Chapter 23: Chapter 23 – Attempted Murder

Without hesitating for even a second, I threw up my hands and conjured a golden glowing shield between me and my assailant. It was just in time too, as the second the divine shield came into being, another fire bolt was sent my way and struck it instead of hitting me square in the chest. A second later and another fire bolt ineffectively slammed against its surface. Then soon after, another and another after that. 

On and on, my would-be murderer’s assualt continued as they launched fiery cantrip after fiery cantrip at me. One after the other, they all stuck the shield protecting me from harm. Under normal circumstances, their tactics would have been a legitimate method of wearing down my mana, but since my shield miracle only had an overtime cost and not a per block cost, my divine power was barely being affected by their own more taxing assault. Still, though, eventually they would have run out of patience and started casting higher level spells just to end things, so I knew that I needed to do something quick before that happened.

To that end, I poured an extra portion of divine energy into my shield while trying my best to keep its more complex, expanded size held together through sheer willpower alone. When my efforts succeeded and the shield grew a foot on all sides, I immediately pushed it forwards through the air and at my attacker. The small strands of divine power that were keeping the shield tethered to me so that it could remain powered snapped once it got over a metre away from me, but it would continue to protect me for a few more moments.

The shield wasn’t able to fly the whole way to my assailant as it was still taking quite a beating from their barrage of fire bolts, and without the connection to me, it was now slowly falling apart, but it gave me all the time I needed. While remaining sat on the ground where I fell, with my back resting on the side of my car, I spun a magic bolt of my own before firing it off at my target. Despite the fact that they were currently hidden behind the shield floating in between us, I knew roughly where they were and aimed accordingly.

As the golden fist sized orb that was my conjured holy bolt flew out of my hands, I wasted no time getting to my feet and dusting myself off. The pain coursing through my left arm as I moved was incredibly excruciating. In fact, it was the most pain I had ever been in, but I just had to grit my teeth and push through it if I wanted to survive this encounter.

When the holy bolt reached my divine shield, the golden disc sputtered out and fell apart just in time to let my attack pass. The bolt of divine energy travelled a few extra feet from there, getting quite close to my assailant before its trajectory was intercepted by one of their fire bolts. When the two magical projectiles struck each other, they both exploded, but mine was packing considerably more punch than theirs was, and this collision occurred much closer to them than it did to me.

The bright and powerful explosion of force created by my holy bolt completely enveloped and snuffed out the small ball of fire created by their cantrip. The explosion was so powerful that even though my assailant wasn’t directly hit by it, they were pushed off their feet and flung back a metre.

As they struck the hard pavement with a painful gasp, I immediately dashed forward. Arcanists were usually hesitant to engage in close combat since their bodies were frail, but thanks to the effects of my bloodline, I would have an advantage up close, even if my assailant was a couple of levels above me.

"GRRAAAA!" My now enraged assailant let out an animalistic growl of anger as they moved to stand back up on their feet, and for the first time I got a proper look at their appearance.

Although that said, their attire didn’t exactly give much away. They were dressed in a long flowing black trench coat with baggy black clothing underneath it. They even had some kind of black mask that encapsulated their entire head. Their clothes were so good at hiding any discernible features that I wasn’t even able to tell if they appeared masculine or feminine.

Before this would-be murderer had even the slightest chance to cast another spell at me, I closed the distance and crashed straight into them, shoulder first. Both of us fell to the floor after I collided with them, but my descent was much more controlled than theirs. Because of this, I found myself positioned above them as I rained punch after punch into their chest, side, and even their head, but the hard black mask around their head only hurt my knuckles when I tried to punch it.

To rectify this and shed some light on the question of who is trying to kill me, I eventually let up on the punching and instead grabbed around the mask, attempting to pry it free. As I did this, my assailant finally managed to recover enough to try and resist me. They even managed to land a couple of hits on my side, but eventually, I got their mask off of them and tossed it aside.

"Isabel?" I gasped as I saw the woman’s long luscious red hair and fiery red eyes greet me once the mask was gone.

I knew the young woman didn’t run with the most pleasant crowd, but I didn’t think she was the kind of person to try and attack someone. Not to mention, that apart from insulting the asshole, George, I hadn’t done anything to antagonise her group. Why did she want to hurt me so badly?

