The Extra of The Lunerra

Chapter 422 - 55: Pure Physical Strength

I knew instantly.

I already knew, actually.

But when I experienced it myself... I truly understood.

Why the Lautes are so feared.

Why their manipulation of mana is so terrifying.

And...

Why Rian Laute has been labeled as untouchable.

As humans, mana in the atmosphere is not something we can use directly, but it is important for both replenishing our reserves and for our growth.

And it is always there.

Even if its purity, its density is different in each place... it’s always there.

But... as soon as Rian Laute used his ascension skill, or whatever it is... I felt that this whole connection was severed.

My reserves suddenly stopped replenishing. I felt like I was in an infinite nothingness. It was like, even though I could breathe, the atmosphere was gone... The sudden loss of mana was such a sudden blow that all my senses were confused.

However, I was able to recover quickly thanks to the fact that I had activated Ascension of the Crimson Giant.

As an ascension skill, it drained my reserves almost rapidly... but there was enough to last a while.

As I gazed at the majestic, almost divine appearance of Rian Laute, both excitement and nervousness rose in me.

He was making the mana in the atmosphere reject me. Or... the mana was so drawn to him that it spontaneously denied the existence of everything else in the environment.

Either way... it made it clear just how frightening he was.

He raised his hand, slowly... carelessly. And aimed it at me.

All the mana in the atmosphere moved with him... as if obeying his orders. The amount of mana, the intensity, the purity of the attack gathered in his hand and directed at me... was so high that it caused the light to refract where it passed.

It was like an indescribable natural forgiveness, a hurricane of pure mana instead of wind... but all and more in a single attack. Stay updated via novelhall.Côm

Not only did it refract light, but it even dragged the atmosphere itself with it. It played with pressure points, creating vacuums of its own.

And then... it reached me.

I felt as if a gigantic planet had been dropped on me. My legs, my arms, my torso... every single cell I had... Each of them was crushed under the mana, which felt like a solid just by its density alone.

My bones crunched, my muscles tore.

The ground beneath me collapsed, unable to support the mass, and my feet sank into the cracking ground.

It was a tremendous pain and force.

It was the most powerful attack I’ve ever taken in my life.

No, probably... it was the most powerful attack I will ever receive in my entire life.

It was so hard to resist that only its sheer power pushed me to give up, reminding me of what a blessing it was to let it all go.

But, then... it was over.

All that force, all that weight... slowly disappeared.

The refracted light was slowly restored.

And the first thing I saw... was a huge pool of blood all around me, which was all mine, in the dust cloud.

"A- ah..."

I was still standing, somehow.

I was alive.

But I was knee-deep in the ground, all my bones were broken. Blood was pouring out of every part of my body, as if every vein I had had burst, every muscle had been severed.

And then I started to heal, fast.

First my bones, which had been shattered to pieces, straightened, then the tears in my muscles reconnected with each other. My veins rebuilt and my body regenerated all the blood it had lost.

And as the dust cloud slowly lifted... the mansion slowly emerged.

Or rather, what was left of it.

What... wasn’t?

I was in the center of a huge crater.

Everything around us was gone.

There was no trace of the mansion, no sign of its walls... no sign of any living thing.

And in the middle of all this ’nothingness’ stood Rian Laute... with his hovering figure.

His ascension skill was still active. His long hair fluttered to his left side and his golden eyes gazed at me.

But when combined with the abnormal state of my body, the results are tremendous.

And on top of that, the addition of Ascension of the Crimson Giant.

This skill... not only increases physical strength, power, endurance, and regeneration.

The Crimson Giants are, first and foremost, a race that existed in the past.

And the most familiar traits of this race... is that their bodies can absorb the mana itself and become many times stronger, that they can convert mana into ’force’, which is what my style actually does, only with their bodies.

So what happens when all this is combined?

I jumped, causing the cracks already under my feet to widen by many meters and the ground to shake...

All the air around me dissipated around me, literally creating a vacuum due to sheer force, leaving nothing around.

The movements my sword followed were simple. A few straight turns and pseudo swings to maintain momentum. But every one of these ’pseudo’ swings reached the clouds, tearing slits in the ground hundreds of meters away.

But these were unimportant.

There was only one target in front of my eyes.

The last time I swung my sword, when I made my attack... Rian Laute was right in front of me.

Just by standing where he was, the mana he emitted around him, the aura alone was enough to take my breath away...

Despite all the strength I now wielded, his individual strength was so much greater than mine that his presence was enough to crush me.

At the same time, the attack he was preparing to carry out...

It was many times more powerful than the one before.

Powerful enough, perhaps, to wipe an entire average-sized island off the face of the planet, if that was its purpose.

All the mana in the atmosphere was gathering on us.

From everywhere, it was being pulled here.

And it was getting ready to collapse on us, like a press machine.

But I didn’t stop.

I didn’t have to stop.

Because it was only his presence that gave me this feeling of ’weakness’.

His current state, not his body.

And his body... was sick.

It was dying, even without me.

It was fragile.

And the blood that appeared on his nose, trickling down, was a sign of that.

I exhaled all the breath in my lungs at once.

The fingers holding my sword shattered under the force, the bones in my arms broke over and over again.

Cracks appeared on the sword, its red metal trembling as if it was about to explode like a bomb.

Yet it would hold.

I knew it would.

There was a reason I had chosen it as my main weapon for so many years, after all.

And so... I swung the sword.

At the same moment... the huge wall that had gathered above us, so white it looked like heaven descending to the planet, fell to the ground.

But Rian Laute did not only carry out this attack.

As the blood dripping from his nose fell to the earth, he narrowed his golden eyes, focused on my sword... and destroyed the mana around it.

All the mana inside it, as well.

He scattered everything.

But it didn’t matter.

Because what the sword had was not mana.

It was pure strength.

And...

~cra-

Everything turned white with a momentary crackling sound.

~BOOM!