Chapter 133: Battle At The Factory
Right then, without warning, Casper blitzed toward Ethan and Nina in a burst of explosive speed.
The movement was so sudden that his wide-brimmed hat remained suspended in midair for a brief moment where his head had been less than a second earlier.
Leaving one huge ass crater in the same spot.
Nina quickly reacted almost immediately, bringing forth her shield in front of both herself and Ethan just as Casper’s fist slammed into its golden surface with devastating force.
The impact rang out like a thunderclap, sending vibrations through the Shield of Pythos. But the shield held firm, absorbing the blow as it was designed to do.
In the next split second, Ethan levitated upward from behind Nina’s protective position, rising several feet into the air as he aimed his left hand downward toward Casper’s position.
The purple magic circle that had been hovering over his palm flared brighter as bolts of lightning erupted from the circle and rained down toward Casper.
This was the Lightning Fury Bolts spell, and thanks to Ethan’s Amplification trait, it had been boosted from its original Tier 5 strength all the way up to Tier 6.
Casper, whose head had lifted up to follow Ethan’s sudden flight into the air, noticed the magic circle activating and disengaged at once.
He leaped backward in one powerful bound, moving so fast it blurred as he put distance between himself and the incoming lightning strikes before they could connect with his position.
The bolts struck the concrete floor where he’d been standing just a fraction of a second earlier, leaving scorched craters in their wake.
But Nina wasn’t about to let him recover.
The half-dragon summon followed up immediately in one straight-line dash that closed the distance between them.
Almost the instant Casper’s feet touched down from his backward leap, Nina’s long flaming sword was already cutting toward him in a horizontal swing.
Casper quickly lunged his right fist forward to meet the blade head-on, his knuckles clashing directly with the edge of the flaming weapon.
The impact caused a massive shockwave that blew outward in all directions.
Both Ethan and Nina had similar reactions of widened eyes at what they’d just witnessed.
His fist was holding through that direct contact with her flaming blade without getting severed or even burned.
Nina didn’t waste time being surprised for long though.
The summon quickly retracted her blade and swung twice in rapid succession from opposing directions, each strike coming from a different angle to try and overwhelm his defense.
Casper raised his left arm to block as the blade came slicing in from his left side, then immediately raised his right arm to block as it reversed direction and came cutting back from his right.
Each time her sword met his fists, there was that same impossibly solid resistance as though his bare arms were made of metal.
Nina then retracted the blade once more and swung it down vertically with both hands gripping the hilt, intending to cleave him clean in half from head to groin this time.
But Casper pivoted on his heel and drew his right fist backward before lunging it upward in a devastating uppercut that met the descending edge of her sword mid-swing.
This caused an unexpected deflection that sent Nina’s blade bouncing back upward from the force of impact.
Nina, who hadn’t expected to be met with such overwhelming force from bare hands alone, was forced to stumble backward as her balance broke for just a second.
But that single second was all Casper needed.
That momentary loss of footing created an opening, and the moment she stumbled and lost her stance, Casper blitzed forward with explosive speed.
He drove a powerful straight punch directly into her midsection with enough force that the air itself seemed to compress around his fist before detonating outward on impact.
The blow connected and Nina was sent flying backward like a rocket launched from its silo, her body hurtling through the air at incredible speed straight toward Ethan’s position behind her.
Ethan’s eyes widened in alarm as he saw his summon coming at him.
He had to step aside quickly to avoid getting hit by her body as she flew past him and crashed somewhere behind.
But stepping aside meant taking his eyes off Casper for just that brief instant.
And in that moment of distraction where Ethan’s gaze had followed Nina’s trajectory to make sure she was okay, Casper had already closed the entire distance between himself and Stark in one single explosive dash.
His fist was already lunged forward in a devastating straight punch aimed directly at Ethan’s head, now only a few meters away from connecting with all lethality.
Ethan’s enhanced senses picked up on the incoming danger immediately. And just as he realized the danger he was in, the warrior-class assassin suddenly met unexpected resistance.
Casper’s entire body froze in the motion of advancing as though time itself had stopped for him alone.
His muscles locked up completely, unable to move past that point to complete his assault on Ethan.
Ethan instinctively bound Casper in place with the Stillbind spell, acting before he was even consciously aware of the decision.
Aside from the first time he had gotten this spell to work properly against the fast-moving Nina during their training sessions, Ethan had consistently practiced with this spell every single time they sparred together afterward.
Sometimes he even practiced it idly without having to be engaged in active combat with his half-dragon summon at all, just visualizing the patterns over and over until they became second nature.
Over time, the constant repetition had turned it into second nature. It was ingrained so deeply in his muscle memory and mental reflexes that he could cast it without even turning to face his target.
Ethan then swung Ragnarok in the same motion as he turned, pivoting on one foot to properly face Casper’s frozen form.
He aimed for the neck without fail, putting all his amplified strength behind the horizontal slash meant to decapitate him cleanly.
Unfortunately for Ethan, even with his Amplification trait boosting Stillbind from its original Tier 6 power to an effective Tier 7 level, it could only hold someone as overwhelmingly strong as Casper in place for less than two seconds.
And right as Ragnarok’s glowing edge was about to connect cleanly with Casper’s exposed neck and end this fight, the warrior broke free from the binding spell through sheer force of will and physical power alone.
Casper leaped sideways and out of range so impossibly fast that only a thin line along one side of his body had been grazed by the legendary sword’s edge.
"What?" Ethan whispered in genuine surprise as he watched Casper skid across the ground several meters away before coming to a controlled halt.
I mean, Ethan had known there was absolutely no way Stillbind would hold someone like Casper for very long given what Joe had said about this man’s strength level being beyond normal S-tier limits.
But that reaction speed the warrior had just displayed at literal point-blank range while breaking free from a Tier 7 equivalent binding spell?
Ethan wasn’t sure even Nina could react that fast under those exact same circumstances. This truly wasn’t S-tier at all.