231 Falling
When Meredith stood up from behind the pillar and threw the pieces of stone that had fallen on her aside, she saw Luke make an unusual pose with his arms, positioning them behind him. Then, the half-wolf disappeared from her vision and appeared in front of Vinigo, which startled her and the fat older man. At that moment, Meredith thought that the fight was finally over and that Luke would be able to immobilize his opponent, but she was wrong about that.
Vinigo was able to pick up his strange sparkling necklace and then broke it. The breaking of this strange crystal necklace created a flash of light so intense that it forced Meredith to cover her eyes with her right arm.
The flash created by the crystal came alone, and no noise came from it. However, when the half-fox opened her eyes and looked at where her best friend was fighting, she couldn’t find anything.
‘What!?’ She was amazed, for Vinigo and Luke had disappeared from the basement and, worse, without a trace. ‘No, that shouldn’t be possible. Luke is stronger than he is; he has to be around here somewhere.’
Nevertheless, Luke was no longer in the Oukiwa Academy of Nobles underground, and Meredith realized this when she heard a crash that shook the structures of the entire region.
After the spark, the half-wolf and Vinigo were teleported together to the surface, but not to a safe place, but sixty meters high.
From this height, Luke could see the whole vast expanse of the Academy and much of the city and its walls. He could see many more of Oukiwa’s notable buildings if he wasn’t fighting in mid-air. Luke was repeatedly punching the old mage’s face without giving him time to rest, as they both fell in an inevitably deadly fall.
“You… son… of… bitch!” Luke vociferated and slammed into Vinigo with great anger, without giving him time to conjure any magic. Then Luke pulled him by the collar and pressed him down, to use him as a fall cushion.
“You will not kill me! Use the shield! Use the fucking shield!” Luke ordered.
“WE’RE BOTH GOING TO DIE TOGETHER NOW!” Vinigo shouted with insanity in his eyes.
The half-wolf looked at him and realized how remarkable the resemblance was in his eyes to all the humanoid monsters he had ever fought. They all looked insane and didn’t fear the death, but none of them had been suicidal until this point.
“I’ll make you sorry for making me use THAT early!” Luke declared, leaving Vinigo confused and bug-eyed.
Therefore, in the midst of relentlessly falling against the roof of one of the Academy buildings, the half-wolf decided to use for the first time in public the Gene Skill he gained from ingesting the core of the Lord of the Jungle, one of the members of Marie and Masink’s Legion.
Luke positioned his left hand against Vinigo’s chest, pointed his right-hand skyward, and roared:
“<Yggdrasil>!”
The old mage looked at both of Luke’s hands and saw nothing happening or being expelled. He felt an inevitable desire to laugh, even though he knew he would die in just a few seconds because the hiss of atmospheric pressure was getting louder and more frequent in his ears.
“HAHAHAHAHA! You missed?! Ahhhhh, too bad! I’ll die, but I’ll take you with me-“
Vinigo couldn’t finish his sentence because he saw a confident smile appear on the half-wolf’s face. Then he heard cracks coming from below. For this reason, he turned his head a little, and what he saw startled and amazed him at the same time. The roof of one of the Academy buildings was now the site of a gigantic tree, but not only that, the branches of this leafless tree stretched out to reach them, growing at an almost divine speed.
When one of these branches approached, Luke used his left hand on Vinigo’s chest to use him as a platform, throwing him against the roof of the Academy and at the same time reaching the branch.
Tuuuummmm~
Vinigo’s collision against the red tiles covering the ceiling of the Academy made an explosively similar noise. This bang was largely created because of the destruction of the shield magic that Vinigo used, which was supposed to be an absolute defense magic.
The half-wolf directed the branches to leave him near the spot where Vinigo had fallen. The ten-meter tree behind him shriveled; the roots were dry, and the branches grayish. He then deactivated <Yggdrasil>, because it was an Epic Skill, but it tired him as much as his Legendary Skill, due to its complexity. Incredibly, the half-wolf knew that he was still weak to use this Skill at its maximum, no matter how constantly he used the <Eye of Horus>.
The dust raised by Vinigo’s collision against the roof of the building was mostly pushed aside by Luke with <Vind> as he ran towards his enemy, because he knew that the old mage wouldn’t die so easily. And he was correct in assuming this because Vinigo managed to land on his feet thanks to his shield, but wasn’t without damage, as his two legs broke and also his spine.
The half-wolf saw Vinigo twisted from afar and continued to run towards the older man. But in the middle of the way, Luke saw that his opponent began to tremble as before, and then his limbs regenerated with an above-normal naturalness.
Nonetheless, this regeneration came at a cost, a very high cost. It was clear that Vinigo’s face had aged a few years when he regenerated. He looked at the half-wolf angrily and said:
“It has been many years since someone made me so old… Can you realize what you have done now? You have just ripped precious years of life out of the world’s greatest figure representing genetic advancement! Do you understand the gravity of this?”
Luke looked at him from top to bottom, with dropped gazes because of the disgust he was feeling just from exchanging words with that vermin.
“In my conception, when I am done here, I will take away the freedom of just one more monster, which to me is nothing. If I have to break your bones until you turn into an old man who can’t hold his own shit, it will be even better for me.”