The Dragon's Test

"What?" The dragon opened his eyes wide, wondering if the girl in front of him was telling the truth. "You...want to take my test? This is not a game, child. You can easily die and you saw what happened to the Silver Flash, when he was one of the most powerful who came here before."

"Mmnn." Ning'Er nodded her head to confirm her words. "I owe a great debt to my grandfather and this is something I must do for him or I believe some inner demons will develop within me, which will impact my future potential."

The gigantic beast stared at her for a long while before finally responding. "Very well...I hope that you know what you're doing. I can sense that you're already at Black Gold Rank but early stage. A child your age with this level of talent will easily reach Legend Rank in the future. You could come back any time when you're stronger but yet you choose to take such a risk now. I guess you could call it bravery or foolishness...or filial love. It's impressive in its own way."

It led her to a large adjacent room that was bare so that the fight would not threaten any of its precious treasure. Taking a deep breath, it called out a clone around half the size of itself, that radiated with lightning power, giving off an aura of peak Black Gold Rank. "Be careful, girl. My clone won't be instructed to take it easy. Once the test begins, only one will remain at the end, you or the clone."

"Begin."

The lightning flashing around the clone died down after a few moments so that it completely felt like a real dragon, only that it was weaker and smaller than its creator. Ning'Er wouldn't have even suspected that it were a lightning clone if she did not visually see it being created. What an incredible ability! She braced herself, knowing that this would the fastest and most dangerous opponent she had ever faced so far in this life.

When the clone finally acted, she did not even know at first because it moved so fast that its afterimage remained standing there for a moment. Before she knew it, it had already flown up above her and began raining down deadly thunderbolts of lightning at incredible speed.

"Hmmpphh!" She grunted but felt a sense of relief that it had started off with these long ranged attacks for which she had a counter prepared. With a thought, an ancient, rusty sword appeared in her hands and as she infused it with her pure soul force, it glowed with a blinding silver light. The dragon watching at the side's eyes narrowed as it felt a strange sense of threat coming from this weapon, even though the electricity flickering off the blade was clearly something that a dragon of its lineage should dominate.

She lifted the Thunder God's Meteorite Sword above her and it hungrily sucked up all the lightning bolts heading her way like a black hole that couldn't be satisfied. She could sense that the tens of lightning strikes it had consumed barely scratched the surface of the power it wanted to devour, and in response, the sword roared in frustration and shot back everything it had accumulated in one thick, concentrated lightning bolt.

The room was filled with the deafening screeching sound given off with attacks of this type of nature and as the clone received the combined lightning bolt, it screamed with rage and pain. Although it had a natural defence against this type of energy, the overwhelming berserk energy was not something it could refine all at the same time. While half of the energy became a tonic for it to grow stronger, the other half rampaged through its body, vibrating through with devastating intent.

The dragon clone abruptly swooped down towards Ning'Er in an instant, realising that ranged lightning attacks would only be taken advantage of by that mysterious sword. It began a powerful combination of close combat maneuvers.

"To the left a bit! Now bottom right! Directly behind you!"

Silently, Ancestral Founder Ye Yan, was helping to direct Ning'Er's frantic defence against the blinding speed and unpredictable trajectories of the clone's attacks by speaking directly into her consciousness from the connection they had through the sword. Otherwise, she could only trust her senses and instincts because her eyes could not come close to picking up the movements of her opponent.

Already, her right shoulder lay dripping with fresh blood, along with another deep gash in her left hip that was beginning to hinder her rotationary movements. She could feel an insidious lightning poison trying to burrow itself into her bloodstream from her open wounds and knew that if the fight continued for much longer, she would become poisoned in the same way as her grandfather.

But she could not even think about attacking at this point because it was needing all of Ye Yan's and her own attention and abilities to defend against the insane speed of the dragon clone's deadly attacks. She didn't even have time to charge up another lightning attack with the divine sword she was holding. She was fortunate that she was wearing Heaven's Shift as her armour, if not her back and front torso would have been covered in numerous more slash marks.

"Ye Yan, we're going to have to change it up. Take control of the sword when you feel me let go, and begin attacking at the blind spots as hard as you can!" She communicated in her consciousness to Ye Yan. One of the abilities of a sentient sword was that it could use infused soul power and attack an opponent independantly from its user.

As the clone closed in once again, she threw the Thunder God's Meteorite Sword to the side as though she were discarding it, and pulled out Wind Cutter from her interspatial ring in an instant. Launching herself backwards with three handstand backflips to avoid the diving attack of the clone, she kicked hard, using the immense backwards momentum to rise high in the air, sending across three devastating wind blades towards her opponent.

The dragon clone shrieked in frustration and, unsure how powerful this new weapon and its attacks were, it was forced to defend itself from the rippling blades of wind that slashed down onto it. Three loud rings sounded as the attacks hit the hard scales of the clone's arms, leaving visible white scratches but not penetrating the tough defence of the beast.

