"Cough... cough... cough..." I coughed, emerging from a cloud of smoke.
Before I could process what was happening, a stone pillar shot up from the ground, hitting me square on and hurling me across the room.
Still in the air, sharp stalagmites jutted out from the floor, trying to impale me.
"Dammit, Hera, let me breathe!" I shouted, using gravity to push my body into the air, dodging the spikes on the ground.
Here was an annoying dichotomy between my maids. Fighting Dália was like a sticky time bomb that accelerated its countdown with every minute of combat. The start was slow, controlled, and I had the pressure and initiative, until the bomb exploded and all my efforts were thrown out the window by sheer domination and terrain control.
But with Hera, it was the complete opposite. She was a powerful earth mage at the Lower Champion level, but she wasn't far from breaking through.
Unfortunately, her affinities were excellent at countering my main offensive element, electricity. And that was frustrating.
However, her affinity wasn't even the biggest problem I faced—it was her skills as an alchemist.
Her fighting style mixed earth attacks with smoke bombs, poison, disorienting gas, flashbang pellets, and so many other tools that it could only be classified as unbearably irritating.
And that was her goal: to irritate her opponent to the point where they threw away their rationality and attacked recklessly. That's usually when they'd lose. I was living proof.
My body floated in the air for a moment, in a zero-gravity point, as I accumulated lightning in my arms and legs. The gravity shifted, making me weigh ten times more and accelerating me toward the ground.
As soon as my feet touched the floor, all the gravity dissipated, and I sped toward Hera, who stood in the middle of the training section atop a large pillar, with several stones orbiting around her.
In an instant, I got close enough to weigh down the gravity around Hera, who quickly reacted by hurling rocks at high speed.
I used my speed to dodge the stones while circling the pillar, always focused on making the gravity heavier and heavier.
On top of the pillar, Hera knelt, but before she gave up, one of the stones she had thrown at me glowed with a strange color. In a fraction of a second, I saw a strange red orb inside the stone, which exploded immediately.
'Damn it, how many tricks does she have up her sleeve?' I wondered.
I was thrown away from the pillar again. My arms, which had shielded my face, were scorched from the explosion, and a few rocks hit my torso.
'Add a few more broken ribs to the collection!'
I didn't give up. I rolled on the ground, stabilized myself, and without delay, sped toward the pillar again.
While Dália's strategy was total terrain control, Hera was the definition of a war fortress. At the start of the fight, she had molded a section of the ground into a ten-meter-high pillar and had since been hurling exploding rocks, piercing stalagmites, smoke bombs, and so many other concoctions at me.
I returned to the necessary distance and once again used a good portion of my mana to weigh down the gravity around Hera. At this point in the fight, my prana was practically depleted. Inverting my affinities, I now used electricity magic only to enhance my movements and attacked with gravity using mana.
However, I still didn't have a big move with this affinity, like I did with electricity. This limited me to crushing, pulling, and pushing.
Since pulling and pushing Hera in her fortress didn't work, all that was left was crushing.
'Give up, come on, come on...'
My body moved, dodging spikes, holes that appeared, a rain of stones, and stalactites flying toward me.
'A little more control...'
Gradually, I was getting used to the rhythm of the fight.
Then, an idea popped into my mind. One I had never succeeded with before.
Electricity surged through my body, and my speed grew exponentially. I ran toward the pillar, and when I got close, I jumped up toward Hera.
Theoretically, it was a terrible idea. I had already lost two fights with this same move, trying to get close to Hera. The first time, spikes shot out from the pillar, impaling me, and the second time, the entire pillar exploded, throwing me across the room unconscious.
Hera saw the scene, and a satisfied smile appeared on her face. I noticed the pillar trembling, and like last time, everything exploded, creating a massive shockwave.
"BOOOOOOOOOMMM!"
'It works, it works!'
A fraction of a second before the rocks and shockwave could throw me, my body stopped conducting electricity. With my right hand, I made a cutting motion in the air, and the result I had been waiting for appeared.
