Leon's fist slammed into the side of a bipedal fish, the impact folding its torso inward as purple lightning burst across its slick skin and sent it spinning through the air, and as he turned his body mid-motion to evade a leaping claw swipe from one of the fin-eared creatures, he spoke.
"Camellya, I've been meaning to ask, but exactly how many elements have you mastered?"
A frog-like monster lunged from the side, its tongue snapping forward with a wet hiss, but before it could reach her, the air around Camellya shimmered as a thin wall of water intercepted the strike and redirected it into the floor, where it sizzled faintly.
Without moving from her spot at the centre of the broken control room, she replied, "I haven't mastered any elements. I'm simply competent at some of them."
Leon dipped beneath another claw swipe, pivoting on his heel as he slammed an elbow into the jaw of a fin-eared creature that had leapt at him from behind, lightning bursting from the impact.
He continued with a spinning kick that sent the monster's body crashing into a cluster of bipedal fish, then lowered his leg and raised his hand in front of his face. He clenched his fist and sent lightning coursing through his arm, creating sparks around his fist, then relaxed it to pull the lightning back.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, so what are the ones you're competent with?" he asked, repeatedly clenching and relaxing his fist until he was satisfied with the smoothness of his magic output.
A group of monsters rushed Camellya from three directions, claws raised and tongues lashing, but the ground beneath them suddenly softened into thick mud that swallowed their feet mid-stride and halted their advance as she answered.
"The four basic elements. I've also dabbled in derivatives like ice."
Leon turned his gaze toward the immobilised group as the mud hardened instantly, trapping their legs in place.
"Oh, that explains a lot."
He dashed forward in a blur, his right foot snapping upward into the chin of the nearest creature and lifting it slightly before his left leg followed in a sweeping arc that smashed into another's side, his body rotating as he planted his foot and fired a lightning-coated punch straight into the chest of a third, the burst of purple energy blasting through its torso as he adjusted his weight again and delivered a downward kick to the first creature as it dropped, then pivoted into a backhand strike that crushed the skull of another trapped monster, each impact sending arcs of lightning jumping between their bodies.
While he moved, Camellya turned her gaze toward a group of frog-like monsters circling the edges of the room, her right hand raised lightly with rings of magic power appearing in front of her index and ring fingers as she spoke.
"I focused a lot on fire and water due to their synergies with—"
She paused mid-sentence, her eyes narrowing slightly as another tongue lashed toward her, only to be deflected by a thin current of wind that altered its path, the wind magic circle beneath her feet fading after completing its task.
"Synergies with?" Leon asked, sidestepping a burst of pressurised water that tore through the air where he had just been.
A bipedal fish leapt toward him, and he met it with a lightning-coated knee that slammed into its torso and knocked it downward, his hand snapping forward to release a bolt that blasted it into the floor.
The lightning didn't stop there, as the magic power in his arm spiked and the force behind the bolt increased, tearing through its scales, ripping open its skin, and roasting its insides in a burst of violent purple light. Leon instantly felt the excess power slipping past his control and immediately cut off the flow, the lightning vanishing in an instant.
Camellya cast him a glance from the side as the magic circles in front of her fingers expanded, and when she saw him rein the lightning in on his own before it could spiral further out of control, she returned her focus to her spell and answered his question, "Their synergies with one another."
The two magic circles in front of her fingers expanded to about 30cm wide each, one glowing with a fiery red and the other with an ocean blue. They overlapped and fused, and a pillar of fire erupted from the ground while, from above, a torrent of water burst through the broken ceiling and crashed downward with immense force.
The two collided in the centre of the room, and the resulting explosion of steam blasted outward, sending monsters flying in all directions as scalding vapour filled the space.
"Steam explosions are very powerful, after all," Camellya calmly said as she lowered her hand.
Within the dense cloud, visibility dropped to nothing, but flashes of purple lightning tore through the mist as Leon moved, weaving between disoriented monsters while he attacked, each punch and kick accompanied by bursts of lightning that illuminated brief glimpses of bodies collapsing and being thrown aside.
