Dark Dragon: The Summoned Hero Is A Villain

Chapter 361 361: Lightning In A Bottle

He could see the moment they noticed his aura happen in real time. Their eyes widened, their brains unable to comprehend an SSS-rank being standing in front of them.

They'd never felt anything like that, but it was unmistakable. Just the physical pressure alone that erupted from his body, as if he was more real than anything else around him, was enough confirmation.

He moved before they had finished processing what they were looking at.

He stamped his feet into the ground and energy erupted from him, spreading out in a wave that covered the ground and the sky simultaneously, creating a mirror-like surface that rose on all sides and sealed above them like a box being closed.

The reflections inside it were perfect and slightly wrong, the way all mirrors are slightly wrong, showing everything in all directions.

The Stormborn didn't hesitate. He attacked, a large pillar of lightning coming down with the full weight of everything he had, turning the air white around it as it descended.

Noah stretched both hands.

A glass orb formed between his palms, and the moment the lightning hit, he sealed up the glass, trapping it effortlessly.

Noah grinned at his creation before holding it up and looking at it. The lightning crackled violently as it moved inside the glass like something alive and looking for a way out.

"Always wanted to try that," he said. He glanced at their expressions of absolute shock and chuckled. "Capturing lightning in a bottle. Turns out it works."

He reached into the orb without opening it and fed more current into it, adding his own lightning to the mixture. The lightning's color changed from a bluish-white to a darker blue, growing in power.

The glass began to glow as the lightning inside it became something denser and more compressed, running out of room to move.

Then he lobbed it upwards at them.

Both mages moved instantly, reading the threat correctly.

Edric went left, golden wood erupting around him in layers, the barriers building on each other with rapid efficiency.

The Stormborn went right, tornadoes spinning up around his body in concentric rings, each layer rotating counter to the one outside it, the compression meant to stop penetration from any direction.

The orb reached the apex of its arc and exploded.

Glass shattered in every direction as the orb released its payload in every direction simultaneously.

The shards moved faster than shards had any right to move, driven by the discharge behind them, and the lightning followed, filling the sealed space with a light that had no color at its center.

The Stormborn's tornadoes took it directly. The layers slowed it, absorbed portions of it and did exactly what they were designed to do, and still the current found the gaps between the rotating rings and drove itself through them.

It reached him inside the eye of the tornadoes and didn't stop. The attack slammed into him violently, tearing through his lightning immunity and searing deep into his bones, creating deep burns in his entire body.

The attack wreaked havoc in his system and he fell down from the sky, unable to feel anything except extreme pain. He slammed into the ground, the impact creating a small crater, the damage leaving his body smoking.

Edric's wood held better. The outermost layers went first, the lightning shattering them into splinters that the discharge then carried outwards in every direction.

The inner layers absorbed the remainder, the golden sheen darkening under the load, and when it was over Edric stood inside the wreckage of his own defense with his robes scorched and his hands shaking faintly from the current that had made it through.

Silence filled the air.

Noah looked up, holding Edric's gaze. Edric's eyes were wide, as if he couldn't believe what had just happened.

Then Noah glanced down at the Stormborn who was between them, lying open on the cracked ground, unguarded, every defense spent.

He looked up at Edric, a grin slowly appearing on his face.

He heard Edric's breath catch.

"No." The word came out wrong, stripped of everything professional. "Please."

"Yes," Noah said.

Edric moved, wood surging forward and downwards, building a shell around the Stormborn's body faster than the eye could follow, layering protection over someone who couldn't currently protect himself.

Noah snapped his fingers.

The magma came from below, giant hands made of it erupting through the ground and closing into a fist around everything in that space. The Stormborn, Edric's wood, all of it compressed together into a single sealed shape that glowed at the seams.

The sound Edric made was not a battle cry. It was a scream of pain from losing a close friend.

The wave of purple erasure energy came from both of his hands, erupted through the air towards Noah with the desperate energy of someone who has nothing left to lose.

Noah simply raised a wall of earth between them and watched the purple energy work its way through it, the stone ceasing to exist in strips and columns until the wall was gone.

By the time the wall stopped the wave of erasure, dissipating into nothing, Noah was already holding a bow made of fire.

The arrow notched on the bow was made of white-hot fire, and all Edric saw was a smirk before Noah released the attack.

Edric's wood surged around him as barriers but the arrow tore through them like they were made of paper, before tearing through his shoulder.

Blood sprayed through the air as a huge chunk of his shoulder was blasted into tiny chunks, his arm severing immediately.

The arrow continued past him before striking the mirror barrier and cracking a hole through it, the sealed space finally breached.

Even through the pain, Edric didn't wait. He dived through the hole, leaving his arm on the ground behind him as he escaped.

Noah watched the empty sky where the man had been, the grin still on his face.

He knew he could chase and kill Edric but he simply lowered his bow and let it dissolve.

Edric was not the name at the top of his list.

No. That spot was reserved for someone else.

Lady in Dark.