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CHAPTER START---
Oberon's Light Shot was obvious to both seasoned mercenaries, and their response was well practiced.
The woman thrusts her hand forward, raising tendrils of sand from the ground and launching them at Oberon while the man snapped his fingers, erecting a square purple Barrierbarrier in front of them.
Oberon's Light Shot shattered against it as the tendrils of sand rushed him, then, to their surprise, he jumped.
He leaps through the air and toward the ceiling with surprising speed, gesturing toward the woman and making a pulling motion.
Her gravity flips and amplifies, pulling her toward the ceiling and away from her husband before the man could make sense of this development.
"No sand up here!" Oberon yells as he pulls her directly toward him, rearing back his right fist to attack.
She flips and orients herself in the air, mirroring him with her gauntlet and crashing their fists together.
Because he's able to create leverage in the air, Oberon's strike nearly dislocates her wrist, causing her to wince as she's sent careening toward the ground below.
Her husband raises his hand to make a Barrier and catch her, but before she could reach his Barrier, Oberon pulls her back toward him while floating in the middle of the cavern.
To the man's horror, the boy pulls his wife in and delivers a kick to her thigh, fracturing the bone, before flipping above her, grabbing her by the shoulder, and launching her into the ceiling.
The impact knocks the wind out of her, and Oberon immediately gestures to pull her in again.
The man sees this and draws a dagger from his belt, throwing it at the back of Oberon's head.
To his surprise, the weapon bounces off the air a foot away from the boy, who doesn't even notice it.
'What kind of Magic is that?' the man wonders while drawing his blade, ready to do whatever it takes to bring their enemy down.
The woman notices this while falling toward Oberon, gritting her teeth and ignoring the pain in her leg, accepting the danger of this child.
As she gets closer, she rears her hand back, then thrusts forward.
"Scorching Sand Blast!" A bright brown Magic Circle forms in her palm, converting Magic Energy into hot sand and firing it in a condensed stream at Oberon.
Oberon instantly understands what she's doing, floating to the side, narrowly avoiding the attack, and landing an uppercut to her chin.
She begins another journey to the ceiling, but he grabs her by the right ankle, breaking it with his grip, and flings her toward the far wall.
'Creating material costs a lot more Magic Energy than manipulating it, so she's trying to conserve Magic Energy by using natural sand. And the man can't fight in mid-air, I'll keep that in mind.'
The woman's back hit the cavern wall, sending cracks through the stone as her agonizing scream echoed through the room.
Oberon raises her hand and aims at her, focusing his Magic Energy, and releasing a single beam of light, aimed directly at her shoulder.
"This should knock you out," he announces while firing the concussive Light Shot at her.
He maintains his connection to the spell as it's covering the distance, but much to his annoyance, the man leaps up to where the woman is plastered against the wall.
He stakes his sword in the wall and flips to stand on the handle, back against the wall, and palms facing Oberon to create a purple Barrier in front of them.
Oberon sees this and narrows his eyes, changing the formula of the spell mid-flight, splitting the singular concussing beam into a dozen piercing beams.
The man's eyes widen in horror as the cavern grows brighter, and he expands his barrier in response to become a dome, shielding them from all sides.
The dome digs an inch into the wall behind them before the light beams slam into it, shattering against it, but startling the man as they adjusted at the last second to each hit different areas.
'This kid, what the hell is he! Why does he know this?' The man feels his energy draining faster than usual, all because Oberon understands his Magic. 'Barriers aren't uniform, he's spreading his attack to multiple places with gaps between them. He's forcing me to make it uniform instead of reinforcing any one obvious spot. Who is this ki—'
The man's thoughts are cut off as a rock rips itself from the wall and hits him in the back of his head.
He then feels the wall behind them move closer, and peers through the dazzling lights to see Oberon now firing with one hand while making a pulling motion with the other.
"He's going to crush us," the woman mutters, spitting out a broken tooth as she digs her fingers into the wall. She spreads her Sand Magic through it, reinforcing the entire wall to prevent it from moving, anchoring it and them into place.
