Chapter 185: Aether Blessed Academy Devestating Losses.
Chapter 185: Aether Blessed Academy Devestating Losses.
The crowd roared as Ophelia stepped up onto the stone platform. Her boots thudded.
Facing her was Valen, a tall, broad shouldered Void student with a cruel grin plastered across his face, teeth yellow.
On his right hand, a thick obsidian ring glowed with a sickening red light, pulsing like a heart.
"Another cute little Aether girl," Valen sneered, cracking his heavy knuckles, his dark uniform stretching over big arms. "Let’s see if you break as easily as the fire bitch yesterday. You Aether girls look soft when you bleed."
Ophelia didn’t answer with words. Her jaw tightened. The moment the referee dropped his hand and shouted BEGIN, she slammed both palms straight onto the stone floor, her voluptuous body bending, her ass raised, her hips wide.
Gaia’s Aegis!
Instantly, her skin took on a dense, rocky sheen, her physical durability increasing by thirty percent as she drew energy directly from the natural ground beneath the stage.
Veins of brown light ran up her legs. Heavy stone spears erupted from the floor in rapid succession, driving straight toward Valen’s chest and gut, sharp like knives.
Valen laughed, his obsidian ring flaring with dark energy, dark purple aura exploding around him. His four fold stat multiplier ignited, sending his raw physical output soaring into a terrifying realm that made the barrier hum.
He didn’t even bother dodging. He smashed his bare, dark infused fist forward, obliterating the heavy stone spears into flying dust with one punch.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
For twenty brutal, agonizing minutes, the stage was turned into an absolute war zone of dust and blood.
Valen moved like an unstoppable dark battering ram, his four fold boosted speed and strength allowing him to tear through Ophelia’s earth barriers like wet paper. He closed the distance repeatedly, raining heavy, bone crushing punches against her arms and ribs.
Ophelia used earth walls, earth fists, earth hammers. She made the ground rise and punch him. Valen smashed through them. He grabbed a stone fist mid air and crushed it with his hand.
Blood spurted from Ophelia’s lips, staining her deep blue uniform dark. Her body took punishing blow after punishing blow, the heavy concussive force cracking her ribs and bruising her skin dark purple and black. Her rocky skin cracked. She coughed blood but did not fall.
At eight minutes Valen landed a dark punch to her jaw and her lip split open, blood pouring down chin.
Ophelia spat blood onto stone and slammed her foot down, making stone spikes shoot up under Valen’s feet. Spikes stabbed his calves and he screamed, blood pouring down legs.
"Is that all you’ve got?!" Valen screamed, limping but still coming, lunging forward with a fist meant to shatter her skull, ring glowing brighter as he overclocked it.
Ophelia’s eyes flashed with fierce, unyielding resolve. She didn’t retreat. She let Valen’s heavy fist slam straight into her left shoulder, using her Gaia’s Aegis to absorb the deadly impact while pinning his arm against her body with her own bleeding frame, hugging his arm tight against her big bust.
"Got you," Ophelia gasped, blood trickling down her chin, her voice broken.
With her mana nearly depleted, her blessing’s secondary trait activated. She manipulated the shattered rock and stone dust around their feet with zero mana cost, wrapping heavy earth tendrils around Valen’s legs and binding him to the stage floor, stone crawling up his knees like chains.
Before Valen could react, before he could rip the stone off, Ophelia pulled her right hand back, concentrating every drop of her remaining physical strength and earth mana into her palm, her whole body shaking.
She drove a devastating, close range earth shattering palm strike directly into Valen’s throat, her palm covered in stone.
BOOOOOOM!
The concussive shockwave blew the stone floor open beneath them in a five foot crater. Valen let out a wet, horrific choke as his neck snapped backward with crack heard in first row.
His eyes bulged. The four-l fold external energy stream from his obsidian ring backfired violently into his damaged mana circuits, tearing through his internal organs as his own boost turned against him.
Valen collapsed like a sack of bricks, coughing up heavy pools of dark blood, twitching violently on the shattered stone, ring flickering and then going dark.
Ophelia stood over him, swaying on her feet, her body drenched in her own blood, her uniform torn at shoulder showing bloody skin, her breath coming in ragged gasps, legs shaking.
"MATCH FOURTEEN VICTOR: OPHELIA DRAGWYN FROM AETHER BLESSED ACADEMY!"
Lynx instantly went to the stage then caught Ophelia as her knees buckled, lifting her voluptuous, battered frame gently into his arms.
He held her close, feeling her heart beating weakly against his chest, her big chest heaving.
"You won, Ophelia," Lynx said softly, his voice full of warmth as he brushed blood matted hair from her face. "You did incredible. You broke his throat."
