Jude POV:
Light creaked through the windows. My eyes fluttered open as I stared at the ceiling hanging over my head.
Feeling Cordelia lying on my hand, I carefully slid her off my arm before waking her up.
"Good morning Cordelia," I said with a smile as she stirred awake.
"Ah Jude, you woke up already!" she said with as she flashed a smile at me.
Her sheet left her body but she didn't bother covering it like Kathyln did after our first time together.
"Let's have a bath" she said slyly as she kissed me on the lips with her cheeks tinted red. I nodded as we both went in together.
After we were ready, we both stepped out of the bedroom together.
In the living room, I found a drowsy Caera who looked like she would fall asleep any moment now.
Hearing our footsteps, her head snapped to our side before her face turned completely red.
"Why were you two so loud last night!" she screamed with an accusing look in her eyes.
"Jude, didn't you set the sound barrier?" Cordelia looked incredulously at me.
"Oops," I let out as I realized my mistake, "I forgot to conjure the sound barrier around us."
Cordelia sighed while Caera continued her rant about how the two of us wouldn't let her sleep all night.
"Let's leave that matter for now," Cordelia said in frustration as Caera grumbled some curses under her breath.
"Where's Seris?" I asked when I noticed her mana signature was not in the city.
"She's on her own mission," Caera answered as she explained what Seris was doing.
Nodding in understanding, my eyes glinted as I formulated our next plan, "It's time to assassinate the group of Vritra assassins."
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Jude POV:
Wraiths.
Powerful Vritras who together in a group who were created by Agrona to kill adult asuras. Not high-ranking ones like Windsom, but adult mid-ranking asuras who make up the greatest firepower of Kezess.
Individually, there power isn't something I need to be wary off, but its their astonishing teamwork that sets them apart from others.
And today, I was going to kill of the platoons of Wraiths on a secret mission.
'Seris and Cordelia's information network is far superior to what I believed,' I thought as I quickly neared the base that was the meeting place of this platoon when they weren't under any orders from Agrona.
[All-seeing Eyes]
Activating my technique by siphoning aether and mana to my eyes, I was able to make out the frankly well-hidden secret base that served as their hideout.
'To think that I would have to go all the way to Truacia,' my brows furrowed, 'Agrona is quite cunning to hide his secret weapons deep inside the most precious dominion.'
Gathering aether around my fist, I punched through the wall. My eyes quickly scanned the five figures spread across the chamber.
"You must be the Wraiths" I said with a smirk, taking in each figure.
The foremost was a tall, broad-shouldered man. Flowing locks of earth-brown hair tumbled around thick, corkscrew horns that stuck up several inches from the top of his head. He wore red chainmail under black half-plate armour that glowed with protective runes.
His dismissive eyes met mine. "Why are you here, Jude Lewyin?"
"To wipe out your platoon of course."
My sentence must have seemed like that of a hopeless dream as all of them burst into laughter.
"Then we must eliminate you," the Wraith who seemed like the leader said.
"Oh come on, Richmal, we hardly ever get to have any fun," one of the others said, whipping thick blond braids around his head and staring at me with hungry eyes. "If it is true that this one killed three of the Scythes, we should have some fun with him before releasing him to the oblivion of death." Like Richmal, this second man also had blood-red eyes and onyx horns. His curled out and down from the sides of his head, nearly touching again under his chin.
"The Scythes must have been sauced on elder nectar to let this skinny lesser murder them."
The rasping voice crawled like bugs out of the shadows and into my ears, making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I traced it back to a Wraith whose robes were dark with burn marks, the hood of which was pulled half up over his bald head. Two daggerlike horns thrust forward from his forehead. Blaise. The bright red of his eyes was interrupted by dark splotches that seemed to float over their surface, matching darker, ash-grey patches that marred his cold, marble skin.
Next to him, the fourth Alacryan was half-hidden in living shadows. I caught flashes of jet-black hair curled up into horns atop her head and dark, ox-blood eyes surrounded by grey-black skin. Valeska.
The fifth Wraith was a marble-skinned woman in heavy black plate armour. Only her face and head were exposed, showing off her short, bright blue hair, which was styled into spikes around her ridged horns. Runic lightning bolts were tattooed across her scarlet eyes. Ulrike, I knew from Seris's intel.
