CHAPTER 48: HUNTRESS

Tossed away into the air by the rebound of the clash, Theo managed to catch a glimpse of the woman bending her body mid-air like some sort of cat and then landing on all fours...

Before crashing into the ground and rolling away for a further few meters himself.

Even though he was a cultivator and had a fair dose of physical training, this kind of reaction time, control over his own body, and ability to move around without support...

Any attempt at replicating it was bound to fail.

"RAAA!"

Out in the distance, the four hunters Theo encountered first raised their voices and their arms in cheer.

Just seeing the difference in how their ally landed and how Theo failed to was enough to restore their confidence after the stalemate they failed to break before.

’That should be enough, huh?’

Paying no mind to the cheers of the cannon fodder, Theo grasped at the ground, stopping himself from rolling any further.

With the ground-based net of his still intact, he could feel the woman rushing in with another charge. This time, however, she slowed down by a noticeable margin.

’Is it caution? Or is her charge from before something she can’t use recklessly?’ Theo calculated in his mind, deploying several small glyphs around himself as he stood up.

The huntress, however, gave him no time to rest.

Sadly for her, Theo didn’t need any.

"DIE!"

She screamed out, proving that—after all—she spoke the same tongue that Theo did.

Her attack pattern, though...

Was exactly the same as before!

Zig-zagging charge, as if she leaped from one side to the other to artificially increase the distance she could cover before laying down the attack.

Despite her rush, she never dared to jump high up, always remaining close to the ground where she could properly control her stance, direction, and movement.

’So that’s how it is.’

The huntress made one mistake.

After seeing how her first attack managed to work to a degree, she opted to stick to what clearly worked. And while there was no sign of naïve confidence on her face as she finally straightened her path and leaped straight at Theo with her last step...

It still was too little and too late.

’Activate.’

In a single instant, all five of Theo’s glyphs came alive.

The first one, using the ground mana-netting as a foundation, created a total of five tendrils of manifested mana that grabbed onto Theo’s waist and lifted him up in the air, way out of the reach of the huntress’s spiritual spear.

The second glyph, just like the one he used during his rush, split the gravity of the space above which Theo floated, reducing it for him while greatly increasing it for the huntress who, following the momentum of her charge, found herself directly below him.

The third glyph was an axis for the rest of them, spreading a myriad of tiny arms out in every direction, each of them serving as an access point for the world’s mana to get absorbed into the whole array.

The fourth glyph was merely a control one, charged with timing everything for the best possible effect.

As for the fifth one?

’Now!’

Seeing the huntress locked in the gravity well below him, Theo activated the last of his glyphs... and dropped out of the air.

The tendrils that held him up in the air suddenly shifted their attention, all rushing down and taking hold of the huntress instead. And rather than lifting her up in the air, they held her down to the ground.

Quite admirably, the huntress still resisted.

Her muscles flexed, her face contorted, while her eyes filled with raging determination.

The spiritual spear in her hand vanished into thin air as her mana rushed back into her body, giving it another burst of explosive strength.

For a moment, her body started to rise, fighting back against the increased gravity field, against the perfect void of the world’s mana around her, against the chains of Theo’s mana tendrils...

But there was still one element left in Theo’s trap.

Theo himself.

Deprived of the support of his tendrils, Theo had no more ways of fighting back against the gravity, causing his body to drop.

When he floated, he was only as high as three, maybe four meters above the ground. But as he dropped just half of that distance, his feet crossed through the split between the lessened and heightened gravity, rapidly accelerating his fall.

The acceleration grew stronger the more of Theo’s body passed through the border, turning him into a small missile by the time he fully crossed it. And with nothing but downward momentum?

He dropped straight over the huntress’s back, deploying a small spell—powered directly from his mana reserves—just to spread the force of impact from a single point of contact to the entire surface of the huntress’s back.

Thump.

With the added weight and momentum of Theo’s body slamming her down, the explosive bit of strength of the huntress had reached its limits.

Her arms shook one last time before caving in under the pressure, sending her body down into the ground as Theo pinned it down with his magic and the weight of his own flesh.

"Whew!" Theo exhaled before the huntress could as much as utter a single, pained cry. "That was one fun bout!" he added in a cheerful tone, happily enjoying the surprisingly hard cushion of the woman’s back underneath his butt.

"K-kill me..."

Unable to move a single muscle, the huntress struggled to even ask for a strike of mercy.

Yet, her request only resulted in Theo raising his eyebrows.

"Telling me to die, now telling me to kill you..." he muttered, shaking his head while slightly shifting his position over the woman’s back...

Before standing up, dusting his clothes off, and snapping his fingers, redeploying all of the mana used for his five glyphs back to just a single barrier one.

Freed from all her restraints, the huntress remained still on the ground for just a second before jumping up like a cat and then rolling away.

Only once she created a few meters of distance did she allow herself to jump up and land on all fours before arching her back up and slowly standing up on her feet, her body still bristling and ready for another bout.

Theo, however, displayed none of the woman’s hostility.

"That charge of yours, quite the marvel of ingenious use of ma... spiritual energy," Theo commented with a small smile on his lips as he locked his hands behind his back.

Now that he deciphered the secret behind the huntress’s technique and with just a few meters of distance between the two of them, he no longer had any reason to fear or even respect it.

’At this distance, just the standard shield should do,’ he judged, only to turn on his heel and walk a few steps further away.

"You are using all of your energy in bursts whenever you step, zig-zagging to increase the number of steps and then push all of that energy into a spear strike instead, right?"

The huntress’s face grew still, her eyes filling with an equal amount of shock and rage at the sight of Theo dissecting her technique with such nonchalance.

"Which means," Theo turned on his heel again so that he could face the woman once again, at a distance that would be somewhat comfortable to the both of them, "you can’t really use it when we are so close, can you?"

If the smile on Theo’s lips or the look in the huntress’s eyes could kill, then both of them would fall dead then and there.

"My question for you is simple, then," Theo added, relaxing his posture while driving up his mana as he prepared for the second round of combat, "do I need to make you eat dirt as if you were some sort of a beast, or have you calmed down enough to talk like a proper human instead?"