Chapter 475 Lethality Manipulation



"GRRRROOOOAAAARRRRRGGGHHHH!!!!"

The Bear released a roar of pain, loud enough that monsters hundreds of metres away immediately began bleeding from their noses and eardrums, while some were even temporarily knocked unconscious.

"Ouch! That was loud."

Eliza spoke after backflipping and landing on the ground behind the wounded bear, thanking her stars that she made the split-second decision to cover her ears with magic after noticing energy building up in the bear's mouth earlier.

After having released such a loud soundwave attack, the Bear Expected Eliza to be down for the count, so one could only imagine its surprise when it turned around and saw that she was still very much okay.

It wanted to charge at her immediately, but doing so would worsen the slash wound on its chest that she had given it earlier, plus one of its eyes was not taken out, so its vision was greatly limited.

The Bear, despite feeling rage towards Eliza, was still wary of being attacked by Evan from its blind spot.

It was then that it noticed that for some reason, its wounds were not healing at all.

'What…?'

Eliza had dealt four serious injuries to it, and even though it did not expect its eye to heal instantly, the first stab wound to its shoulder should have at least healed by now, but for some reason, it had not.

As if Eliza knew the bear's thoughts, she held up her palm and condensed a ball of life essence within it before saying out loud.

"Anti-Regeneration."

Hearing her words, the bear was finally able to understand why it felt danger from even her seemingly normal attacks; it was because those attacks were going to cause wounds that would not heal.

Understanding that its wounds were not going to heal, however, was just the first step of Eliza's plan.

"Lethality Manipulation."

A charge of her skill was consumed and an 'Aspect' of life was chosen to manipulate. The chosen ability was a single target ability that consumed a lot of magic power, but in return, it was capable of turning even a small scratch on the target's body split open into a gaping wound.

And for the bear that already had a gaping wound on its chest?

"GRRRROOOOAAAARRRRRGGGHHHH!!!!"

It let out another blood-curdling scream as the slash wound on its chest ruptured open, with fresh blood spraying into the surroundings and painting the ground red.

The bear's massive body tumbled to the ground as it writhed in pain, but Eliza wasn't done as the mark she had placed on the bear's back at the beginning of the fight activated.

"Unhealing."

With that word, the healing of every wound the Bear had suffered within the past month was all instantly undone, and the bear was forced to re-experience the pain it felt when the injuries were inflicted on it originally.

Seeing the bear being reduced to a bloody mess on the floor, Eliza consumed three more charges of her skill and activated another aspect to manipulate.

"Health Manipulation: Mental."

However, she was completely unable to do anything about the bear's current mental state which was affected by the knowledge that it was receiving life-threatening wounds that were not able to be healed.

"You seem to be very interested in mental health manipulation recently. Ever since we entered the tower of trials."

Evan's voice rang out from behind her but she was not startled as she had long sensed his life sign approaching her.

"Yeah. My Child of Life skill is a lot more powerful than I expected. Since it can temporarily give me health manipulation powers, I wanted to see if I could manipulate mental health too."

"Why though?"

"It's something my father can do, he showed me once so I wanted to see if I could replicate it."

Although the answer Eliza gave Evan was indeed acceptable, it was nothing more than a big fat lie. Eliza could not really care less about replicating her father's techniques, especially ones achieved with the power of a World Law like Mental Health Manipulation.

'I can't exactly say the reason I'm trying to do that is to use it on him now, can I?'

She thought to herself as she remembered the conversation that she had with Artemisia in the Spatial gap between the entrance of the Tower of Trails in the Oak Avenue Manor, and the real tower in the Cloud Piercing Isle.

However, a loud roar, followed by the sound of the massive bear barrelling towards her snapped her out of her thoughts, and she roused her magic power.

Deactivating her child of life skill, she slammed her staff onto the ground and activated an Esoteric elemental skill she acquired recently.

"Life Ice."

The ground under the charging bear caved open, and a pillar of green ice emerged from below and shot up into the sky, enveloping the Giant Bear's body in the process.

