Chapter 280 Blue blurry effect

Seeing the woman in front of him, the words left his mouth without even realising it.

“Mom?”

“Is that you?”

But before Elara could answer that, the ward around them that had been holding all this while gave a thin, strained pulse. Selene really was struggling now to keep up with the number of monsters.

A lean bipedal lizard-creature forced itself through a gap that had not existed a second earlier. The barrier had thinned into an almost non-existent state now, under the constant pressure; the light around that section flickered like a candle caught in a strong wind. The monster’s claws scraped against the fading edge of the ward, trying to push itself to get in somehow.

And finally, it managed to get inside, low and fast, eyes locked on the nearest warm body.

Lys was the first to notice that. So, he turned, CorpseSlayer already rising to slay the thing….

But getting past him, a blur of blue moved with incredible speed.

The sound of the person moving was clean and sharp: fabric cutting air, boots finding grip on blood-slick dirt.

Elara closed the distance before the lizard-thing could even finish its lunge, when it finally broke through the barrier.

She did not hesitate. The long broken spear shaft she had picked up from the ground drove forward with her full weight behind it. The already bent tip just punched straight through the soft gap beneath the creature’s jaw and up into its skull. The spear’s momentum carried the monster another half-step, where it was in midair in its lunging state.

It collapsed right at the moment it hit the ground, not even twitching once.

Lys just stared at what just happened.

He had been about to move himself, but she beat him to it. And that being said, she was also one and a half meters behind him.

So the speed she ran just now was not a thing even he could achieve right now with all of his progress till now. That just shows how much stronger she really was in reality. The image of his sweet, housewife-type mother shatters right at this moment.

Elara yanked the shaft free with a short, practiced motion. Dark fluid followed out from the monster below when she did that.

She then turned toward him, and for a moment the chaos around them seemed to pull back. Her eyes moved over his face, his blood-spattered clothes, the cursed sword in his hand. Something complicated passed through her expression: relief, recognition, and a flicker of almost disbelieving assessment, seeing the Lys she had seen just some time ago was no longer the same. This one was stronger, more battle-hardened, more manly. It was obvious from the way he looked how messy this fight had been for him. Words couldn’t even describe the way he looked right now.

She just stepped in and pulled him into a brief, fierce hug, without caring for how he looked.

“I barely recognized you,” she said against his shoulder, voice low and rough. “You… look different.”

Lys’s free hand hovered awkwardly near her back.

‘Huh? I look different? But how?’

He was still himself, just covered in monster blood, running on pure adrenaline and stubbornness. Though he had no idea about any of that.

But before he could ask what she meant, Mira’s voice cut across the noise.

“Mom, behind you!”

Elara and Lys released each other at the same time. Elara turned toward her back.

Another chicken-monster had used the distraction to dart low toward her legs. It didn’t look that harmful, but she knew enough not to let any live. Though she had never seen or read about these types of monsters, she knew enough from the lying corpses of its type that they were not that hard to kill. The majority of the mess around here was of its innards and stuff, after all.

She did not bother with the spear shaft this time. One boot came up and stamped down hard on the creature’s spine; bone and cartilage gave with a wet crunch. At the same time, her free hand caught a second lunging golem by the wrist joint and threw it into another golem beside.

There was a dry crack of compacted dirt and stone giving way when both golems smashed into each other. She shoved the almost ruined spear into the path of a third monster and used the opening to drive the shaft through both of them in one thrusting line.

When she straightened, her breathing was only slightly elevated.

“Thanks,” she called back to Mira, calm, as if they were still in the kitchen and Mira had simply handed her a missing ladle.

In just a matter of seconds, seeing the scene of her mom fighting like a pro, Mira’s sword dipped low. Her mouth opened to say something. But no sound came out. She was in awe.

Around them, the fight had not paused. Monsters still poured through the gate. Selene’s ward was no longer there. So, the load on the village women had gotten much worse. They still swung and stabbed, while cursing the monsters, mentioning even their fourth lineage.

It might have looked like things were finally about to snap; everyone’s limit had reached its final stage after all.

But the shape of the pressure changed the moment Elara took a long breath and looked away from Mira, toward the monsters ahead of her.

She stepped into the thick of it without waiting for anyone to make space.

The next wave of chicken-monsters that came forward met her like water hitting a rock. And in this case she was the rock.

She used the broken spear shaft, making short thrusts, sweeping blocks, and some occasional spinning redirection that sent several creatures tumbling into their fellows. When a heavier lizard-thing lunged, she ducked down at a speed that should not have been possible for a woman of her size. The monster staggered, losing its prey all of a sudden.

Before it could turn back to see behind it, Elara’s spear finished it with a precise stab under the jaw.

Every time she moved, a faint blue shimmer followed her movements, like heat haze clinging to her limbs and spine. It was incomplete, unsteady in places, the visible sign of a body-enchantment that had not been called upon in years.

Everyone who was witnessing her fight now knew; most Enchanters never learned to use their power this way. The majority, like Mira, poured their talent into objects, blades that cut cleaner, tools that lasted longer, charms that held small blessings. That path was safer, more marketable, and far less demanding on the body.

