Location- Sky Blossom City, Card stadium, Arena no.2
“Stone Gauntlets – Stone Skin” facing Ms. Park’s imminent attack I had no time to dodge so I chose to face it head-on using the skill of my Summon Armament. Soon 3 layers of Stone covered my entire cloud body. The stone skin was more concentrated where I calculated Park’s attack would land.
Without much suspense, Ms. Park’s heavy sword landed on my shoulder breaking through all three layers of stone skin one by one like a knife through butter and finally lodged 50 cm deep into my shoulder.
I never expected Park to be capable of using the flicker ability in this form. It was as if she had planned three moves ahead before every attack. She not only defended and dodged skillfully but also continued to attack me without the slightest delay. With every attack, she kept me on my toes. I never saw it coming which led to me being caught in her melee range. Then the fight grew more intense. Park kept attacking continuously. Compared to the fight with Corey this one was more fierce.
Having successfully landed an attack Park had no intention of stopping after all her prey was trapped in her melee range. There would be no better opportunity for Park than this. So Park started to attack relentlessly. Every sword slash of hers would leave a deep cut on my cloud rule body. If it were just the cut wounds then It wouldn’t be a problem as I could heal the wounds infected indirectly on my original body with the ability of Calamity Soul Core in turn indirectly healing the Cloud rule body.
But it was not that simple. Every cut made by Ms. Park’s sword Redtail was not only deep but it would also leave a demon fire burning in the wound. Demon fire being a flame rule that burns using the power of rules and runes it was tenacious and hard to get rid of. With it festering the wounds it was difficult to heal my wounds.
To heal my wounds I had to get rid of the demon fire festering my wounds first. To achieve that I would have to purify my wounds first using the purification ability of the world rules Sun or Spring. But being under a constant barrage of attacks from Park I was having a hard time defending against her much less making time to purify the wounds and heal them.
They say the best defense is offense and right now I had to go on offense as being in a defensive stance would only stack more wounds until my cloud rule body gets weaker and Park finally claims my head.
“Shine explosion” upon my command the floating head of avatar C2 swallowed the Sun Eyeball and gulped it down. Soon my cloud rule body started to balloon up and finally became bloated like a pufferfish.
Ms. Park who was madly attacking me noticed the changes in my body and her intuition rang in alarm alerting her and promoting her to retreat in haste. But it was too late my cloud rule body soon inflated while letting out a huge flash. It was like a 5-meter tall flash grenade exploded. The shine explosion covered the entire arena no matter how fast Park was or if she used flicker she couldn’t escape taking damage.
Park who was next to me took the full brunt of the Shine explosion. But thanks to the dense smoke armor and the horn helmet she was able to protect her vital parts and escape with a few significant injuries. Being a veteran Park could continue to fight with these wounds but they would continue to hinder her. The shine explosion had a purification effect causing huge damage to Park’s body. And also this purification effect of the shine explosion purified the demon fire festering my wounds.
While Park was still dealing with the aftermath of being caught in the Shine explosion I took the opportunity to heal my wounds.
I seem to have underestimated the defense of Park’s Smoke armor and her organ armament helmet. They blocked more than half of the shine explosions damage and were the reason why Park made it out of the shine explosion while still being capable of fighting. The purification effect of the shine explosion is the bane of the dark attribute of Corey’s demon fire of which her entire body is made up of. I thought with the range and damage of Shine Explosion I could render Park unable to fight but it seems the power of the explosion was not enough to break through her defenses and knock her out.
Having learned from our last clash, this time around Ms. Park focused on increasing her defensive prowess compared to last time. She planned to achieve that by forming a denser smoke armor to cover her vital regions. But she could not make the armor too dense and tough as it would hamper her moment and reflexes. Adding the hindrance from the injuries earlier her combat prowess will decrease by a sharp margin.
“Flame shower” Since her close combat is no longer sharp as before Park decided to switch to ranged attacks. Being the master of demon fire she did not lack those but she believed that melee can get the work done faster.
With Park’s command, the sky turned red and a huge fire vortex formed 300 meters over the arena. From the mouth of the vortex, numerous large fireballs started to spray out of its mouth and their descent was aimed at me.
“Skill combo – Raging Lightning mine” A strong Lightning spread throughout the arena. This time instead of summoning dark clouds for disaster rain I replaced it with my cloud rule body to complete the skill combo. As the sky was covered by the flame vortex it was impossible for me to summon clouds for the skill disaster rain which is essentially part of the skill combo.
As the raging lightning mine covered the arena it nullified the incoming large fireballs. Neither I nor Park were done here we both prepared for our next big move.
“Blood Burning x 3, Shine explosion – skill Combo enhanced Shine explosion.” The reason Card Emperor Claude added the broken rune blood to his Ego Gem is because of its taboo skills like the Blood Burning which can burn the user’s blood to enhance his other skills or physical prowess.
I planned to use it to enhance my Shine Explosion. Since I had 3 spare avatars I did not have to worry about this taboo skill affecting me. So I used Blood burning on all three avatars without any restrictions which enhanced my Shine Explosion by 3 times. Usually one would restrict Blood burning in order not to damage their physique. Due to this they only get a boost of 50% but since I did not restrict it I got the complete 100% boost for all three of them adding to a 300% boost.
“Hell Sanction – Hell Bridge” after spraying the large fireballs the flame vortex above the arena sky did not dissipate rather it grew larger and with Park’s command, the Vortex split the sky, and a huge flame beam of the radius of the arena descended. Just as the Hell Bridge neared me my Ballooned body inflated and let out a huge flash from within, Shine explosion.