The man glances at his wife and breathes a sigh of relief, not expecting things to be this difficult, only to feel a large drain on his Magic Energy as the entire wall shakes.
He looks back at the barrier to see Oberon kneeling on it as if it were the floor, staring daggers at him.
The boy lands another heavy punch, shaking the wall along with the man's confidence.
"Just give up!" Oberon hits the barrier again and keeps striking between pleas. "Please give up… I don't want to hurt you… We don't have to fight!"
The man's Barrier is hammered until Oberon knocks it deeper into the wall, almost crushing the couple between the stone and Barrier before the woman's preparations are complete.
"Now!" she commands, and the man expands the barrier to push Oberon away while she thrusts both hands forward to create one large Magic Circle.
Dozens of scorching sand tendrils, each as wide as a car, erupt from the wall and rush Oberon.
He flies away, avoiding them as best he can, but unable to sense Magic Energy, some of them slam into him, shattering against his Barrier.
The woman redoubles her efforts, releasing a harrowing scream as she sends a dozen more tendrils after him, costing so much energy that her husband has to help her stand.
"Catch your breath," he says.
"No time, he's strong."
The man waves his hand and alters the Barrier, keeping it embedded in the wall but mixed with his Invisibility Magic expertise, shifting its appearance to hide them.
"His Stealth Magic is annoying," she says.
"Stealth Magic?" The man looks at Oberon, fighting the tendrils, then realizes what she means. "I can't sense him. Damn it, that's why our instincts feel off."
"He also has a lot of Magic Energy. Gravity, Light, Stealth. We should be careful, he could have more. I don't see us winning the battle of attrition. We need a decisive strike."
The man pulls his sword out of the wall. "I'm no good in the air, but if you give me a boost, I can do it."
"Yeah. This kid's a monster. If we don't kill him now, he'll just be sent after us later, anyway. Just be sure to chop his head off."
"Keep him in our sight. We can't sense him, so we have to rely on the old ways to track him."
The woman nods and takes a few deep breaths, focusing her remaining Magic Energy and doing her best to ignore the pain wracking her body.
On her signal, the man drops the Barrier, and she leaps toward Oberon.
Her fractured bones immediately remind her why that wasn't a good idea, but her training and experience argue that showing weakness would do her no good, and the latter wins out.
Oberon sees her coming and spreads his arms wide, pushing the tendrils away before flying toward her.
She calls all the scorching sand toward her, creating clouds of sand beneath her to try matching his mobility as they clash.
Her two decades of experience allow her to adjust quickly, then her close combat experience and training give her a clear advantage.
For each strike Oberon lands, she'd lands four. But while training gives her that advantage.
Oberon is the prodigy of the age, the boy beloved by Magic, and each of his hits gave her sweet dreams of a retired, peaceful life.
Somewhere out in the lush countryside, where she'd never again have to fight a 8-year-old boy, that strikes with punches that hit like an earthquake.
"Hngh!" she coughs up some blood as he strikes her ribs, and once again she smashes her armored fist into his forehead, not even breaching his Barrier as the fingers within shatter.
She winces as he takes this chance to grab her face and throw her toward the ceiling, but the woman materializes sand on her body to slip out of his grasp and begins falling to the floor.
Oberon waves his hands and inverts her gravity, pulling her back up toward him, and the woman wildly waves her hands, commanding all the scorching sand tendrils to rush him.
Oberon notices the tendrils in his peripheral vision and cancels his Gravity Magic, giving the woman a sense of ease as she creates a soft bed of sand behind her to cushion her fall.
As she does, the tendrils all swarm Oberon and crash into him, not allowing any room to escape.
The woman smiles as she falls back to the safety of the ground. "Got y—"
Her gloating becomes a shallow gasp as a piercing Light Shot strikes her left shoulder, piercing her armored left hand and forearm, which she raised to defend at the last second.
Oberon remains locked in place, pointing down at the woman with the beam of light leaving his finger and piercing the ground through, all while her sand smashes into his Barrier, revealing its shape.
Defensively, he expanded it, creating a sphere around himself. As the sand plastered it, the woman falls to the ground.
Oberon and the woman lock eyes as her sand quickly envelops him, and she flashes a sinister smile at the young boy.
