Dreadwolf, Lord of Runes

With Aelia finally managing to force Luna into close quarters, the battle quickly began to heat up. Literally. Aelia's weapons only ever burned brighter as they started clashing with Luna.

Yet, Luna's skill was rapidly showing once again. Her swords remained covered in crackling, crimson lightning to combat the blue flames as they deftly parried and deflected Aelia's hammers.

It wasn't long before the catling noticed that Aelia was the second-most skilled fighter she'd fought today, with Lyra taking the top spot. She realized Aelia had a lot of raw talent that was only brought out slightly by her experience.

'Maybe teaching her is not such a bad idea…' Luna suddenly thought to herself, realizing it might be fun to unleash someone's potential.

But she soon frowned and focused back on the battle. Aelia's hammer blows were never hitting their target, only ever glancing against Luna's swords, yet every time she swung them, they generated small explosions of blue flames that still put pressure on the catling.

"Looks like she found an appropriate weapon-art among those techniques," Kane muttered to himself when he noticed the explosions. "How fortunate."

Weapon-arts were techniques that focused exclusively on weapon focused skills. Usually, they were were linked to specific weapon types, included a fighting style, and increased the power of weapon-related skills.

Yet, the downside was that they were far less versatile than regular techniques. If your main technique is a weapon-art, then your internal energy flowed in such a way that non-weapon related skills actually became weaker, or even entirely unusable.

The Elemental Blade Combat Art that Kane possessed was not a weapon-art, however. As the name suggest, it is a combat-art, which is another form of technique that focuses entirely on style and skills, with no attention paid to the internal energy flow.

Instead, it simply uses the energy flow from regular techniques like, in Kane's case, the Crescent Moon Manual, and his newest Eternal Winter technique. This made combat-arts far more versatile, but also less powerful, compared to weapon-arts.

Beside him, Ella nodded. "Yeah, although weapon-arts exist on every Mythic stage, they are especially powerful at the lower stages, where power is often more important than versatility."

Kane couldn't deny that, even though he would never trade his combat-art in for a weapon-art. For someone like him, with multiple elements, techniques, and his powers as a paragon, versatility was far more important that pure power.

Meanwhile, Luna may not have a weapon-art, but she didn't shy away from using her technique like one. Although she lacked the increased power from an actual weapon-art, her technique being a fourth stage one meant she was still overpowering Aelia's second stage weapon-art.

Thus, she kept her blades covered in lightning, and even continued sending out waves with every swing of her blades. Because of this, surprisingly, Luna was the one to quickly gain the upper hand in this battle.

Currently, Luna was in her most aggressive stance yet, had entirely blown caution to the wind, and was leaking energy like a sieve. Both blades were held in a reverse grip, and she was dodging more than she was parrying or deflecting.

Despite this strategy being extremely risky, as many of Aelia's attacks only barely missed the catling, it was working. Aelia was quicky growing frustrated when she realized Luna was trying to put an end to the fight as soon as possible, and might even succeed.

It wasn't long before Aelia found herself entirely on the defensive. Just as with the battle against Anna before, Aelia was only barely able to keep up with Luna's attacks.

Her fifth rank cores allowed her to resist Luna's onslaught by just barely blocking the catling's attacks and destroying the lightning waves with her flames, but she knew this wasn't sustainable. For either of them.

Yet, at the current rate, where Luna knew this was her last fight and fear of being injured wasn't a concern, she might very well break through Aelia's forceful defence before she ran out of stamina. This was different from her fight with Anna, as she was still trying to reserve some energy for fighting Aelia back then.

Now, Luna practically ran circles around Aelia. Her dual blades stabbed and slashed forward in an endless flurry of metal, each one of her attacks followed by a crimson lightning wave.

Neither of them was getting away without any wounds, either. Edges of lightning waves were cutting into Aelia's flesh, burning and cutting it at the same time, while the blood element enflamed her insides.

At the same time, the heat and blue flame explosions were creating burn wounds on Luna's body. Even her long, beautiful white hair was getting singed.

Yet, neither of them cared about any of this as the battle waged on. Hammers swung and missed. Swords crashed against hammer hafts. Lightning cracked and fizzled. Fire roared loudly.

The crowd watched with bated breath as they even forgot to cheer. A battle of titans was happening in front of their eyes, and they refused to miss a beat.

Occasionally, lightning would begin to flicker at the edges of Luna's body, but because she'd already used this ability against Anna, Aelia knew what to expect.

Whenever she noticed those flickers, she would roar, and pour even more power into her flames. Her immediate surroundings would then immediately become exponentially dangerous, not allowing Luna to get close, even with the extreme speed of her flash skill.

It wasn't long before Luna stopped trying all together, and focused on her other attacks instead.

For just a few more minutes this continued. Luna, putting heavy pressure on Aelia, who was only barely able to defend herself, despite her higher power.

But then, Aelia finally had an opening.

Luna stumbled slightly, either due to exhaustion or a recent burn on one of her legs, and Aelia was quick to capitalize. Finally having a moment of peace, she had to make a quick decision on how best to make use of it.

In the end, she decided not to attack with her hammers, afraid she'd mis again, and instead used this time to release the most powerful flame explosion she could. She knew that, with Luna's weaker defences, she just had to hit her once.

Thus, roaring, she poured power into her hammers again, before smashing them together with as much force as she could.

Instantly, a massive explosion of blue fire engulfed Luna, and black smoke obscured the entire battlefield. Only the most observant among the crowd noticed a wild discharge of crimson lightning happened at exactly the same time.

Despite knowing she was fine, Kane couldn't help but frown a little, and growled softly through his link with Ella, "Ella…?"

"She's fine," came the elf's quick and soothing response, yet without providing clarity on the winner.

Meanwhile, tensions rose in the crowd as everyone held their breath in anticipation of the result.

Finally, the soft, familiar ting of a breaking barrier echoed. Immediately afterward, a green and red light descended from the ceiling, yet the smoke obscured who they were shining down on.

A moment later, the arena began to clear, and the scene revealed itself.