The air fractured as Vastarael's body shuddered.
The light pouring from his limbs formed glowing lines across his bronze skin. His breath came in wet gasps and when she reached out to touch his arm, his skin burned. He was becoming Divine and it was killing him.
"Stay down," Elyonari whispered, stepping in front of him, her boots crunching into the ashen frost of corrupted peony petals.
She didn't wait for him to protest.
The Crimson Verdarite let out a hiss, his massive corrupted form towering over them both like a demonic forest guardian twisted by plague. His armor of charred bark glistened with slick red sap. The pollen from his tree-body whipped around the air, meant to embed into the lungs and birth vines from within.
But Elyonari was immune. Her lungs felt clear. The pollen had no effect. And so did Vastarael.
The Verdarite narrowed his blood-soaked eyes.
"You… Why is my pollen not seeding in you?"
Elyonari smirked slightly as she lifted her staff.
"Wouldn't you like to know."
Her Boon pulsed within her.
She could feel it in her bones. The air brushed against her like a dance partner, warning her milliseconds before each blow. Her magic flickered with unusual sharpness. It was time to use her Boon.
She moved.
The ground behind her erupted as a massive crimson root burst upward, trying to skewer her. She wasn't there.
She was already moving, low to the ground, spinning around, letting her wind launch her forward. A crack split the air beside her as a tree-sized vine struck where she had been a moment before.
She twirled the staff, generating a swirl of molten air behind her that caught the vine and melted part of it away, just enough to slow it down.
Another vine from the left and she ducked and swept a leg back mid-air to avoid being clipped, then fired a horizontal pulse of ice, freezing the base of it. It collapsed into brittle wood.
The Crimson Verdarite screamed in frustration, now stomping forward.
"You're just a Third Phase Ascender! Why won't you die?!"
Elyonari flipped backward, landing lightly on an outstretched root like a leaf on water.
"Luck," she said with a cheeky grin, twirling her staff in one hand.
Then, with a flick of her fingers, she sent a chain reaction of rock-shard bursts erupting from below the Verdarite's legs. He staggered, vines trying to protect his exposed core. But they weren't meant to injure. Just… to frustrate, mostly because that was all she could do right now.
Her power wasn't strong enough to harm a Scavenger Ranked Verdarite but with her Boon of near-death luck and her uncanny battle instincts, she could stay alive longer than anyone should.
Every spell she cast was low-power but high-disruption. Lightning shards along his eyes, wind pulses that threw off his aim and water blasts that slickened the ground beneath his roots just enough to make him misstep.
Every attack he launched at her missed by a hair's width. And that was all she needed.
A blast of infected bark tore through the air beside her, splitting the earth open and causing a small earthquake that cracked the ground. Peonies died under the pressure. Entire trees shattered as his infected vines slammed into the terrain over and over, trying to catch her. She flew above the barked ground using her staff. She couldn't use a high-tier spell. That would draw too much attention to Vastarael.
"Elyonari—!"
He tried to warn from behind, staggering up to one knee, divine light still bursting from his spine.
"Don't! Finish ascending, dammit! I've got him!"
She conjured a wall of fire, ran along its rim like a gymnast and hurled it down at the Verdarite's face. It was swatted aside like a toy but the sparks landed inside his crimson pollen cloud, igniting them in small explosions.
The Verdarite screamed in fury, ripping up entire trees and launching them toward her.
She leapt, twisted and slid between two flying trunks, one of them brushing her hair just barely. She landed on one knee, panting, staff spinning in front of her.
Her eyes turned. Vastarael was glowing now.
A halo of fractured sapphire and gold light spun behind him. His hair lifted from his shoulders but he was still half-asleep in evolution. His muscles were tearing and regenerating. He couldn't join the battle yet.
Her brain ran through every detail, every second. She didn't aim for damage. She aimed for distraction, reaction and disarray. That was how one stayed alive against a foe you couldn't kill. She kept him moving, kept his eyes and rage on her. Because every second she bought was another second for Vastarael to ascend.
She darted between trees, slipped under corrupted roots and launched herself off a piece of debris and hurled a hurricane pulse into the Verdarite's torso just as he opened a gap to retaliate.
He staggered just a little, enough for her to grin again.
"You really can't hit me, can you?"
She said mockingly, though her arms were burning, her essence and Nature Energy pool thinning. The Verdarite bellowed.
"I'LL RIP YOU INTO TWIGS!"
She panted, sweat dripping from her forehead.
"Try me, wood boy."
The air rippled. The sky bloomed green.
Elyonari's eyes flashed with a bioluminescent emerald light as her breath steadied, her feet no longer touching the earth. The moment she invoked her Pinnacle Tether, a surge of tranquil energy exploded from within her.
Her Essentia Form took hold.
The winds bent toward her, The clouds above shifted green as if reflecting her rising aura. Her hair fluttered wildly as she rose higher into the air. Her fingers wrapped around her staff.
Nature answered.
The Verdarite roared, vines exploding upward as he sensed the drastic spike in her presence, but it was already too late. She whispered the name into the wind and the world obeyed.
A spiral of green fire erupted behind her, blasting downward in a concentrated vortex that incinerated the infected peony blossoms into spores of ash. The Verdarite's vines coiled in defense but green lightning followed it instantly, shooting from the fire, curling around his bark and detonating at unbelievable speeds.
Elyonari twirled in midair, balancing perfectly on a rising gust of wind that curved beneath her, holding her steady in the skies.
Each flick of her wrist summoned ice needles, which she launched in a fan-shape that froze sections of his outer bark and then with another motion, she summoned columns of water from the soil beneath, which she flash-froze midair and hurled like spears.
She never touched the ground. Not even once.
She hovered, leaning on her staff and launched a series of rock shards upward, forming a protective wall behind her from the retaliation vines that cracked against the earthen shield and shattered, causing a powerful shockwave that destroyed a few trees.
Her battlefield control was absurd.
One moment, she was far above him, summoning a green sun of flaming compressed air and fire. The next, she was behind him, surfing a streak of lightning, her staff trailing wild green sparks as she unleashed a geyser of ice into his midsection.
The Verdarite roared in frustration, slamming his hand into the ground, trying to force his corrupted flora to catch her.
But she never stayed still.
Every second, she was summoning a new natural element at rapid speeds without any need for summoning.
Her Essentia Form, Natura Summoning, wasn't spellcasting. It was elemental communication that made her summon elements in less than a second without need for buildup.
A blast of corrupted crimson pollen burst from the Verdarite's core but she was already slicing through it, encased in green lightning, the poisonous air parting for her instead of corrupting her.
She dived toward the Verdarite, flipped just above his shoulder, and summoned vines of her own that wrapped around his arm, counteracting his corrupted flora. He growled and tore them off but even that moment of pause was exactly what she wanted.
She clapped her hand to her staff's tip, spinning it, and a typhoon of elemental fire and wind surged outward that blasted away the infected terrain around him.
And still, she kept flying.
She spiraled upward, wind lifting her higher and higher. She looked down at the battlefield she was dominating from above and took a breath. Her Essentia Form left green etchings in the sky.
Below, the Verdarite let out a massive roar, slamming corrupted roots into the earth that caused quakes, but they never even grazed her. Every time he moved, a new elemental obstacle blocked him. Every time he advanced, a fresh barrage of rapid fire elemental streams bombarded him, forcing him to stay on the defensive.
She wasn't powerful enough to kill him but she was powerful enough to pin him and buy time.