Power Of The School's Strongest (Arthur X Maria) 12

Maria kept on dodging and slashing, leaving a plethora of small injuries on the body of the vestige.

The vestige on the other hand was beyond frustrated seeing that its enemy just remained out of reach, trying desperately and failing to land a hit on the ever elusive enemy.

Apart from just activating her armor to speed up, she also augmented her body with fear emotional energies, which while not making her as fast as usual, the combination of the ability to move in all directions and the added speed made her a lot more elusive.

But the vestige didn't allow this situation to continue for much longer.

Monitoring when she was coming closer, it would start to swing its whip-like tentacles in her direction, forcing her to spend more energy to dodge, and if she started to retreat, it would instead start looking for Arthur, planning to rush towards him instead.

This meant Maria couldn't get a moment of rest, always having to face the vestige and keep its attention on her, increasing her chances at getting injured.

There were even several times that she would've been hit, but by temporarily going over the sweet spot, she would be able to go faster, enabling her to dodge out of the way in the nick of time.

But she knew that she couldn't keep this up and that soon enough, the vestige would either hit her or notice something was up.

Unfortunately for her, it did both faster than she would've wished it had.

She was moving towards the vestige, planning to make another injury on it, when four tentacles swung at her almost one after the other.

But Maria wasn't afraid. Using the same move as before, she dodged the seemingly impossible to dodge scenario by creating a platform that she used to jump backwards, going back in the direction with the least amount of tentacles, behind her.

What she didn't notice though, was the extra tentacle that swung in from the side, swatting her away the second she was out of the bombardment.

This tentacle used the same trick it used on Arthur, swinging from behind another one to create an artificial blindspot.

The second it made contact, the tentacle also exploded, sending her further away from it with a share of injuries.

While Maria's technique was definitely overpowered for her age, it definitely didn't come with its fair share of limits.

One of which was the fact that she couldn't augment her body with two different types of energies at once.

And when she was hit just now, she was augmented with fear, which was the problem.

Her rage technique worked by loading her body up with rage emotional energies.

Because of this characteristics of the energy, it would cause the energies within to become restless and move all over the place, increasing their potential but reducing the control the owner had over them.

Another characteristics of this energy was the fact that it had memory, if it was dispersed, it had the tendency to move back to the place it once was.

And Maria could control these characteristics, attaching the energies to her body cells so that when they were split, blown up, or separated, as long as they weren't too far away from her, they would want to get back together and restore to their original state, thereby 'healing' her.

But the prerequisite was that she had to have suffered the injury after she activated the technique.

And she hadn't before now.

Meaning that she had suffered a very severe injury without a way to rapidly heal herself.

But she didn't let that slow her down, quickly switching to the rage energy and downing a nutrient pack, using the supplementary nutrients and energies to boost her natural healing factor.

But the vestige, the smart little cookie that they all knew it was, noticed her attempt at distracting him, realizing that she was always making him face one way.

So, it turned the opposite way and started moving, soon noticing Arthur perched up a tree, barely 90% done with the sphere!

'Damn it!', with a curse, Maria dragged her still injured body, switching back to fear and overclocking herself, catching up to the vestige in a flash.

This time, to make sure it was distracted, she sent her last spear, charged with as much rage energies as she could muster, hurtling towards it again, further aggravating her injuries.

*BANG

*KRROAOAOA

As expected, the vestige forgot temporarily about Arthur, turning to the one who just blasted a hole into it, and started running towards her, sending several tentacles swinging towards her like deadly whips.

Knowing she couldn't dodge it on time, she hurriedly switched back to rage to avoid further worsening her injuries, just in time for a 'bang' to reverberate through her body, sending her flying sideways and leaving her with several broken bones.

They quickly started to heal, although not with the almost instant speed she had before.

She quickly stopping the overclocking she started after the hit to not further destroy her ability organ.

But while taking all these hits, she at least made sure that her legs were intact, as broken legs would mean the end of this battle for her.

The vestige came running back at her, reaching her in a second and launching several tentacles at her.

Quickly activating her equipment, she launched herself into the air, stepping on platforms to quickly change her direction, ascending higher and higher to get some time to heal.

But the vestige surely wouldn't allow that, and it finally made its move.

As talented as she was, it has been established that Maria is also extremely forgetful. Because otherwise, I can't explain for the life of me why she again forgot that the vestige could create a second impact on a location it had hit before!

With the accumulated charge it had built up all over her body, the second impact that hit her from all sides almost squashed her, making her lose her concentration and sending her, covered in blood and with several new broken bones, falling towards the floor.

She belatedly realised what had gone wrong, berating herself for forgetting something so Important while she fell down.

Her life flashed before her eyes for the second time today, causing an endless amount of frustration to bubble up from within her.

Time seemed to slow down, her mind working in overdrive to think of a way out of her predicament.

Though she couldn't see the ground, she could clearly imagine what was happening there.

Considering that she wasn't far from the floor or the vestige, It would send out its tentacles while running under her, ready to gobble her up instantly.

She was right, as he vestige did exactly that, already relishing its brilliant plan and the amount of nutrients it would gain from her.

But it wouldn't get the chance as Arthur swooped in at that moment, rescuing her from the jaws of death with one hand and trying to keep the sphere stable in the other.

Landing on a tree to the side, the boy, not looking at her, just said two words.

"I'm ready".

Once again Maria was alarmed at his change in attitude but couldn't ask why for now, just nodding with a hum and got ready to fulfil her part.

At that moment though, two things happened.

One, the vestige, noticing what was in Arthur's hand, felt a large sense of danger, and turned around to immediately start running away.

The expressions of both of them changed as they needed a bit of time to ready their plan, belatedly realising that they should've made it impossible or at least difficult for the vestige to run away.

