PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

But what she received as an answer was only Desmond shrugging his shoulders and just at that moment Desmond simply faded away a second time, only this time Mei was at least able to hear a low whisper coming out of Desmond’s lips indicating the name of the skill he was using;

That’s how Mei realized that what Desmond was using right now was a movement technique unfortunately she wasn’t able to think beyond that when she felt a disturbance in the air behind her before hearing the sound of the wind splitting.

Barely being able to react, Mei blocked with some difficulty the downward kick of Desmond who seemed to have come out of nowhere once again, still in the air with one of his legs in the process of transmitting the impact force of his first kick, Desmond anchored his body in the air using wind mana to have an artificial foothold just before launching an upward kick with his free leg thus breaking Mei’s defensive posture.

However when Desmond tried to lash out with a third kick Mei’s response was much faster and more intense now that Desmond didn’t have the element of surprise on his side so he ended up being repelled by Mei.

As soon as Desmond finished backing up, Mei tried to use her superior speed to lash out at Desmond but her efforts were thwarted when Desmond used his to disappear for the third time.

It was a shame that Mei didn′t fall a third time in the same trick, as soon as Desmond tried to approach Mei he was quickly repelled by Mei’s strong defense who did not seem so surprised on this occasion by Desmond’s ambush.

Seeing Mei’s proud smile, Desmond couldn’t help but comment with exasperation: “I should have known that a trick like this wouldn’t work more than a couple of times against someone with senses as bestial as yours.”

“I guess you chose the wrong opponent to use that technique,” Mei replied.

.....

Desmond on his side decided to keep silent, it was just as Mei had said, she was the wrong opponent to use the and the reason was very simple.

Desmond’s was a technique that combined a couple of rather complex variables, first exploiting an innate weakness of the human senses where one went from stillness to high-speed movement in an instant causing a momentary lapse where the opponent’s senses adjusted.

In that split second when his opponent’s senses went through that small adjustment, Desmond combined all the stealth skills he knew to reduce his presence to a minimum making it harder to perceive unless you looked directly at him.

Finally, Desmond always tried to stay in the blind spot or the peripheral vision of his opponent by further increasing the difficulty of being perceived.

Since all this took place while Desmond was moving at high speed, to his opponents it seemed as if Desmond disappeared completely only to appear a moment later while attacking them.

With all the above, the had very precise technical requirements and an extremely high synchronization, being much less effective the more it was used against the same individual and being ineffective against individuals with very keen senses.

It just so happened that Mei had one of the most monstrous senses and instincts Desmond had ever met so it wasn’t entirely surprising that the will cease to be effective so soon, though, of course, the fact that it was reasonable didn’t make Desmond feel better about seeing a technique that had taken him so long to develop to be overcome so easily by his opponent.

Still, Desmond was not discouraged, the fact that the technique was less effective did not make it completely ineffective so Desmond continued to use his again and again trying to get over Mei’s defenses.

The strange thing was that even though Mei was getting used to Desmond’s strange movement technique, she was still having a hard time keeping him at bay and this wasn’t due to the element of surprise in his attacks or the speed with which Desmond attacked; it was actually more like she was slowing down.

“You focused only on developing insidious techniques.” Having blocked another of Desmond’s attacks, Mei couldn’t help but comment when she saw a strange blue glow around Desmond’s hands.

Mei never expected Desmond to use a technique similar to Xiauyue’s where he took advantage of the soft and calming nature of the energy used to paralyze or in this case numb the opponent’s nerves.

However, the technique displayed by Desmond was considerably weaker than Xiauyue’s , a fact for which Mei was grateful or things might have become extremely difficult for her.

What Mei didn’t know was that Desmond had developed this ability that combined martial aspects with aquatic mana based only on the understanding he gained about the soft and flexible properties of water when he consumed the and that it had only taken Desmond a month to develop a technique like this in conjunction with other skills that he had not yet used.

God only knows what Mei would think if she knew, one has to know that Xiauyue’s was part of her family’s martial art and that these martial arts were extremely powerful and highly valued in the martial sovereign world so a martial art like the one Desmond developed on his own that imitated Xiauyue’s skill to such a great extent was already considered a high-level martial art; so it was pretty ridiculous that it would take Desmond so little time to create such a technique.

Of course, even with all the above, there were still two facts that did not change, the first was that this technique was just as Mei had described it; quite insidious.

The second problem was that even with the combination of with the technique that Desmond called , Desmond was still unable to get the upper hand on Mei.

It couldn’t be helped, Mei was simply too strong being in the two-star class while Desmond was still in the one-star class, the power gap wasn’t easy to bridge, even less so when fighting someone as talented as Mei.

That was not even mentioning the disadvantage a mana user faced when he was fighting a Ki user in close combat, to put it succinctly; Desmond was asking for a beating.

The only reason he hadn’t been hit until he was unable to recognize north from the south was that Mei hadn’t been using all of her strength, of course, that didn’t detract from Desmond’s efforts thus far. It was amazing enough that he managed to put up such a good fight with Mei with the use of his new abilities.

One has to know that under normal circumstances when a mana user faced a ki user they would never engage in close combat as it was no different than asking for death, so Desmond being able to pressure Mei was worthy of being praised.

Of course, Desmond didn’t feel that way and that was why he decided to change his approach, since close combat doesn’t work, Desmond would try to use his most powerful abilities as an Elementalist.

Taking a gigantic amount of core mana from him, Desmond didn’t hesitate to pour it all into one of the few abilities he knew would be effective against Mei.

“Feel the weight of the world on your shoulders ”

By the time Mei realized what Desmond was doing it was already too late, small puddles of water formed on the ground around Mei from which dozens of chains made of water shot out.

These chains seemed to be alive and quickly wrapped around Mei’s body before these began to restrain her as they crawled up her body like snakes.

The sudden turn of events left the audience surprised but also quite frustrated because even though the chains seemed to be made of water, these didn′t wet Mei’s clothes, which prevented the scenario in the minds of many men.

As for the sexy scene of seeing Mei chained uptight? This never happened as the chains barely managed to restrain Mei’s tyrannical physical power as she constantly burst and deformed the chains that bound her before new chains emerged from the ground to further restrain Mei.

Holding on with all his mental strength to control over the chains, Desmond began to burn through the rest of his mana reserves preparing to deliver his most powerful blow yet.

Mei tried with all her might to free herself when she noticed the maelstrom of wind that formed around Desmond but as she had experienced in the past, the chains that now bound her were too difficult to break; after all, restraining people like her with inordinate physical strength was the specialty of these chains.

Therefore, Mei could only continue fighting the chains as she watched as the maelstrom of wind around Desmond only intensified as multiple rings of ultra-condensed wind formed on Desmond’s four limbs who had used to push his control over mana beyond his limits to execute this ability.