Chapter 663: Beat Me More! [Bonus Chapter]
From the crouch, Silas twisted his hips with his left palm snapping upward in a short brutal strike aimed at her floating ribs.
WHOOSH!
’Tidal Impact...’
A dense sphere of heavy water erupted from his palm and Seraphina’s combat instincts were terrifying.
’What a strong attack...’
She dropped her weight, throwing her entire body into a spinning, horizontal axis mid-air with her right foot snapping out like a whip.
CRASH!
Her heel, wreathed in roaring crimson fire, intercepted the water sphere mid-flight.
The collision between heavy hydro-mana and solar fire detonated into an apocalyptic cloud of scalding vapor that blanketed the central ring.
Within the blinding white fog, the tempo didn’t slow at all... It accelerated into unrestrained madness.
CLANG! CLANG! SHING! CLANG!
The sound of steel striking steel rang out in a continuous deafening staccato as twenty exchanges were in the span of two heartbeats.
’Ah... So hot...’
Seraphina was a tempest of flame.
She moved like a dancing demon, utilizing the unnatural leverage of her petite frame to weave around Silas’s longer reach.
A low sweep aimed at his ankles, a rising reverse-grip stab toward his armpit, a spinning backhand slash coated in searing plasma... She did it all.
WHOOSH!
Every strike was infused with the pride of House Bloom and every movement executed with the lethal elegance of a predator who was trying her best to hunt down her prey.
...And with every strike that Silas parried, her heart hammered harder, faster, drunk on an intoxicating rush of adrenaline.
It felt amazing.
’He’s matching me!’ Seraphina thought, her red eyes going wide and sparkling with breathless joy. ’He’s not even using his Gold Core suppression or overwhelming me with a higher mana pool!’
No...
’He’s reading my angles! He’s parrying with a third-rate iron sword! This is the man... this is the man who stands above the world huh?!’
SHING!
Her right dagger skated down the length of his blade, straight for his knuckles but Silas rolled his wrist and let it slide off the flat.
CLANG!
Her left dagger came up from underneath, Silas dropped the pommel and cracked it aside.
SKRRRRRK!
She hooked both daggers over his blade like a pair of scissors and pinned it against his hip.
’Got you!’ Seraphina thought, her grin splitting wider but Silas didn’t pull back.
He drove the pinned sword forward with his whole body, spun in a tight circle, and tore it free.
KRAAAAANG!
A fan of orange sparks lit the fog for half a second as Seraphina’s feet skidded back a full step.
’How’s he doing this...? Is it some secret technique...?’
Silas pulsed a thin ring of water mana eyes and blue lines should have bloomed across her body however they flickered and then they twisted into unstable wisps and snapped apart in her heat.
’Rip-Current Perception is a bust, huh?’
He wasn’t surprised by it, it was pretty bad against people who had a high body heat as he wondered how Morwenna got past this whole thing.
’Still, how hot is her body?’
Seraphina saw the half-second he spent thinking.
’Hesitation!’
She crossed both daggers and swung them out in an X!
SHHHHHK!
An X-shaped arc of white-hot fire ripped through the fog toward his chest, however a hard gust burst under his heels and shoved him sideways.
WHOOSH!
The X tore through the space where his ribs had been and carved two glowing scars across the stone.
’That was close...’
Still, was Sera trying to kill him? This was like the third flame attack that would have crippled or even killed him if he didn’t think fast.
"Don’t think I’m done with you!"
She stomped.
BWOOOOOM!
The floor under Silas erupted as a spiraling cage of crimson fire tore out of the bedrock and wrapped around him in huge interlocking petals, twisting upward and closing over his head like the bud of a monstrous flower.
’She already set it up...?’
Inside the bud, the heat pressed against his skin like a hand and his water coating sizzled off the steel, however he planted both feet and thrust his left palm at the petals.
’Hurricane Repulsion!’
BWAAAAAAAM!
A shockwave of compressed air punched outward in every direction as the petals ripped apart, flaring open like a flower hit by a bomb, and burning shreds rained across the platform.
Seraphina skidded back three paces with her cuffs snapping in the wind.
’One palm!’ she thought, her eyes shining. ’That bastard broke it with one palm!’
She didn’t give him a second to breathe as she lunged back in.
CLANG!
Silas deflected her left dagger outward with the flat of his blade with his footwork shifting into a tight circular pivot.
’Severing Horizon!’
He swung the training sword in a horizontal sweep and a thirty-foot crescent of heavy, pressurized water detached from the edge, screaming across the stone like a hydraulic guillotine.
Seraphina’s eyes ignited.
Instead of dodging, she crossed both daggers before her chest.
FWOOM!
Two spiraling, crimson fire serpents erupted from her forearms, coiling tightly around her daggers as she brought the cross-guard down squarely into the center of the heavy-water crescent.
KRA-BOOOOOOM!
The solar flame swallowed the water wave whole and the ungodly temperature boiled the entire thirty-foot construct into vapor in half a second with the concussive shockwave blasting the mist apart, leaving both of them standing in the clear scorched center of the arena.
