MIGHT AS WELL BE OP-Chapter 952: A Knack
This time, it was Aura Nova’s turn to be surprised, yes, she had expected Lucian to recover, but she hadn’t expected it to be this swift and instantaneous, so seamless that it felt less like recovery and more like the world itself correcting an error. She had expected him to dodge and for her attack to at least graze him while he avoided a lethal injury.
But he had defied her expectations entirely and blocked instead, sustaining not even the smallest injury in history, not even a scratch or the faintest mark upon his skin. She could tell that the katana in his hand wasn’t another one, but the same katana she had just gotten rid of, the very same weight, the same edge, the same presence she had felt moments ago.
Lucian had always known that it was normal to lose a sword or any weapon on a battlefield, it was a mistake many warriors made and paid for with their lives, and it was precisely the reason why he carried a blade that could return to him with nothing but a thought or a subtle tug of his will, a weapon bound to him as faithfully as a shadow to its owner.
"Surprised?" Lucian asked with a calm tone as he and Aura Nova just stood there, their weapons pressed tightly into each other, metal grinding against metal as faint sparks dripped downward like dying stars.
"Indeed, I am," Aura Nova stated, not denying it in the slightest, her calm state remaining exactly as it was, her breathing steady and controlled as the glass of the shattered windows from earlier plummeted toward the asphalt, falling between and upon them like rain droplets, chiming softly as fragments bounced and shattered further.
"I guess that makes the both of us," Lucian stated with a calm smile on his face, "although I don’t know how you suddenly achieved such battle experience and combat IQ and skill, I for sure know it isn’t through the battle with Kingsley," he spoke evenly, his eyes sharp and observant, "and I have to say, your Omniedit ability is truly broken if it can allow you to perform such ridiculous feats," he added as he stared at her with a faintly amused smile, one filled with both praise and wariness.
Although Lucian didn’t know exactly what Aura Nova did, he could already guess she had increased her battle experience somehow, no one sharpened that much in such a short time without bending the rules of reality itself.
’She really has improved, all the gaps in her movement and attacks that Kingsley had exploited previously are almost all gone,’ he thought to himself, recalling the flaws that once existed and noticing how nearly every one of them had been meticulously erased.
’Sighs, everyone is just so talented and monsters of different yet equal calibre, the author really does have a knack for writing overpowered characters,’ he mused silently to himself.
Kingsley who had lost to Aura Nova had come back to battle Aaaninja, and he had deployed an improved Law Defiance Field which formerly had glaring weaknesses.
And now, Aura Nova who had lost to Kingsley in terms of close quarter combat had also started to erase this particular aspect of her weakness with terrifying efficiency. Lucian couldn’t help but sigh internally at the gathering of such talents, each one evolving mid-battle like monsters shedding old skin.
He had expected to end Aura Nova in close quarter combat within a couple exchanges of attacks, a clean and decisive victory, but it seemed he would have to pick up the tempo, after all, she had evolved, and evolution in battle was always the most dangerous variable.
Aura Nova smirked before she spoke, "Don’t blink or you would miss," and the moment those words left her lips, she was gone, her body appearing behind Lucian like a ghost slipping through space, her blades zigzagging through the air as she unleashed a storm of attacks, her speed increasing with every swing until her form blurred into streaks.
Lucian’s body simply turned into an afterimage, Aura Nova’s attacks tearing through empty air as nothing but fading silhouettes were struck, the next moment the building collapsed totally beneath them from the accumulated damage, both of them plummeting from the air, their bodies arranged side by side as though falling partners, but they didn’t attack each other as they descended, they simply gazed at one another with small smiles as though they were reading each other and seeing meaning in that silence, their hair dancing wildly to the rhythm of the wind as gravity tore them downward with merciless pull.
The moment they got to the ground, their bodies adjusted seamlessly as they landed with a deft touch, knees bending to absorb the shock, but the instant the soles of their feet made contact with the earth, they blitzed forward again with cataclysmic speed. Sonic explosions followed as they tore through the wind and shattered the sound barriers as though it was nothing more than a joke, the atmosphere cracking behind them like breaking glass.
Aura Nova put some distance between her and Lucian as she weaved through a shower of attacks, each sword line narrowly missing her by centimeters, her eyes snapping toward a fuel truck at the side of the ruined street, and without a pause, her foot met it as though it was a football, and with that single kick it tore forward with a metallic hiss and violent spin, its massive frame hurtling toward Lucian like a launched missile.
Lucian didn’t even react visibly, his wrist merely flickered and a single sword line flashed across the air, and in the next instant the entire fuel tank exploded into bits of metal and rubber, sliced apart so cleanly it looked dissected rather than destroyed, fragments scattering everywhere.
Aura Nova tore in from the side as she had used the tank truck as a distraction, her blades already aiming for his blind spot. But Lucian had already seen through that, his katana flashed again and the next instant over a million sword lines appeared around Aura Nova, each interlinked like a net of death woven from pure steel intent, and without hesitation or remorse, it collapsed upon her from every direction.
Aura Nova’s eyes flashed sharply, she made a split-second decision, Sword Intent immediately pulsing through her body and blades like lightning through nerves, and without delay, she pushed forward like a bolt of lightning through the sky, her twin short swords tearing through one attack after another as they closed in around her as though trying to cage her in place.
Seeing the attack seemed endless and that cutting through them one by one would eventually overwhelm her, she changed tactics instantly, her hand blurring as though it glitched out of reality itself and the next instant she unleashed a wide-range area attack that was filled with nothing but death and destruction, her own attacks collapsing into Lucian’s and tearing through them like knives through butter, shredding the sword net apart with raw dominance.
Buildings crashed, the asphalt cracked and caved in, ravines tore open like wounds across the earth, sword marks marred the ground around them as they unleashed a thunderstorm of ruin upon the battlefield. Choking clouds of dust, debris, and shattered stone twisted into the air like a roaring wind cyclone climbing toward the sky, swallowing everything in sight. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦
The battlefield became a haze of churning and swirling obstruction, vision reduced to shadows and flashes, a warzone where only instincts and killing intent could guide survival.
