Chapter 54: Manug(3)
It was a ruse, the archer had only acted as if he was slowing down because of the wounds, just before Cades had caught up, already sure of his easily attainable victory, the archer ran forward with great vigour and left some wonderful surprises for Cades.
These surprises consisted of a few light grey balls of clay, nothing more, or so Cades thought before they exploded before he could react, with him barely having passed them as they caused another wave to once again rush through the endless chain, and yet, barely scratching the surface of the uneven onyx metal.
Luckily the explosion wasn't fast or powerful enough to catch up to Cades and impede him, but the wave of the chains, resembling a spike send out into both directions did take his balance for the fraction of a second, enough for the archer to somehow run away much further than he had previously been running at, barely leaving behind any blood.
Cades didn't know how he was able to do, he had some ideas though.
Maybe he was using light magic, transforming his own particles and temporarily achieving near-instant velocity to achieve another position in a limited space, such as this, also known as its more popular term, "teleportation" or in this case, "blink".
Maybe the archer was using an artifact, after all the archer did have those magical bombs that resembled a ball of clay, on the other hand that was a disgustingly crude work, barely worthy of being called artificing, Cades wouldn't call it so either.
Just as a person who painted one painting isn't a painter or a player who played one game isn't a gamer this person was in all likelihood not an artificer, just because they knew how to make magical bombs.
His last idea was that this person was, without a doubt, from another world, maybe they knew something he didn't, actually, it was almost impossible for them not to know something that he didn't know regarding magic.
After all the archer had been able to consciously imbue his arrows with different elements, and he had somehow put away that huge bow into thin air as fast as Cades could see back when the bow had just vanished, and the archer was able to move so fast, which in on itself was something that Cades only theoretically knew how to do and would need a teacher to really find out how to do.
But there was something weird about how the archer was fighting, every single attack that the archer was throwing at him was almost instantaneously, as if the archer had no need to prepare or cast, as if he had no need to get the magical energy out of the depths of his mana organ.