Gilal used her own blood to form a shield-like membrane. It looked incredibly thin, but it was far from easy to break through.
The stone-crystal shards L fired at high speed were faster than bullets, and harder and sharper, too. The fact that they still couldn’t pierce the blood membrane showed just how powerful its defense was.
But the human spectators couldn’t bring themselves to celebrate. More and more people had realized that the membrane was made from Gilal’s own blood.
How could she keep fighting for long if she was using her own blood?
After blocking the attack with the blood membrane, Gilal immediately counterattacked. She ducked low and charged at L, shaping the blood along the way into a solid dagger in her palm.
Everyone was stunned. They hadn’t expected a “Blood Mage” to choose close-quarters combat!
The top Ascendants, with their wealth of combat experience, understood the reason behind Gilal’s choice more deeply.
They had all realized that L didn’t have “vision” in the usual human sense. It determined the position of objects entirely through vibrations and feedback.
That meant long-range attacks were less effective than fighting up close. At close range, the greater number of vibrations would cause its feedback to overlap and become distorted.
So Gilal hadn’t chosen close combat because she excelled at it. She knew that fighting this way gave her better odds of winning.
When Gilal had covered only half the distance, she flicked her left hand. A whip of condensed blood took shape and lashed at L from mid-range.
She intended to overwhelm L with all kinds of vibration feedback, making it unable to pinpoint her position.
As the blood whip neared L, it used the force generated by high-frequency vibrations to scatter it. But the whip was made of individual drops of blood, and its shape could be re-formed at any time.
Gilal controlled the scattered blood, turning it into one blood dagger after another. Together with her true body, they attacked L from every direction.
Chomp, chomp, chomp!
Sensing the danger brought by the chaotic feedback, L suddenly began spinning at high speed like a top, then started moving erratically around the cavern.
It was fast and hard, and the momentum from its rapid spinning made it like a moving tank, able to smash any enemy it encountered to pieces.
Gilal had already closed in. Just as she thrust her blood dagger at L, it spun toward her at high speed. The dagger shattered instantly, and she herself narrowly avoided being hit.
“Boom!”
L crashed into the cavern wall behind Gilal, leaving a massive crater, then continued its erratic movements.
Gilal couldn’t predict its path. After thinking quickly, she slid a fingernail across her left arm. A long gash appeared, and a tremendous amount of blood poured out.
The blood quickly turned into hundreds of fibers, finer than spider silk. They wove together in midair to form a huge net, which spread toward L.
When Namelica’s president saw Gilal use this move, his heart tightened with worry.
This move, “Blood Fiber Cutting Net,” was Gilal’s signature technique. It had a wide range and immense power, but its drawback was its heavy cost.
That cost wasn’t limited to Mind Power. It also consumed blood!
In the past, when facing powerful enemies, Gilal would use their blood to perform this technique. The more enemies there were, the more effective it became.
But now she had no one else’s blood to use and could only rely on her own. There was no doubt that this would place a heavy burden on her body.
Every spectator could see that.
“Gilal’s face is getting paler and paler. Can she really keep this up?”
“She’s fighting with her own blood the whole time. Don’t tell me she’ll die of blood loss halfway through the match!”
“I’ve noticed that her control over blood is incredible. It seems her wounds only bleed when she needs them to.”
Guan Tong had noticed it, too. Gilal’s wounds didn’t bleed when she didn’t need blood. She must have been using her ability to control how quickly her blood clotted.
It seemed like a minor ability, but it was actually formidable.
If her enemy were human, then with this ability, all she’d need was one small wound on them. She could stop their blood from clotting, making them bleed to death.
Thanks to its enormous area, the blood net would catch L no matter how erratically it moved. The huge net advanced steadily toward it.
The moment they made contact, an intense grinding clash erupted.
Gilal poured a great deal of Mind Power into the blood net, giving it incredible toughness. Along the surface in contact with L, she also formed rolling serrated edges.
