Chapter 345: Boundary Change

Bella’s hands moved, lightning coating her palms, catching two more attacks.

BOOM

Another explosion of force, another wave of death radiating outward.

More bodies disappeared, reduced to nothing by pressure that exceeded what human flesh could endure.

Elizabeth saw the shockwave expanding toward Adrian, saw it moving faster than her brother could react, saw the wall of compressed air and raw Aura that would kill him if it connected.

Her body moved without permission from her brain.

She threw herself between Adrian and death, her Aura flaring to maximum output.

The shockwave hit her like being trampled by Giants she’d read about.

Her vision went pure white.

Her ears popped so hard she tasted blood.

Her body lifted off the ground, flying backward through air that felt solid, crashing into burning earth twenty meters away with impact that cracked something inside her chest.

’Can’t... can’t breathe...’

Blood ran from her nose, her ears, probably other places she couldn’t identify through the pain.

She pushed herself up on trembling arms, the world spinning in nauseating circles that made her want to vomit.

’Adrian... Where’s Adrian?’

Her vision cleared slowly, shapes resolving from blurry masses.

Adrian lay on the ground behind where she’d been, unconscious, his chest rising and falling in shallow breaths.

Alive.

Vermont and Bella were moving away deliberately, their bodies blurs, leading the five masked attackers away from where she and Adrian had fallen.

’They’re protecting us... Drawing the fight away so we don’t die from just being near S rank combat.’

Elizabeth could only see afterimages of Vermont’s spear, frozen snapshots of movement her eyes couldn’t track properly.

BOOM BOOM BOOM

Delayed sonic booms echoed across the battlefield, each explosion marking violence that had already happened seconds ago.

Her eyes found Bella, saw her aunt’s face showing strain even from this distance.

Then Bella turned mid-combat, her eyes finding Elizabeth and Adrian, her face going pale.

"VERMONT!"

Bella’s voice carried across the chaos.

"Can you hold them?! All five?!"

Elizabeth couldn’t see Vermont’s response clearly, but she heard his raw voice cut through.

"DO IT! I’LL MANAGE! JUST PROTECT THEM!"

Bella’s hands came together.

Purple Aura exploded outward with such force that reality itself seemed to bend.

"

Domain: Lightning Forest!

"

****

Purple lightning erupted from burning ground like judgment made manifest.

Massive trees of pure lightning grew in seconds, their trunks pillars of contained power, their branches reaching toward the burning sky.

Where the purple touched the orange, the oppressive heat lessened dramatically.

Elizabeth gasped, air filling her lungs without agony for the first time since the Domain had activated.

Around her, Murdock forces who’d been on the verge of collapse straightened, their Aura no longer burning just to keep them alive.

But Elizabeth saw Bella’s face go pale almost immediately, saw her aunt’s hands trembling, saw the strain of fighting another Domain user written across every line of her body.

’She can’t hold that long...’

Then something changed in the air itself, a subtle shift Elizabeth felt more than saw.

The orange Domain’s boundary rippled, its structure altering from Completely Sealed to

One-Way Seal

.

’He’s getting pressured as well... He was forced to change the boundary!’

From her position on the black tower in the distance, Elizabeth caught the orange-haired man raising his hand lazily.

Fire constructs materialized around him, warriors made of living flame, each one massive and terrible.

"Go."

His voice carried across the Domain despite the distance, bored and dismissive.

The constructs marched toward Bella’s lightning trees, their purpose singular.

Destroy the Lightning Domain.

Purple lightning lashed out to intercept them, but the constructs kept reforming, kept marching, relentless.

Bella’s trembling intensified.

’She’s going to exhaust herself.’

****

Then hundreds of masked figures poured forward like a tide.

Elizabeth forced herself upright, ribs screaming protest with every breath, her hand finding her sword’s hilt.

Behind her, Adrian remained unconscious as she looked around.

’A few blocks away in the Murdock estate, his daughters are waiting for him to come home.’

The thought hit her as Lamien, one of their best A rank fighters, moved to intercept three enemies heading her direction.

"Lightning Step!"

Purple lightning wrapped around his legs and he vanished, the distinctive crackle of the movement technique leaving ionized air.

He reappeared behind the trio, his blade already swinging.

One skull-masked head separated from shoulders, arterial spray painting the burning ground.

But the other two turned on him with coordination that spoke to years of training together, their blades moving in patterns designed to create openings.

