Chapter 173: Into the Storm
The tank’s quake execution failed because of the interruption from Renita’s cover fire. And Eren got within the striking distance from his opponent as a result.
‘This is it for me for now. You’ll have to manage things on your own.’
Said the gem in Eren’s head and went silent. But the latter didn’t have time to think much about it. Especially now since the stacked spell had turned into a normal time-element spell for him.
Eren cancelled his execution of Sedated Perception as well. He didn’t need it anymore. Plus, this wasn’t the last fight he was going to be a part of for today. He needed to be frugal about his mana consumption.
As a result of dispelling both the time element spells, Eren was now out of the diluted world. He landed right beside the tank the next moment.
Eren had a sudden urge to kill this tank with a special derived element. After all, just like the fog guy, he too had the perfect counter against a close combat expert like him. But with so many witnesses watching his every move, he settled for only beating the c.r.a.p out of him.
Eren ran Blitz Bolt at its full potential through Diceros Right and performed a slash at the guy’s torso almost vertically. The tank had worn an armour artefact so he wasn’t worried about killing the opponent in the process.
The slash was only meant to make the tank go on defence. Which he did by raising his arms’ bracers against the slash. The slash was stopped by the bracer. But Eren then drew out Diceros Left and pierced the guy’s arm from below with it.
Diceros Left was lodged right between Ulna and Radius’ bones of the tank’s right forearm. The tip would have been out from the other end but the guy’s bracer wears prevented that from happening.
But this was enough for Eren anyway. He didn’t show any mercy and yanked the lodged katar towards him before twisting it.
It took a while for the tank to register the pain of Eren’s mutilating actions on his body. But when he did, all he could see was a white light in front of him accompanied by the deafening noise of a whole lot of nothing.
The sheer pain had short-circuited his senses. Eren’s lightning element attack also had a hand to play in it. But then his brain adapted to the pain and finally decided to process it. And that led to the tank’s downfall.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhhhh.”
The tank shouted from his very soul after he felt the pain in his forearm. He forgot about the fight and defending himself and just sat right then and there on his knees, holding his pierced forearm with his other hand.
The tank tilted his head back as he let his vocal cords relieve some pressure for him. But as he looked up, he saw a palm reaching his face. His body didn’t feel like it should defy the palm’s procession for some unknown reason. Otherwise, the consequences would be even more severe.
Eren grabbed the tank’s face with his palm. His fingers spread all over his face. The gap in fingers allowed the tank to look at Eren for one last time for the day.
“Night night, mate.”
Said Eren out loud and ran Blitz Bolt through his palm. With it, he made the tank experience his sought-after relief from pain.
“Two down, two to go.”
Said Eren as he released the tank’s face from his grip. He looked at Renita who was approaching him and commented:
“Good support. But next time, eyes on the opponent. Not on me.”
Renita’s cheeks turned red when she heard that. She tried to mask her blush with fake anger:
“It’s… it’s all your fault. You should have told me about your move sooner. I was caught off guard and had to look for you.”
Eren scratched his forehead with a mirthless smile on his face before replying:
“I didn’t know that I’d be able to stack my spell in that situation. That came out of the blue.”
“Hmm? Which spell did you stack? And what do you mean you didn’t know? This speed isn’t in your control?”
“Something like that. Anyway, my previous instructions about the berserker boys still stand. Do you understand?”
Eren asked as the smile vanished from his face. Renita saw the butcher’s mood suddenly changing and replied honestly:
“I do. But Eren, think about the repercussions..”
Eren shook his head before replying stoically:
“See. I’m not forcing you to go through this. Even without you, I’d be able to manage things on my own just fine. Decide. We don’t have much time.”
Said Eren while looking at the full-fledged battle unfolding in front of him at a distance. The mage was bombarding the dual berserkers from all sides.
Ron had managed to injure the healer with one of his berserker charges before retreating to his initial position. That had affected the recovery speed of the mage, who had now started to struggle to keep the berserkers in check.
Eren started to walk in the direction of the ongoing fight, leaving Renita behind him to ponder over. One could see she wanted to prevent Eren from doing what he was going to do. But she also knew that he wouldn’t listen after looking into his cold eyes.
Renita finally clenched her fists before following Eren who had by then started running with his movement speed towards the mage.
The mage saw that Eren was approaching her from a distance and she couldn’t help opening her eyes in surprise. She had thought that it might take a while, but her quake element user teammate was more than enough to take care of the guy.
She had already been proven wrong once when she had predicted the battle result between Eren and her fog element user teammate. Eren and Renita had beat him while staying in his domain.
Now the same duo had pulled another stunt and beat their quake element teammate as well. Therefore, it’d be a cold day in h.e.l.l before the mage made the same mistake and underestimated this simple-looking Novice ranker coming towards her like an unstoppable force.
Eren saw a barrage of fireb.a.l.l.s heading his way when he was within the mage’s area of influence. This time, he didn’t dodge. He didn’t take any detours.
Renita was right behind Eren, following him in his path. And all she saw was her heartthrob getting bombarded by the fury of stacked fire-element spells.
“Eren!”
Her shrill cry echoed in the battle ring and outside it.