Faced with Nikolai, Luke couldn't help but tense up.
'It's far from my first time facing an overwhelmingly stronger opponent. But this time around, I don't have the time to go around and train before fighting him… The most I can do is…'
Luke rummaged through his robe, before pulling out a small, gray orb, no bigger than a walnut.
Without any hesitation, Luke clenched his fist, crushing the orb into dust.
Bright light emanated from within Luke's clenched fist, and then started flowing out all around Luke, forming a thin, gray, see-through veil in a 2-meter diameter around Luke, in the shape of a semi-circle.
'I hope that the merchant didn't lie about the whole 'it can even protect you against a dragon's breath' sales pitch…'
The orb that Luke had crushed was the artifact of protection, one of the two artifacts that he had managed to scam out of the fat merchant in Millef.
Next, he pulled out the mana amplification artifact, and also crushed it without hesitation.
Bluish light came out of the artifact as he crushed it, and the light then seeped into Luke's body, through his orifices.
'Whoa! I can already feel the effect…'
This artifact did not increase the mana capacity of its user, it instead strengthened the bond between the user's soul and the mana surrounding the user's body.
Additionally, it helped with mana output, meaning that the user could exert an amount of mana well beyond the elemental's limit. This, of course, had a lot of drawbacks and should've been avoided.
Of course, Luke didn't know any of this.
While Luke was activating the artifacts, Nikolai casually looked at him, with his hands crossed, and with an amused smirk that was clearly visible even with a hood covering most of his face.
"Go ahead, use whichever artifacts you want. It won't change a thing!"
Nikolai wasn't worried at all, as he could tell how weak Luke was when compared to himself.
This 'disciple' of Ellios wasn't deemed worthy of his time.
But after Luke activated the mana amplification artifact, the smirk disappeared from Nikolai's face.
"Oi, oi, oi! What bullshit is this?!"
Nikolai, who was a seasoned elementalist and fighter, could easily distinguish which artifacts Luke was using the moment Luke pulled them out of his robe.
And, as far as Nikolai could tell, what Luke used were no more than common, single-use artifacts.
So why was there a silver glow emanating from Luke's body?
Nikolai was sure that it couldn't've been an effect of either of the artifacts that Luke had used.
Thinking that he may've underestimated Luke, Nikolai charged towards him. He couldn't afford to let his guard down anymore.
As Nikolai sped up, the air surrounding him started turning white.
A white rod-like object started taking shape, coming out of Nikolai, around his lower back.
It kept extending until it reached almost 2 meters in length, and at its end, a stinger was formed.
The whole process took less than five seconds.
Nikolai's 'tail' was made out of pure white ice, and was formed out of five smaller chunks of ice, giving it flexibility.
It resembled a scorpion's metasoma, often times referred to as a scorpion's tail, as it swirled behind Nikolai.
Luke, of course, watched Nikolai's metasoma as it formed, and had already started thinking of how to counter it.
He himself was unaware of the silver light that his body was surrounded in.
'That tail is definitely made out of ice. My fire elemental may be very weak, but I think it's worth a shot if I boost its power using my wind elemental…'
By the time Luke finished his thoughts, Nikolai was already right outside of the barrier protecting him.
Nikolai slowly waved his arms without any apparent pattern to speak of, and as he did, his metasoma started jabbing at Luke's barrier.
At first, the jabs were slow and weak, but as the attack continued, Nikolai waved his arms faster and faster, and following that, the metasoma attacked with greater power and speed as well.
Luke wasn't sitting idly during this time.
He was preparing an attack of his own, with the power of his fire elemental at its core.
To Nikolai, it seemed like Luke was just standing inside of the barrier and waiting for him to break through.
And then, Luke suddenly opened his mouth.
Nikolai thought that he was about to beg for his life, but quickly realized that something was off.
Luke kept his mouth open as his face contorted.
Nikolai had a very bad feeling about this and stopped striking Luke's barrier.
While no attacks could penetrate into the barrier from the outside, attacks could be launched from inside the barrier without issues.
Just as he was about to retreat backwards, Nikolai was faced with a pillar of deep red fire coming out of Luke's mouth.
Nikolai instinctively guarded himself with his metasoma and tried sidestepping out of the way of Luke's fire breath, but the red pillar followed him, almost like it was locked onto him.
As fire and ice clashed, steam followed in Nikolai's wake, restricting both his and Luke's sight.
Nikolai's once mighty metasoma only held out for a few seconds before melting completely into a puddle of water.
Once the metasoma was gone, Nikolai kept conjuring thick sheets of ice to mitigate the burning, which helped reduce some of the damage, but still didn't allow him to see anything in front of, or around himself, due to the massive amount of steam.
Luke's fire breath lasted for close to one minute, before dissipating into thin air.
As soon as Luke's attack stopped, Nikolai shifted from defense back to offense.