Taking advantage of a slight moment of hesitation after her identity was revealed, Isabel immediately brought her head forwards and headbutted me right in the nose. A few curses escaped my mouth as my nose started to bleed and the young, fiery woman wasted no time using this distraction to turn the tables on me. Soon I was the one on the ground as she sat above me, laying punch after punch into me, and unlike most arcanists, she hadn’t neglected her physical strength either.

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As my body was getting bruised and beaten, I quickly thought of how best to handle this situation. Isabel seemed keen on killing, or at least horribly injuring me, and I had no idea why she was doing it, but despite this, I didn’t really want to hurt her. Well, not until she gave me a proper reason to, but even then violence and murder weren’t really something I enjoyed the idea of. My best bet was to get out of here as fast and safely as possible. Once I was in the clear then I could think of a proper way to resolve the situation with the least amount of bloodshed.

To this end, I gathered my divine power in the palm of my hands, intent on trying something I had yet to really do. That being, creating a whole new effect instead of just mimicking another spell or cantrip. While Isabel was letting me have it with punch after punch, I gave up on trying to defend myself or fight back and instead just tried to slip my hands closer to her face.

The woman immediately realised something was up and turned her attention to stopping me from what she would have assumed was my attempt to claw at her eyes. However, I eventually managed to get close enough to what I wanted to do and closed my eyes as the energy held in the palms of my hands exploded with blinding light.

There was no physical force to this explosion of light, just a bright, blinding whiteness. It was so bright that even with my eyes closed, my vision was momentarily a little messed up. However, Isabel, who had been mere centimetres from this flash of light, was rendered completely blind by it and screamed in agony as the sense she was most reliant on was taken away from her. That said, it was in no way permanent. Her sight would come back just as soon as she could be seen by a skilled healer.

“You fucking cunt!” She screamed and although the woman above me was now blind, she was still quite enraged and capable of wildly lashing out. A few hits even managed to land and leave quite nasty impacts on my side, but it was much easier to get her off of me now that she couldn’t see. 

Once freed from under her, I ran over to my car. Not wasting even a moment, I yelled out orders to the construct built into it before I even opened the door. "Car, take me home as soon as I’m inside! And do it as quickly as possible!"

Unfortunately, my voice was all Isabel needed to hear to know my direction, and once she knew that, there was still one more spell she could cast at me. Despite being blind, her fingers and mana sense were so used to casting this spell that in no time at all, a fan of flames spell was spreading out in my direction, scorching whole swathes of the pavement between us.

I instantly felt the ambient mana react to the swell of a 1st level spell being upcast to 2nd level, not to mention the heat of the inferno quickly approaching. In light of the threat that posed, I threw open the car door before literally diving inside. As soon as I was fully in the car, it immediately accelerated as fast as it could possibly have gone, but even that wasn’t enough to stop the flames from reaching inside. Even though it was only for a split second, the fire was hot enough that half of the back seat and a good portion of my legs were horribly burned.

As the car sped around the street corners, going as fast as it could, I lay in the back in excruciating pain. Although Isabel was left behind in our tracks, the door she burnt up was flapping as we moved around, not quite able to shut properly now that some of the interior's plastic had been melted.

"Ah, fuck me, that hurts!" I cursed as the car rounded a corner and hit a small bump, which rocked me onto my sore arm.

After a few moments of pain, I remembered the goddess in my head, who has lifetimes of experience with divine power and asked her. Allure, is there anything my divine power can do to heal me?

Yes, but your reserves are quite low. She began to inform me. If you run your divine power through the injured parts of your body in a manner similar to what I taught you when you wanted to get your erection back, it should slowly heal your wounds, but it takes a lot more divine power to heal injuries than what you have left. If you do it slowly and ration out what you have left, then you can probably dull the pain to a tolerable level until you find another source of healing.

While doing just as the goddess directed me to, the absence of pain that this action created felt just too great, and my response to her was moaned out loud because of that. "Thanks, Allure. I don’t know what I would do without you."

Think nothing of it, Alek. After you’ve freed me from the confines of that crown, teaching you how to use your new powers is the least I could do.

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