Supreme Magus

their full potential only in close quarters. With his life on the line, he forgot his pride as a plant folk and as a future ruler of the night, facing her like a peer instead of a bag of flesh full of nectar.

Illum pushed his speed to the utmost limit, circling around the protection of the conjured shield to avoid surprises, just to discover that Phloria ’s skill allowed her to keep up with him.

Cursing his bad luck, the thrall lunged forward with all of his might. His left arm easily pierced through the shield and the soft flesh it was protecting. Illum clenched his fist to crush her organs and to make sure that the injury would put her in critical condition. 

Yet the moment the attack landed, he found himself drowning in his own blood.

His left arm was cut in half at the elbow level, and the other half was still wriggling out of his own back, whereas the human was unscathed. Phloria had hidden a dimensional door behind her tower shield so that when the enemy had been foolish enough to attempt a frontal assault, she was ready.

A Grendel ’s claws were sharp enough to pierce a Grendel ’s skin, allowing her to turn the enemy strength into a weakness. Phloria had also dispelled the dimensional door the moment her shield had collapsed, to not give the enemy the time to pull his arm back and try again.

The bleeding stump and the hole in the chest of the thrall were too much for his already battered body. The shock from the massive damage taken and the darkness energy ravaging Illum ’s body killed him on the spot.

”That was insane! ” Friya couldn ’t believe her own eyes.

She prided herself of being one of the few dimensional mages, a title belonging only to those who had stepped up a simple means of instant transportation into a battle technique, yet not even Friya would have dared to try such a thing.

”Opening a dimensional door from so close it ’s too dangerous. Locking the coordinates of its entry and exit point takes time, plus you couldn ’t know the angle the attack would come from. You could have gotten yourself ripped into shreds! ”

”You ’re only partially right. ” Phloria said while checking that there were no more enemies. ”I would ’ve never managed to pull it off if I were fighting one on one, but I ’m a Mage Knight and I rarely battle alone.

”The hardest thing was to not move from the spot, so that the entry point was always the same and I had only to adjust the exit point. ”

Friya still had many things to say about the craziness of such a move and so did Lith. What Phloria had pulled off was more a matter of cold blood and timing rather than talent, things she had proven to have plenty.

Yet it was a highly impractical technique that required for the mage to stay almost still and focus entirely on one target to the point of ignoring their surroundings. Lith was afraid that the rage from being suspended was affecting Phloria ’s mind.

She had never been reckless, which made him worry.

Neither of them had the time of saying anything because the plant folks that had been watching until that moment were now surrounding the corpse of the Treantling, which had reverted back to a young weeping willow.

”Can you burn it? ” Asked the Thorn woman who had defended the thrall before Lith exposed him.

”Don ’t you want to bury him or something? ” Phloria asked. Based on what she knew, plant folks would happily feast on their dead to assimilate part of their essence and power.