Read Novel Full Chapter 481: The High Ground [II]
Chapter 481: The High Ground [II]
For a brief moment, there was nothing beneath us but empty air for hundreds upon hundreds of meters.
The wind howled past my ears as we both descended into the darkness below, free-falling.
The cliff face rushed upward beside us, jagged stone jutting out and twisted roots flashing by in a blur.
Well.
Thalia had officially lost her mind.
Not that I expected anything less from her.
I drew Aurieth back, pouring a healthy portion of Essence into it until its blade started glowing like a dazzling star in a starless night sky.
But before I could discharge a crescent slash of light and cleave my sister clean, she activated a Card.
In response, the air quickly distorted and shimmered right under her feet. It was a translucent platform of compressed wind.
She stepped off it as though it were solid ground.
The invisible platform burst apart beneath her boot in a powerful gust, hurling her sideways through the open air.
She landed on another foothold of compressed air that bloomed several dozen meters away, then she jumped off it to land on a third.
Then a fourth.
Then a fifth.
It was a movement Card that was allowing her to walk on air.
Okay, so she hadn’t totally lost her mind.
Thalia kept moving down in a zigzag pattern, pivoting sharply at irregular intervals to make it difficult for me to line her up.
I gave up on attacking and thrust my sword deep into the steep rock face.
Sparks showered into the abyss below, bright and crackling as Aurieth carved through the mountain like hot iron through wax.
Pebbles and boulders broke loose around me, tumbling down.
The strain tore at my shoulder, but it arrested my momentum, slowing my descent just enough for me to regain my balance.
With a small grunt, I ripped the Divine Sword free, kicked off the crumbling stone, and plummeted toward her again, controlling my fall by lodging and dislodging my blade into the cliffside here and there.
Thalia reached land first, dropping in a roll across the damp soil before immediately coming back onto her feet.
She didn’t stop running. The moment her boots touched solid ground, she was already moving again.
I landed a few seconds later. My sister was already far ahead, sprinting toward the treeline.
The forest was much darker here, dense canopy completely blocking the moonlight and making a maze out of the mangroves.
Did she think she could lose me in the woods?
I steadied myself and raised my sword high overhead.
Its blade started glowing again, but this time, the golden radiance didn’t just coat the steel. It expanded until it couldn’t be contained within my sword anymore and shot skyward.
A towering pillar of celestial light speared the heavens, cutting through the darkness of the night and lighting up the surrounding forest in blinding brilliance.
The immense pressure from my sword emitting that much energy made the air vibrate and grass flatten all around me.
Grinning, I brought Aurieth down without a second thought. The massive pillar of light swayed and fell forward like a collapsing tower.
Giant mangroves in its path were instantly vaporized into ash; the damp soil beneath them flash-boiled and blasted away in a churning wave of displaced earth.
Roaring heat washed over everything.
Ahead of the cataclysm, Thalia turned to look back over her shoulder. In the bright glow of the falling pillar, my sister’s face was twisted in pure horror.
She tried to react. She tried to get away, but she didn’t have the time. The towering column of light fell directly upon her.
THWAAAAM—!!
The blinding beam continued slicing through the dense woods for nearly a hundred meters, carving a wide, smoking trench straight through the heart of the mangrove maze.
When the brilliance finally died down, half the forest before me was… gone — reduced to cinders and steam and ashened stumps of incinerated trunks.
The gilded blade of Aurieth hummed softly as I lowered it, the residual light dissipating from its surface.
I stepped forward, walking into the long, smoking scar stretching down the center of the clearing. The earth was scorched black and still popping with tiny embers.
My boots crunched against the calcified soil until I reached my sister. Thalia was down face-first on the ground, wheezing uncontrollably.
The back of her vest was reduced to charred flakes, its edges still smoldering like the ground around her.
Her warbow lay shattered into splinters, and even through the haze of settling smoke, I could see countless agonizing burns blistering across her back.
That was going to hurt.
In my defence, I held back a lot. But maybe not enough.
Thalia’s body then started convulsing violently. It was as if she was having a seizure.
Then, all of a sudden, the air around her started flickering with red, blue, and green scan lines like reality itself was glitching.
Her form warped, pixelating and dissolving into harmless static motes. The girl lying at my feet the very next second wasn’t my sister. In fact, she wasn’t even a girl.
Instead of Thalia’s dark black hair and familiar features, I found myself staring at a completely different face.
A face that belonged to a young man with short, ash-grey hair and olive skin.
I blinked a couple of times, then sighed, pressing a hand to my chest in mock horror. “Oh, no~! Don’t tell me my stoic elder sister was actually a cute boy all along? My entire childhood is a lie! Who saw this twist coming?”
The grey-haired Cadet coughed up a burning lungful of smoke before his eyes rolled back. The Instructors whisked him away immediately.
So this was her strategy to lure me out.
I knew it was a decoy. I knew she wanted to drag me down here. But now what?
Looking around, I thought about wandering deep into the woods, but then abruptly flinched when a loud thunderclap split the quiet hush.
It wasn’t a natural storm. According to Kang, it wasn’t supposed to rain tonight. A soft drizzle, maybe, but that was it.
Yet the dark clouds directly above the cliff I had jumped down from were swirling into a vortex. Thin tendrils of blue electricity constantly arced across them, illuminating the world.
And right beneath the center of that unnatural tempest, standing at the very edge of the cliff and glaring down at me with disdainful golden eyes that reminded me too much of my father, was Thalia.
Ah. She had secured the high ground.
Moreover, she wasn’t alone.
Beside her, I could see another girl. She had thick black hair tied in twin pigtails, excessively big glasses covering a pair of deep violet eyes, and an ornate wooden staff gripped tightly in her trembling hands.
Damn.
Double-teamed. Height disadvantage. And she brought a Caster to a fist fight.
Scoffing, I took a relaxed stance and cupped a free hand around my mouth to shout up at the cliff. “Hey! Pigtails! Whatever my sister is paying you, I can double it! Plus, I’m way better company!”
The Caster recoiled, obviously not expecting me to address her directly. Or make such an absurd offer.
I almost thought she wouldn’t reply. But she did.
The violet-eyed girl steeled herself, resolve clear on her face. “M-My name is Moria! And I’ll not be making any deals with you when you already rejected me once!”
I frowned. “I… did? I don’t even remember you.”
The girl’s face flushed red. She was either blushing because it was her first time talking to a guy as hot as me, or she was enraged because I trampled on her dignity. Who knows? Could be either.
“I requested to be one of your Sector Officers!” Moria shrieked before biting down on her lower lip. “I begged one of your friends, but you didn’t even deem me worthy enough to be bait! You said I could go stand under a streetlamp if I want to be in the spotlight!”