Camellya waved her hand lightly, and a gust of wind dispersed the steam in a wide arc, revealing the aftermath of Leon's rampage through the mist. Immobilised monsters lay on the ground with their skulls crushed, chests burned or blasted apart, their bodies scattered across the room.
"Well, fire and water are also very good at synergising with lightning," Leon said as he wiped some sweat off his brow. "I mean, we can have explosions."
Right as he said that, Leon pointed his right hand toward the opening in the ceiling where the water had descended, and at that exact moment, a monster leapt through the gap, only to be met with a face full of lightning erupting from his fingers.
Simultaneously, a fireball from Camellya crashed into the monster's face, and the collision produced a violent explosion of crackling flame and lightning that blasted the creature's skull to pieces mid-air.
"And we can also have electrocutions," Leon said as he pointed toward a wounded monster attempting to crawl away, releasing another bolt of lightning.
Camellya responded instantly once again, firing a water spear that overtook Leon's lightning bolt and pierced the creature a fraction of a second earlier, the liquid spreading across its body just as the lightning struck.
The lightning coursed through the water and locked the creature in place as it convulsed before going still…permanently.
Leon blinked at this and turned his eyes toward Camellya, who was silently drinking water from her bottle.
'Damn, she's fast. Her thought and casting speed are amazing.'
In the moment between Leon pointing at the crawling monster and speaking, she had already constructed a spell circle and released a Tier 2 spell with perfect timing to match his attack.
What's more, it had moved even faster than Leon's lightning-based attack, whose main forte was its speed.
"You're not chanting or saying any spell names," Leon said, commenting on something he'd noticed.
"Extra Skill: Chant Revocation," Camellya responded as she covered her bottle and returned it to her spatial storage. "It eliminates my need to chant for low-level spells, and I don't need to say the spell names out loud if I'm proficient enough with it."
Once again, Leon was reminded of the fact that Camellya had possessed her memories of Deity Rising for 7 years now, and has had the Arcane Polymath skill for that long as well.
'It's not surprising she's gone ahead to get Extra Skills that make her an even more competent mage.'
Leon had a few Extra Skills himself, rare abilities beyond Core Skills that granted powerful effects which usually didn't fall within normal skill limitations.
They could be obtained through effort and came in a wide variety of different powers.
"We have good synergy, don't we?" Leon asked, a light smile on his face.
The moment he said that, he leapt forward, closing the distance toward Camellya, his fist pulling back as purple lightning coiled around his arm.
He sent his punch forward, the attack passing just beside her head, not a single arc of lightning touching her as it continued past and slammed into the face of the monster behind her.
The lightning around his fist erupted violently on impact, scattering sparks across the room as the monster was sent flying across the control room and into a wall.
Before it could even slump down, pressurised spears of water erupted from magic circles hovering in the air and pierced through its body from multiple angles, then the lightning still erupting from Leon's fist spread across the water, crackling violently as it coursed through the creature's body, electrocuting it to death.
"Guh"
Leon grunted as he pulled back his fist, staggering backwards slightly as he held his right wrist with his left hand.
"Your magic power control is slipping," Camellya noted with a frown, and Leon silently nodded as he flexed his fingers, the numbness receding gradually.
"You can use light magic, can't you? Why don't you heal yourself?"
As the son of the woman with a title like 'Healing Angel', Leon had naturally high recovery abilities and also possessed her Light Magic, which allowed him to use some support and recovery spells.
"…um…shock therapy?"
"What?"
Camellya gave him an incredulous look, and Leon chuckled as he explained, "I want to get used to the pain that comes with shocking myself, so in an event where I have to overload myself, I don't reflexively flinch or back out because of the pain I'm not used to."
"…"
His words left Camellya looking at him in silence for a moment, her mouth opening as she attempted to speak, but she eventually decided against it and remained silent.
Meanwhile, Leon took a few steps back, dismissing the diaphanous notification board that had been hovering in front of his eyes since the last monster in the room died.
[Level Up]