Chapter 201: You Are Home

The cavern groaned, drawing the attention of the three as the ceiling was lower with the walls closing in. They had minutes, maybe less.

Rhys looked at Lyssa. Lyssa looked at Rhys. Some communication passed between them, some understanding that Elias could not follow.

“One more,” Rhys said. “You have passed through Lyssa, but not me.”

“I am no longer just surviving for a few minutes? Fine,” Elias braced himself. “One more.”

Rhys smiled, and he attacked, not moving through shadows, almost as if he had burned himself out by touching the old shadows in this place.

He came at Elias with a flurry of strikes that seemed to have no pattern, rhythm, or tell, but there was no need for rhythm, when he was moving faster than anyone that Elias had fought, however, what made this attack to be much dangerous was that Elias was aware that the appearance that there was no rhythm to Rhys’s attack was a lie.

Rhys had always been holding back; all of his teachers were constantly holding back, and Elias had proven to them that he should not be underestimated.

He should be a bit afraid, but Elias was struggling to hide his excitement, and inside his Lumina Spade, his Elder Talent was releasing rumbles of power that sent waves of lightning through his head, and inside the chaos filling his head, his mind was calm.

Elias blocked the first strike from Rhys, dodged the second, caught the third on his forearm, and felt the bone bruise beneath his skin. He had been punished for doing this, but this gave him the chance to counter, as his palm drove toward Rhys’s chest, but Rhys was not there, was already behind him, already striking.

This was not moving through shadows; Rhys had suddenly accelerated and appeared behind him. It should have been an ability or technique, or just pure damned attribute supremacy.

The blow caught Elias between the shoulders, and he stumbled. He quickly turned and blocked a kick that would have shattered his knee before bringing both arms up to catch a fist that would have crushed his throat.

Elias gasped in pain and exhaustion. He was slower than Rhys, weaker, and more tired.

“My body is meaningless, my mind is the key…. My body is meaningless, my mind is the key…”

Inside his head was a constant chant that was almost hypnotic. In this situation where he was so drastically exceeded in physical capabilities and techniques, he could not fight with instinct.

However, even though he was being dominated, Elias was rapidly learning. His body was moving, taking hits and trying to stay in the fight, while his mind was reading patterns in the chaos so he could see the shape of the attack before it landed, to move where the strike would be, not where it was.

Elias always had this capability, but he had not pushed it to such limits before in his life, and despite the fact that he was making visible progress, it was not fast enough.

Rhys’s palm found his chest, and the shadows pulsed, and Elias was flying again, crashing into the closing wall, and sliding down like a wet patch of mud, his vision darkened, and Elias had to furiously bite his tongue, or he would have passed out.

Vitality: 734 / 4551

Whatever healing he had managed to piece together was just wiped out, but he was still in the fight. An average Fury Forge would barely have 500 points in Vitality, and Elias saw no reason why he could not still fight.

He pushed himself up, although his arms would not stop shaking; his problem, as always, was his Stamina, and Elias was unconsciously shutting out the knowledge of how much Stamina he had in the tank.

Something told him that he should have collapsed a while ago, but he was still going, pushing past his limits when he should have long collapsed, and despite every bit of common sense telling him to fall to his back, Elias rose to his feet.

Inside his head, he felt something click; all the accumulated damage and the battle had created a mental map that instantly connected to the muscles of his body, and Elias felt a cold wave touch his mind.

“Again,” he said.

Rhys’s face was unreadable. “Elias…”

“Again.”

Rhys hesitated, and Elias attacked, trusting his body to make the motions for him. He moved like the shadows Rhys commanded. First, he feinted left, then struck right, and he felt Rhys block.

Elias roared with everything he could give as he turned the block into a lock, twisted, while he threw his weight against Rhys’s guard. Rhys was stronger, but Elias was desperate, and desperation had a strength all its own.

He broke through, and his palm struck Rhys’s shoulder. It was not a killing blow, but the barest of a touch, but it was enough.

He stepped back. “I touched you.”

Rhys stared at him, a look in his eyes that Elias had never seen before. Was it admiration? Then, slowly, he began to laugh. “You did.”

With that laugh, the tension broke, and the shadows seemed to light up. Elias glanced at Lyssa, who was smiling, her eyes wet, her hands folded before her.

“You pass,” she said.

The cavern chose that moment to collapse.

The battle between Elias and Rhys has barely lasted a minute, and there should have been more time if the collapse of the cavern had followed its normal pace, but the cavern chose to collapse all at once

“CRACK…. BOOM!!!”

The ceiling cracked, a fissure racing across its length, and a slab of stone the size of a house broke free and began to fall.

Elias stared with tiredness in his eyes; there was no way he could survive such a thing falling on his head. He would be crushed into a paste in an instant.

A wave of darkness erupted from beside Elias as Rhys vanished and appeared in midair.

From his body emerged several massive arms made of shadows that caught the falling slab.

He was pushed down until his feet touched the ground, and cracks radiated from the ground around his feet. His face went white with effort, the veins standing out on his neck, his hands raised as if he were holding the sky itself.

Elias’ eyes popped open in shock. Rhys must have been holding up hundreds, maybe thousands of tonnes of rock.

“Go,” Rhys called out through gritted teeth.

Lyssa grabbed Elias’s arm and pulled him toward the passage. He ran, but all the exhaustion he had been feeling seemed to choose this particular moment to show itself as his legs felt as heavy as lead and his heart seemed as if it was about to burst out of his chest.

Behind him, the heavy slab fell, and Rhys’s figure was lost, and the ground shook with the impact, causing Elias to stumble, and when the shockwaves from the crash reached him, he fell to the ground, but Lyssa’s hands were there to pull him up.

If he said he remembered what happened next with any degree of alacrity, he was lying.

Only determination, instincts, and sheer stubbornness kept him pushing through twisting passages and uneven floors.

The light ahead grew brighter as the passage widened, and finally, Elias could see smooth stone tiles ahead, and that meant he was home.

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