But a smaller number of people always took the harder road: they learned to weave enchantment directly into muscle, bone, and nerve. Strength that does not come from the arm alone. Speed that never relies only on footwork. Durability that lets a person take impacts that should have broken ribs.

All of that belongs to people who use body-enchantment techniques.

And from the looks of it, Elara belonged to the second group.

Even rusty, even armed with nothing better than a scavenged shaft, the difference was immediate. Even when the golem’s stone fists slammed toward her shoulder, she just turned with it instead of against it, letting the force slide past while her free hand caught the creature’s elbow joint and folded it the wrong way.

Only people possessing immense power and technique for using body-encantment knew this type of thing.

Even the famous Fiora tribe, which was known for not using mage ability at all, had almost all of its members as body-strengthening types. Though this type was not exactly ultra rare, it was worthy of respect and was highly battle-oriented. At least most fighters knew this fact.

Lys also felt his own swings slow for half a second simply from watching the technique his mom was using. Though he had seen Vessa use enchantment, and even saw several people until now using enchanted weapons before, he didn’t exactly see anyone using body-enchantment. Till now.

Elara was using the technique like a pro; even after years of deliberate holding back, her fighting spirit never died, as far as Lys could guess.

Those who knew would have noticed that the enchantment she was using was incomplete; in some places it stuttered, and where an old pathway failed to open fully, she had to compensate with pure technique.

But the foundation of the real thing was still there, and it was a more profound fighting style than anything else on this battlefield.

Finally finding a chance to see her mother fight in a way she had only heard about before, Mira found her voice in pieces.

“What the hell, Mom…” She cut a golem’s leg out from under it and kicked the body away without looking. “Mom. How are you…why are you…. since when can you fight like this?”

Elara drove the shaft through another creature’s throat, twisted, and pulled free, though the thing finally broke apart with this motion. There was a slight stiffness in the way she reset her stance, as if joints that had been quiet for years were protesting the sudden demand. Still, she did not slow down, even after her spear was broken.

“I know,” she said between breaths. Her eyes stayed on the next threat, hands both spread wide. “I know you have questions, honey. All of you must have. Finding out about this part of me like this… I’m sorry.”

“But the answers will have to wait until we get home, honey. For now, focus on in front of you. Don’t get distracted.”

Mira made a frustrated sound that was half growl, half disbelief. “That’s not…you can’t just…”

She couldn’t finish the sentence before Elara moved from her position.

A bipedal lizard had broken past one of the village women and was coming straight at Selene’s exposed flank. And Elara was the one who was moving to get that thing now, barehanded.

The shimmer around her legs flared brighter; she crossed the distance in a low, driving burst that left a faint afterimage in the lantern light. She intercepted the creature with a shoulder grab that lifted it off its feet, then threw that thing toward Lys, who was also waiting for her to do just that.

The creature was flying, and when it got close to Lys, he just casually swung his sword. It got cut in half and fell sideways beside Lys.

[EXP Gained: 26]

[EXP Gained: 16]

[CorpseSlayer: Level 4 – 345 / 1600]

Elara straightened; she glanced once at Mira to finish the last conversation.

“Later, honey. I promise. Right now I need you to keep your left side tighter. You’re still dropping your guard when you finish a swing. Maybe I’ll show you some techniques of mine, after all of this is over, okay?”

Mira’s face went through several expressions in under a second: outrage, confusion, reluctant compliance. She adjusted her stance with a sharp, irritated motion and met the next monster with a cleaner cut than before.

Seeing the mother-daughter pair resolve things between them somehow, Lys finally forced his own body back into motion.

CorpseSlayer rose and fell. The familiar cold pull of absorption traveled up his arm. But part of his attention stayed locked on the blue dress blur moving through the chaos as it belonged there.

As far as he learned from Selene, he knew most people who learned body-enchantment still preferred to use proper tools, enchanted blades, reinforced spears, weapons that felt familiar to their own style.

But even he could see, from the way she was fighting, Elara had none of that. She had picked up another broken shaft and was likely suffering from years of deliberate disuse of her own powers. And she was still the most dangerous person on the field.

Selene’s voice reached them, strained but steadier than before. “I don’t think I can keep my Radiance beacon on for even a minute. Somebody has to do something when that happens.”

Elara gave a short nod of acknowledgment and shifted position without needing further instruction. The faint shimmer around her arms flared a little brighter as she met a pair of golems in front of the village women, where once the barrier existed.

A village woman on the far right stared openly as Elara caught a lizard-thing mid-lunge, turned with its momentum, and used the creature’s own weight to drive it into the dirt. The woman stared for a moment at the creature below her before driving the broken spear into it. This spear was also done in by this.

On the other hand, Lys was also killing monster after monster without looking at the notification. The system window flickered and vanished at the edge of his vision. He did not care.

Though the fight had gotten a little easier by Elara’s entry, he knew this victory feeling was only momentary. If those women from earlier don’t do something about the gate quickly, everyone present here would be in for a long fight.