It looked at the girl in front of it and growled in amusement at such a weak attack when suddenly, it sensed a dangerous, hidden attack that was about to reach its body. It immediately tried to shift quickly to the side but a powerful blade stabbed into its ribs right under right arm. Despite its defensive actions, the sword still pierced two feet inside, fortunately missing any vital organs. However, as the sword nimble forced itself out, blood started pouring from the wound, which would weaken the creature over time.

It held the wound with its left claw, glaring at the girl in the distance and the sword that hovered next to her. It had obviously underestimated this weak human and was incensed that it had incurred damage in the battle when it had held such an overwhelming advantage throughout.

With an earth-shattering roar, it crouched down and began trembling as a mysterious layer of silver lightning began to cover its entire body from head to toe. Within a few moments, it was completely covered with a dangerous aura of lightning, and you could barely see its body through the blinding, sizzling light that flashed all over it.

"Be careful, little girl. Now you've got it to be serious." The dragon at the side of the room spoke up, warning her. As much as it thought she was a fool to come challenge the test so early, it was beginning to appreciate her talent and fearlessness. Imagine how far she could go if she could survive this ordeal!

BANG!!

The moment she heard the thunderous sound in her ears, she found herself flying backwards at extreme speed, stopping only when her back smashed against the rock wall behind her. Her face showed an expression of shock as she realised that Ye Yan had sensed the attack coming and actually positioned the sword in front of her chest to bear the brunt of the attack. She coughed and spat out a mouthful of red blood, and groaned at the pain that wracked through her entire body.

The dragon clone was at least twice as fast and powerful as before. If she couldn't even see it before it powered up, what hope did she have now?

"Ning'Er! Get up and keep on fighting! If not, you will die!" She heard Ye Yan's voice screaming at her in her consciousness and despite her sense of despair, she climbed out of the broken rocks around her and stood with unsteady legs to face the enraged beast.

"Ning'Er, you must hold on! I've heard of a divine technique like this among the ancient beasts before. They receive a large boost in power for a short period of time but if you're able to sustain, they wil enter into a weakened state!"

Her heard began pounding as she heard his words in her mind. But how was she going to hold on against such a godly strength? She saw the creature's legs bunch under it as it got ready to pounce again.

In desperation, she instantly transformed into her Panterran form to use its agility to evade the deadly attacks that kept finding her. She dashed to the side the moment she saw the clone twitch and an instant later, the rocks exploded where she had just been standing a moment before. This happened for another two times and she began to realise that the clone could not change its direction once it launched itself at that unbelievable speed.

However, if it could take a chance and anticipate where she would run to, it could head there instead and once it chose the correct location by chance or instinct, it spelled the end for her. It because a frantic cat and mouse game as she had to use all her wits to keep dashing to the least likely place her foe would attack. But it was only a matter of time before it made one lucky guess.

After nine exchanges, on the tenth attempt, it headed directly for where Ning'Er was heading for. She couldn't even sense it but Ye Yan's panicked voice sounded in her consciousness an instant before the attack hit. She crouched into a small ball and braced herself in the smallest position possible as a glancing blow smashed her thirty feet away.

The Panterran somersaulted and tumbled across the stony floor over and over again before it came to a stop. There was complete silence for a moment.

"Ning'Er...Ning'Er! Wake up!" Ye Yan's tentative, anxious voice reached her as she came to her senses. Her vision was blurred when she opened her eyes and she felt excruciating pain throughout her body. A few of her ribs were definitely broken because of the intense agony she felt as she tried breathing and as she spat out another mouthful of blood, there was some pink frothy substance within showing that she had punctured her lung.

She looked down at herself to find that she was back in human form and that her right knee was bent at an unnatural angle. She pulled herself to a crouching position, and in the haze of pain, she looked around, wondering when the death blow would fall.

She finally saw the dragon clone thirty feet away panting heavily as it glared at her. The glowing layer of lightning that surrounded its body was fading away, and it growled softly in pain as it felt the backlash of using its divine technique. However, its body was still in good condition, especially compared to hers, and it started ominously stepping towards her to finish the battle.

"Ye Yan...get ready. This will be our final attack. Pierce down from above." She communicated once again to the Ancestral Founder.

The sword silently flew in behind the clone and when it was directly above, plunged downwards at a deadly trajectory. The creature sensed it and opened its cavernous jaws to chomp down onto the sword, breaking its momentum and effectively nullifying the final attempt it could make with its depleted soul force. With a jerk of its neck, it flung the sword to the side with incredible force, making it sink deeply into the rock wall.

In the next instant, a berserk black light erupted beneath the terrifying beast and the sound of a million crickets filled the air.