Chapter 301: The Battle Junkie III

[Deep Underground Area]

Martial arts are structured systems of combat and self-defense techniques rooted in physical discipline, mental focus, and often cultural tradition. Originally developed for military training, hunting, and personal protection, martial arts have evolved to include diverse styles worldwide, each with unique principles and movements.

While magic is often portrayed as an extraordinary force that can be wielded by certain individuals, creatures, or artifacts to alter reality, defy natural laws, or channel supernatural energies. It brings elements of wonder, power, and mystery to fantasy worlds, often following unique systems and rules that govern how magic works within that particular universe.

In this world not everyone can use magic like the top students of each academy, some use martial arts and this branch out to many categories like swordmanships or sword arts. To be exact the overall population of this world consist of three categories that fall in this type of scale. In a hundred percent, 10% are people who doesn't know martial arts and doesn't have the capability to wield magic, 40% are the people who can wield magic, and 50% are people who knows martial arts.

In this case, it seemed like while Shun and Akito were busy fending off the terrorist group in another kingdom overseas, Lorius himself learned a lot of new things during the break and somewhat manage to acquire one of the 4 pillars of power in this world, the ventus mark.

With that knowledge hidden from everyone, Sephiria was naturally caught off guard when Lorius executed a martial move which knocks her back and made her crash unto the wall.

Coughing up as Sephiria catches her breath, she then glared towards Lorius as she literally didn't expect that Lorius himself would pull out such stunt which caught her off gaurd. However despite her underlying circumstances, Lorius would not even care, as he quickly rushes in towards her using magic and even combo it out with martial arts.

"Accel!!! Accel!!! Accel!!! (Martial Skill) Destruction Fist!!!"

Seeing this, Sephiria quickly used "Blink" to get away from Lorius and dodge that sudden quick attack. The moment she got away, she then constructed the sword of the Ice Empress with her elemental mana, as she concentrated her mana unto the sword. As she stabbed it unto the ground and casted a wide are spell.

"Frozen Field!!!"

In that moment, ice suddenly erupted from the ground as they chased after Lorius, forcing the person himself to jump away and use a different method to deal with Sephiria.

"Lava Wall!!!"

Using a lava spell to block Sephiria's magic, Lorius then raised its hand unto the air as he manifested lightning unto his palm and threw it towards Sephiria.

"Thundershock!!!"

In response to this, Sephiria quickly puts up her defensive spell "Frost Guard!!!" Which blocks the lightning strike from above, as she begun to concentrate the mana unto the tip of her sword and casted another spell to counter attack Lorius.

"Ice chasers - 20 bits!!!"

As multitudes of attack went towards Lorius direction, the person himself them quickly casted a spell to clone himself and leave the fake Lorius behind while he sneak up on sephiria. Just like that, Sephiria's spell only manage to hit the fake Lorius, as the real one himself manage to sneak beside her and attack her from her blindspot.

"(Martial Skill) Destruction Fist!!!" + "Pyro Blast!!!"

Combining magic and martial skill in one attack, Sephiria's defenses and armor got easily broken through by such an attack, as she got blown away all the way across the room and crashing through multiple rocks. Just like that Sephiria was hurting so much, that she can't even recover from that quickly as she tried to hurry and find stuff within her pocket dimension bag to save her from this current situation.

On the otherhand Lorius noticed the late response from Sephiria and he begun to wonder whether he had gone to far from fighting agaisnt Sephiria herself. After all this type of skills and combination spell was something he prepared against both Shun and Akito. However due to how much Sephiria had grown stronger in that short amount of time, he couldn't help but see her in equal footing and respect to the point that he revealed his cards to her.

But now that he realized that even as some time has passed and Sephiria hasn't got up yet, he might have gone too far causing her unable unable to even react to fight back.

Since there was no pillar of light yet, he was confident to say that Sephiria was not yet eliminated, meaning she survived his attack. However due to his attack, Sephiria might be experiencing pain worse than death, which made him nervous all of the sudden.

After all not only is Sephiria engaged to Shun who he held in high regard, she is also the daughter of a Duke within the kingdom. Even though he has the power and strength to even overpower the kingdom, he was not here to dominate all but rather live in peace while experiencing life. This time if he accidentally had given a Duke's daughter an irreparable damage, he would really be in a tough spot  which could even endanger his way of life.

"Hey are you okay?! Are you alive? Clap once if yes, clap twice if no"

"....."

"Come on! Your pulling my leg here! Atleast tell me if your still there"

After waiting for some time and no response returned to him, Lorius begun to feel nervous all of the sudden as he somewhat panicked while heading towards Sephiria's direction. While walking towards Sephiria, he begun to run down multiple scenarios on his head on how to handle this situation.

If something happens to her, he could always heal her using superior magic that could even regenerate missing limbs, but if worse comes to worse, he would need to result in using divine magic to bring her back to life. No matter what he will protect his way of life even if he needed to break a taboo.

In that moment just as he was about to reach Sephiria, a sudden spell suddenly came straight at him from the side, as he quickly puts up a shield and blocked all those attacks. At first he thought that Sephiria was finally attacking back, but upon noticing the elemental mana on the attack, the attack itself wasn't cyro based magic but rather light based, in other words there is someone else in here aside from the two of them.

Just as he was thinking of this Cedric then suddenly appeared before him as he sent a sword wave towards Lorius while grabbing Sephiria who is lying on the ground. With that, Lorius suddenly realized that Sephiria's team must have arrived and was planning to pull her out of this situation. If that was the case then something must have happened to his team as this place only has one teleported that is connected to the surface. If Sephiria's team is here, then that only means that his own team is in danger on the surface.

Coming up to this conclusion, Lorius suddenly got serious again as he chased after Cedric with an intent to question him thoroughly.