"I almost died there," Lucien muttered, looking at him to see if he was being followed. "That beanstalk was increasing his strength based on what he said, but I have a feeling he wasn’t even using it," he continued.
Eventually, he stopped flying away and just hovered in the air, trying to observe any changes from where Vaelion was. Suddenly, out of the rubble, a figure flew out.
Vaelion was still chasing them.
From how he ran, it didn’t seem like he could fly, leaving Lucien confused.
"What was that power he used to find me so quickly then?" He pondered, getting into flight position again.
He couldn’t let Vaelion catch him. He knew he had no hesitation to kill him, and Lucien wasn’t quite ready to meet his end.
He quickly charged up a beam and fired it at Vaelion from his palms in an attempt to thwart his efforts. The beam landed on the ground, shaking the ground and causing destruction to everything around the blast radius.
Vaelion, however, leaped out as though nothing had happened, his sword strapped to his side as he ran with full focus on Lucien.
"Why’s this guy trying to kill me so much?" Lucien sighed, then turned his scrunched face to look ahead. "What did demons do to this guy"
Vaelion looked like he was catching up, and he was doing it quickly as well. Lucien couldn’t do anything but watch his end slowly creep closer.
"A-agh! I’m dead either way." Lucien stopped and began moving in the opposite direction as Vaelion had somehow caught up with him.
’I just need to blast out a concentrated beam from my feet, and I should be able to gain some distance,’ he thought, looking for an open space on the ground to land just before it was too late.
That move drained the little energy Lucien had, so relying on it excessively would most likely be a double-edged sword that would eventually work in Vaelion’s favor.
Lucien eventually executed his descent, a fully charged beam already pulsating at his feet. Vaelion approached him, his face squeezed in disgust.
"I’ll kill him. Filthy demons aren’t free to traverse this realm." Lucien could hear Vaelion mutter those words as he clutched his sword and unsheathed it.
"I’ll kill you!" Vaelion swung his sword in the air, barely missing Lucien’s body before he was blasted off into the air as planned.
Lucien, now slowly drifting across in the air, looked at Vaelion as he screamed and continued running in Lucien’s direction.
"Ugh, persistent little insect," Lucien mumbled, letting his body fall to the ground once more.
"Alright! Another one," he stated, looking around for Vaelion. Vaelion seemed farther off than he did, still screaming and swinging his sword around.
Lucien blasted off another fully charged Mana beam from his feet, and this time, he flew even higher in the air, his body swayed by the erratic movements of the winds.
"This power... I thought it would make me overpowered. But, at the sight of a young division captain, I still find myself running away?" Lucin mumbled, descending once more.
Vaelion seemed even farther away than he had the last time, and his screams were becoming harder to here. Lucien’s plan was working, but was that really the approach he intended?
Lucien flew into the air again and to his surprise, a stone barely missed him, although it posed no danger either way.
"Where’d this thing come from?" He said in a startled voice, stopping himself mid-flight to readjust. "If I go for another beam, the Mana Wrath provided me will be severely depleted.
Lucien kept flying, but a few more stones occasionally flew by him until one eventually hit.
"Huh? That didn’t hurt at all," Lucien stated, looking down with an eyebrow raised. "Is he that desperate that he’s throwing rocks at me now?"
Still floating in the air, he grabbed the stone that had gotten stuck deep in his robe and examined it. Lucien’s eyes widened at the sight: a cartoon illustration etched on one of its sides.
’He’s using Cartoon Magic, right? That must mean...’ He slowly turned his body, hoping that his prediction would prove false.
"Cartoon Magic: Telellustration" The voice spoke from behind him. Lucien knew it was Vaelion, but he chose not to believe it.
"It’s best to have fun while naming things," Vaelion stated, slowly approaching Lucien.
Lucien quickly sprang away from Vaelion, but he reappeared behind him, continuing his speech about the beauty of cartoons.
"Is this another illusion? Unfortunately, it feels real," he muttered, as he charged up a mini-sized beam in his palm, waiting for the right moment to blast it on Vaelion’s body.
"Oh? What do you think you plan on doing with that hand of yours?" Vaelion’s sword immediately sank itself deep into Lucien’s hand, destroying the beam before he could release it.
Agh!
Lucien screamed in agony. He grabbed the sword’s hilt and tried pulling it off, but it wouldn’t move. Suddenly, it disappeared and reappeared in Vaelion’s hand, as if nothing had happened.
’How is he able to carry that thing so easily?’ Lucien thought, his body severely weakened from all the injuries he had sustained.
He needed to run away fast, but he simply couldn’t. No matter how fast he flew or wherever he chose to go, Vaelion kept appearing close enough to deal damage and confuse Lucien.
Lucien sighed in disappointment as his power slowly faded away. His cloak tore up and slowly disappeared. Just as his cloak disappeared, he lost the ability to fly and fell to the ground.
Vaelion watched him slowly descend, smiling ominously at the sight of his eventual death. "You deserve nothing but an even worse death, filthy creature."
The wind hit Lucien’s body like a wall, giving him its own beating as he slowly lost his consciousness.
’Is everything trying to kill me?’ he thought, his eyes partially open as he looked straight up. He could see Vaelion’s silhouette, but he couldn’t feel any emotions because of it.
’I know this feeling. It feels just like how my life was before I was reincarnated. I wonder...’ His mind slowly drifted off, and his body kept falling to the ground, his clothes getting ripped apart by the intense winds.