Lord Of Beasts

With the two B Rank damselfly-like beasts finally brought down, their broken bodies lying on fractured floating islands, Kaela found herself alone.

Alone against the true threat.

The A Rank dragonfly hovered in the air before her, its sleek body crackling with faint arcs of blue electricity that danced across its surface like living veins. Its wings vibrated at a frequency that distorted the air itself, bending light, warping perception.

For a moment, everything stilled.

Kaela exhaled slowly, rolling her shoulders as her purple aura flickered back to life, coiling around her like a storm waiting to be unleashed.

And that’s when her one-on-one battle began.

Because in the next instant it vanished.

BOOM!

Kaela’s arm snapped up just in time as something slammed into her guard. The force alone shattered the island beneath her feet, cracks exploding outward in every direction as the ground collapsed into nothingness.

She was sent flying.

But she twisted mid-air, stabilising herself as her aura surged, anchoring her against the chaos.

”There you are.”

She lunged forward, her fist meeting its body.

The impact detonated the air between them, a shockwave ripping outward and obliterating a nearby floating island into fragments that scattered like dust.

They shot upward, higher and faster.

The battlefield expanded into the sky itself.

Purple and blue collided violently, aura clashing against electricity in a storm of raw power that tore through everything in its path.

Kaela swung.

The dragonfly slipped past her strike.

It was incredibly fast.

A streak of blue flashed across her vision, and pain followed.

Lightning tore across her side, searing flesh, disrupting her aura, and sending her spiralling downward. Her body screamed, and her regeneration kicked in instantly.

”Tch-”

Kaela forced herself upright mid-fall and launched herself back into the air.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Each clash echoed like thunder, and each exchange pushed her further.

The beast had electricity-based abilities, insane speed, and could both attack from range and up close. Not to mention that it could fly. Meanwhile, Kaela was forced to bound off these floating rocks and augmented physical attacks.

But something was changing.

At first, she was reacting to its attacks, and most of the time having only one option: to endure it and use her mana to heal.

But now she was starting to anticipate its attacks.

She hadn’t gotten much faster, nor had the beast she was facing gotten any slower, yet she could now see its attacks coming. It was only a flicker, a whisper of the movement before it happened, but that made all the difference.

The dragonfly blurred to her left.

She moved before it arrived, its strike missing her for the first time.

Kaela’s eyes sharpened.

”There it is.”

She grinned, because she knew exactly what that feeling was.

Foresight.

It wasn’t like she could peer into the future, but it was an instinct that gave her an edge, and that fraction of a second was invaluable. She couldn’t activate it at will, and thus it wasn’t an ability she relied on, but when it appeared, everything changed.

With it, she was even closer to the Valkyries of legend.

The dragonfly accelerated.

Its body crackled brighter, electricity surging outward and forming jagged arcs that lashed through the air like whips.

Kaela dodged one.

Then another.

A third grazed her shoulder, exploding on contact and sending a violent surge through her body. Her muscles spasmed, and her aura flickered, as her healing struggled to counteract its effects.

The beast was unleashing more of its mana, and as such, its electricity-like power was even more lethal.

Still, she stepped forward, ready to face it head-on like always.

”You’re not the only one getting serious.”

Her aura flared, becoming denser but more refined.

The chaotic energy that once defined her fighting style began to compress, sharpen, and condense into something far more dangerous. She moved faster and stronger than before, and most impactfully, her strikes no longer wasted motion.

Every punch.

Every step.

Every breath.

She had become the living embodiment of her Title: the Riot Valkyrie.

Chaos refined into perfection.

The dragonfly responded.

Its body split into afterimages, multiple streaks of blue lightning converging on her from all directions.

”What the-”

Kaela’s vision blurred.

Her instincts screamed, and that tiny glimpse forward triggered again when she needed it most.

But rather than moving away, she went through it.

Her body twisted between the incoming strikes, barely slipping past them as electricity tore through the space she had just occupied. Then she drove her fist forward with all she had, and for the first time, the dragonfly was knocked back.