"Ugh—!"
The recoil pushed Seraphina’s daggers wide and her guard was open for a fraction of a heartbeat but Silas didn’t use the sword.
’Using blades against this woman is like asking for an invite to be countered...’
With that thought, he released his grip on the leather hilt, letting the iron weapon drop toward the ground with his right hand shooting forward like an uncoiled iron spring.
GRASP!
His fingers locked around Seraphina’s right wrist, arresting her momentum but Sera didn’t panic.
’Is that so?’
With her left hand, she reversed her dagger, plunging it downward toward his forearm.
SHING!
Silas’s left hand snapped up with his palm catching the base of her thumb, violently twisting her wrist outward with a textbook joint-lock.
CLICK-CLATTER.
Both of her volcanic steel daggers slipped from her numb fingers, clattering uselessly against the stone!
"No weapons?" Seraphina snarled with her grin widening. "FINE BY ME!"
Did he think that without her weapons, it would be much easier to force her to submit...?
’That’s a foolish thought...’
Deprived of their blades, members of the Bloom clan could turn their bodies into engines of war!
Sera drove her left elbow straight toward Silas’s jaw with her forearm wrapped in a roaring mantle of solar flame.
FWOOSH!
Silas leaned his head back by two inches as the heat blistered the skin of his chin and countered with a lightning-fast palm strike to her sternum.
THUD!
Seraphina caught his wrist with both hands, using his forward momentum to kick off his chest, flipping over his head like an acrobat.
’I’ve been practicing since I was three... You won’t be able to beat me like that.’ Sera thought.
Before her feet even touched the granite behind him, she spun, throwing a vicious rising roundhouse kick aimed squarely at the side of his neck.
THWACK!
Silas brought his left forearm up, blocking the kick and the impact drove his slippers an inch into the shattered stone, but his frame didn’t yield an inch.
"...Amazing."
She didn’t stop.
WHAM!
Her left fist slammed into his ribs.
’Ow! Fuck!’ Silas thought with his breath hissing out through his teeth.
CRACK!
His right elbow smashed into her cheekbone and her head snapped sideways, and she spat a bead of fire onto the stone.
’You hit me in the face!’ Seraphina thought. ’But I want more! Beat me more!’
She grabbed his collar and headbutted him.
BAM!
Stars burst behind Silas’s eyes.
’Ahh! Is her head made of rock?!’
He dropped into a low sweep and his heel scythed under both her ankles.
WHOOSH!
She fell, planted both palms on the stone, and flipped herself upright on a burst of fire from her hands.
FWOOOSH!
Sera came back down with a blazing heel drop aimed at the crown of his head as he crossed his arms over his face.
BOOOM!
The granite rippled under his slippers and the heat licked through his sleeves.
’She’s a goddamn furnace...’
He twisted her ankle, spun, and flung her across the ring.
WHAM!
She hit the stone and sprang up laughing with fire trailing from both fists.
"AHAHAHAHA! AGAIN!" she screamed as she came at him in a flurry which Silas weaved.
WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!
’Is she perhaps... enjoying getting beat up?’ Silas thought with a chill going down his spine as Sera’s hand shot forward once more.
BANG!
The punch grazed his temple however Sera had already prepared for that as she slid under his guard and drove a rising knee at his gut.
THUD!
Silas folded around it, caught her ankle, and heaved her over his shoulder.
WHAM!
Her spine slammed flush against the reinforced floor.
The granite beneath her shattered instantly blooming outward into a spiderwebbed crater of jagged gray stone but she didn’t even grunt.
’I really want more!’
Before her momentum settled, her right palm snapped down and slapped the fractured stone as a concussive detonation of raw flame erupted directly beneath her hand with the kickback violently launching her back up into the air and snapping her right back onto her feet.
FWOOSH!
"Is that all you’ve got, Graves?!"
"Don’t push it!"
She spat a mouthful of smoke and wiped her split lip with her thumb.
’Damn him,’ she thought. ’He’s actually good at this...’
Without pausing, Silas stepped inside her guard with his right shoulder slamming hard into her chest in a devastating close-quarters shoulder check.
BOOM!
The breath exploded from Seraphina’s lungs as she stumbled backward three paces.
Silas didn’t give her room to breathe as he closed the distance with a low sliding step with his left hand swatting aside her blazing left hook and his right arm cocking back like a heavy industrial piston.
’I fell for the trap!’ She thought as Silas’s eyes glinted, Sera tried to defend herself but it was... too late.
Silas stepped into the punch, driving his right fist squarely into the center of her solar plexus.
BAAAAAAAAAANG!
The strike landed with the dull sickening thud of an iron wrecking ball hitting reinforced concrete and a violent concussive ring echoed off the walls.
All the air, all the pride, and all the breath inside Seraphina Bloom was instantly, violently expelled from her mouth in a gasping choke.
"Gah!"
Her eyes bulged with the color completely draining from her face as her knees buckled under the shockwave rippling through her abdominal wall.