"Enough," Richmal ordered, the deep well of his baritone burying the other voices. "You demean yourselves." A coiled lash of dark green, stinking liquid shivered into existence in his fist, and he met my eye. "We will waste no more breath on you, lesser."
"Suit yourself," I said as the confident smirk never left my face. Lightning laced around my body as I covered the distance between Richmal and I instantly.
A blade conjured up from Creation vivum before zipping towards the leader's heart.
The room exploded into chaos as all of them kicked into action.
Black iron spikes shot from the ground to deflect my blade, and a gust of black wind seemed to enfold Richmal. I felt the aether blade strike home, piercing the black spikes effortlessly, but then the wind carried my target away. A breath later, he reappeared across the room from me, his armour torn and blood seeping from a wound in his side.
Black spikes conjured out of nothing as they headed for my heart and head.
'Not bad,' I thought as I twisted my body to strike all the spikes with my sword, destroying them into oblivion.
All five opponents were moving, casting. Shields of black wind and soulfire moved with them, turning the room into an inferno.
Twin torrents of black fire and sluggish, bubbling ooze sprayed at me from different directions. Giant shields of vivum conjured out of thin air as they blocked the spells in their tracks.
I could tell the shield slowly melting away from the acid but it wasn't anything threatening me now.
Clad in lightning, I instantly shot towards my next target.
Ulrike.
My sword covered in gusts shot towards her with full force. She used her mana shield to block my attack, but it was too weak to hold against my sword.
Her eyes widened in surprise as she side-stepped, using her spear to barely deflect my sword just enough to avoid a fatal wound.
The ground heaved beneath me as a partially-formed golem made of hundreds of interlocked spikes ripped through the granite tiles and reached for me.
Blue flames augmented with aether left my palm before burning the golem to a pile of trash, the heat melting away the spikes acting as the joints of the golem.
Greenish mana condensed beneath me while a cyclone of black wind came from another side.
"Huu~" taking a deep breath, I released my ice magic to freeze the entire room almost completely.
The two spells were stopped, however, the Wraiths seemed rather unbothered like I had thought.
'So they are this strong,' I mused, 'They are capable of killing someone like Taci, no wonder Agrona found them useful. But that's their limit.'
'I should get a bit more serious,' I thought as I shot a near-instant blast of Destruction at Ulrike and Ifiok.
Both of them tried to defend against my attack, but failed to do so without suffering damage.
Ulrike lowered her shield, which was pockmarked and burn-scarred from Destruction. Scarlet runes burned brightly across its dim metallic surface. Ifiok stepped out from behind her, his braids smoking and one horn cracked. The flesh on the side of his face was torn and bleeding.
The air had turned into a jelly-like acid sludge that almost sucked me in before I released ice magic to freeze it in its place.
'That was close,' I thought before finding the culprit using All-seeing Eyes.
I found myself behind Blaise, the Wraith who sent that terrible Decay mana art towards me. Surrounding my hand with Destruction, I cut through his soulfire defences before slicing his throat.
Black wind wrapped him and tried to yank him from me but I countered by using my own wind magic.
Claws of the same Decay-type wind mana raked at me and grabbed for my wrists. I slightly snorted before shooting Destruction to destroy the spell in its entirety.
Ulrike was floating twenty feet off the ground, a bombardment of blue-black bolts spraying from her fingertips down on me.
Richmal was controlling several long tentacles of dark green acidic liquid that had boiled up from between the granite tiles. The wound in his side had healed, and even his armour seemed to have mended itself.
"Enough!" I said with force before revealing my full strength.
[Fadarr's Judgement and Irie's Manifestation: Jude's Yin-Yang Armour]
Purple wings of Destruction held together in plates of Creation erupted from my back. My All-seeing Eyes reached its maximum limit as I took in the entire room at once.
Purple flames of Destruction spilled without care, eating away at any spells these Alacaryans desperately threw at me before going away to eat him.
"Is this your limit?" I questioned as I landed next to a defeated Richmal. All of his teammate were dead, with nothing left save for their heads.
"You are indeed strong," he said as he looked at me without a hint of fear, "But you aren't at his level. You aren't Agrona's match."
Slice!
His head rolled down the ground as I muttered my reply, "I know. I still have some ways to go."