"I... I did it, Lynx..." Ophelia weakly smiled, blood on teeth, resting her head against his chest before passing out into the arms of the incoming healers who ran up with stretcher.
———-
The tournament dragged on through its sixth and seventh days, delivering one heartbreaking defeat after another for the top female fighters of Aether Blessed Academy, and the crowd learned to expect blood.
Next came Layla Solara. The sweeping, crimson haired beauty stepped onto the stage with her S Rank Fire Affinity, her massive, heavy bust breathing heavily under her uniform, her wide hips and big round ass making her walk heavy.
She activated her blessing, Ignis Shield, converting thermal energy into an impenetrable fiery wall that blocked sub-S Rank attacks, fire swirling around her thick thighs.
She fought her Void opponent for twenty excruciating minutes, turning the arena into a roaring furnace that made air shimmer.
She bloodied her opponent heavily, burning his flesh black, his arms charred, his face blistered, but the Void fighter’s four fold ring multiplier allowed him to withstand the heat and eventually shatter her fiery shield with a brutal, heavy strike that punched through fire and hit her chest, knocking Layla out cold and bleeding on stone.
Then came Nadia Goldspire. The dark skinned beauty with cascading brown waves, a lush heavy bust, and wide flared hips carrying a massive, round rear that shook with every step stepped into the ring with her S Rank Earth Affinity.
She activated Titan Power, making her physical strikes hit ten times harder, stone cracking under her boots.
Nadia swung heavy earth blasts, stone hammers bigger than a man, shattering her opponent’s ribs and painting the arena stone red in a grueling twenty minute war.
The Void fighter coughed blood for ten minutes straight, his chest caved in, but once again, the four fold obsidian ring allowed the Void fighter to survive her Titan strikes and overpower her with unnatural speed in last two minutes.
His boosted fist driving into her dark skin and leaving Nadia bloody and unconscious on the dirt floor, her gigantic ass covered in dust and blood, but was still neat.
Rhea Dawnwhisper, with her sleek icy blue bob and hourglass figure, narrow waist and full hips, used her S Rank Ice and Frost Touch to freeze her Void opponent’s internal mana channels, turning stage into freezing blizzard, ice spikes everywhere.
She fought until her hands bled, until her ice turned red from her own blood. Yet, after twenty agonizing minutes of high speed elemental exchanges, the ring’s immense energy forced its way through her frost, dark fire melting her ice and blasting Rhea across the stage in a shower of broken ice and blood, her body sliding limp.
Every single one of Queen Eleanor’s escort squad had fought like lions, bloodying their Void opponents to the absolute brink, making them bleed heavy, but every single one of them had lost to the four-fold cheat rings except Ophelia.
On the eighth day, the atmosphere reached a boiling point. The screen announced a match that brought the thousands of spectators to their feet, shouting so loud stone shook.
MATCH TWENTY-TWO: LYNX AZARION - AETHER BLESSED ACADEMY VS. SOL - AETHER BLESSED ACADEMY
Sol was a Year 3 Earth affinity user from Aether Blessed Academy. He stood on the stage, his face twisted in deep, bitter frustration.
Sol had carried a quiet, desperate crush on Raven for months, but Raven hadn’t given him a single glance, always looking toward Lynx instead, sitting close to Lynx in these past few days, laughing with Lynx.
"I know I can’t beat you, Lynx!" Sol roared, his Earth mana flaring violently around his body as heavy rock armor coated his frame, stone plates growing on arms and chest.
"But I’m going to make you bleed. I’m going to prove to Raven that you aren’t invincible. She should look at me!"
With that Sol lunged forward, slamming both fists down to unleash a tidal wave of jagged stone pillars aimed straight at Lynx’s chest, ground cracking.
Lynx stood calmly in the center of the stage, hands in pockets. He simply stepped forward, his heterochromatic eyes shining with cold indifference.
With a single, casual wave of his hand, Lynx used a fraction of his Gravity affinity.
The gravitational pressure around Sol exploded instantly to ten times. The heavy rock armor coating Sol’s body shattered into dust in less than a second, powder falling.
Sol let out a sharp gasp as an invisible, overwhelming weight slammed down onto his shoulders, forcing his knees violently onto the hard stone with crack.
BANG!
Sol writhed on the floor, unable to lift his head, his face pressed against the dirt, arms shaking trying to push up but gravity too heavy. Nobody watching knew what Lynx did to him, to them that was just his high understanding of his Wind Affinity.
"Don’t throw your personal insecurities onto the stage, kid," Lynx said smoothly, stepping past Sol’s pinned body without even looking down, voice low. "Raven never looked at you because you’re weak. Train instead of crying."
"MATCH TWENTY TWO VICTOR: LYNX AZARION FROM AETHER BLESSED ACADEMY!"