was the natural state of a certain crazy girl who was holding onto Daimon's arm as of current after all.
"Those are some pretty big words for a useless queen that hasn't won a single round so far~", she said with the most innocent and malicious-lacking face and voice she had, which due to everyone knowing her crazy and shameless real personality, made it even more insulting.
It took Sheilla everything she had to not visibly show her anger, she simply clicked her tongue and focused on the fight once again.
That being said, Amber looked at her fist and saw a new bite mark stuck to her, which meant that Bryan managed to partially block the damage with his pressure attributed mana at the last second.
As if to confirm that, Bryan who heavily landed on the ground, got up at once, his eyes were bloodshot and the right side of his face had become swollen, he even had one tooth punched out of his mouth, but he didn't seem to have suffered serious damage.
"My bad, I actually forgot about that annoying curse technique of yours", he said as he rubbed his chin, though he didn't show it he was screaming of pain inside, not because of the punch to the face, he created a pressure barrier at the last second, what really affected him was when Amber manifested her glyph, which somehow not only interrupted the activation of the shark bite curse but also counterattacked him.
'A mana depriving course which messes up the mana circuits of the enemy, quite a fitting technique for a knight', he thought to then say.
"For not being a defense type knight, your last punch was rather light, or perhaps you ran out of battle aura".
While he was surprised by Amber declaring that she isn't a defense type knight, he didn't think that her offensive power was a great deal, otherwise the pressure barrier wouldn't have held out.
"But I'll give it to you, just with my incomplete White lineage, I won't be able to defeat you, but it is the perfect counter to that little curse of yours", he said as he manifested those illusory shark heads out of his palms to then use them to bite his own body.
"Shark Blessing", the shark's teeth sank into Bryan's flesh and dragged a few spheres of brown light, which were actually Amber's battle aura.
"Phew, that's better, luckily casting and cleansing curses is within the possibilities of the White's lineage, and now... let's finish this", Bryan then gazed at the area where Amber's glyph was still glowing, even through her clothes, the area below her navel, before he licked his lips.
Amber softly snorted at the clear change in Bryan's gaze, which made Bryan smirk.
"It took quite a bit of "effort" to gather this much, so I didn't want to use it so early into the game, but whatever, you'll help be recover later so there is no loss I guess".
With those words, black mist was released out of Bryan's body, his white/light blue hair, then suffered another change, gaining a few black strands here and there.
High into the sky, Daimon frowned at the sudden change in Bryan's appearance.
"That is... nether", he said, to which the crazy girl nodded to then add.
"Mm and unlike that loser from before, it wasn't awakened with the help of those guys".
'Seeing Terry having his body stolen over by Arlion without him being able to even resist must have left quite the impression on him', thought Daimon.
"Your cousin might have had a really high compatibility with the Lord's power, but the driving force of his nether was too shallow, so it was naturally devoured by the Lord's, that guy on the other hand, awakened it on his own", said the enemy queen, while she screamed on the inside.
'Last time he could barely condense nether temporarily, now that I think about it, he had a few chained women following him when he arrived, I thought they had left since when that Arlion guy went ahead they were nowhere to be seen but... it seems that wasn't the case'.
The wound on Bryan's face was immediately healed and his skin actually became fairer, he was originally quite decent, but now he could be called handsome without a doubt.
"I must admit that this power is indeed quite addictive, I don't blame that guy for losing himself into it, what a fool if he wasn't obsessed with just one target, then he wouldn't have been used like that", said Bryan to then add.
"In this state I'm immune to curses, so let's try again", he said, half of the previously white shark bites on Amber's body turned inked black.
'I wonder what face will you make after seeing one of your partners long for another man', thought Bryan as he gazed in Daimon's direction from the corner of his eyes, before snapping his fingers.
The black and white marks both lit up, but contrary to what Bryan expected, Amber... didn't even flinch at all.
"Huh?".
With a confused expression, he snapped his fingers again and again, but nothing happened.
'What the hell, is the curse not properly activating', he thought just to be brought back to the real world, by Amber's voice. Explore stories at мѵʟ
"It is activating, you are just not strong enough to even "shake" me", she said, her hair dyed white all the way from the top of her head to her lower back, what followed for Bryan was as if time had slowed down, he blinked and Amber was gone.
"Reverse", Amber's voice came from behind Bryan, who tried to move but found himself unable to do so.
"Booom!", a loud shockwave, followed by a huge release of light brown battle aura, caused a deafening explosion, a meteor-like figure was sent flying towards the sky, the dust raised by the impact suddenly settled in an unnatural way as if it was attracted towards the ground, revealing Amber's tall figure, meaning that the one sent flying was of course Bryan.