Read Novel Full Chapter 482: The High Ground [III]
Chapter 482: The High Ground [III]
What? When did that happen?
I wanted to defend myself because I really had no memory of doing whatever trash talk she claimed I did.
…But then again, it did sound like something I would say. I could also faintly recall Ray mentioning a girl who had the innate ability to manipulate weather within a five-meter radius.
Hmmm.
Oh…
Oh, right.
I remembered now! Yes, I did make fun of her!
Right!
…Well. Oops.
Thalia didn’t indulge in the melodrama. She summoned a cruciform longsword and raised it up, pointing toward the sky.
That seemed to be some kind of signal between them.
Because, as if on cue, a blinding flash of electric blue tore through the dark clouds the very next moment, and a lightning bolt came hurtling straight down from the swirling tempest above.
But instead of striking me down at the base of the cliff as I was too far out of Moria’s range, that arc of raw, high-voltage electricity… slammed directly into my sister.
I would’ve laughed at the apparent misfire, but I knew better. It was intentional.
The lightning didn’t electrocute my twin as it should’ve. It clung to her.
The intensity of the electric current surged around Thalia’s frame like a suit of plasma, crackling violently as it bled into her body through her cruciform sword before flowing back into it.
The steel glowed white-hot, humming with an overwhelmingly destructive charge.
It all happened in a split second.
And then, in a literal flash, Thalia swung her blade downward, aiming its tip dead at my chest.
The accumulated lightning answered her movement instantly. It burst out of the tip of her longsword, shooting out toward me in a jagged beam of blue light.
Now, I’m fast. I’m very fast.
Even back in my youth when I was a B-ranker, I was confident enough to embarrass most of my batchmates in a race.
But no one dodges an actual bolt of lightning once it’s already in the air! Not at B-rank, at least!
Which was precisely why I didn’t try to dodge.
The instant I realized what was about to happen, I had already made my move.
As such, before her lightning bolt even cleared the edge of the cliff, I had hurled Aurieth straight up at my sister with everything I had.
The Divine Sword spun through the air like a blazing golden disc.
Mid-flight, the spinning blade collided with the incoming torrent of electricity.
It was a beautiful sight that came next. Sparks cascaded across the sky in a blinding shower.
Aurieth didn’t block the attack. It cleaved through the bolt of lightning like a knife through silk, parting the torrent of electric blue in a luminous wake of golden radiance.
Thalia barely got the time to gasp.
She could only throw her head out of the way of my Divine Sword as it zipped past her, its razor-sharp edge cutting a deep gash through her left shoulder.
Blood sprayed into the night, catching the dying blue light of the crackling lightning in the atmosphere, and Thalia collapsed to her knees onto the stone ledge, screaming in agony.
I held out my hand toward the sky to recall my sword.
The golden blade checked its momentum high above the cliff, made a sweeping U-turn through the clouds, and came flying right back toward my waiting palm.
FWOOO—!
…But the sword never got to me.
A fast blur whizzed by, plucking Aurieth right out of the air just inches before my fingers could touch it.
My hand closed on empty air.
“What the—” I snapped my head toward where the blur had gone, genuinely stunned.
A few dozen meters out of my reach, a wiry young man was gripping the hilt of my Divine Sword with both hands.
He looked like he was suddenly regretting every life choice that had brought him to this moment.
Because even though he had caught it, Aurieth was still pulling itself toward my open palm with the force of a runaway train, dragging the wiry Cadet along for the ride.
His boots skidded across the muddy ground, plowing two deep trails into the dirt as he desperately tried to anchor himself in place.
I smirked. “Nice catch, buddy! Now hold on tight!”
The Cadet gritted his teeth, his arms shaking from the strain.
Then… he vanished.
And I really mean he vanished. There was no displacement wave or speed burst. He was just gone.
At least until he reappeared several dozen meters further back in the woods.
Aurieth jerked toward me again, but before the sword could pull itself and its captor any harder, the wiry boy vanished for a second time.
Then a third and a fourth.
He kept vanishing. And each time he did, he reappeared farther and farther away from me, teleporting to widen the distance faster than my sword could fly back to my grip.
Some kind of short-range teleportation Origin Card, maybe? What a pain in the ass.
I let out a disappointed sigh and lowered my hand.
“Fine. Keep it warm for me.” I shrugged off my mild annoyance, rolling my shoulders as I called upon my Origin Card.
Up above, Thalia was still down on one knee at the edge of the cliff, clutching her bloody shoulder and struggling to get back up.
Moria, her Caster, was panicking.
They were wide open.
I pressed my foot down, preparing to buckle the ground under me and use it as a springboard, scaling the cliff in one go to reach them.
And I would’ve done that…
If not for a very strangely familiar voice choosing that exact moment to shout out, “Stop!”
My body froze before my mind did, refusing to acknowledge what my ears had just heard. Or… whom my ears had just heard.
Because of course I made a mistake. I had to. Of course he wouldn’t betray me. He would never.
Right?
Slowly, I turned around toward the source of the voice.
My stomach dropped.
Standing at the treeline, a safe distance away from me, was a boy with tousled blue hair whipping wildly in the midnight gale, his stormy eyes gazing back at me.
It was Vince Cleverly.