As soon as Lucas stepped into the striking range, he unleashed a fury of spear thrusts at Quinn.
Swoosh, Swoosh, Swoosh—!
Cling, Clang, Cling—!
Sparks flew, and the familiar sound of metal clashing against metal resounded throughout the air as Quinn parried every thrust of Lucas’ spear with his daggers.
Right when Lucas thought he had the upper hand against the necromancer, Quinn sidestepped, dodging his spear, and swirled around to perform a spinning kick.
Thwack—!
“Arghhh!”
The kick landed flat across Lucas’ side ribs, making him grit his teeth and grunt in pain.
Quinn moved quickly and jumped a few steps back to safety after landing a hit. He was fighting with his guard up all the time, careful of his enemy’s every movement.
However, Lucas didn’t have the luxury of being careful and taking his time. On his back was Quinn’s horde of shadow minions who were about to reach him.
He’ll have to deal some damage to Quinn before they reach him or he’ll be stuck between shadow minions on his back and the necromancer on his front.
“Tsk!”
Thud—!
Clicking his tongue, Lucas stabbed his spear into the ground and summoned the bow from his smart bracelet.
He took out another glowing arrow from the quiver on his back but…
“Too slow!”
Before he could nock it on the bow, Quinn appeared right before Lucas in the blink of an eye.
‘…?!?’
Lucas was, for the lack of better words, surprised shitless. He couldn’t believe that even in this state, Quinn could move this fast!
How?!
Thwack—!
The black-haired boy willed mana into his right leg and kicked the fallen noble dead on his chest, sending him flying right into the horde of his shadow minions.
“Die,” Quinn spoke as he did that.
“Khuaaaa! Khaaa!” once again, Lucas’ vision blacked out for a moment before his body landed in the midst of Quinn’s minions.
“Arghh!” massaging his forehead, he quickly rolled and got up on his feet. He picked up his bow that had jerked from his hand when he landed and tried to ignore the stinging pain in his chest.
“Fuck that guy.”
Letting out a few curses, he nocked the glowing arrow on his bow and closed one of his eyes before taking aim at the largest remaining shadow minion – a giant mantis.
It was that same giant mantis as before and it was coming at him, seemingly recovered from the fireball that Lucas shot him with.
“Stay the fuck down,” he said and shot his light-enchanted arrow.
The arrow pierced the head of the mantis, causing it to fall, before radiating a white light and disintegrating its body into nothingness.
Lucas swiftly stowed his bow into the dimensional storage of his smart bracelet and proceeded to touch his black and red nanometal armor.
With a mere mental command, the tiny nanobots constituting his armor began to retract from his body and converge into his right palm.
In no time, they morphed into a spear which he firmly grasped. He was without any armor now, but he had a weapon.
“Gilth Swoein!”
Right at that moment, Quinn yelled a chant for one of his shadow magic spells in High Elven before raising his palm and aiming it at Lucas.
To the fallen noble’s horror, Lucas very well knew what that chant was since it was one of Quinn’s signature spells in the first few volumes of the novel.
Although the pronunciation was a little different from what he had imagined while reading, he was sure of it!
‘Fuck, he’s casting Shadow Pulse!’ Lucas thought, clicking his tongue again.
Suddenly, tendrils of purple lightning crackled around Quinn’s extended palm. A dark, violet aura began to gather before him, coalescing into an ominous shadow energy orb.
“I thought you’d put up more of a fight,” Quinn taunted, confident in his ability to overpower Lucas.
As the orb pulsed with dark energy, the air around it crackled even more. Then, with a sudden burst of intensity, it shot out a beam of violet darkness directly at Lucas.
Since all this happened in the blink of an eye, Lucas had no time to move out of the way. Chills ran down his spine as he stood there frozen with his eyes widened in the horror of his impending doom.
However, at the very last second, Lucas managed to muster what little willpower he had in himself and spoke:
“Phoenix’s Embrace!”
BOOM—!!!
Right in that very second, the beam of dark aura collided with Lucas’ body and created a huge explosion.
Dirt and chunks of broken concrete flew, tendrils of violet lighting crackled, and everything around the immediate vicinity of the point of collision was destroyed.
Even Nero had no chance of surviving that spell head-on, much less Lucas.
Dodging Shadow Pulse wasn’t an easy task since the dark aura it requires to activate that spell would send chills down anyone’s spine, inflicting temporary fear and shock.
That was the reason Lucas was frozen like a deer in headlights.
“Heh,” Quinn scoffed.
Usually, demolishing brats like the one he had just killed wasn’t even something he considered fun, but something about this guy irked him down to his very soul.
He just did not only want to kill him. No, he wanted to torture him first to his heart’s content.
Maybe these feelings were the result of Lucas knowing about ‘her’ and using that information to threaten Quinn.
However, his condition right now made him unable to do anything else besides barely beating him.
In fact, he used his strongest spell not because Lucas was worthy of his full might but because Quinn had no other option.
Using Shadow Minions to fight was taking too much of his mana and putting a strain on his consciousness.
Yes, since Quinn had to control every single minion by himself with his mind, it put a great deal of strain on his mental strength.
Usually, it’s not something he can’t manage, but right now, even standing properly was taking a toll on him.
But after that last spell of his, everything was over. He had emerged victorious and now he could finally rest.
Although he wanted to do the favor Kai had asked of him and help class 1-C-8 win, what he wanted to do more was fall asleep – probably the effects of all those sedatives.
“Haaa,” letting out a satisfactory sigh, Quinn turned around and began to walk as his minions returned to his shadow like obedient pets.
Swooooosh—
“Huh?!”
However, right then, he felt something on his back, which made him instantly spin around and look at the spot from where the smoke was rising – the very same spot where his spell made the work of Lucas.
As the dust gradually settled, Quinn’s eyes widened as he took in a sight that left them shocked.
Standing before him was a being that could only be described as an angel descended from the heavens.
It was a tall, young man with fiery red hair whose piercing silver eyes shone like an ocean on a sunny day.
The most striking feature of this divine apparition, however, were the wings of pure, blazing red flames that were on his back, illuminating the surroundings with their radiant glow.
But Quinn’s attention was soon drawn to the youth’s upper body, which was encased in sleek golden and red armor, its intricate details gleaming in the flickering light of the flames. On the youth’s chest was an engraved red ruby that seemed to have possessed a shine of its own.
Quinn noticed the design of the armor matched the golden earrings that Lucas had worn on his ears.
That settled it.
Quinn was sure that Lucas had used a relic– a powerful one at that– to survive the might of his strongest spell!
“Heh,” Lucas began to speak as the wings of flame on his back gradually extinguished. “That tickled.”𝒏𝑶𝗏𝑒𝓁𝓷𝑒xt.𝒸𝑜𝓂
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[Phoenix’s Embrace→
The Knight of the Starlight’s Gift has been used in the making of nigh-indestructible armor, which is crafted by a skilled dwarven blacksmith.
When attacked with magic or physical objects, the armor can reduce the strength of the attack to one-tenth of its original power, ensuring the user’s protection.
Once shed, the armor provides a significant boost in all stats and grants an extra life to the wearer. The armor can be summoned again, provided the user does not lose the additional life.]
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