Chapter 116: Adaptation

Valerian’s body crashed through the trees and was embedded deep into the ground. Ravena floated above him in the air with a wild grin on her face.

She wouldn’t have expected that fighting someone who was weaker than her would actually be fun, but the different unique affinities and surprises Valerian had shown her were entertaining.

Her form blurred and appeared above the hole that Valerian disappeared into. It wasn’t a crater, but a literal hole only a few meters in diameter and hundreds deep.

"Come out, I know you aren’t inju-"

Her sentence got interrupted as she felt a high amount of insanely pure mana approach her fast through the hole. She moved her head to the side as a beam of black-purple mass zoomed past her.

The beam had dark purple lightning crackling around it and gave off enough heat to melt the stone walls of the hole without touching it.

The beam traveled past her and split the clouds of the night sky in half before fizzling out after traveling a bit further.

’It was a strong attack, but not really a problem. Hmm?’

As she thought that, she felt a slight pain on her cheek, and when she moved her hand to find out what hurt her, she was shocked to feel a shallow cut under her eye.

The cut wasn’t deep enough to even draw blood, but that didn’t change the fact that it shocked her beyond measure.

’He actually broke through my skin and injured me... he isn’t even in the SSS rank yet.’

The cut was already healing, but the speed at which it closed was far slower than it normally would.

As the shock of the small cut settled, the culprit shot out of the hole with black scales covering his forearms and [Void Lightning] crackling around his body.

Ravena casually caught the fist and squeezed down on it, destroying it. Valerian didn’t react to his hand disappearing just like that and channeled his lightning through his body, enhancing his speed.

He kicked towards her head, but she also caught his leg just as easily and destroyed it too, but by then his fist had already healed and he engaged her in another round of close-quarter combat.

This time Ravena took a defensive side and put her sword away in her spatial ring. She blocked every hit, kick, or swipe he tried to do with his claws, delivering brutal counters in return.

Valerian’s body parts exploded more than once, but they regenerated just as fast. His already strong healing got further increased by the divine mana supplied to him by the stars in his soul.

With the near-endless supply, he could lose as many limbs as he wanted and not fear running out of mana in the process.

They moved at high speeds, breaking past the sound barrier and uprooting trees whenever they clashed. With every time Ravena countered him, Valerian could feel his body adapt to it and move away from making the same mistake again instinctively.

Ravena could feel it, how he didn’t make the same mistake twice, becoming better with every exchange.

’Incredible.’

She could only marvel at the adaptive abilities this new Valerian displayed, and she felt her blood boil in the heat of combat.

Catching his leg when he tried to deliver a kick, she threw his body into the air before stretching out her hand in his direction.

Valerian could feel a heavy mana distortion around his body and tried to teleport away, but to his horror, he found out that the space around him was locked, making teleportation impossible.

’Shit!’

Ravena’s outstretched hand began to glow in a purple light as the gravity around Valerian’s body increased a hundredfold and he crashed down into the ground.

As he stood up completely uninjured, he was met with a knee covered in silver lightning to the face, sending him flying through the woods.

The lightning didn’t burn or electrocute him; it literally cut through his body wherever arcs branched off and hit his body.

Standing in the ruins surrounded by broken-down trees, Valerian’s heavenly face was cut apart by the silver lightning, but he didn’t have to suffer for long as the cuts closed again, restoring the gift to the world that was his face.

’Cutting lightning?’

It was a strange variant of the lightning affinity, but he had little to complain about, as he didn’t have exactly the most normal affinities.

He could feel Ravena’s presence approach him slowly through his mana sense. Having enough of close combat for the fight, he returned to his hit-and-run method with space. But he was a bit hesitant to rely on teleportation so much after she displayed the space lock.

Yet he didn’t have a way to deal with that yet, and space was the best mobility option he had, so he had to work with what he had.

His body disappeared from the spot and reappeared high in the air, his purple eyes locking onto Ravena. He raised his hands as dozens, then hundreds, and then over two thousand spears made out of [Cosmic Fire] appeared in the air.

He could feel the slight strain releasing so much mana at the same time had on his body, but he wasn’t nearly at his maximum.

Letting his body rest for a moment, he held the spears high in the sky. When he felt that he could release a lot of mana again without hitting his S-rank limit, he coated the fire spears all in [Void Lightning] before coating them in a layer of [Event Horizon].

By now Ravena was looking up at him in the sky, but before she had the option to move to him, Valerian released the spell, and what followed was absolute annihilation.

The two thousand fire spears crashed down, their speed increased by the gravity of [Event Horizon]. By subtly manipulating the space around them, he controlled the spears with pinpoint accuracy, making them all impact at the same time on the same location.

The spears impacted; the first thing that happened wasn’t a loud explosion, it was the fabric of space bending inwards as Valerian added another spatial distortion attack to the mix.

Then everything collapsed at the same time, annihilating everything around it. The initial explosion reached for over 5 km in all directions, burning the trees and carving the earth.

Then the blast hit; just getting hit by the shockwave would have been enough to kill anyone below the A-rank, let alone the attack itself.

Valerian stood in the air far away from the impact and watched this symphony of destruction brought by this new stage of his physique. But he didn’t feel satisfaction, as there was a mana signature in the middle of the explosion standing tall like a monolith.

’Tsk, of course.’

His eyes were locked onto this single spot in the overwhelming cloud of dust. Remnant arcs of black-purple lightning flashed in the dust, and the heat of the purple fire continued to burn further into the ground.

Valerian could have launched another follow-up attack right now to increase the pressure, but he wanted to see just how far he was from the peak—just how insignificant he was right now when compared to the top.

And he didn’t have to wait for long as the dust cloud began to settle and the true extent of the spell revealed itself.

It wasn’t just a big crater. The [Void Lightning] voided everything it touched, the [Cosmic Fire] burned everything it touched into oblivion. But standing in this hell of cosmic magic was Ravena, though her form was different from before.

Most of her body was unharmed and still perfectly intact, but the hand which she held out into the sky, like she was holding the weight of the cosmos above on her own, was charred and bleeding.

Valerian looked past her arm and into her eyes, but instead of an angry or annoyed expression about the injury, she had a grin.

That single grin terrified Valerian more than anything else could.

She clenched her fist, causing new blood to flow out of her burned skin, and her body disappeared.

His instincts weren’t even able to pick anything up, but Valerian could feel something inside him. When he looked down, he saw Ravena’s charred hand pierced through his torso as silver lightning began to cut him apart from within.