untsuku

“Oh, just a little something to help you relax, so I could bring you here,” she smiled impishly, slowly stalking closer until she was even with my hip, her sexy, four-inch heels clicking on the floor. She was seductively licking her full, pouty lips, and began to trail her pointed, lacquered red fingernails up and down the back of my thigh. “And another little something, to make sure you'd be in the proper mood for what I have planned. But I'm not talking about when we met tonight, at the party. You and I have met before. Don't you remember, Brian?”

Noah had already made progress in slowing the flow of his mana and his bodily functions, and the headband was helping. His heart dropped to one beat a minute, and he all but stopped breathing. Typically, such a state would be fatal, but the more he slowed down his mana, the more he could forestall damage. Without mana flowing, his cells would stop processing nourishment and oxygen, but they wouldn’t wither and die, for the molecular processes of cell death were also halted. Caught in a near-perfect state of suspended animation, his physical senses operated at the lowest possible level, and he became more attuned to the flow of mana around him, sharpening his spirit senses.

Roc had the advantage of experience against this style, but his missing arm proved a debilitating handicap. In one regard, it made dodging easier, as he had less mass to move out of the way of Ingram’s attacks, and he couldn’t be slowed down with painful flesh wounds to the missing limb, but it also left his offense and defense on his right side almost nonexistent. Depending on who he was fighting and what type of combatant they were, the severity of such a handicap was variable, but against such a similar warrior, his disadvantage was increasingly evident with each passing second. Back and forth, over and over, they hurled attacks at each other and then pulled back, using their wings to move in and out of each other’s reach.