Chapter 174: Backstab
Chapter 174: Backstab
“Eren!”
Renita’s shrill cry echoed in the battle ring and outside it. She thought the guy had gone mad. He wasn’t exactly his 100 percent due to the two battles he was part of. And yet he had gone right ahead to duel with the mage who was clearly in a better condition than him.
That too in a front clash, when the mage held the advantage because of her AoE spells. Renita could only think of one thing when Eren pulled that move:
‘He wasn’t counting on my support this time.’
Unbeknownst to her, Renita’s eyes were moist. But before she could process those emotions, a storm of lightning lit upright in the middle of the domain of fire.
The domain created by the fireballs was soon breached by a person who only had a chainmail armour worn on his torso now. And that chainmail armour had gotten slightly red due to the effects of the mana generated fire.
Eren had come out from the other way of that barrage of fireballs. The skin of his torso was sizzling and getting burnt due to being in contact with the chainmail artefact he had worn under his clothes.
Eren quickly removed the artefact and stored it inside his storage. Most of his clothes were burnt off. Thankfully, he had protected the area around his groin by covering it with a layer of mana. So he was saved from being a laughing stock in the academy.
But that’s not all he had done. Eren might be a masochist when he needed to be. But he was never suicidal. That’s because he had already executed one of his spells before heading right into the storm of fire.
Blitz Heal!
The lightning element healing spell was running at its full effect and trying to mend his scorched and burnt skin. As a result, his bare torso had loads of tongues of lightning dancing over it.
Of course, it didn’t do anything to make Eren suffer less in the fire. One needed a special kind of mindset to knowingly harm themselves for the sake of their benefits, even when they knew they could be healed later on.
In his current condition, Eren looked like a thunder god if he was a teen and short-statured. But he didn’t care about his appearance. He had shown his performance to the mage to create deterrence in her mind. To show her that he could survive the worst she could do to him.
And that temporary deterrence showed its effect. The girl subconsciously faltered when she saw the madman coming for her.
She started retreating backwards to create a safe distance between them. Eren only smiled after looking at the intended effect of his showmanship taking place right in front of him. He shouted at the dual berserkers:
“Dino, Ron. Now!”
Dino and Ron were standing at the other side. They quickly understood what Eren was trying to do and approached the mage from two sides, trying to box her in.
Everything happened within a few moments.
The mage saw that she was soon going to get surrounded and had a determination filled in her eyes. She summoned another volley of fireballs around her and let her surroundings get consumed in them by detonating them all at once.
She thought she would be safe inside her domain of fire. Unlike Eren, her clothes were fireproof because of the element-specific rune inscriptions on them.
Dino and Ron immediately got consumed in the storm of fire along with Eren. All three are from different directions.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghhhhh”
“Aaaaaah!”
Unlike Eren who didn’t utter a word despite his third-degree burns, Ron and Dino were pretty vocal about their situations. Their metal skin spell had again become their bane as the spell retained the effects of fire landed on it like a usual metal.
Both of the berserkers somehow survived the firestorm. They survived by casting the metal skin spells on themselves for a short while before quickly dispersing it, then executing them again.
They thought that now that they had crossed the domain of fire and closed in on the mage without her healer on the tow, things would soon move to the up-and-personal battles.
Both of them activated their metal skin spells once again. And then approached the mage who could be barely seen standing in the middle of the firestorm.
Dino and Ron nodded at each other before recovering their berserking potions. They had already started running towards their opponent who was gearing up another stack of spells by overdrawing on their mana.
The berserkers were about to gulp their potions down. The mage was almost finished casting her stacked fire-element spells.
But suddenly Eren came right in between them. He spread both his arms and murmured something to himself that his audience of three people couldn’t hear:
“Blitz Storm!”
Said Eren and then smiled at the berserkers. Dino and Ron were confused at first before opening their eyes wide in surprise.
This was the biggest betrayal they had faced. That’s because they were within Eren’s AoE spell when he executed it to supposedly target the opponent mage.
The opponent mage was hit by Eren’s AoE spell too. She had already overdrawn on her mana. Plus, now she had to face the consequences of failed spell execution while facing the butcher’s lightning spell.
At least to say she wasn’t expecting Eren to cast such spells while his teammates were within the range. That’s what caught her off guard. She was expecting Eren to hold onto his spells when he got in close range along with his teammates.
But who knew Eren had this planned from the beginning of the match?
Eren’s Blitz Storm was detonated at this time, engulfing friends and enemies alike. Both sides were beaten and battered. So when the AoE went off, it made double the impact.
Ron, Dino and the enemy mage were zapped till their irises dilated. They were mere moments away from losing their consciousness.