?A barrage of lightning fell around Randal as he twisted and turned to get out of harm's way. He spun space around him multiple times to redirect the lightning too, but Ning scared him to the point that he wanted to dodge by himself.
He didn't want to take a chance with space when the person in front of him had the capacity to affect it as well.
What surprised Randal more than anything was that he was being played by someone who was only in the Essence Manifestation realm. If anyone found that a Stellar Harmony realm individual was being toyed around like this, they would make fun of it for all of his life.
'Time, Space, Shadow, Void, Lightning, and Sound,' Randal thought. "What else does he have? And how did he acquire them all in the first place?'
Randal hadn't even been aware that he had mistaken one of the Essence types out of sheer confusion.
Ning threw out more and more lightning attacks, while constantly fighting back Spatial attacks. He either switched to Space Core and fought back or simply didn't care that he was cut and destroyed by it.
Teleporting him around didn't work either as Ning would just teleport back to where he was.
As such Randal remained on the defensive. He knew something more was up here and he didn't want to needlessly fall into a trap. His only hope to see this through was to wait until the end and hopefully have Ning lose all Essence.
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇtThe fight lasted for no more than 3 minutes before Ning had to change to another core.
"Another?" Randal couldn't help but get angry now. "Just how many do you actually have?"
"Don't worry, there's only this and one more," Ning answered him truthfully and attacked with another Essence that Randal had never felt before.
He tried dodging the attacks Ning made barely based on his senses of where the Essence was being used, but to his eyes, nothing was happening. That made him slightly confused.
He wondered if it was like Time, where one had to have things be around to see what the actual effect was. But no, Randal could see the effects now. In fact, he feared that he might be the only one in this entire world who could see the effect.
Space bent around the places where Ning's attack went through. The bending of Space was almost negligible when considering their constant use of Space Essence. But this was not Space Essence.
Randal had never before seen an Essence that could interact with Space itself while not being Space Essence. He could think of absolutely nothing else that could exhibit such behavior.
Then he felt it.
Suddenly his body grew heavier, and moving it became somewhat cumbersome. He was in the Stellar Harmony realm, so his physical body was plenty of times stronger than most regular humans, but the curve of physical strength improvement plateaued very quickly around the Essence Soul realm, so he wasn't as strong as he wanted to either.
He felt his body grow sluggish, each movement needing more energy. His body had to work hard as well. His breathing grew ragged and he could hear his heart beating through his chest.
"What is this?" Randal let out a grunt.
"Gravity!" Ning answered him.
"Gravity?" Randal couldn't help but ask. "You… you can control gravity?"
"I can," Ning said. "Are you going to make me continue fighting? Or will you pay up for the damages you caused?"
"Bastard!" Randal said softly and felt the force of gravity increase even more, nearly causing him to stumble. He quickly used his Essence to bring himself away from the location
The gravity there had been affecting a rather large area.
Ning appeared close by again, brought there by Umbra who stood behind him. She did nothing but aid him in battle by always keeping him around Randal.
"You have brought me down to my last Essence Core, Randal Tarmon," Ning said. "You better pay up while you still have the chance because once I'm done with this, I will kill you for what you did."
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏmRandal took a deep breath and stared at Ning with no fear. "I admit I was hasty in my decision-making, but I will not be threatened by you. If we must, I will let the law decide what I must do in repayment."
"I don't bloody care what the law says," Ning said. "You killed my beast in my home that you trespassed upon. Either pay with what you value or pay with your life. There is nothing else that I will accept."
Randal gritted his teeth in frustration. He was acutely frustrated that he was constantly being made fun of by whom he should easily be beating. What he was even more frustrated by was that he couldn't find a way to leave this world of shadows using his Space Essence.
It was almost as if there was no way out. Would he have to do what he didn't want to?
Ning sighed and changed his Essence Core again, and almost instantly used it. The technique he used didn't do anything or create something with the Essence. What it did in fact was send a flow of this Essence toward Randal in its raw form.
Randal frowned a little when he sensed both the Essence and the attack. There was something wrong with this attack and Essence. Not only was it being used so carelessly, there was something about him that gave him a bad feeling.
Almost as if he had seen this being used sometime in his past.
Randal gasped as he remembered the tiny Essence crystal that he kept around all the time and had ended up using it in desperation to save his life when fighting against the leader of the assassins.
This was that terrible Essence that had killed the man the moment it came into contact with him.
Randal didn't want any of this, so he used his Space Essence to try and get away from there. However, the moment the Space Essence came into contact with the mysterious Essence, everything went bad.