Miles and Nick didn't move.
Even if they wanted to, they couldn't.
It was as if thousands of threads were winding around them, restricting their movements.
Sweat coated their skin, soaking their clothes.
Their mana whirled and spiraled out of control, small streams leaving their bodies here and there.
An expression of pure horror was plastered on their faces, pupils dilated and their breath leaving them almost the second it entered.
Meanwhile, the Nox kept walking towards them. Its slit pupils were honed in on Miles and Nick, a sliver of eerily dark mana trickling out of them.
Now, the Nox was barely a hundred meters away from them. Unknowingly it had sped up its approach, nearing them even faster than before.
Seeing the deteriorating situation, Miles' eyes widened and an uncontained, adulterated hatred suddenly exploded out of him, tinging his eyes red.
"FUCK!"
Miles roared.
The air cracked and splintered.
The surroundings shook.
The wave of hatred-tined mana was so powerful that even the Nox stopped in its tracks, surprised by the sheer power of said mana-wave.
An A-rank hunter shouldn't be capable of that.
Disregarding everything else, Miles harshly forced his mana around his mana-circuit faster than it was accustomed to handling, causing him to spit out a mouthful of blood.
Not minding it one bit, Miles pushed his right leg backward and shifted his weight towards his left one. He rotated his spear so that the blade was behind him at the same height as his head.
It was an extremely weird stance. It left so many openings that they were all hard to count.
With logic thrown out the window, through all of his whirling thoughts of death and revenge, Miles issued a chant in his mind.
'Frequency Foundation: Blast.'
Then, he swung the blade of the spear down towards the ground as heavily as possible.
The result?
BOOM!
The moment the blade met the ground the surrounding air fractured then proceeded to shatter like glass under a sonic boom, the space bulging from the sudden outburst of speed.
The ground around on which Miles had been standing evaporated too, a large crater with cracks several meters long spreading out from the point of impact.
And Miles?
Miles had already been blasted forth by the explosion, his body somehow fine, crossing the 50 meter mark in not even a fraction of a second with the spear's blade heading straight for the Nox.
Not being prepared for such a sudden assault the Nox didn't have time to block Miles' attack, being impaled squarely in the chest with dark and clumpy blood squirting out of the wound.
Miles twisted the blade as if to create even more pain, yanking it left and right as if mixing a bowl of cereal.
The Nox however, as if not feeling pain, readied its four tails to attack, the skin somehow peeling back to reveal a sharp black blade.
They poised and fired, all four of them aiming for Miles' head.
In the second where Miles had unleashed a blow on the Nox, Nick's mind had cleared.
Seeing his half-brother, the one person he trusted most in his life be put squarely in the face of catastrophic danger, his senses had returned to him with a force that had completely annihilated the dark mana that had been shrouding his senses and assisted in actively amplifying his fear.
With a resolute look in his eyes, his body tensed for battle. He bent his knees halfway and extended his left hand and clasping his right one over it. His spear had since disintegrated into motes of light which had flowed into him, his mana reserves rising slightly.
His arm bulging, he muttered.
'Shadow Foundation: Pincer."
A figure appeared behind the Nox, materializing out of its shadow. A tendril pierced forward, taking the form of a spear identical to Miles' and stabbed the Nox in the back, right at the crux of where the Nox's tails were connected to the body.
Miles jumped out of reach, pulling out his Spear. At the same time, the Nox's yellow eyes suddenly turned crimson, its mouth opening to let out a deafening screech with its tails flailing around it in a frenzy.
One of them met Nick's spear which broke on impact, relieving the pain the Nox was feeling.
'Frequency Foundation: Blast.'
Miles somehow found the strength to grip his spear and bash it into the ground again, being exploded away from the Nox in the same manner he had approached it with.
Where he disappeared, another crater formed and the mana around it was again thrown into chaos, the Nox also being affected and flung backward a few meters with a pained screech.
Miles reappeared beside Nick, somehow unscathed yet clearly exhausted from the short encounter.
Nick looked at Miles, concern knitting his brow.
"You didn't get hit, right? How much mana did you use?"
Miles looked back at Nick, also keeping an eye on the Nox which was now flailing about on the ground, whining in pain.
"No, I didn't get hit and I used about about a third. I shouldn't have gone for 'Blast' right off the get-go."
Nick sighed, also looking back at the Nox.
"I also wasted more than I intended to. Making the spear do enough damage to surprise it with no momentum took up 30%. I didn't think we'd need that much to literally just.. pierce the skin."
Nick and Miles shook their heads in lament.
From an outsider's perspective, this should've been a happy occasion. They had caught the quasi forth grade Nox off guard and injured the apex of its tails.
Shouldn't they be a bit happier?
However, only Miles and Nick knew that the damage they had dealt the Nox was nothing but superficial. Though the tails were the crux of the Nox' attacks, they were extremely hard to damage.
