The duel between the two Master Rankers was brutally short, lasting a mere five seconds.
Yet, it was a fiercely one-sided encounter, with the losing side nearly meeting their demise in the very first exchange.
"Aaaaargh!"
Ariella's anguished cries reverberated across the battlefield, mingling with the surrounding chaos. She managed to break free from Eren's relentless assault, but not without significant cost.
Her right arm had been severed at the shoulder, and her less dominant left hand, typically employed solely for defense, suffered severe damage. The flesh on her left arm appeared as if it had undergone surgical removal, with the Radius and Humerus bones exposed.
Astonishingly, these white bones remained unharmed, indicating that Eren's precise attacks had meticulously targeted her flesh while avoiding the bones. This should have been impossible for a regular Ranker no matter how much they had battled in their lives.
It was as if Eren had studied bodily anatomy so closely that his attacks were subconsciously in line with his knowledge. Such precision was entirely unprecedented in Ariella's experience.
Ariella had used her mana to stop the blood flow and keep the remaining flesh on her left hand from falling to the ground. As a result, her hand looked as if it had been half-sacrificed into some kind of flesh-offering ritual.
Ariella deliberately avoided inspecting her wounds. She believed that doing so might instill fear in her, potentially worsening the ongoing struggle against the Foreign Mana Invasion.
Yet, there was another powerful emotion simmering within her, an unrestrained rage. It felt as though her entire being was immersed in a sea of anger and fury directed at Eren. This surge of emotion provided her with the necessary determination to continue her course of action.
"You... you won't get away with this, you fucking maniac. House Lowin will do everything in its power to hunt you down now that you have attacked me like this."
Ariella asserted this as she carefully maintained her distance from Eren. She had also instructed a few of her subordinates to be ready to step in if needed. It had become painfully clear to her that engaging Eren in close combat alone was nothing short of a suicide mission.
"Don't act like a victim in the problem you created for yourself."
Eren, seemingly unfazed by the situation, responded casually and even taunted Ariella. He stretched and rotated his limbs as if preparing for another round of combat. It was evident he intended to conclude their battle swiftly and move on to his next objective.
As for the white flames that were consistently damaging Eren? He only needed to snap his finger and use his own bloodline powers to counter them.
Snap!
***
While the scion of House Lowin had heard about Eren's style from her records, it was only now that she realized these records had grossly underestimated or downplayed his strengths.
Or Eren was finally unveiling his full range of abilities, choosing to step into the spotlight all of a sudden.
Sometimes, hearsay and others' experiences fell short. Mere records couldn't do justice. Some things had to be experienced personally to truly grasp the conclusions others had drawn before.
Eren's mind-boggling healing rate and the sheer force of his lethal offensive strikes set him apart from other Master Rankers. In fact, it seemed as though his abilities had outgrown the confines of his conventional Rank, inching ever closer to the Grandmaster tier.
Ariella was just about to resume her death spar with Eren. After all, Eren's body was still covered in her white flames. They couldn't be extinguished using normal means. Plus, they had a resilient nature to them.
The white flames were supposed to damage Eren constantly over time. As such, she needed to keep on maintaining pressure on Eren while he was being dealt the passive damage by her flames. But she halted her steps in dread when she watched something unimaginable occurring in front of her.
Ariella watched in disbelief as Eren casually shed the patches of skin that had been exposed to her white flames. To her astonishment, he seemed to discard his own skin as if it were lifeless, revealing fresh, unharmed skin beneath.
The damaged skin, which had been affected by the white flames, fell to the ground and transformed into a viscous, slime-like liquid. This transformation extinguished the white flames, causing them to vanish into thin air. The liquid then returned to Eren, seemingly moving of its own accord, before melding back into his flesh.
"You… what kind of fucking abomination are you?"
Ariella asked while looking at Eren with vigilance and trepidation. Her mind was sending her danger signals as she watched Eren do something in front of her that no records on him had ever described him to do ever.
"This… this is not normal even by the half-bloods' standards. How can a normal half-blood survive the white flames from House Lowin? How can you do… THAT!" she screamed.
Goosebumps appeared on Ariella's skin as she felt the otherworldly mana signatures coming from Eren at this moment, when he was using his Abilities. This was the side of him that he had seldom exposed.
'That's a bloodline Ability for sure. But I have never seen or heard someone do that even in ancient records related to all the half-blood clans who were living in Anfang prior to the Calamity Era,' she thought to herself.
Ariella struggled to comprehend how Eren had inflicted such extensive damage upon her in mere seconds. Plus, he could disregard the white flames as if they were nothing but a fancy trick. Her bloodline powers had practically no effect on the guy apart from creating a minor nuisance.
This outcome contradicted the expectations she had based on all the publicly available knowledge and privileged data she had gathered on Grimdawn. She had thought that Eren, as a half-blood, had an inferior bloodline of unknown origin.
Despite the ordeal he had just endured, Eren appeared mostly unharmed, except for some minor injuries on his arms and the right side of his waist. Moments ago, his body had been engulfed in white flames as a consequence of confronting Ariella directly, causing severe pain and third-degree burns.