Lamien drove his sword through the second attacker’s chest.

The third’s blade punched through his back and erupted from his ribs before he could pull his weapon free.

Lamien’s eyes found Elizabeth’s for half a second, shock and pain written across his face, blood bubbling from his lips.

Then he collapsed.

"NO!"

Milie rushed forward, her hands blazing purple.

"Thunder Clap!"

Her palms slammed together and lightning exploded outward in a shockwave that caught the killer mid-step, cooking his nervous system, the smell of burning flesh mixing with ash.

She’d left herself completely open executing the skill.

An enemy’s ice-based skill caught her while her arms were still extended, frozen solid before she could lower her guard.

Another masked figure’s hammer shattered her into fragments.

Elizabeth’s hands clenched on her sword.

’Two dead... In seconds... Trying to protect me.’

****

She moved before the thought finished, her Tactical Foresight sub-skill activating automatically.

A blade from the left, aimed at her throat.

She tilted her head and felt the weapon pass close enough to slice purple hair, the wind of its passage kissing her cheek.

Aura blast from behind.

She twisted, let it hit the enemy in front instead, his chest exploding in a spray of bone and gore.

Three masked figures attacked simultaneously.

Earth user’s pillars erupted to trap her.

Wind user sent cutting blades from angles calculated to be undodgeable.

Close-combat specialist rushed in with a sword wrapped in dark Aura, ready to execute once she was pinned.

Elizabeth saw it all half a second before it happened, ghost-images overlaying reality.

Her sword moved, purple lightning coating the blade.

"Violet Severance!"

The weapon art’s technique exploded through her strike.

Lightning carved through rising earth like it was smoke, the Aura arcing outward in branching patterns that intercepted wind blades mid-flight.

Her movement carried her past the close-combat fighter in a spiral that physics shouldn’t allow.

Her blade opened his throat.

He didn’t realize he was dead until blood sprayed from severed arteries and his legs stopped working.

Three down.

But there were hundreds more.

’I can see where they’ll strike... Know what they’re doing before they do it... But it doesn’t matter... There are too many... Eventually one gets through and–’

Four more rushed her from different angles, their approach staggered.

Her blade flashed.

"Thunder’s Dance!"

Her sword became a blur, each strike carrying voltage, each movement calculated through years of brutal training.

One down with his heart stopped.

Second down with her blade through his eye socket.

Third down with his throat opened.

Fourth down before he understood his vector had been predicted.

But her arms were getting heavy, muscles burning with lactic acid that Aura couldn’t fully suppress.

Blood soaked her clothes from cuts she didn’t remember receiving, shallow wounds that kept bleeding, that added up.

Her breathing had gone ragged, each inhale suggesting those cracked ribs from the shockwave earlier were worse than she’d thought.

A woman to her left screamed as she killed two enemies before a third’s spear punched through her back and erupted from her chest.

The scream cut off wet.

A man Elizabeth had trained with last day collapsed under four attackers, his defensive skill overwhelmed, his body disappearing under blades that rose and fell and rose again painted red.

"PROTECT THE MISTRESS!"

Three Murdock awakeners formed a line between her and the approaching tide, their techniques blazing.

"Lightning Spear!"

"Thunder Step!"

"Violet Storm!"

They fought with the desperation of people who knew they were about to die.

The first fell when gravity pinned him and a blade took his head.

The second lasted longer, her speed keeping her alive until exhaustion slowed her enough for a killing blow to connect.

The third held longest, his defensive techniques buying seconds before they swarmed him.

Elizabeth’s jaw clenched, her next breath feeling wrong through damaged ribs.

’No more... No more dying for me!’

Her Aura blazed brighter despite reserves that were critically low, anger giving her strength exhaustion had stolen.

"Storm’s Wrath!"

Her blade moved faster, lightning exploding from each strike in branching patterns, the weapon art technique designed specifically for multiple opponents flowing through combinations meant to devastate groups.

Five down in a heartbeat.

Ten down before they understood the danger.

Fifteen down as lightning jumped from corpse to victim to corpse.

Her sword carved through them with fury born from watching people die for her.

But her right arm was starting to shake from muscle fatigue.

Each swing sent jolts through her damaged ribs.

Her Aura reserves were dropping into dangerous territory.

And there were always more masked figures pressing forward.

Always more.