The blood fibers that had once been individual strands had now become blood saws, ready to cut apart L’s stone-crystal body.
“Creeeeak!”
The blood saws scraped against the stone crystal with a grating sound that set people’s teeth on edge. Everyone had assumed they would have no effect, but, to their surprise, they actually carved a straight groove into L’s surface.
That meant its body wasn’t as indestructible as it seemed. It also showed that the destructive power of Gilal’s blood was far beyond anyone’s expectations.
With its body wounded, L reacted like a startled rabbit and began vibrating at an even higher frequency.
Its vibrations were so rapid that they destabilized the entire cavern. The black iron crystals hanging overhead began to come loose, as if they were resonating.
“Look out!”
“It’s falling!”
“Look up there!”
The human spectators saw huge chunks of iron crystal falling from the cavern ceiling and cried out in alarm.
Gilal, there at the scene, was even more alert. She had been watching the crystals since they first began to loosen. When they started falling because of the resonance, she dodged them at once.
“Boom!”
Each iron crystal struck the ground with a thunderous crash, punching a huge hole into it like a bomb.
Gilal darted left and right. She had to avoid the falling crystals while also staying alert to L’s charges, and for a time she was forced onto the defensive.
All the human spectators were on edge for her, their tension at its peak.
Many people didn’t even dare to keep watching, afraid that seeing her lose would instantly shatter their hopes of winning the rule challenge.
At that moment, L’s attacks grew even more frenzied, as if it wanted to take advantage of Gilal’s precarious position and defeat her once and for all.
It didn’t rely only on ramming her with its body. Just as it had at the beginning, it also broke itself apart and fired its stone-crystal shards like a shotgun blast.
Facing the dense hail of stone-crystal shards, Gilal could see that L was going all out, even at the cost of breaking its own body.
Then she had no choice but to stake everything on one desperate move.
Rip!
To the shock of countless spectators, she slit an artery and controlled the blood gushing out, letting it engulf her.
A red pool of blood formed around her in an instant. She quickly sank into it, causing all of L’s stone-crystal shards to miss.
The spectators stared at the vast sea of blood spread across the ground, dumbfounded. If Gilal had lost that much blood, could she possibly still be alive?!
Yet the very next moment, Gilal’s head emerged from the other side of the blood sea. Only her eyes were visible as she watched L in the air.
Guan Tong, watching the match, understood what was happening.
This was probably Gilal’s ultimate move. By creating a blood pool from a massive amount of blood, she could sink into it and move rapidly through it.
That way, she could avoid attacks from outside while appearing anywhere in the pool at will to launch a surprise attack on her enemy.
But he had the same concern as the other spectators: could Gilal’s body withstand losing so much blood?
If she couldn’t end the fight quickly, then no matter how well she controlled blood, she might still die from blood loss.
He looked toward L and realized that Gilal’s strategy had worked.
After the blood pool appeared, L seemed to lose its bearings, spinning wildly in the air.
It needed to use vibrations to locate its enemy. But Gilal, submerged in the blood pool, had become part of the blood itself and could no longer be located.
As a result, when Gilal suddenly moved through the pool and appeared beside it, L didn’t vibrate in self-defense in time.
“Die.”
Gilal spoke for the first time. The vibration of her voice accompanied the blood in the pool as it formed a gigantic blood saw, which tore viciously into L!
“Crack!”
L, which had fired countless pieces of its own body at Gilal, couldn’t withstand the blow. The blood saw cut it apart, and at that very moment, a chunk of iron crystal fell from above and struck it.
With a tremendous crash, L was driven into the ground and fell completely still.
Pale as a sheet, Gilal could no longer hold herself up and dropped to one knee. She managed to use her ability once more.
The gigantic blood saw silently broke apart into streams of blood, which returned to Gilal’s body through the wound in her artery. As the blood returned, a little color came back to her face.
The spectators watched in disbelief. The blood she had released could actually be drawn back into her body?!
But that no longer mattered. What mattered was that she had defeated L and won the match.
The human spectators erupted!