The battle came to a momentary standstill. When Layn and his friends descended from the ridge towards the three powerhouses of the Celestials, every living soul froze in place.
For a single moment, no one cared about the fight, about the battle, about their own survival. Their deepest instincts alerted them about what was about to happen.
And then the two groups clashed.
The fight started at the same time in three different places.
To the right, Al and Irea engaged with a man who covered himself with fire. Judging from the look of elation on his face, he didn't care about the battle itself, too focused on the fight that had just started.
To the left, Markus and Yelna engaged with the youngest of the trio. While Markus showered him with powerful slashes of his ax, Yelna roamed around the place, looking for the opening to use her hunter abilities.
And in the middle, Layn clashed with the oldest of the three cultivators powerhouses.
'Rebound,' Layn thought, raising an attribute-etched wall of mana in front of himself a second before crashing right into the old man.
"Futile!" the man shouted, striking away at the archmage.
His fists carried both a powerful momentum of a physical swing and a massive load of mana. The strike was at the level that could easily flatten a considerable part of the hill.
Layn bent his knees, guiding the flow of his rebound shield along with the movements of his body.
Originally, the rebound shield would simply reflect all the energy directed at it upwards to a certain limit. Yet, it was the simplest and, at the same time, weakest of possible ways of using it.
Leaning his body forward only to bend his back backward the moment the strike connected with the shield, Layn allowed his wall of mana to angle, seemingly giving in to the strike.
Bit by bit, the old man's fist inched closer towards his body... But as the reflection finally kicked in, when combined with the angling of its surface, the attack only managed to scrape by Layn's side.
'Here,' Layn's eyes flashed. The second his opponent's hand brushed past him, he dropped the shield, redirecting its mana into a powerful strike on his own. With his opponent exposing his side, Layn managed to land a perfect...
A perfect miss.
Just like Layn wielded an overwhelming advantage in terms of mana manipulation, the man's physical prowess was on an entirely different level.
'I don't think even Gartian would have a chance against him,' Layn thought, biting his lips as he jumped one step away.
The clash between the archmage and Consal proved to be quite... disappointing. Even though they were both the strongest within their respective force, their exchange ended up fruitless, as opposed to what happened to their sides.
"DIE!" Faglar shouted, smashing his fists right where Al stood a second before. The second his fingers touched the ground, it exploded with fires, instantly burning several of his fellow celestials.
"Leave it to me!" Irea stepped forward, using her mana to create a whirlpool of energy around herself and Al, redirecting the flames of the attack to the sky. "Now!" she shouted.
"You don't need to tell me!" Al rushed ahead, using the visibility impairment of the whirlpool to sneak a powerful downward slash at the opponent.
"Nice one!" Faglar laughed off, taking the strike directly on his chest.
Not even a drop of blood appeared, his skin proving to be too tough for Al's blade to penetrate.
To Layn's left, Markus finally managed to land a side-slash on the Jeah, only for the Star Emperor to block it off with his arm. Just like his ally to the side, Jeah's cultivation allowed him to easily ward off almost any sort of physical attack.
"They are really going at it," Layn muttered, scanning the situation as he took two more steps to the back.
"You tell me," Consal replied, shaking his head.
The two men looked at each other, one more surprised by the other. Contrary to what happened to their sides, their area of the fight was completely devoid of hostility.
Instead of using hate and wrath to propel their actions, the two of them simply looked for the openings in the stance of the other. But as annoying as it was, they were stuck in a silent and relatively peaceful game of shadows, trying to guess what the other was capable of and how they could counteract it.
"At this rate, we will end up doing nothing, leaving all the glory to the others," Consal complained with an uneasy smile.
"Is that really what you came here to achieve?" Layn asked while squinting his eyes. Since the fight began, his calm state of mind was shaken a little for the first time.
'We abandoned our camp that we worked so hard on, several of my people died, more are about to die as the battle goes on... All because you wanted some glory?!' he thought, tightening his teeth.
Yet, instead of giving in to the anger, Layn killed it out.
In a fight like this, emotions were the assassin of the focus. And Layn desperately needed his concentration to counter all and any technique that his opponent could pull out from his ass.
"It's not that simple," the old man shook his head. "But I don't like the idea of being left out," he added, his expression hardening. "I'm coming," he announced, lowering himself on his knees as his face lost all its emotions.
'He is about to go all-in,' Layn noticed, biting on his lips as he shrouded himself with several layers of shields.
For a mage like him, close-quarter combat was the last-ditch measure, not the standard way of fighting. He practiced it up to this point only because the difference between him and his opponents was just that great.
'I need to shove his attack aside, lock him in place and then eradicate,' Layn hatched a plan, a strategy that played to his strengths instead of his weaknesses.
The only reason why he allowed himself in such a disadvantageous situation was the need to guide the battle into a specific flow, a specific way of developing so that the main strategy for the conflict could continue!
'What's the situation...?' Layn used a spare second to take a look around.
On the right-wing, his Slavian allies finally managed to break through the Celestial's formation, pushing them down the ridge. The fight of Markus and Yelna also started to turn in their favor, only accelerating the development on the wing.
The situation to his left was far worse, albeit not tragic. While neither his men nor Al and Irea managed to break through their opponents, they still managed to hold them at bay.
"You made a mistake," Consal suddenly whispered, appearing right behind Layn's back.
The old man didn't crash into any of Layn's barriers, didn't activate any of his traps. He appeared to simply ignore all the defenses the archmage set, cutting straight to the worst distance for the archmage.
"You shouldn't have looked away," Consal uttered, allowing the satisfaction of his surprise attack to shave away at the surprise part of it.
Yet, even when alerted, Layn had no time to react. Without even a second of hesitation, the old man drove his energy-coated fist straight into the archmage's back, piercing his torso right through!
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