NOVGO.NET Chapter 744: Painful Comprehension. Michael Normal Finally Comprehends A Law [1]
Chapter 744: Painful Comprehension. Michael Normal Finally Comprehends A Law [1]
The elf moved again.
She swept her palm downward, and the space beneath the gray-robed man thickened, then erupted into a spiraling lattice of roots that grew from empty air.
They wrapped toward him in silent coils.
The gray-robed man’s eyes narrowed.
"Die," he whispered.
Withering flowed.
The roots turned brittle before they could close. Their green sheen dulled into gray, then into powder. The air filled with dead dust again, falling in slow spirals.
But the elf did not stop.
Her fingers flicked, and the dust became spores.
Each particle flared with faint light, then multiplied, exploding outward into a swarm of microscopic seeds that flooded the air around him like a cloud of living knives.
The gray-robed man’s robe snapped.
His aura expanded.
The cloud crossed into his domain and collapsed instantly, as if all the vitality inside it had been ripped away at the root. The seeds died mid-flight and fell as ash.
The gray-robed man smiled, cold and patient.
"You cannot outlast me," he said. "Everything living ends."
The elf’s gaze sharpened.
"Nature is omnipotent. Anything that goes against it pays the price."
She clapped her hands once.
A wave of verdant mana rolled outward, and the space around the gray-robed man suddenly thickened with scent, with moisture, with the heavy weight of an unseen forest.
For a breath, his Withering Law slowed.
Just a fraction.
The elf used that fraction.
She extended two fingers, and a line of green light shot forward like a whip, splitting into dozens of strands mid-flight.
The gray-robed man’s expression tightened.
His right hand rose.
"Law Skill. Empty Season."
The pale domain surged outward, washing over the green pressure like a flood.
Where it touched, the world faded.
The moisture vanished.
The scent disappeared.
The elf’s face tightened for a heartbeat as her law constructs flickered. The strands snapped and died one after another.
The gray-robed man stepped forward, slow and confident.
"I won’t repeat this again," he said calmly. "Hand him over."
The elf did not answer.
She shifted her hands again, but this time the green did not bloom outward.
It folded inward.
Compressed.
Condensed.
A sphere of living rules formed in front of her palm, vibrating with suppressed force.
She thrust it forward.
The sphere exploded into a ring of green blades that curved around the gray-robed man from both sides at once, seeking his blind spots.
He tilted his head slightly.
"Law Skill. Decay Spiral."
A thin gray ring appeared around his wrist and expanded in a silent sweep.
The green blades touched the gray ring and crumbled, their life ripped out in an instant.
But the elf had already followed.
She blurred forward, closing the distance, her palm striking through the gap where the blades had died, aiming for his chest.
The gray-robed man turned, his robe fluttering.
He dodged by a breath.
Her palm grazed his shoulder.
Green light burst.
His robe tore.
A thin line of gray bled across the fabric as the Withering Law fought her influence.
They separated again, hovering a short distance apart.
Below them, Michael’s vision pulsed.
He could feel the battle above only as distant tremors. His undead were still dying. The bond snapped again and again, and each snap felt like a hook tearing through his mind.
He clenched his jaw.
His hands trembled.
But his mind was not yet dull.
A command pushed through the chaos.
Fade.
Leave my side.
Kill him.
A shadow detached from the formation around Michael.
At first, it was only a ripple in the air.
Then the ripple expanded.
A huge black mantis appeared, its body like polished obsidian, limbs bladed and long, its head angled downward with predatory stillness. Its presence was almost invisible.
It appeared directly beside the gray-robed man with no warning or sound.
Fade’s scythe-like arm swung, aimed for the man’s neck.
The elf’s eyes widened slightly.
Even she had not sensed it until it existed.
The gray-robed man reacted instantly.
His body slid sideways in a blur, the strike carving through empty air where his body had been a moment earlier.
A thin line of gray dust trailed behind him as he moved.
He turned his head, eyes sharpening for the first time into something truly dangerous.
"You dare sneak up on me?" he roared.
Fade did not pause.
The mantis flickered again, reappearing above him, then behind him, then to his left, each movement a clean jump through space, each strike aimed at a killing point.
The gray-robed man avoided the first.
Then the second.
Then the third.
He dodged, slipping through narrow gaps with an elegance that did not fit the brutality of his law.
But the elf moved with Fade now.
The moment the gray-robed man dodged, green light surged to fill the space he left behind.
Roots formed like traps.
Leaf blades curved in pursuit.
Every dodge became a step into another attack.
For the first time since the clash began, the gray-robed man was forced to stop drifting backward lazily.
His robe snapped as his aura surged.
His pale domain expanded again.
"Enough," he said quietly.
The air turned thin.
The mantis pushed through anyway.
Its blade descended.
The gray-robed man raised two fingers.
The space between his fingers turned gray.
Fade’s blade grazed that gray line, and a portion of its scythe arm instantly withered, cracking and shedding into ash mid-swing.
Fade recoiled, its body flickering backward.
The gray-robed man looked down at the falling ash, then back at the mantis.
His smile returned, smaller and colder.
Meanwhile, as everyone battled for their own reasons, Michael could no longer bear the pain of his soul being torn apart. Tears mixed with the blood flowing from his eyes.
One had to understand that Michael shared two types of connection with his undead.
The first was the necromantic bond between a necromancer and his undead, a link of master and servant.
The second, far stronger due to reinforcement by his talent, was the bond of blood kin. His undead shared his blood.
Losing them caused pain as well, but it was not pain that struck only the soul. The body suffered alongside it.
Yet within this mysterious state, Michael was learning something new.
The saying that you do not know what you have until you lose it was unfolding before him, though in a very different way.