abcnovels
Chapter 154
Chapter 154
154 Sparring
Zero felt Layton’s enthusiasm and responded with a smile and left the bench moving towards the center of the room, the meaning behind her actions were obvious and Layton and Lilith understood and followed closely, they both stopped some distance from each other, Lilith who was having a hard time containing her excitement started first and displayed her domain, black gooey and muddy substance oozed out of the floors as her domain changed the environment, zero and Layton spread out their domain also but only concentrated it a few feet around themselves, Layton did this because his domain didn’t really have any obvious characteristics and was presently not strong enough to wrestle for control over the environment with Lilith, zero on the other hand could easily suppress Lilith domain and gain the geographical advantage but she didn’t choose to do so, she had been a legend way longer than any of them and the solidity, power and strength of her domain would tip the scales drastically in her favor which would destroy the point of their sparring, plus as an assassin she had the habit of not using no more force than required to achieve her goal so her trump cards and means would not be known.
A few feet around zero was void of the dark substance and a spherical environment formed around her as the space in the clean environment fluctuated rapidly and rippled forming a glass like phenomenon, Layton on the other hand did not elicit any obvious change, in fact, his domain did not even restrict the change Lilith had brought, he simply stood leisurely on the black goo as he stared absentmindedly while his will was already shining and active quickly calculating the various effect, values and consequences brought by the change in environment.
Lilith didn’t give him any time to think as she leapt towards him her silky legs swiping towards his skull, Layton easily used his palm to stop the predictable trajectory of the attack but that wasn’t the end Lilith swiftly twisted her waist and unleashed a flurry of beautiful attack combos, although the speed and timing of the attacks were decent it wasn’t something he couldn’t handle as Layton easily deflected n=and dodged the attacks but the next moment he leapt backwards dodging the dim blade light that had appeared in his previous position, the light moved forward disregarding the absence of Layton and lightly swept over Lilith’s head decapitating her. The beautiful head flew into the air as blood gushed out of the headless body that slumped to the ground motionless, the scene shocked Layton but he didn’t have time to think about it as he felt a foreign body enter the space with which his domain was wrapped around, it was zero, it was unknown when she appeared behind him and he didn’t feel her presence at all, it was only by virtue of his domain that he felt her when she came into his range, and even then he didn’t feel any danger it was only by virtue of his prudence that he noticed her, the dagger in her hands seemed to turn to light as it stabbed forward aiming at the back of his heart, the silent killing intent subtle movements and powerful sneaking techniques reminded Layton of what Zero was an assassin. Layton facing the imminent danger had a calm look on his face, his muscular skeleton trembled slightly as his biomagnetic field was aroused, his domain started to move and his biomagnetic field turned the opposite way coupled with the strength of his will amplifying his actions space was slightly twisted making the stab to only graze a part of his skin near his ribcage, Layton did not have a chance to perform a counter as the figure of zero immediately disintegrated after her actions.
All these happened within a very short time frame it had not been more than a minute since the battle first began, when Layton turned his gaze back to Lilith’s decapitated body he found it was gone, instead she was standing spotless some distance from him, when she was decapitated and the domain did not disintegrate Layton knew she was still alive, coupled with the scene in front of him and the surface information he managed to glimpse from the black mud with the help of his domain he knew Lilith possessed some type of immortality quite similar to those of traditional vampires who made use of a sea of blood template as their domain which ensured their enormous vitality and life as long it existed. Layton wasn’t sure if zero was aware of this or if she was just confident in the means of the building to ensure no permanent injury would occur during sparring.
Layton suddenly heard Lilith say, “That should keep her busy for a while, now it’s just you and me.” He was aware she could only be talking about zero, Layton’s mind rapidly turned as he closely observed the environment and searched his memory and soon enough he became aware of the mode of zero’s concealment and movement which was space and Lilith should have used some means to influence the inner space where zero was situated trapping her there for the moment.
Zero who was trapped in the interlayer space of the environment was not in a hurry, although she didn’t expect Lilith’s black mud to have the effect of seeping into several hidden layers of space, much less to do so silently she wasn’t worried, the stability and strength of her domain ensured she wouldn’t be negatively affected by the phenomenon the only reason she was trapped was because of the viscosity of the substance which affected space and thus restricted her movements, her movements and attacks were done by traveling through space from this interlayer to the surface layer of the space, it is because of this movement that Layton did not feel any danger or warning signs until she moved out of the interlayer and stepped into his domain, even then when the trajectory of blade was forcefully changed and grazed his skin she had already rapidly stepped back into the interlayer, perfectly displaying an assassin’s traditional qualities of retreating after a strike, it was only during the moment she stepped back into the interlayer that Lilith succeeded in trapping her.