I disappeared and reappeared with my hand gripping Hera's neck. Below us, the pillar exploded, but like last time, the damage was limited to the sides. Hera, who was on top, took no damage, and now neither did I.
With my hand on her neck, electricity surged through her at full power.
"AGH..." Hera let out a brief groan before passing out.
Falling from the pillar, I held her in my arms and landed slowly on the ground. My breathing was ragged, and I was on the verge of an energy collapse.
The training section's environment dissolved, and I heard sounds behind me.
There, Dália was clapping with an extremely happy expression that I had defeated Hera. Well, ever since that incident, an unexpected rivalry had formed between them.
Elian, who had been overseeing the fight, approached me.
"Glenn wins, eleven to six," he updated the score. "However, it wasn't really a victory, was it?" he questioned.
"Phew..." I sighed, knowing what he meant. "I guess not."
"Interesting use of spatial affinity. What changed for you to finally be able to use it?" Elian asked.
"I don't know. I just felt like, in that moment, it would work. It's very different from using lightning and gravity."
"Try to describe the feeling to me. This is important."
"Give her to me," Dália approached, taking Hera in her arms and using healing magic on my body.
I thanked her and turned my attention back to Elian.
"At the moment I stabilized from the stone explosion, something clicked in my mind. Like all I needed to do was move my arm and explode."
"Explode what?"
"I'm not sure. I just thought about exploding everything in front of me, and it worked."
"Hmm..." he murmured, hand on his chin, thinking about something. "Can you do it again?"
"Not now. That single move used up half of all my mana."
"Sit and meditate. The fights are over for today. Try to keep the feeling fresh in your mind. We'll continue with just that."
"Yes..."
The training room changed, and my cozy meditation spot was reconstructed. A pillar in the middle of a lake, surrounded by ten other pillars.
"Glenn!"
"Yes!"
"You know you can't show this in your fight in three days."
I nodded, aware of the situation. This was my biggest secret. No one in this world had ever awakened a third affinity, and I was already drawing attention with the two I had.
Since I awakened, in all the training sessions, even when I started training with Master Elian, I had never been able to manifest anything related to spatial affinity. This had been the first time.
While with electricity and gravity, my understanding of Earth's concepts was a great help, especially in casting speed, this didn't apply to spatial affinity. It almost felt like everything I knew about space hindered more than helped.
Sitting in a meditation position, focused on recovering energy, I entered my inner world. It was the same as always. Well...
'That wasn't there before!'
Far below, in the endless abyss, on the side where the blue light of the mana core illuminated, there was a crack, as if a mirror had shattered but was slowly repairing itself.
'What is that?'
My body moved downward, toward the abyss. The closer I got to the crack, the more gravity tried to pull me toward the neutral point. Struggling with all my might to resist, I got close to the crack.
Reaching out toward one of the shards, my fingers tingled, and a cold sensation traveled up my arm. And instantly, as I touched it, the crack repaired itself.
I stopped resisting the gravitational force, which quickly dragged me back to the neutral point. I wasn't paying attention to that anymore. All I did was stare intently at my right arm, which was numb with a vibrating sensation.
'That's it! This feeling is the same as back then.'
Excited by the new discovery, I pushed myself to recover my internal energy.
**
Standing next to Elian, I moved my right arm, using mana and trying to simulate what had happened in the battle with Hera.
"Tinkle..."
In front of me, space split, as if a pair of scissors had cut through it. Without hesitation, I stepped into the rift and appeared over fifty meters away from Elian.
"Impressive!" he praised. "And the energy cost?"
"The same. Half of my mana reserve was consumed."
"Can you repeat it with prana?"
"Yes."
"Then twice is safe. Three times pushes you to the brink of energy collapse, and the fourth time you'd start convulsing..."
"I think so."
"Well, twice, in my opinion, is more than enough to turn the tide in any situation."
A smile appeared on my face. Today had been a memorable day. Another step toward power.