WHOOSH!
She was sent flying backward as her body began to fold forward around his fist with gravity claiming her frame.
Silas immediately pulled his punch back with his left hand rising as he prepared to deliver a gentle concussive chop to the side of her neck to end the match cleanly and catch her before she hit the stone.
’I can finish this easily,’ Silas thought while moving forward.
He was half an inch away.
Then...
The world stopped.
’No...’
The word rang inside Seraphina’s skull with her vision going white at the edges as her legs were not answering her at all.
’Not like this... Not in front of him... Not in front of Harper.’
’I’m a Bloom. I’ve been burning since I was a child and I am not losing to a single punch...’
Her fingers curled against the stone... she refused to go out like this, she hadn’t made him push that far yet.
"BURN."
She opened the floodgates of her Primordial Fire Spirit.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
A cataclysmic detonation of pure white heat erupted directly from the center of Seraphina’s chest and Silas’s blue eyes widened.
’SHIT!’
The concussive force of the thermal release slammed into Silas like an oncoming locomotive, blowing him backward through the air.
WHOOOSH!
He twisted mid-flight, digging his slippers into the granite and carving two long smoking trenches thirty yards across the arena before coming to a halt.
’This got a bit more troublesome...’
The entire cube turned into a blinding shadowless sea of white.
In the center of the ring, the girl with the messy crimson hair and the oversized white shirt was gone.
Hovering four inches above the molten, bubbling granite was a being of pure destruction.
Seraphina’s hair was no longer crimson... It had transformed into a flowing, magnificent cascade of brilliant luminous silver-white fire, billowing around her shoulders like molten starlight and her red eyes had vanished, replaced by two glowing orbs of pure white-hot plasma.
Across the pale skin of her neck, her forearms, and her cheeks were burning runes ignited with pulsing brilliance.
The Floodgates were wide open and the ten-times multiplier of the Primordial Fire Spirit began to alter the fundamental laws of combustion within the chamber.
CRACKLE-FWOOSH!
A towering swirling cyclone of three-thousand-degree solar flame erupted outward in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree wave as the air itself began to burn.
The nitrogen and oxygen molecules within the artificial vault sheared apart into glowing plasma with the heat radiating with such terrifying intensity that the massive basalt walls of the dimensional cube began to glow dull red.
Her white eyes found Silas and she vanished.
BOOM!
Silver-white fire punched through the spot where Silas had been standing.
’Left!’
He was already moving with his forearm snapped up, wrapped in a skin of heavy water as he caught her fist.
CRAAAAAASH!
The impact drove him ten feet backward across the glass-slick floor and steam screamed off his arm.
"Is that all?" Seraphina asked.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
She released three punches in a single breath.
He swayed under the first, rolled his shoulder through the second, and took the third on his crossed wrists though it shook every bone in his arms.
Water flashed to steam on his skin with every hit.
TSSSSSSSSSS!
’Okay... Okay! That’s enough!’
Fifty yards away at the observation railing, Valerius screamed:
"MY HAIR! SHIT, MY HAIR IS ON FIRE!"
A stray lick of the superheated air had drifted over the barrier, instantly igniting the tips of Valerius’s golden bangs into tiny yellow embers.
The blond noble was frantically slapping the top of his head with both hands with panic written across his face as he looked at the glowing runic seams of the ceiling.
"SERA, STOP!" Valerius bellowed, his voice cracking with genuine terror. "COMPRESS IT! COMPRESS THE DAMN MANA! THE RUNES CAN’T HOLD THIS OUTPUT! YOU’RE GOING TO BLOW UP THE PROTOTYPE AND VAPORIZE SILAS’S PLACE!"
Above the sea of white fire, the entity tilted its head.
The silver-white flames dancing along her eyelashes flickered slightly as Valerius’s panicked screams pierced the roar of the inferno.
Slowly... Seraphina drew a breath.
She didn’t dispel the transformation though, instead, with terrifying willpower, she clamped down on the Primordial Spirit’s wild raging torrent.
’I need to calm myself down...’
VUUUUUUUUUUUM!
The colossal three-hundred-foot storm of white fire was forcefully sucked backward, collapsing inward toward her core like water draining into a whirlpool.
Within three seconds, the raging sea of flame had condensed into a tight razor-thin aura of blinding silver-white light hugging the contours of her body.
The air around her bent into a violent shimmering heat mirage as she hovered in the air with her glowing white eyes staring across the molten glass-slick floor straight at Silas Graves.
’So cute...’
Silas stood with his arms slightly raised and crystalline mist of water-mana swirling around his forearms while his blue eyes locked onto her with a bit of worry in them.
’Stop looking at me like that...’
For a long heavy heartbeat, the shattered cavern was dead silent, save for the crackling of cooling stone then, Seraphina’s chin tilted slightly.
The silver-white flames of her hair brushed against her bare throat as her lips parted.
"So..."
She leaned forward, her plasma-white eyes locking squarely onto his pupils.
"...how many children do you think we should have?"