It recovered instantly, but Kaela was sure that the impact had mattered.

”Got you.”

The beast’s response was immediate after sustaining damage.

It had constantly been on the offensive and overwhelming its opponent with attacks that it hadn’t even considered it was capable of countering.

But now it was truly taking her seriously.

The air grew heavy and oppressive.

Electricity gathered around it, condensing into a sphere of pure blue energy that pulsed with destructive intent.

Kaela’s eyes widened slightly.

”Oh, that’s new.”

The sphere collapsed inward, before suddenly exploding outward.

Zap! Zap! Zap!

A storm of lightning bolts rained down, each one capable of tearing through stone, through flesh, through anything in its path.

Kaela didn’t retreat.

She charged like the insane warrior that she was.

Her aura flared violently, wrapping around her like armour as she forced her way through the storm, lightning striking her body again and again, burning, tearing, slowing her regeneration further.

Her skin charred, her muscles screamed, but she kept moving, knowing that the moment she stopped meant death.

Finally, she broke through and closed the distance.

Her skin was red and black with electrical burns, her instant recovery no longer very instant, but she endured the mind-numbing pain. Gritting her teeth, she forgot about healing her body and channelled all the energy she could muster into her legs.

BOOM!

She launched upwards like a rocket, the island she had burst off fracturing from the power.

Then she drove her knee into the dragonfly’s body on her way up.

Another shockwave erupted.

The beast retaliated instantly, its body spinning as a blade of condensed electricity formed along its wings, slicing toward her neck.

That flicker of foresight came again.

She leaned back just enough for the blade to pass less than an inch from her throat.

If not for her Valkyrie Instincts, as she called it, she might have even been beheaded in that moment like Mace had been. But there was no point dwelling on an outcome that hadn’t happened.

Instead, her hand shot forward, grabbing and trying to crush anything she could get her hands on.

For a split second, she thought she had it.

Then, it discharged.

A violent surge of electricity exploded from its body, forcing her to release it as she was thrown back once more.

She hit a fragment of an island hard, and was lucky she hadn’t fallen into the void.

Her body bounced, rolled, then stopped.

For a moment, she just lay there.

Her aura flickered weakly, her healing struggled, and her breathing was heavy.

”...Heh.”

A laugh escaped her, low, tired, but still excited.

”This is more like it.”

She pushed herself up slowly and painfully, despite how much her body protested. Her aura flared again, unstable, but still there, and that was all she needed.

The dragonfly hovered above her, seemingly unscathed.

Though upon further inspection, there was a small crack along its body from the knee she had just landed on top of her initial strikes.

It was barely visible, but it was unmistakable.

Kaela smiled.

”Guess you’re not invincible either.”

Both of them were running low on energy; the electric sparks around the beast were much weaker than when they began.

It was do or die, and Kaela had no intentions of dying.

Swoosh!

They moved at the same time for one final clash with everything they had left.

She surged forward, her aura burning brighter than ever, every ounce of strength, every drop of energy, every fragment of instinct poured into a single strike. Meanwhile, the dragonfly became a streak of pure lightning, its entire body condensing into a devastating charge meant to pierce straight through her.

Time slowed.

That flicker appeared one last time.

She saw herself being struck down, but also saw how.

Kaela adjusted and gave up on clashing with it head-on with her right fist, as much as it hurt her pride to do so. It blitzed past her like an unstoppable laser, completely tearing through anything in its path, including shredding the right side of her body.

In the beast’s eyes, this was as good as over, and he had won the clash of final attacks.

Or at least it had thought so.

”But I’ve got another arm, fucker!”

She spun mid-air and connected with her left, channelling all the remaining energy she had, her hand becoming a violet atomic bomb.

BOOOOOM!

That was the most powerful strike of her life, because if it hadn’t been, she would have been the one who lost this one-on-one battle.

But even Keala would struggle to recover from the damage she sustained...