PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

To emerge victoriously, one had to constantly overpower the opponent, preventing them from gathering any additional mana and eventually depleting their mana pool.

Desmond’s opponents followed this ideology throughout the battle, constantly harassing Desmond with all sorts of attacks, trying to eventually wear him down and corner him.

The invading soldiers made a massive mistake in all of this, as they completely ignored a self-explanatory item on the battlefield; the barrier of water behind Desmond.

One of the main reasons Desmond was forced on the defensive for most of the battle was his need to protect Cecilia and the children at the orphanage.

But the tables turned utterly the moment Cecilia erected her own barrier. From then on, the massive wall of water ceased to be a drain on Desmond’s mana reserves and control instead of becoming an enormous source of power ready to be tapped.

Every drop of mana Desmond was able to muster during the few minutes of the fight so far was poured into the barrier, enough mana to drive Desmond insane now that he had it at his disposal.

All that aquatic mana turned into a whirlwind was not something that could be brought down by the attacks launched by the two knights and the soldiers that accompanied them. Hundreds of tiny threads of mana shot out of the vortex, quickly covering Desmond’s arms, intertwining and condensing into two gauntlets.

Now that he had all of his attention and control focused on a single point, the time Desmond needed to unleash was many times shorter than anyone could have hoped.

.....

The grin on Desmond’s face turned aggressive and excited; not having to care so deeply for the safety of others had lifted an enormous load from Desmond’s shoulders. Desmond was now coming down like a blue meteor on his enemies, charging behind him a gigantic whirlwind of water as awake.

The only thing that could be heard before the impact was the thirsty laughter of a man whose chains had been removed, followed by a verse they could not understand.

“God’s mistake, drag them into your domain, let their sins sink under the sea, ready to be eaten. ”

Using a verse strongly related to the leviathan myth as a catalyst and control mantra, Desmond could barely channel the ridiculous amount of mana behind him into an ability he hadn’t mastered yet.

Upon impact, Desmond slammed both fists into the ground in a mauling motion while the miniature leviathans inside the gauntlets went wild with excitement, roaring with ferocity.

For the first time since developing the series of skills, Desmond was able to feel what it was like to indeed carry the fury of the seas, and with him as the epicenter, a gigantic tsunami swept everything in its path with overwhelming momentum.

None of the soldiers could take the blow, with more than half falling unconscious from the concussion and the other half too injured to get up from the ground after being hit and thrown dozens of meters away.

On the other hand, although they also took a heavy hit, the two knights still managed to withstand the brunt of the attack by burning through much of their mana reserves to defend themselves.

Unfortunately for both knights, Desmond was just getting started, and they soon realized how naive they were to be momentarily pleased when they resisted what they believed to be Desmond’s ultimate.

Not that it was their fault either, they had no way of knowing that Desmond’s ability was never designed to be a killing attack and only seemed that way because of the ridiculous amount of mana Desmond ended up pouring into it.

However, the skill was designed with entirely different intentions than both knights expected and was nothing more than a precursor to a whole world of pain.

“”

Then it was the turn of others to have shackles on them, although these were not figuratively. Both knights noticed the water reaching up to their ankles only when their bodies were tightly restrained by chains.

It turned out that after the initial hit of , all of the water mana that swept across the battlefield like a tsunami hadn’t dissipated after the attack and instead formed a sort of water disk on the ground.

With a radius of almost thirty meters and a height of forty centimeters, the water disc covered the entire battlefield, but the disc itself was not dangerous. The unconscious soldiers were drowning in it, but the disk was not there for offensive purposes and instead functioned as an ability catalyst for Desmond.

Desmond could cast water abilities from the disk, using it as a shallow mana pool; thus, Desmond reduced the time to release power and gained greater mana efficiency. Therefore maintaining the consumption of its internal energy reserves until all the mana on the disk was depleted.

In essence, was a field combat type ability like those seen in RPGs, but it had some drawbacks that made its use quite risky despite its theoretical effectiveness.

The main problems with this ability were, obviously, the enormous mana consumption required for its activation, which resulted in an incredibly long cast time and the possibility of interference or even use by other mana users of the same element.

After all, once Desmond turned the disk into an external mana source, it became possible for other water users to fight for control of it or steal mana from it. It was a shame that the only decent water user in the place would now be found dead without even an intact corpse.

It’s not like other mana users were defenseless either; the earth knight was using a defensive barrier to try and repel Desmond’s chains showing a pretty high degree of success.

The weight behind his mana was restrictive enough to counter Desmond’s chains but not strong enough to completely repel the attack, so the earth knight was thrown into a tug-of-war between his barrier and Desmond’s chains.

On the other hand, Desmond watched with interest the knight’s resistance as his chains restrained and suffocated the rest of the knights. Still, Desmond had perhaps underestimated the fire knight, who found himself subdued by Desmond’s attack for only a brief moment before exploding in a gigantic flame that evaporated the chains that bound him.

The sheer intensity of the flames around the knight even burned away some of the water mana around him, thus reducing Desmond’s external mana reserves. Unfortunately for the knight, his burst of power, while significant, was not something he could sustain in the long run.

Soon, hundreds of water chains under Desmond’s guidance, who controlled them with his hands as if they were another limb, relentlessly charged at the burning man until the fire was extinguished and the man subdued once more.

The smile on Desmond’s face grew a couple of notches as his intent strengthened as a set of chains emerged from the ground under his feet, wrapping around Desmond’s arms. The last link in the chains was held in the jaws of the leviathans in Desmond’s gauntlets, and soon an endless stream of metallic mana flowed through the chains in his hands to those that directly encircled his enemies.

From restraint to suppression, the weight and solidity of the chains increased exponentially, quickly tightening their grip on the earth knight, whose defenses were beginning to collapse. While unnecessary, said effect extended over the restraints over everyone else present on the battlefield.

Then, Desmond went from suppression to annihilation, each of the links becoming not only solid but razor-sharp, slowly cutting and penetrating the flesh of those under his shackles.

“I expected more resistance.”

Leaving a disappointing comment to be heard by the few people aware, Desmond turned and crossed his arms over each other, continually tangling the chains between them until both arms were tied tightly together.

With both arms wrapped in chains in front of him, the entire muscular structure from wrists to shoulders and back swelled from the strain generated by the exertion made by Desmond, who seemed to want to burst the chains now restraining his arms.

“Tremble, succumb, crumble under the weight of the world. <Atlas – Unchained and Shattered."

As the space between Desmond’s arms widened, the shackles around his opponents tightened no matter how much which lay beneath its restraint crumbled. The cracks of links snapping reverberated in unison with the crunch of limbs snapped, flesh being brutally torn, and the water under Desmond’s feet turning crimson even before his ability execution had finished.

Desmond’s body relaxed for a moment, and the links between his arms stopped creaking, nothing more than a momentary calm, a cruel mockery, and a fleeting hope for those who were still alive... Then with one last tug, the chains burst, just as everything that used to be enveloped by these did.