Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!-Chapter 281: Breaking point (1)

The barrier cracked.

No matter how much more mana this damned fox supreme could hold, she could never construct a wide-area barrier strong enough to hold against a pinpoint strike from another supreme. Her power… was simply spread too thin to compare with a concentrated attack, even if it was far weaker than the barrier in its entirety.

The barrier cracked. The whiskers of the opening spread out from the point where Etaria slammed her fist down, only to expand further and further all the way to the point where the structural integrity of this part of the barrier reached its limits, caving in under the mana-filled fists of the princess.

'It went through!'

Not having any practical experience of fighting with a fellow supreme, Etaria easily found joy in her accomplishment.

After all, save for when she forced both Madam and Zanba to fuck off into the distance with her explosion, this was her first time actively trying her strength against the power of a fellow supreme! frёeωebɳovel.com

The barrier cracked… and shattered in an area wide enough to let Etaria pass through, carrying on the power of her strike through the shattered barrier and all the way to the ground, where she last remembered seeing Madam stand.

Etaria's fist flew ahead of the rest of her body… and connected.

But contrary to how things went with the barrier, the moment her fist connected to her target, it came to a complete stop, unable to advance even as Etaria continued to pour more and more of her mana into it.

"Just…" she uttered through her tightened lips, somehow suspended in the air as she continued to wrestle with all her might to push her fist through, "die already!"

The smoke rapidly expanded all over the place. The shockwave of Etaria's fist meeting its match blew it away for but a second, only for the smoke to return right away, making it hard for the princess to see even her own fist.

'What the hell is this smoke?!'

The very moment Etaria lost her focus for the tiniest of moments, everything changed.

Rather than blocking her fist, Madam turned her guard and her entire body to the side, allowing Etaria's fist to slide down her guard and move past her, only to turn along with the strike and send a painful slap directly at Etaria's back.

"Auch!"

Feeling pain for the very first time in a long while, Etaria gritted her teeth, momentarily overwhelmed by the long-forgotten sensation.

For a supreme, there were only a very things in the world capable of causing them pain. Find your next read on novelbuddy

And as it turned out, a fellow supreme was one of those things.

"Silly kid," Madam muttered while Etaria walked a few paces forth, carried along by the momentum of her strike. "Just what the hell do you think you are doing here?"

Etaria turned around, trying to face the direction the voice was coming from…

Only for the next strike to find the side of her waist completely unguarded, sending her stumbling a few paces ahead.

"Show yourself!" Etaria called out angrily, killing her momentum and turning around, trying to peer through the smoke to find out where her enemy was.

Yet, even though Madam's mana should paint her as the most obvious target… Right in the middle of all the ascended and promoted ascended, her mana simply dissolved in the sea of chaotic flows.

Deprived of the sense she grew so used to exploiting over the years, Etaria could only grit her teeth and desperately look around, not knowing where the next attack would come from.

'Shit, this is bad,' the princess cursed in her thoughts, throwing her head all over the place, always sensing an enemy presence right behind her back, regardless of which direction her back would point at. 'I need to get out of this damned smoke!'

Pac!

A strong slap found its way directly to the princess's buttocks, causing a new… mental kind of pain.

'THIS LITTLE BITCH…'

With how even the emperor himself wouldn't bother to slap his daughter's ass for the sake of discipline, the pain Etaria felt was as new as it was humiliating.

Smack!

Another strike found its target, this time striking the back of the princess's head.

And once again, rather than causing any real damage, it only filled Etaria's soul with wrath and embarrassment.

'I need to get her out of here!'

Refusing to let anything like that happen ever again, Etaria quickly gathered her mana in her core, and ignored the second slap to her ass that followed…

And she slammed her fist down into the ground, releasing the hold over her mana and allowing its energy to disperse in a powerful shockwave that, at least for a moment, blew most of the smoke away.

'There you are!'

Turning to the target deprived of the cover of the smoke, Etaria rushed forth, not willing to let this opportunity go to waste.

She didn't try to cause Madam any harm, though. As proved by how actually hard it was for her to break through Madam's barrier, Etaria wasn't delusional enough to believe she could end the fight with just a single, hurried strike.

But she was more than capable of striking that damned fox hard enough to send her flying out of the forest clearing, the smoke and the midsts of the forest defenders whose aura allowed this damned supreme to somehow hide away from Etaria's eyes.

