Ch28: The Rogue Slayer P1
Chapter 28: The Rogue Slayer P1
~28.1~
*****
“I know you said to rely on you, and I trust you very much,” Kye said as she dodged around the training grounds while Allison was giving her a tough training session. “But I don’t need help! I made a single mistake! One I understand and have already adapted for it! I’m fine!”
Allison ignored the protests. “No.” Attack after attack, she could only match blades with Kye, never land a hit. Despite her own extraordinarily expansive experience, Kye’s combat prowess was built on not only what Allison taught her long ago when Elysia was a child, but also the many millions of lives worth of experience she gained throughout her tenure as a transmigrator. But Allison had the power advantage. She could put much more mana into her strikes.
Kye’s own class was taken over by Allison, and Kye was relegated to a student. Rather than teaching her peers, Kye was receiving an intense lesson from Allison in front of them. Each clash released a pressure wave that would have pushed the onlookers to the wall if not for the barrier the Venturi sisters were managing.
“Will you calm down already?” Kye yelled as she adeptly dodged Allison’s attacks, no longer able to block them properly. She had to resort to redirecting the incoming attacks with parries or dodges to keep from being thrown around by overwhelming attacks.
“I am perfectly calm,” Allison said as she began infusing mana into her body to increase her speed. Noting that, Kye did the same, albeit with more finesse. She had already displayed such an ability before when she almost decapitated Shiro in the void while rescuing Rei. Kye developed a technique to infuse an incredible burst of mana into a tiny time frame. She was using mana burst in multiple ways at the same time. Every small movement she made to dodge Allison was done with a mana burst.
“How is she doing that?” asked several students.
“Actually, how is she doing that?” Michelle echoed. “That is unreal even by our standards, and our standards are already ridiculously high. Right now I’m clocking her at 40t per second of consistent output, but when she uses a mana burst, that output jumps a thousand or two thousand fold, in multiple places. Mana burst is already insane to use, but she’s doing it in tandem. Sheesh! ”
The students nearby all looked at her with stupefied expressions.
“““HUH???”””
Michelle shrugged. “No point in sugarcoating anything with that woman. Everyone knows she’s the King of Elysium. Back in the day, she could fight the rest of us at the same time and win.”
“What do you mean by that?” Louise asked.
Adele answered, “Before anyone became a transmigrator, when we lived in Athas, some of us got it in our heads that, with the right teamwork, we could finally win a match. And well, I think you know her well enough. Maya, myself, Adara, Eliana, Elias, Katriel, Kadmiel, Luma, and a handful of others took her on at the same time. We practiced our teamwork for centuries before we actually fought her. Want to take a guess how it turned out?”
With a reluctant smile, Louise replied, “...you lost?”
“Yeah, but I mean how well we did.”
Alethea smiled and interjected, “To put it into perspective, take all of those names except mine and pit them against me. I won, but it was close. I barely beat them out. Elysia beat us all in seconds. Our teamwork didn’t matter, our skills, techniques, magic, none of it mattered against her. Just look. Allison is putting out far more mana than she is, and yet Kye is keeping up with her just fine.”
Michelle nodded. “With her, there’s no such thing as a fair fight. Kye is a monster, and this trick she’s doing use mana burst multiple times at once is new to us. I’ve never heard of her doing that before, though to be fair, she never had to. It’s only because her body is in such bad shape that she’s having to do that. But she also was wielding mana burst as a mortal like it was nothing. Even once at a time is incredible when doing them hundreds of times in sequence.”
“She could do it like this as a mortal, too,” Sanae said. “I can as well. It’s complicated, though.”
“When you say complicated, that usually means impossible for everyone except the two of you and maybe Alethea,” Michelle replied.
“To think the King of Elysium, our very creator, is in front of us...” Isabel said. “She truly lives up to her status. And... she’s been our friend all this time? And our teacher? And more?” Isabel, like many others, was struggling with the truth of Kye’s identity.
“Wait, what is she doing?” Louise asked, her eyes narrowed and focused on Kye’s mouth. “She’s... saying something, but I can’t hear her over the crossfire.”
Alethea, Adele, and Michelle each raised an eyebrow, wondering what was going on. Soon their curious expressions shifted to shock and all three of them immediately poured mana into the barrier to help the sisters strengthen it.
“This is gonna be big,” Sanae said with a smirk, completely unconcerned with the severity of the spell.
Kye began speaking louder, no longer trying to chant under her breath. “Gather and show your strength. Let nothing stop your rampage.” A ball of silvery white mana pulsated in her hand as she continued to chant. “Fly and carry my enemy beyond the horizon. I command you-”
“Stop!” Astraia, who had just appeared out of nowhere, grabbed Kye’s arm and pointed the orb upward. Astarte had teleported in next to Allison to stop her as well.
“Both of you, stop. You’re being summoned. This is an emergency.”
Instantly, both dispersed their mana and gave the Atlantis sisters their full attention. The royals watching them from behind the barrier joined them as well, and Astarte began casting a rune spell.
“Where are we going? I’ll make a portal,” Kye said.
“Never mind that, I need only a moment to transport us,” Astarte replied as she finished making the rune. “<<Rune of Transmigration>>.” With all the royals gone, the rest of the class was left wandering what was going on.
“““Huh?”””
*****
Revision: 2024-9-9