While the fire breath was effective against his ice elemental, it barely damaged him at all.
And it wasn't just because of his ice elemental taking the brunt of the damage, it was because Luke's attack itself lacked in power, and abysmally so.
Nikolai knew this, and scoffed at Luke.
He thought that he had underestimated Luke, but he instead overestimated him from the very start.
It looked as if Nikolai was about to strike Luke's barrier again, but surprisingly, he chose to sit down right in front of it.
Luke was feeling dizzy after managing to pull off the fire breath.
'I can't believe that actually worked… It didn't have almost any effect on him, but it melted his tail, as expected… '
The fire breath attack was obviously inspired by the mythological stories of dragons that Luke knew of.
The power of Luke's attack, of course, paled in comparison to the ones of the mythical dragons.
There were multiple ideas swirling around Luke's mind on how to actually conceptualize a new attack, based on his fire elemental, and strengthened by the wind elemental.
His first idea was using one hand to wield the fire elemental, and the other to wield the wind elemental. Then, he'd use the wind elemental to make the fire combust and move along with the wind, making a quasi-flamethrower.
It wasn't a bad idea, but…
He remembered Ellios' words.
["I choose to believe in your potential."]
Luke knew that he could use his elementals in many ways, from amplifying his physical abilities to condensing a ranged attack of that elemental's nature.
Then, he wondered.
'Couldn't I use the elementals on the inside of my body as well?'
He tried conjuring a small ember on the inside of his mouth using his fire elemental, and to his surprise, he did it with little difficulty.
The small ember floated silently on the inside of his mouth, not harming Luke at all.
Then, he used his wind elemental to enhance his lungs, greatly increasing the force of his breath, and supplying his lungs with the needed oxygen to do so.
In the next moment, he opened his mouth and tried breathing out as hard as he could.
Nothing happened at first, but in just a few seconds, a pillar of red fire started coming out of his mouth, like a volcano erupting.
If someone were to say that the fire breath attack was just a fancier version of the quasi-flamethrower attack, Luke couldn't really say that they were wrong.
It was true.
The power was basically the same, it just looked flashier.
But learning how to amplify even the inside of one's body was an important step forward for Luke as an elementalist.
Even though he could barely harm Nikolai at all, the results were still good.
But 'good results' weren't enough.
As Nikolai sat still in front of Luke's barrier, the barrier started dimming bit by bit.
It was slowly, but surely, losing its strength.
'Shit.'
Luke cursed inwardly.
His sight was a bit blurry, but he could still make out what was happening around him.
The breath attack has left him exhausted and dizzy, even though it was close to useless against Nikolai.
Luke started thinking of ways to win against Nikolai, but nothing came to mind.
'I don't think that running away is an option at this point…'
Ellios had wanted him to fight for his life here, knowing full-well both Luke's and Nikolai's strengths.
Apparently, Luke would either figure out how to survive or he would die.
As the barrier faded in and out of existence, Luke could feel a sense of dread encroaching up his spine.
He knew well what this dread represented.
It was his fear of death.
Trying to forget such notions, Luke started gathering wind around his body.
He'd need to try and buy time while he came up with an idea to defeat Nikolai.
…Something was wrong.
Wind started gathering around Luke's legs, but dispersed just as quickly as it gathered.
Luke tried a few more times, but the more he attempted to do it, the more lightheaded he got.
His surroundings started spinning.
'What… is this?'
The world started turning black all around Luke, and he started falling towards the ground.
But, instead of hitting it, the ground seemed to get further away from Luke the closer he got to it.
After falling for what felt like dozens of minutes, Luke finally hit the ground below.
"Oomph…"
The barrier surrounding Luke was now gone.
'Move, dammit!'
He tried commanding his body to stand up, but none of his limbs listened to him.
Luke could just barely move his neck, but nothing more.
He could see Nikolai standing up with a sneer on his face.
Nikolai chuckled as he slowly walked towards Luke.
Every movement that the man made during those short few moments were full of disdain.
And, moments later, he was standing tall above Luke and was looking down at him.
"Hah… Pathetic."
The man spat on the ground next to Luke and turned around, as if to leave.
Seeing this, Luke relaxed for just an instant.
But doing that was a mistake.
Nikolai suddenly turned around and drilled his foot into Luke's unmoving body.
Even though Luke couldn't move, he could feel the pain as if nothing was wrong with his body.
His eyes widened and he spat out blood as his body flew across the open plain.
Luke smashed into the ground and his body limply kept rolling until losing the momentum from Nikolai's kick and stopping.
Luke grit his teeth and bore through the pain.
Some of his bones were definitely broken now, but he had no way of telling which ones.
He lay on his back and weakly raised his head to look towards Nikolai.
The hooded man was slowly making his way towards Luke, with a happy smile on his face.
Luke's body shook with each step Nikolai took.
There would be no way out this time.