"FUCK YOU!" Gathering all the energy she could while on the go, Etaria abandoned all the techniques and reason, condensing all of her fury and sense of humiliation into a single strike…

That, in the moment of confusion, connected.

Madam obviously raised her guard and blocked the strike… but due to its upward angle, her feet left the ground, while the power of the strike carried her up and away from where she stood.

'Again!'

Daring not to waste her time, Etaria quickly fixed her footing before running up a few paces to gain fresh momentum and jumping up, straight to where Madam flew off. And once mid-air, she turned around and, while constructing footholds out of solidified mana, she struck that damned fox again, sending her flying out of the opening in the forest, the smoke and all the auras she could hide in.

"No more hiding!"

***

'This isn't looking all too well,' Madam thought when the golden princess' fist carried her up to the sky, where the cloud of smoke grew much thinner. And when the princes rushed forth and jumped only to deliver another strike, Madam could do nothing but brace herself for the attack.

SLAM!

As much as Madam refused to show any signs of pain or exhaustion, she was quickly reaching her limits.

Keeping up the blessing on her kin, maintaining the barrier in the places where the human troops managed to break the line of celestials or divines, maintaining a powerful barrier directly around Peter's gate…

All of those side tasks she kept up with continued to drain Madam's aura at an increasing rate. And while she could easily keep it up with the help of her domain by simply absorbing the world's aura that fell under her control…

With Lo'Atkar's invocation spoken out loud, none of the three supremes present on the scene could access this class ability of theirs. And from the looks of things…

Madam was the only one keeping up all sorts of secondary spells going, while both of her opponents dedicated their whole attention just to bringing her down.

'This might get dicey…' Madam thought, gritting her teeth as she pushed her aura into a simple weave, turning it into a quasi-physical rope she used to pull herself down to the ground, to where she could actually support her defenses with proper footing.

'I was never a fan of mid-air combat,' she thought, infusing her aura into her body and allowing it to half-transform back to its fox form. And right as her nails turned into proper claws, Etaria came down with yet another of her gold-infused attacks.

'This really feels like fighting that damned bastard,' Madam thought, gritting her teeth in mute frustration. 'Much more than I would like to admit!'

Etaria's fist fell down, showering the entire area with the golden light of her aura, aura she likely didn't even know the origins of.

And as small of a threat as she would be to Madam normally, with all the secondary spells she continued to keep up…

'Fuck!'

Unable to gather enough aura to properly defend herself, Madam raised her guard… Only to be thrown back several meters when Etaria's fist connected.

The few trees that were in Madam's paths shared her pitiful fate, not even slowing down her movements, as if they were nothing more than paper rather than thick pieces of solid and living wood.

'If this continues…'

Unable to find enough time to gather her thoughts, Madam already had to raise her guard again, once again gathering her aura to reinforce her block right in time for Etaria's strike to fall down.

"Just die already!" the golden princess shouted again, proving how lacking her dictionary was while in battle mode.

"You really are an annoying one!" Madam screamed out, once again trying what worked before. Instead of blocking and taking the full brunt of the strike right to her core, she twisted her block to the side, hoping to let the strike pass by, dispersing most of its energy to the side…

But Etaria, as young and inexperienced as she was in Madam's eyes… Wasn't inexperienced at all. And from how she instantly recognized the move Madam used before and rushed to counteract it by twisting her body to the other side and following up with another attack…

'As if!'

Rather than turning her block around and risking not making it in time, Madam jumped a little and braced herself for the strike, only for it to feel straight into her bottom ribs…

But as she didn't resist the attack and instead allowed it to just push her away, it failed to do any real damage.

Landing down a few meters away, Madam raised her face and straightened her back, giving the panting princess a look of fake superiority.

"Tired already?" Madam asked, forcing herself to put on a small smirk.

'To think I would resort to faking my situation like that…' Madam thought, suddenly distracted. 'Is this how this kid influenced me already?'

To fake it until they make it had to be the main calling in Peter's life, at least when judging how he acted thus far. And so far…

The aura of the world suddenly shook. The flows of the world's aura twisted in ways Madam never experienced… And from how Etaria froze on her spot as well, she was able to sense it too.

"What just happened?" As if they weren't trying to kill each other just now, the princess raised her golden eyes and stared daggers at her opponent.

"I'm not exactly sure…" Equally as confused, Madam looked over to where the main battle was taking place…

Only to see thick smoke rising well above the line of the trees, much higher than it did before.

And out of this smoke… a strange flying monster emerged.