Chapter 361 World League: Junior Division Preliminaries (Part-4)
Claire, on the other hand, increased her speed.
Instead of following the same path as Gideon, she raised her divine sword, poured soul energy into it, and slashed at the empty air, creating an arc of energy.
The mud wall was cleaved into two with an opening in the middle. However, their movements were already predicted by Ainsley Ravillon.
As Claire was about to pass through the opening, she realized that it is a trap.
"Attack…" Ainsley shouted and the three dragons bombarded Claire with their respective soul skills.
Ainsley's rainbow dragon changed its attribute to dark and blasted flames tinted with a shade of black around the edges which is much stronger, powerful, and hotter than regular fire.
Meanwhile, the water dragon had shot a concentrated beam of water and the copper dragon exhaled a stream of acid.
Just as all of them were about to strike Claire, the latter closed her eyes and crouched on the ground. Her golden wings suddenly erupted from her back and covered her body, shielding her from the attacks.
<strong>"Skill card: Holy ground, activate."</strong> While staying in the crouched position, she also managed to take out a 2-star card from her pocket and threw it on the floor.
The wings couldn't handle the combined power of the three incoming attacks and the feathers were burned away before revealing Claire. Just when Ainsley and others thought that their plan worked, the wings were resurrected by the divine power of the Holy Ground and shielded Claire.
The wings were destroyed once again and resurrected. By the time it repeated this process four times in a row, the attack was ended.
Claire got up on her feet and retracted her wings to look at the opponents that tried to gang up on her. Brandishing her sword like a whip, she spoke, "Your execution is good but it was lacking in power and coordination. There's no synergy between your soul skills. Anyway, it's our turn."
She raised her left arm above her head and shot a concentrated beam of light towards the sky. It barely contained any power and wouldn't have even killed a bird if it hits it by coincidence but for her teammates, the signal was enough to act.
At the north edge of the platform where a large Oak Tree had rooted itself into the ground while being coiled by a gigantic serpent's tail, Louis and Mia were standing on the top of a branch with bows in their hands. While Mia had a man-made bow, Louis had a bow Arcana.
Both of them saw the signal.
<strong>"Okie, unleash the soul skill: Forest of Spikes."</strong>
The leaves rustled and the trunk shook for a moment, vastly spreading its roots all over the platform.
Meanwhile, Louis took out a skill card and activated it, conjuring a special energy arrow, and shot towards the mud wall. It cut through the air like a flash of lightning and struck its target.
But, the wall wasn't damaged at all. Instead, the arrow just passed through the wall while distorting the space around it and then, struck the floor nearby Claire and others.
In the next second, something similar to an appearance of a black hole emerged below their feet. Before they get to escape by flying away, the enormous suction force dragged everyone into it. Even Claire wasn't any exception. However, unlike the rest of those three, she had a way to break free.
Claire unleashed her strongest soul skill, the Descent of Heavenly Guardian, which removed all the pressure on her. She flapped her wings and flew into the sky, letting her opponents be sucked by the black hole prison.
"Use energy eruption to escape. Don't worry about your teammates." Ainsley said to his other two teammates. From the start, they intend to do that to cancel this trap force but only hesitated because they might injure their teammates. Now that Ainsley had already said it, they used energy eruption.
The black hole was destroyed but at the same time, the soul energies of the three of them clashed, resulting in an explosion, blasting away each other.
Meanwhile, Gideon was engaged in a battle with Harvey, a wood dragon user. However, he wasn't interested in defeating him. Gideon was on complete defense. He was evading the attacks of the wood dragon while separating Harvey from his teammates.
*Boom*
The explosion caught my attention of Harvey. As he turned away his attention for a moment, Gideon took advantage of it and stretched his palms. All of the electric sparks dancing on his body gathered at his palms.
"Take this…" He shot concentrated beams of electric charge from his palms. It's because of this unique finishing move, that Captain Kenneth of Dragon Riders had appointed Harvey to take care of Gideon.
Because of its extreme speed, the wood dragon couldn't stop it and tried to twist its body. "Eh?" Harvey was alerted.
Unfortunately, a momentary distraction had cost him the match. The electric beams struck him in the back and electrocuted him.
Fortunately, he didn't lose his life but was severely injured with third-degree burns all over his body. Gideon, here, showed his humanity by further activating a healing card on his unconscious opponent as soon as the wood dragon disappeared. His action drew a lot of praise from the spectators who were watching his battle. Of course, some scoffed that his heart is weak.
At the same moment, three of the opponents and their dragons crashed in different places on the field.
Before they even got up, team Twilight made their next move.
Mia, who had unleashed her soul skill even before Louis' skill card attack, delayed the timing and acted as soon as they were injured by the attacks of their own teammates.
"Ugh…" Ainsley groaned in pain as he slowly tried to get up on his feet. All of a sudden, a huge and sharp wooden spike pierces his stomach. Followed by that, a couple of more spikes pierced his body. "Argh…" He screamed. The wooden spikes disappeared and he fell to the ground.
The rainbow dragon let out a roar.
Just for a moment, all over the field from the mud wall was filled with wooden spikes erupting from the ground, some are large while some are small. The bodies of the dragons and the humans were pierced all over their bodies.
The ambush lasted only for a second but everyone's situation turned drastically. As the members of Team Dragon Riders were careful enough to protect their important organs with their soul energy and used the remaining energy for the eruption technique, the other parts of the body were damaged. One can clearly see holes in several parts of their bodies.
Out of the three, only Ainsley was still conscious as his dragon changed its attribute to light and quickly unleashed a soul skill, healing all of his injuries in a second. Along with him, the rainbow dragon also healed itself.
Ainsley then looked around to access the situation. Three of his teammates are down. In the sky, his captain was frozen like a statue and was being captured by the giant eagle. As for the firedrake, it wasn't even there. When did it die?
As Gideon dashed towards him and Claire landed on the ground, he shook his head. "This time, we were soundly defeated in a mere minute of time."