Though they couldn't be really blamed for this. As talented as they were, experience was one thing that most in their class lacked.

Besides, one had a lot on their mind while the other wasn't someone who remembered things well.

Before they could even start chasing after it though, the second thing came to help them.

Suddenly, the ground started to quake heavily, causing the trees in the environment to start to sway and the loose ground to overturn.

Fissures opened up randomly as tiny hills rose up at the same time, causing the runaway vestige to stumble.

The two figures that had just jumped off the tree they were on to start giving chase just hovered in the air, looking at each other and not believing how perfect the timing for this was.

It wasn't hard to figure out the reason for this but now wasn't the time to thank the person.

Quickly charging up an attack, both of them launched it at one foot, combining the attack in mid air and blasting the foot, creating both internal and external injuries on it.

Another attack on the other foot on the same side of its body ensured that it would not be able to move for a while, giving them ample time for this part.

Maria stood in the air for a few seconds and Arthur moved a bit distant from her, giving her space to do what she was doing.

The reddish rage energy that was coming out of her started flickering, gradually growing smaller and getting more and more vibrant.

In about ten seconds, just when the quaking stopped, it had grown into a familiar vibrant red colour, the type she had just unlocked now.

All her injuries started to heal at a rapid pace, her energy pulling her towards the vestige.

She didn't fight it but instead let it pull her, sending her flying towards it.

Arthur then took the ball of flames in his hand, which due to the flames he launched at the vestige was having difficulty controlling, and did something unexpected.

On one of the spinning tops, he 'poked' a hole. sending a thin spinning vortex of flames towards... Maria!

The flames flew to her faster than she flew towards the vestige, hitting her back and launching her faster.

She quickly started to burn up, her eyes showing a glimpse of the pain she was going through.

Normally the flames would burn her so fast she couldn't feel the pain, but she was healing even faster, meaning that she felt every second of it!

But she didn't let that distract her as she focused on the second part of the plan.

As you might have guessed, she could use her energy to take over and augment other forms of energy, which she used initially in her battle .

And this particular manifestation of her ability seemed to produce energy that liked to cling to her target.

To understand the plan with those facts established, you just needed to ask one question.

What would happen if she infected a large amount of already volatile flames to chase after and stick to the vestige?

The answer was the spectacularly bright and noisy but heatless display that it showed now.

A vibrant orange beam, not vortex, of targeted flames made their way towards the vestige at a speed unmatched by the three of them!

This time though, no matter how much the vestige tried and screamed, it couldn't shrug them off, even without their control, as it quickly charred it from the outside till it's life core.

Although Maria didn't last long in that state, quickly falling unconscious 15 seconds after first contact, it was long enough to send all of the flames from the sphere that Arthur charged through her and at the vestige.

If he had charged the sphere and just launched it at the vestige, it could have dodged it and even if it didn't, a lot of the energy would be wasted.

But this method made sure that not a single bit of it was wasted, burning the entire thing to ash, leaving only the hard to destroy life core and some prior dislodged tentacles.

As a memory she couldn't forget even if she wanted to, the time she first used this type of energy was still fresh in her mind, so it didn't take much effort to tap into that type of state again.

But it was then she noticed the severe drawbacks of this state.

One was the large amount of her mental and physical energies it took up and the second was the extreme tunnel vision it induced, making most of her thoughts centered on the thing it was marked on.

But she still decided to go with it as it was the best idea with the highest success rate she could think up.

The unconscious and falling Maira was then caught by Arthur and taken down to the ground, gently set down and fed another set of healing potions and nutrient solutions.

Arthur took a moment to look at her with a complex look on his face before moving towards the vestige, or what remained of it.

Stopping the influx of energy and deactivating his still active ability, he quickly dug through the remnant ash, fishing out the life core, which looked like a glass marble the size of three grown men's fists filled with black gas with hints of red and orange gas that refused to mix. 

'Weird, this one doesn't seem to have a will attached to it.', Arthur thought to himself with a furrowed brow.

As smart as the vestige seemed, you would expect it to have it's mind complete in there when even dumber ones had theirs, but the fact that it had nothing was odd enough to catch Arthur's interest.

Taking note of it, he decided to investigate it later as he looked into his own body, wanting to assess the damage but was greeted with another surprise.

'How come my body is only this damaged?!', this time he was seriously shocked.

In a good way, but shocked nonetheless.

He was totally expecting his entire body to be in shambles, with only a few minutes or so away from death if he was being optimistic.

With the way he went very close and almost surpassed the time limit, it wouldn't have shocked him to be on the ground on the verge of death right about now.

But the energy, while detrimental to him, still didn't kill him as much as a freshly dead smart vestiges' core should've.

'Unless that one didn't have a will too!'

Quickly taking out the core, he noticed that the core in his hand also lacked a will inside!

'But I was sure it had a resident will when I held it', he thought seriously.

'Was it just the rest of it while it was still alive that just faded away?'

His mind kept churning.

If he was just mildly interested in it before, now it had almost his entire attention.

Before he could start investigating though, a voice sounded through his head.

[Alright, who was the one who sent that wave of pain through my head just now?! You had better be ready with a damned good explanation or you won't like me when I get to you!], the voice shouted through the link.

[That voice sounded like Arthur's. Is everything okay on your end?], a female one said.

Arthur hesitated a bit and then responded,

[I'll explain later, right now I am tapped out both physically and mentally and Maria is unconscious, I'll bring her back after we rest up and heal a bit.]

He temporarily shelved this idea because of the situation they were in, but made up his mind to thoroughly research the cause of this the moment he had free time.

Right now though, he wanted serious rest.

Meanwhile, the ones battling against the mantis finally finished their battle, with their own story to tell if anything was to be gotten from the excitement in Victoria's voice through the link.