Power Of The School's Strongest (Arthur 2)

He looked like a meteor falling from the sky and to the ground, which was no doubt the reason for the name for the technique which he arguably came up with just this instant.

[Meteor fall!]

The heated claws sliced through the pelicans' left wing like a knife through butter, cauterizing the wound while separating the wing from it's body!

With a mighty, loud and inhuman screech, the vestige fell from the sky, landing on the ground with a huge thud!

Arthur didn't let it rest though as he came down on it pretty hard, landing on it and changing his claws form.

From curved and barbed ones they became shorter and straight, resembling narrow spikes.

He let out a barage of flame-packed punches on the ice puffin, watching it struggle in vain as it tried and failed to get up or land any decisive blows on him despite it's superior body strength!

That wasn't to say that it didn't land any on him. 

Haaving lost it's flight it used anything in it's arsenal to try to hit him and almost suceeded several times but they only ended up giving him glancing blows at best, just nicking his armour or failing to draw blood.

Getting a little carried away, Arthur let down his guard which allowed a tail packed with the vestiges frustration to hit him squarely on his side, launhing him away and sending him through several trees!

Although he manipulated his body's energy at the moment before he was hit to strengthen the area, his arm was still heavily broken.

The smashing through trees certainly didn't do him any good either as he had ruptured a few things in his body.

He managed to stand up using his one good arm but almost fell again as he coughed out a few mouthfuls of blood.

An injury like this would have usually rendered him almost useless, but thanks to the fact that he didn't have to use the special coolant, he was open to the use of other potions.

He promptly took out a high grade level three healing potion from a compartment on his belt with an expanded inner space and drank the contents of the vial.

Not satisfied with just one he also took out another and downed that one too.

He was in a bit of a hurry as he could hear four footfalls moving in his direction and an angry screech, making him know that the vestige was coming to finish him off.

Even though it couldn't fly after losing it's wing, it was still a very decent runner in its own right with it's four feet.

Also, the cauterized wound on his wing stump had already scabbed off and was starting to regrow a new one at a ridiculously fast pace.

'Damn, do I really envy these things regeneration.', Arthur said with a bitter smile as he allowed the potion to heal his mangled arm.

Not five seconds after this, his arm was fully healed, and another second later anounced the arrival of the vestige with a blast of cold energy.

Arthur once again covered himself with flames and ran through the beam, freezing his insides over and countering the effects of his flaw.

But he came to regret that decision as he hastily flew out of the beam, not daring to see it all the way through.

It seemed that the vestige was well and truly pissed now as these new attacks didn't just freeze his body like usual but also started to freeze his energy too, making it slower and harder to control.

Not even resting the vestige launched more and more of these beams along with icy winds and boulders of ice.

Moving around through jets of fire that he released from various holes in parts of his armor in short bursts, Arthur managed to barely avoid the blasts of icy winds and projectiles that threathened to freeze him.

While the temperature change caused by this vestige was helping him keep his flaw at bay, a direct blast from these icy winds and solid ice being conjured would freeeze him to death instantly.

So he needed to keep moving to not give it the chance to do so.

He was walking a very thin line between life and death in this battle while landing immolating punches on it's body.

But overall, he was still having an easy time against this vestige, if you didn't consider his early screw up.

He even had the time to even think up new ways to use his flames.

He considered extending the fight in order to see the extent at which he could raise the heat of his flames when a voice resounded in his head.

[Arthur, I need your help.]

Alia proceeded to give a brief rundown on the situation to him about her twin sister's predicament.

[Haaa, why am I not surprised that she would actually do something like that.], He replied with a mental sigh.

[How long do you think she will last against that thing?], he asked her.

[I doubt that she has any more than five minutes bofore she is defeated and killed.], Alia replied to him.

'A bit tight, but it should be doable.', he thought to himself.

[Okay then, I'll try to finish this fight in four minutes.], he replied before muting the connection.

He put a bit of distance between him and the vestige and landed on a tree about 20 meters away.

"As much as I would like to continue this battle, my attention is needed elsewhere.", he muttered a bit under his breath.

Suddenly, his body temperature and the flames on his body started to rise in temperature at a very rapid pace, almost instantly passing 100 degrees Celsius.

This rapid rise in temerature instantly got the attention of the vestige and gave it pause.

The madness that plagued this vestige since the first hit it suffered seemed to receed a bit as it gave way to another emotion in its red eyes.

Fear.

All vestiges had been observed to start showing a glimpse of awareness and other emotions apart from madness once they reached tier three. 

Granted, not all of them improved on this nascent awareness as they grew.

Most of them either reverted back to their madness once they grew past that level or stayed the same, with only a select few improving it as they reached tier 4.

As there were no reported tier fives they didn't know how this would develop when they grew past that so only intelligent guesses and theories could be made about them.

This tier three seemed to posses even more intelligence than average because it seemed to recognize that it couldn't allow this tiny human to continue what it was doing.

It let out a screech before condensing various ice-blue balls of cold energy and began bombarding Arthur with them while gathering a bigger blast in it's mouth.

"Oh? You must be pretty smart to know you can't let me continue. I commend you for that.", Arthur said with a calm expression.

The orbs of frost energy gradually lost their biting cold as they made their way towards him, fizzing out of existence before they even reached him due to the intense heat.

"Unfortunately for you, it's a little too late for that now.". As he said that the armor covering his skin began to also glow from the heat he was emitting.

With a step, he launched himself towards the vestige that had just finished gathering energy in its beak.

The vestige then launched the energy in it's beak at Arthur, forming a beam of freezing cold energy that arrived at him in the blink of an eye. 

Once it came within inches of him though, the beam of dense cold energy began dispersing as it was countered by the high temperature and flames being emitted from his body. 

Using the beam to hide himself, he flew towards the vestige's mouth and... entered it's body through it.

The vestige instantly noticed this and concentrated it's energy and focus inside it's body to try and snuff out the heat.

It seemed to work as the heat began to subside while Arthur began to freeze over, gradually turning into a statue of ice.

But before the ice reached his heart, it quickly started to melt again at a faster pace than it froze over, showing that he was using his ability extremely fiercely, more than he had ever done before.

In a tone of voice that carried finality and a bit of excitement, he uttered from inside it's body.

"Supernova"

Moments later, the monster started to expand outwards as the pressure and heat in it's body started to increase.

Even though it was trying it's very best to counteract the heat with it's cold, it wasn't enough against the heat that rose in temperature with every second.

After less than ten seconds of battling against the heat, the flames finally won out before the ice bird burst apart from it's belly, instantly dying from this explosion.

It's death released a conflagration of intense flames all around that burnt all of the surrounding trees. leaving only a black patch of land in the center of which stood Arthur.

He could be seen panting heavily while holding a fist sized blue marble in his hands.

Various parts of his skin could be seen beneath his damaged armor, all of them either burnt black or even burnt off.

With a fit of coughs that let out burnt inards and black smoke, he said aloud with a voice that had a tinge of fear and wonder, "That was stronger than I expected. I really could've died from that. And I felt that I could raise the temperature even higher than that."

"I wonder how high I could take the heat.", he said with burning curiosity written all over his face as he took out and used a healing potion.

But he had to supress his curiosity as his attention was needed elsewhere.

[I have finished with my side so I'm going to help out Maria. Point me in her general direction. And how long do you think she can hold on for?], Arthur said to Alia through the connection as his wounds healed up.

With a direction to go and no time to waste, Arthur put the marble in the spatial compartment and launched himself in the direction Maria was in after he finished healing, becoming the first to finish his battle against a tier three in a record time of 10 minutes!