Mana Conductivity: C
Instead of creating human bodies that reflected my past life, I made swords. They were exact replicas, and Phelms became more wary of them than I expected. His concentration was split between the multiple swords that suddenly surrounded him. I could ponder why I’d made swords instead of bodies later. We had a battle to win.
Go!
I sent my replicas flying into Phelms. Well really, I just let them fall. I didn’t expect any of them to do significant damage. He destroyed them with his threads in one flick. They didn’t have the durability to last, but they made for a good distraction. We were lucky that Phelms had just lost to Hundred Blades Forlund. He was really scared of our replicas. In fact, he paid more attention to them than he did to us.
“Tsch!”
Eat this!
Fran accelerated with Flashing Thunderclap, amplified with myriad other spells. It was her fastest attack so far today. She broke through the thread barrier and charged Phelms. He didn’t see it coming, and we took advantage of his surprise.
“What?!”
Phelms dodged the bulk of our blow, but a thin line of blood flowed from his arm. Nothing much, but I had coated my blade with Venomfang. I doubted it would do significant damage, considering his Abnormal Status Resistance. Still, I was hoping that the poison would throw him off a little bit. Manipulating that many threads must require his whole attention.
Fran pressed the advantage and went on the offense. She was doing a lot better now that we were at close quarters. Wounds began to pile up on Phelms’ body, and he jumped back to give himself more distance. Was he really that bad at melee? As we were about to give chase, however…
Fran, wait!
“Hrmph!”
A geyser of threads erupted from under Fran’s feet. They moved like tentacles, tracking her down to tie her up. Phelms must’ve set this up in case he got drawn into melee combat. We’d played right into his hands. Fran managed to dodge, thanks to her Trap Sense, but we needed to be more careful. Phelms’ Lay Trap level was pretty high, and there was no telling where his tripwires might be. Even worse, the old man had managed to escape. This left us in the red—Flashing Thunderclap had eaten away at Fran’s life while I spent mana on the Timespace spell. These wires were a lot more dangerous than I thought!
“One more!”
Yeah!
We charged forward with Dimension Shift. Phelms started to move away, but we were prepared for it this time.
Jet!
“Grrr!”
“What?!”
Jet stuck his face out of Phelms’ shadow and clamped his jaw around his ankle. We told Jet to wait for our signal, since we knew he couldn’t keep dodging Phelms’ innumerable threads. Phelms must’ve known about our direwolf, but had probably forgotten about him. Fran moved in for the kill, but Phelms’ defense proved too formidable.
“Grargh!”
“Jet!”
Blood dripped from Jet’s face as wounds opened up on his muzzle from the multitude of invisible threads. Jet yelped in pain and let go.
Jet, get back in the shadows!
“Arf…”
Phelms was a tough opponent for Jet, who focused on evasion more than defense. We should probably keep our distance if a single thread did him that much damage.
“Hmph!” Phelms made a large gesture as Fran continued her advance, creating a wall of wires.
Teacher!
On it!
We were ready to teleport and continue our charge, until we were suddenly thrown into the air.
“Gah!”
Another trap?!
It happened again. Tentacle-like threads chased after Fran as she tripped another wire. Phelms didn’t attack with his left hand, but that didn’t mean it was idle. The fingers moved intricately, unlike the grand gestures of his right. I had no way to be sure, but I assumed his left hand was the reason my Trap Sense going crazy.
We have to get rid of these threads!
Hm!
Burning them would be better than just dodging them.
“Inferno Burst.”
Inferno Burst!
Inferno Burst!
Inferno Burst!
We focused our flame spells on a single point. The move was similar to when the P.A. focused her spells on one point during the Lich fight. It wasn’t perfect, but it was far more powerful now that synergy gave it a penetrating property. The flaming snake chased him down, burning everything in its path. This should work!
To our surprise, Phelms managed to handle it. He whipped his threads around the flame to weaken it, which made sense. But then he threw himself into the fire.
“Hiiiiyaaa!”
He punched the roaring flames with his right hand. It was weaker now, sure, but it was still a blazing inferno! Was he going to sacrifice his own arm?
Before our shock could wear off, Phelms extinguished the flames entirely. His arms were now encased in woven mana threads. Paired with his high-level Flame Resistance, he was pretty much flameproof.
“They call me the Dragon Hunter for a reason, you know. Their breath tends to be quite fiery.”
Phelms had fought dragons all his life, and our spells did resemble a dragon’s breath attack. No wonder he handled them so easily.
We switched gears and turned to the wind element.
“Wind Cutter.”
Tornado Lance.
Gale Hazard.
Hexagon Tornado.
But Phelms took our wind spells in stride, too. He broke up the gusts of wind with his threads, even forming walls to divert them away from his body. I guess there were dragons who produced hurricanes with their wings and breath, too. He handled the attack with ease, as though he had seen it a thousand times.
With fire and wind out of the question, we were forced to resort to thunder and Timespace.
Let’s start with Timespace.
Not that Timespace Magic offered many offensive spells to begin with. Dimension Sword was the only one that fit the bill, and even that could only be used up close. We warped in and fired one off. The spell moved through physical objects to cut a specific point in space. In exchange for this extraordinary penetrative capability, it had a very short range. You also couldn’t change the spell’s trajectory, and moving even an inch would cause it to miss. Given that Phelms was mostly stationary,