To conserve her Magic Energy, she cancels her spell, relinquishing control of the sand and allowing it all to rain down on the floor below.
Oberon immediately realizes his mistake. Between her smile and sudden change in strategy, he didn't even need the ability to sense Magic Energy to know what this was.
He spun around, reinforcing his Barrier as much as possible, bringing it as close to his body as possible to do so, like a second layer of skin.
And looking up, he could now see what the sand hid and delivered.
The man was above him, blade drawn and cloaked in a razor-thin purple sheen of Magic Energy to enhance it.
Oberon understands the danger this attack poses if they spend that much energy to ensure it hits, so he wastes no time in stopping it.
With a thought he commands gravity to send the man hurtling away into the far wall, and the man feels pain immediately wrack his body.
His blood and organs move first, damaging them since Oberon's focus of sporadic, panicked. It slams into him like an earthquake and sends him flying.
But even then, his training won out, and he completed his attack.
The slash was sent flying through the air, and as Oberon's Gravity Magic is unable to draw in Magic Energy inherently, it passes through the altered gravity field without interruption.
Oberon panics and raises his arms to block the attack just before it can hit, and in his heightened state, his True Magic rears its head once more.
His Gravity Barrier is always active, even while asleep. A creation and habit that has become instinct to compensate for his inability to sense Magic Energy. But it is not perfect. Magic Energy that is not physical or requires no medium, such as pure Magic Energy attacks, is not affected by gravity.
This is exceedingly rare, and is one of the few things he hasn't been able to solve. Even Laxus's lightning requires a medium such as air, so against him, Oberon simply has two layers with a gap between them above his body.
But this slash was one of those rare few attacks that even the forbidden Black Hole spell would not draw in.
However, Cosmic instinctively activates in this instant, taking a noticeable amount of his remaining Magic Energy and spreading through his Gravity Barrier for just a second.
The slash connects with Oberon and explodes into purple Magic Energy. The explosion knocks him into the opposite wall while the man slams against the other.
However, Oberon is knocked into the wall with such fore he creates a hole in the wall, sending bits of debris tumbling down, while the man flips in mid-air and skates down his wall to land deftly on the floor.
Taking a moment to catch his breath, the man then pops his shoulder back into place and inspects his hands.
"What are they feeding kids these days…" he mutters while looking down at his bloody hands. Maintaining his grip on the sword caused the skin on his fingers to be shredded. "Bloodied, sore, but my fingers aren't broken."
"We need to go," the woman says as she forces herself to stand, creating a staff of sand to ease the pressure on her right leg as he left hand hangs limply at her side. It's muscles was exposed and skin torn apart, pieces of broken bone protruding through flesh plain as day. "If another group gets here, they'll kill us."
The man walks over to her while looking at the tablet stuck in the pillar. "Getting that thing out of there takes too much Magic Energy. We'll head to the nearest city, then come back and ambush whoever walks out with it."
He makes it over to her, allowing her to lean on him for support. "Yeah. If we go back without th—"
Both adults fall silent, freezing in place as they hear rocks falling to the ground behind them.
"No way," the man mutters as they both slowly turn around. "Nobody's ever survived that…"
They turn around to see Oberon pulling himself out of the wall and dropping to the floor, landing and stumbling forward before steadying himself.
"Well, there is a first time for everything." He looks up at them with a cold expression on his face.
But they were far more focused on the gash across his chest and forearms, which was healing at a visible rate.
"You taught me something new, so we can stop now," Oberon says. "You should go find a doctor."
The man and woman share a knowing look, then turn to Oberon.
She steadies herself with her staff and gestures for the surrounding sand to begin moving, while the man points his blade at Oberon.
"It's not that simple," the man says. "But you're strong, so at least tell me the name of who I'm killing."
Oberon frowns and shows them his Guildmark. "Oberon Alkwan, of Fairy Tail, Fiore. And you?"
This time, the woman speaks up. "Names are for memorials. You're the only one dying in this fight…"
CHAPTER END---
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pat.reon: Keanu_Eugene [Read ahead & support me]
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