It receded merely a second later, with the bear's body now left to fall into the massive vortex of green icy energy that swirled in the hole on the ground.

"Hey, Evan. Anything you know about my skill that I can't do right now?"

"Hmm? You mean your Child of Life skill, right?"

"Yep."

"Well, for starters. There's Spiritual Elemental Infusion.

Basically, you can imbue spiritual properties into your elemental attacks, just like what you're currently doing with your Life Ice skill, but with the added capability of affecting a target's soul."

Eliza revealed an expression of surprise upon hearing Evan's words, but despite this, her hands still moved to generate two Tier 2 Ice Magic circles that released spears of Ice that impaled the Bear's torso and head.

"That sounds broken."

"It is. Now you see why I got pissed that time you used the skill for a simple purification?"

"In my defence, I didn't know my skill had that much potential. My parents seemed to know about my skill, especially my dad, but they refused to teach me how to use it."

[Level Up.]

[Level Up.]

[Level Up.]

Three notifications popped up in her field of view but she dismissed the notifications and opened up her status board.

"Come to think of it, weren't your attacks a bit too weak to kill that Bear?"

"I used my skill to reduce its Health Stat by two ranks, effectively making it so I could use attacks capable of taking out C-rank monsters to kill it.

I also threw in a few damage breach buffs into the mix."

Eliza replied as she turned her gaze towards the number of skill charges left on her Child of Life Skill and asked.

"Should I recover the charges now?"

"Yep…you're going to need them later."

"I am?"

"You are."

Evan replied as he gave a brief glance at the direction they came from, before turning his gaze to Eliza and appraising her, stat levels included.

|Name- Eliza Lane

Race- Human

Gender - Female

Age- 16

Level- 326

Existence Level - Grandmaster (Inferior)

Titles- A-Rank Adventurer, She Who Peruses the Doctrine of Life, Anomaly, Warrior Priestess, Battle Priestess [], Honorary Viscountess of the Great Western Empire, Disciple of Life.

Class - Battle Priestess

Health – A- (79/100)

Energy - A- (64/100)

Strength – A- (6/100)

Agility – A- (68/100)

Durability – A- (60/100)

Intelligence - A- (62/100)

Condition- Normal.

Magic Tiers- Life Tier 3, Water Tier 2, Ice Tier 2, Light Tier 2, Wind Tier 1.

Skills- Healing, Support Magic (High), Barrier, Flower Cannon, Polearm Proficiency, Unarmed Combat, Cutting Wave, Life Ice, Divergent Ward, Life Energy Draining Prison, Crystal Nova.

Unique Skills- Child of Life (16/18), Breath of Life. |

Ever since the girl achieved grandmaster status, her Child of Life Skill went through a few upgrades, and she could now recover a maximum of three used-up charges daily, hence the reason she had 16 charges left despite having just used 5.

"Your strength stat is as pitiful as always."

"It's still more than enough to give you a resounding knock on the head if you don't hold your tongue."

Eliza lightly glared at Evan while cracking her fingers, eliciting a small laugh from the boy before he pointed to the cave and spoke.

"Enough messing around, I opened the entrance while you were torturing the poor bear, let's go.

Take the Corpse too, Kuro. It has a nice magic stone we'd extract later."

After he spoke, he took Eliza's hand in his and began leading her to the cave, while her shadow wriggled a bit, before expanding large enough to swallow the large corpse of the Giant Bear that was suspended in the air and held up there by the Ice spears impaling it.

◇ ◇ ◇

A few kilometres away from Evan and Eliza's position, a humanoid figure dressed in all black, crouched down on a sturdy sequoia branch as he stared at the direction of the Cave with narrowed eyes.

"Did he sense me? Impossible. Even the girl with the life attribute could not sense me."

He checked one of the bracelets on his wrist, an artifact designed to counter Eliza's life force sensing abilities and made sure it was still working before turning back to the Cave Evan and Eliza had just walked into.

"Senior, is there a problem?"