Even though the power that had been exerted by Nick's technique was tremendous, it was barely a scratch to the Nox considering their insane healing capabilities. It probably wouldn't even take the Nox a minute to recover.
Miles shook his head.
"What the hell is the Slayer department doing? If we survive, I'm going to sue them." He cursed.
"..."
Nick didn't have a response to that, so he opted to stay silent and observe the Nox which was now slowly getting back on its feet. It crimson eyes were somehow getting even darker, slowly turning pitch black.
"You know what? We might get punished for this, but you go report the Nox's grade as a whole fourth grade threat. We need a Slayer here as soon as possible."
Miles looked at Nick, hesitation clearly visible in his eyes.
Nick, noticing the look, sighed in frustration and stretched his arms, maintaining his previous stance.
"Don't look at me like that. We might lose our stations, but if we don't survive then it won't matter anyway."
Without saying anything else, Nick sunk into a deep state of concentration. Closing his eyes, he focused all his senses on his surroundings.
On the palm of his opened hand, a dark blob began to take shape. Being fed by the shadows of the night, the blob grew and grew, an aura of pitch-darkness seeping from it.
Feeling that it wasn't enough, Nick removed all the stops on his reservoirs. Suddenly, the mana intake doubled and then tripled, the darkness on Nick's hand growing rapidly.
Seeing his identical half-brother's concentration, Miles didn't say anything and proceeded to stop holding back as well. His short, dark-brown hair went erect, violet lightning flashing in his pale blue eyes.
The air suddenly began trembling and vibrating, a deep and powerful bass assaulting the surroundings. Turning around and patting Nick's shoulder, Miles walked away from Nick.
After he was a few meters away, he whispered.
"Frequency Foundation: Thunder."
The night sky darkened out of nowhere, echoes of booming thunder sounding in the distance. Mana started whirling around Miles' feet, a purplish hue and crackling lightning surrounding it.
Miles let go of his spear, letting it dissolve into motes of light that also flowed into him.
Then, he stood up straight and leaned forward.
So far forward in fact, that he was almost parallel to the ground and it really did seem like he would fall flat on his face.
A split-second before his head was a hair's width away from hitting the ground however, Miles disappeared with a flash of light.
Next, carnage followed.
The ground cracked, a crater forming around where Miles just had been.
The bits of dirt flew into the air, which had by now feasibly splintered.
It was as if someone had literally punctured time and space itself, crating a ball of destruction where all universal laws were thrown out the window.
A region, where chaos in its absolute sense was allowed to roam free, dismantling and cleaving anything in its space.
As for Miles, he had already exploded forward. Not even half a second later he had already penetrated the protective dome which had been covering the city and phased through it, disappearing behind the solid black wall into the city.
To put this into reference, the dome covering the city was about as far away from them as the Nox.
If Miles had used this move from the starting, him and Nick might have been able to take the threat out directly.
If one looked closer however, it was easy to tell that Miles wasn't exactly in the best shape, his skin teetering on the edge of peeling off.
'I knew I wouldn't be able to use 'Thunder' yet, but I didn't think it would be such a big issue. I'm going to be bedridden for a while, that's for sure.'
While Miles complained in his mind, a huge part of his focus still on reaching the center of Cilica City.
All of these events had also happened in the matter of seconds. Since the appearance of the Nox, Nick' and Miles' attacks and Miles rushing into the city, not even a full minute had passed.
This was how things went in battle.
For the participants it may have felt as if they had been fighting for hours, but for everyone watching it would feel like the battle and its results were decided all too quickly.
After all, in a world where the fantastical concepts of the 21st century were practiced in reality, the perception of the flow of time became unique to each individual.
A few seconds later, Miles had reached the middle of the small city.
Right there in the center stood a small platform.
Guarded by mana-recognition contraptions, Miles was allowed to pass through them and reached a small podium with an illuminated red button on it.
Injecting his mana with information about the attack already etched into the signature, he punched toward the button. The mana left his hand, entering the button which whirred, indicating that the transfer had been successful.
Not daring to feel relief, Miles quickly spun around and through ragged breaths he dragged the last reserved of his mana from the depths of his storage. With, a raspy, dry voice he commanded:
'B-blast.'
This time, not having a spear to act as a medium to transfer the mana, the technique lost a lot of its efficiency.
Still not giving up, Miles continued sprinting at racecar speeds towards the edge of the city where he had come form.
He didn't notice the deserted streets and homes.
Of course, there wouldn't be anyone home. After all the city was in lockdown, with reinforced shelters becoming a mandatory evacuation center for all the citizens.
Just as Miles had finally made it out of the barrier and entered the battlefield again, his heart almost dropped to his stomach.
The sight he saw in front of him nearly made his heart stop.
Nick was being impaled in his stomach by one of the Nox's arms.
The other arm was holding Nick's throat, a wild grin plastered on the abominable creature's face.
Miles roared, helplessness and rage marring his voice.
"NICK! NO-"
SHING!