By Zephyria Leonardo, flicking his perfectly dried blonde hair as if he had never been wet, smiled brightly. Hugo frowned at him as he looked down at him.
Andreas stared alternately with wide eyes at Hugo’s ice wall, which had its lower part blown away, and at Leonardo, who was shining through the surging steam that had escaped from within. Before long, what flowed out of his mouth was pure admiration.
“Did he decompose the water and cause an explosion in that short amount of time?”
Before the explosion, it seemed that the reason why bubbles were rising from the bars was because of that.
But if he had faced that level of explosion at close range, he would never have been without damage, but he was standing on his own two feet and looking so relaxed, so Andreas was inwardly curious about what kind of guy he was.
At Andreas’s words, Hugo, who was looking at the black fragments that had been pushed out by the explosion, gathered ice crystals in his hand and created a long ice spear.
“The non-melting bars rather played the role of a solid catalyst.”
The ability to use his own abilities and surrounding objects, and the formidable destructive magic. The scene of the guy with all of that standing openly in the middle of the imperial capital was a dangerous sight that felt quite unrealistic.
Eventually, as the feared thing happened, Hugo immediately grabbed the ice spear and rushed to him below. He had to end it as quickly as possible so that the scale of the damage would not increase further. If the guy recognized the citizens of the imperial capital as hostages, the Council would have no choice but to release him in order to protect the citizens.
Leonardo quietly watched Hugo’s movements as he flew fiercely towards him. Because he couldn’t use teleportation in the imperial capital, there were restrictions on combat, but rather, thanks to that, he had a better chance of winning because he was a little more advantageous in terms of speed.
Thinking so, he was about to lightly dodge Hugo’s approaching ice spear when tree trunks bulged out from under his feet and wrapped around his ankles with great force.
Leonardo, who was momentarily flustered, immediately tried to tear it off, but the trunk was quite tough and solid, and it was woven with several strands, so it couldn’t be easily torn off at once.
In the meantime, even without raising his head, he felt the coldness of Agrizendro, who had already come close, directly above his head. Leonardo immediately created fierce flames to burn the tree trunks and then flew to the side with all his might.
Kwaaaang!
The ground was deeply dug and the stone floor was split in two, and Hugo’s spear was deeply embedded in the spot. As Leonardo barely escaped the attack, Andreas, who had grabbed his ankle with tree trunks, looked at his burned trunks with regret and muttered.
“The compatibility is too bad.”
At that time, Leonardo, who had escaped from the crisis, quickly rolled his eyes and began to look for Andreas’s magic. Then, before long, he found him on the ice wall and changed his target and rushed towards that place.
As the terrifying guy suddenly looked at him and rushed at him, Andreas hurriedly grew the vines that surrounded the ice wall, snatching one of Leonardo’s arms and legs as he flew vertically at high speed along the surface of the wall.
Of course, because his movements were so fast, even if he grabbed him with trunks, they would break off powerlessly and he would miss him, but because he twisted several strands together, the durability became quite strong, so it was somewhat effective in slowing down his speed.
But even so, Leonardo didn’t seem to care at all, forcibly pulling on the tree trunk tied to his arm and trying to climb up. However, at some point, the thickness of the vine coiling around his body became distinctly different from before, and soon after, he came to an abrupt stop in mid-air as if being pulled by a taut rope.
Frowning at being stopped against his will once again, he immediately created a flaming sword that blazed in his hand. Then, without hesitation, he swung it wildly, cutting down the surrounding stems lurking around him.
The vines coiling around his arm were helplessly sliced by the glowing flaming sword, but the more he did so, the faster the vines below grew, climbing up his legs and binding him tightly. As the speed of cutting down gradually failed to keep up with the speed of the vines growing, soon the lush green vines covered Leonardo’s body as if swallowing him whole.
“Shit, annoying.”
He gritted his teeth and struggled, resisting incessantly.
As the time he struggled unexpectedly lengthened, he became impatient, and even in the midst of this, he felt a chilling coldness approaching from behind.
Leonardo, trying to calm his agitated breathing, took a short breath and looked down at his legs held by the vines.
‘I need to unlock the shackles on my ankles to do something, but now that the iron bars are broken, there’s no way there’s anything stronger…’
He couldn’t bring himself to kick the iron bars to unlock what was tied to his ankles, like when he unlocked the Magic Stone handcuffs on his wrists, because he thought his legs wouldn’t survive.
Luckily, the shackle on his right ankle was blown away by the explosion earlier, but a large Magic Stone chunk was still hanging on his left ankle.
Normally, he wouldn’t have struggled this much with just one shackle like this, but it was his first time using this much magic in the Imperial Palace, so he didn’t know that magic control would hold him back this much.
As the control overlapped, he couldn’t even burn these tree trunks at once, and his flight speed was significantly slowed down, so he thought that if he couldn’t unlock the shackles as he was, he would be caught soon without any meaning in coming out.
At that moment, Hugo’s blue ice spear flying quickly was reflected in Leonardo’s eyes as he instinctively turned around.
It was also at that point that an idea came to him.
The ice wall he was hanging on, tied to the tree trunks, had only its lower part burst even with the hydrogen explosion that blew away the solid iron bars, and it was still towering high and magnificent. So, if it was as solid as this ice, he might be able to break the Magic Stone shackles wrapped around his ankles.
If he added the acceleration of going straight ahead at full speed, the probability would be more than half.
As the ice reaper that would free him from the shackles gradually approached, Leonardo’s heart beat violently. As he approached, the air brushing against his skin felt cold and sharp, and in the midst of that, he laughed at himself for daring to use him.
‘Surely my ankles won’t be cut off, right?’
Just as he was briefly worried, Hugo, exuding cold air with a fierce face, came right in front of him in the blink of an eye.
The moment Hugo raised the ice spear high and tried to strike down at him,
Leonardo cut off some of the vines wrapping around his legs with the flaming sword, and at the same time, he deliberately pushed his ankles towards where the sharp spearhead was pointing.
Crack―!
The ice spear pierced into the middle of the thick and solid ice wall, deeply stabbing the thick tree trunks clustered around it. Then, whitish tree sap flowed thickly from the vicinity, and a gruesome crack went through the penetrated wall behind the tangled stems.
A small piece of cloth torn from somewhere and the Magic Stone shackle were shaking together, stuck on the penetrating spearhead.
Hugo exhaled the breath he had momentarily stopped.
He frowned deeply at the faint red blood on the spearhead stuck in the wall. Then, he gritted his teeth and roughly pulled out the spear.
“Reckless bastard.”
If there was anything physically advantageous in the fight with him, it was his light movements and fast speed. The speed at which he penetrated towards the target instantaneously was among the top three when compared to other mages he had felt were strong so far.
But even if he was so confident in his speed, deliberately sticking the shackles tied to his ankles into his spearhead was something he couldn’t even imagine.
If he hadn’t changed direction, his ankles might have been completely cut off. It seemed he had taken a dangerous gamble against him to unlock the Magic Stone, but it was literally too reckless.
When he raised his head, the guy who was freed from the shackles and liberated was already flying far into the sky. Perhaps because all the restraints that suppressed his abilities had disappeared, he easily burned the stalks that followed with a much faster speed and quickly climbed up.
Hugo frowned at the reckless guy who didn’t seem to care about the injury. Soon, feeling completely caught up in the guy’s extraordinary actions, he immediately chased after him.