118 Escape
Bzzt. Swoosh. Pull.
Eren tapped the weapon spells of his two axes and let them fly away from his grip willingly. He had adjusted his release in such a way that they would fly toward his opponent at the time.
When the weapons flew past Ariadne, Eren tugged at them by pulling the lightning whips they were attached to. He forced them to change their direction and approach Ariadne from two separate directions.
Eren adjusted the length and force behind his lightning whips in real time as he approached Ariadne from the front. It allowed him to change the direction of his weapons and make them cover a large area with their changing orientation and direction. As a result, a three-pronged attack had been initiated against the demonic ranker.
Eren had digested the memories of various martial arts and weapon arts. He employed those memories in the play as well, giving his newly devised strategy a deadly edge.
He was also able to replenish the axes with his unelementalized mana sent through the lightning whips. He would later transform it into fire-element mana using the control of his mana sense. Thus, the axes were always charged and had their own momentum as they flew about in the surroundings.
Things would have been much easier and faster if Eren had a fire-element spell instead of Blitz Whip. That way, he would have been directly able to supply the weapons with his fire-element mana, avoiding mana conflict and making both the spells more effective than they were at this point.
However, the battle strategy he had come up with against Ariadne worked just as well for him anyway. That’s because he was able to keep a distance from her while attacking her in a way she couldn’t completely predict or be prepared against.
Swoosh. Swoosh. Swoosh.
The two axes whizzed around the two rankers at breakneck speeds. They were still attached to the lightning whips by their knobs. But since the lightning whips would be semi-transparent or formless from time to time, it looked like the axes had minds of their own as they flew about around the two rankers.
Ariadne’s survival insects were screaming warning signs from all around her. She had sent her mana circuits into overdrive and was using her movement spell to her fullest now that her life was on the line.
Swoosh. Swoosh. Cut.
The axes were grazing past her delicate skin, cutting her up from multiple points of contact. However, the cuts were shallow. The axes hadn’t managed to land a decisive blow on her. But she knew she wouldn’t be able to handle the pressure for much longer.
Swoosh. Pull. Swoosh.
Eren was quickly becoming used to handling the two flying axes as if they were extensions of his limbs. Jario had thought of spinning around to control the two axes. It was Eren who had applied a different approach, directing the axes that were only interested in cutting through the air.
In a way, Eren refined Jario’s approach and made the ax attacks more lethal as well as unpredictable. It looked like the axes were dancing to his tunes. They won’t always dance the way he wanted them to. But they were getting used to his instructions as well.
Swoosh. Cut. Cleave.
Ariadne was seen losing her left arm when the two axes attacked at the same spot from different directions. They had attacked her one after the other without a pause, catching her off guard.
“Aaaaaaah!”
Ariadne cried in pain as she saw her severed arm leaking plenty of blood right where it had fallen on the ground. Her torso was doing the same, but she was too busy still dodging the weapons homing on her to care about the pain of blood loss.
Swoosh. Swoosh. Cleave.
Ariadne’s left leg was severed from its knee joint. At this point, she had become a target of many flying ax moves that were constantly getting unleashed on her.
Eren showed no mercy towards his opponent now that he had the power to overwhelm her. He controlled his two axes and sent them toward Ariadne one more time to claim her life.
The axes whistled as they cut through the air at breakneck speeds before attacking Ariadne’s battered visage. One of the axes chopped her head clean off while the other lodged itself into her chest– targeting her heart.
Eren tugged at his weapons using his lightning whips and recovered his weapons. He was mentally exhausted by using his mana sense so intensively like that. He felt like he had a headache and his face was red.
Eren grabbed hold of his two weapons and saw Ariadne falling to the ground with a distinct thud. The wounds of her missing limbs released even more blood now that there was no mana defense layer to control the blood loss.
Eren wiped the beads of sweat on his forehead with the sleeves of his arm and looked at his two weapons. They allowed him to extend his range of attacks while giving him the freedom he needed to approach the opponent.
Eren knew there was so much room for improvement in the new battle style he had found for himself. And it would get enhanced further when he paired up with the right Hex gear. However, it would take time and experience. For now, he was happy with the result he had received.
Eren was about to move on to helping his team members when something started bugging him. He observed the blood on the bits of the axes he held.
‘Hm? This blood…!’
The blood the weapons’ bits had on them looked black and old. As if Ariadne had died a long time ago and he had only chopped off a dead body.
He looked at fallen Ariadne and was shocked to see that there was someone else lying in her place. He looked around himself and saw that Ariadne was nowhere to be found.
The beauty-with-brains demonic ranker had cast an illusory spell on a dead body. She had stored it in her storage and recovered it just in time to act as Eren’s punching bag at the very last moment.
Ariadne had escaped from the scene without anyone being the wiser.