Chapter 851 851 - You're bluffing!
Erik looked at her sombrely, but didn't move yet. His best course of action was still to waste time for now. Though he didn't like being passive, he also knew there wasn't anything better for him to do right now.
He still didn't want to engage her directly. Not only because he was missing access to his spatial affinity right now, but also because he needed to be sure this wouldn't end like his fight against Gabriel.
No, the plan was to exhaust her under a more controlled environment than they had with Gabriel. Unfortunately, this frustrating leeching property of her Frostvein affinity was complicating the matter.
Any wounds she inflicted on Erik would not only heal her own wounds but also restore her energy, and since her methods of inflicting wounds were insidious, they were hard to defend against.
At the same time, Erik's natural healing factor was extremely high—not only from his nature as a werewolf, but also from the three bloodlines Elora had infused him with. This, combined with Eira's help, meant that Erik would never suffer a 'death by a thousand cuts'.
Not to mention that Erik's Elorium meant he was essentially inexhaustible… yet now it looked like he'd possibly met the only person on Earth who could match him in stamina.
All this to say that, if nothing changed, this battle could only end with either party giving up, or slaying their opponent in a single, instant kill—something neither of them was likely to achieve against the other.
Fortunately, Erik was the only one who realised this. Even the worst expectations had Meilin knowing extremely little about Elorium. She likely thought she really could exhaust Erik.
Not that she actually intended to defeat Erik this way. From what he'd seen, Erik didn't doubt Meilin's intelligence, and he could see she was far too calm. Even now, she didn't attempt to reignite the fight, but simply stood there staring at him as both their bodies healed back to full.
Since there was no doubt she forgot where they were, he could only conclude that she was under a certain misconception…
'But I can make use of that,' he chuckled to himself.
Meilin smirked at him as soon as her body was fully restored. "You sure you don't want to lower the barrier before this gets uglier?" she asked teasingly, twirling one of her swords before licking the blood of its edge. "Surely you've realised by now that you can't defeat me."
Her smirk widened. "Although… perhaps that wasn't your goal, anyway. Your actions make a lot more sense if you were looking to tire me out first. A plan I'm sure you've realised by now is doomed to fail! Perhaps we should just wait here until the battle ends and this damn kinetic sigil or whatever fails, huh?"
Erik smiled lightly. She obviously didn't want to continue chasing him pointlessly, knowing she couldn't catch him, and neither did she want to repeat the song and dance in which she charges the barrier and Erik intercepts her—repeating that endlessly would do her no good.
'She knows I'm more likely to one-hit kill her in these singular clashes than the other way around,' he pondered to himself. 'Her chances are better in prolonged combat, because she can stack wounds on top of wounds on my body while evading my blows. Yet, she can't force me into combat, so she thinks she's better off just waiting it out.'
The smart thing for him right now was to stay quiet and look resentful… but he couldn't. Being forced to avoid direct combat with this arrogant, cruel woman had hurt his pride, and knowing she was burying her own grave right now forced a smug smirk on his face that he couldn't prevent.
He caught himself almost immediately and quickly hid the smirk, instead frowning sombrely. He even started gnashing his teeth a little, as if pondering on his next course of action.
Unfortunately, Meilin narrowed her crimson eyes at him. "What was that…?" she snarled suspiciously.
Erik stayed quiet.
"Answer me!" she screamed, quickly losing her cool as she pointed at him with her hook sword, qipao fluttering around her legs. "Why did you look smug for a moment?!"
Releasing he'd been caught, Erik dropped the facade. The smirk returned, and he chuckled lightly with a shrug. Yet, he said not a word.
Unsurprisingly, that only infuriated her. "Gah!" she spat, turning to look suspiciously at their surroundings. Two of the battlefields still raged furiously, but the other two were already dying down—those were Astrid and Emma's battlefields.
Though Meilin didn't know their names, she could see a ferocious, dual-wielding warrior slaughtering her first- and second-rankers by the truckload on one side, and a calm angel-like figure on the other, bathing the Enkarians in light from atop a golden disc as thorns spewed from the ground to attack her warriors.
The fact that they could attack so freely indicated the third-rankers on those sides had either died or fled already. At first, Meilin became angry at their uselessness… but then she saw the barrier flicker slightly under her subordinates' barrage. Her eyes travelled downward to notice the energy transfer from those two battlefields to the dome becoming weaker.
Her anger melted as arrogance returned. Grinning widely, she turned to look at Erik again. "Hah! I don't know wha—"
Yet, his smug expression hadn't changed, causing her nose to wrinkle in frustration as she interrupted herself.
"Stop smirking like that!" she snarled, eyes narrowed once more. "Those two may be somewhat powerful, and you may be faster than me, but if you think I don't have another of the Primarch's teleportation stones, you're delusional! As soon as the barrier comes down, I'm gone! You can't stop me, and you can't gang up on me with those two! You have no reason to be smug!"
Much to her dismay, Erik only shrugged and continued smirking, hammer resting on his shoulder.
"You're bluffing!" she screeched, taking a step forward with trembling shoulders.
Still, Erik only shrugged, even taking the time to casually pick between his wolfish fangs with one of his claws. He was disinterest and calm itself, especially because he knew it pissed her off.
Meilin started a tirade of curses in a language Erik assumed to be Chinese. It was a language he couldn't speak, but it wasn't hard to recognise. He could see her eyes switching rapidly between himself and the battlefield, thinking rapidly.
Finally, her rising frustration and anger won. "Raah, whatever!" she roared furiously. "I'm going to wipe that smirk of your face!"
In a flash of crimson she charged forward again. Yet, Erik's expression didn't change as he started throwing up obstacles once more. In but a moment, their battlefield had returned to the state it was in when they started.
In the background, however, Astrid's battlefield was the first to end. Cheers of victorious Enkarian warriors rose up, and an excited Astrid laughed in the middle of it all, a trail of corpses behind her.
At the same time, the barrier flickered heavily under the assault of Meilin's subordinates.