Chapter 259: Love Game - Requiem - Cassiel
Cassie looked at her team. She knew Rain well enough to recognize the cogs were turning in his head, but he was just a mortal from Ayther. Angelkin, sure, but he didn’t know about the forms of power like she did.
The biggest weakness of war form was its drain on mana, which was why most war form users went for size so that they could absorb more mana through their wings using a greater surface area. But the arena had introduced another weakness: it was enclosed to the point that almost no mana could enter or leave. Between Jassiel and Cassiel, the arena was almost entirely sucked dry of ambient mana at this point.
Jassiel had sidestepped both issues by collaring his Elevated in a way that let him use their mana gates, effectively tripling his generation rate.
Cassiel, meanwhile, had focused greatly on improving her gate both before and after the crucible of the mana sauna had granted her the magiform she wore. Combined with her already large capacity, she figured she had another hour or so in her, but not if Jassiel was about to go all out with the power of three gates and an anti-magic sword that could permanently injure her team.
There was only one option to finish him before he overwhelmed the three of them.
"Ozzy, I want you to get your opponent next to Jassiel’s other teammate."
"Yes, angel!" Ozzy shouted enthusiastically before diving to obey.
"Rain, I need you to do something I know you aren’t going to like, but it looks like you already figured out how."
Rain opened his mouth as if to speak, but then closed it, his face falling into a near-frown beneath his puppy-dog eyes that hurt Cassie to the core.
"I’m going to hold off Jassiel. But I need you to stop their hearts," Cassie gestured below at the fallen Elevated. "There are medics nearby. They can-"
"Yes... angel," Rain said, his voice as flat as Cassie had ever heard it.