Abyssal Awakening

\'Cayla helps her kinetic vision to the point she can practically react to anything within her sight so long as her body is able to keep up. The blood she keeps around her blocks out Sigil abilities to an extent while her instincts and reaction help her counter. She\'s practically the perfect counter for every Hunter.\' Ria thought with a bitter smile.

But Alice wasn\'t invincible.

There were gaps that she\'ll be able to exploit but the key is to create that opening!

Ria jumped back and surrounded herself with lightning lances as she remembered the training she had with Kaden.

###

"Listen up brat. The power of lightning is fast and destructive. When people see lightning, they think of speed. Generally, they will tell you that you have two options of attack. Either reinforcing your own body or the method I\'m showing you. Ranged attacks." Kaden explained as he created a strand of shadow to mimic lightning.

Flicking his wrist, he sent the bolt forward and in the blink of an eye, it crashed into the mountain in the distance, creating a large cavity.

"Personally, I like to say that there are three types of usage to lightning. Reinforcement, displacement and discharge. But that\'s based on what I\'ve seen thus far so if you can figure out more that\'s on you. First of all, reinforcement is something you do already on a very basic level.

"Enhancing your body with lightning to increase your speed. Displacement is similar to what you do with the Leviathan Sigil, you swap places with your lightning bolts. The power of teleportation.

"Discharge is what I\'m teaching you now, a method to gather your power and discharge it in one go to achieve maximum speed and power."

Demonstrating the different techniques using his shadows, Kaden was surprisingly patient and meticulous with his demonstration as Ria observed every detail.

"Before we move to the next part of the lesson, any questions?" Kaden asked, noticing the light of curiosity and eagerness burning in Ria\'s eyes.

"I know you want me to learn ranged combat but are there more methods to Reinforcement? You said I\'m doing it on a basic level, but Grandfather and Allura never taught me more." Ria asked.

*Sigh…

"I\'m not a reinforcement user so there is a limit to what I can tell you. Allura is a reinforcement expert since close-quarters combat is pretty much all she does. As for that brat you call a grandfather… I believe he is a Discharge user like me. But putting that aside, show me how you reinforce your body for now."

Following his instructions, Ria stood up and coated her body with lightning. Sparks crackled across her body as her hair flared back from the fluctuation of energy around her.

Standing next to her, Kaden placed his hand on her shoulder as shadows erupted from the ground and wrapped around her.

"You\'re wasting too much of your power on reinforcement. Try to contain everything within the vessel known as your body. If you want to achieve greater efficiency in reinforcement, you\'ll need to first control the flow of power within you without leaking."

###

Narrowing her eyes, Ria started to draw lightning towards her body as she could feel the pain flowing through her body.

\'More. I need to prevent the power from leaking out. If I have the power of lightning, I need to have the reaction to wield it. I need to supercharge my body so I can keep up with Alice\'s kinetic vision!\'

*RUMBLE!!!!

Dark clouds loomed around the Crescent Crown Arena as bolts of lightning struck around the arena.

Seeing this, Alice felt a chill down her spine as she immediately conjured several spears coated in violet flames.

She needed to watch out for Ria\'s teleportation and react accordingly.

\'Ria can teleport to bolts of lightning. If I create a zone of blood around each bolt that I can see, I should be able to narrow down her options.\' Narrowing her eyes, Alice snapped her finger.

The swirl of blood that surrounded her dissipated into blood mist that started to spread through the arena. Her instincts told her that Ria was about to attack!

*Crackle!

Instantly turning her head to the right, Alice sent a dagger towards the bolt of lightning that pierced down.

However, Ria only appeared briefly before disappearing!

\'She\'s teleported twice!\'

Gritting her teeth, Alice jumped down from the thread before looking up.

But what she saw exceeded even her wildest expectations!

Countless bolts of lightning struck towards her as each one seemed to hold a mirage of Ria.

Even with the help of Cayla, Alice found it impossible to distinguish the real from the fake. With no other choice, she could only resort to a brute force method!

Swinging on a thread, Alice created several spears of blood and launched them towards the different bolts of lightning in a desperate attempt to force Ria to react.

But every single spear phased through Ria as they were all fake! The real one was never amongst the group.

Realising this fact, Alice barely managed to turn her head in time to see Ria waiting below her.

Flickers of lightning seemed to flash past her eyes but all of the energy was contained within her body.

Ria\'s left palm was held out, aiming towards Alice while her fist was pulled back and ready to punch forward.

Even if she was to spread out her blood right now to cancel the effects of Ria\'s lightning, she would still be hit by the punch and the gap brought forth by this hit was more than enough for Ria to finish her off.

Smiling bitterly, Alice understood that in this spar, Ria had won.

But just because she knew this didn\'t mean she wasn\'t going to try!

Letting out a shout, Alice aimed her hand towards Ria and created a wave of chains while flames roared forth in defiance. Yet Ria was faster.

*BANG!!!

In a single strike, her lightning crashed through the chains and shattered them into pieces as the force of her punch slammed into Alice\'s chest, sending her crashing towards the pillars.

Teleporting away before the flames could reach her, Ria followed up with a spear of lightning that was ready to pierce Alice\'s chest but stopped herself since this was just a spar.

"Seems like it would\'ve ended a bit differently if this was a real fight rather than a spar." Ria chuckled as Alice had aimed her index and middle finger towards Ria\'s neck.

The motion for gathering power to perform a Void Flux.

"If this was a real fight you would\'ve used your Resonance and finished me off earlier." Alice sighed, understanding that this was her loss. She had the option of Void Flux but it wasn\'t as though Ria had used everything she\'s got.

Both had trump cards left and there was no reason for a spar to be so serious to the point they had to unleash their strongest attacks.

"Same could be said for you. But urg… I didn\'t think trying the reinforcement that Kaden taught me would be so taxing." Ria groaned, collapsing on her back as the lighting faded from her body.

While she was able to reinforce and enhance her body with her orbs of lightning before, the method Kaden taught her brought forth better results yet the stress it placed upon her was far greater.

It showed her how flawed her previous method was with how much energy she was wasting.

\'With my old method, not even five orbs reinforcing my body would be enough to pull off that last attack. But with the new method, just the energy of one orb at maximum efficiency was enough to outperform what I was doing before.\' Ria thought to herself.

The knowledge and experience Kaden held as an Abyss Lord was clear as day. Just one lesson with him improved her power by a visible margin to the point she was even able to overwhelm Alice who had the help of Cayla.

"Was that the last move you showed?" Alice asked curiously as Ria had never shown a move like that before.

"Mnm. Yeah it is. Anyway, let\'s go get some food shall we? I just want to eat a fat meal then go to sleep. Too tired to do other crap." Ria laughed as Alice helped her back on her feet.

"Any preferences for what you want to eat tonight? I lost so I\'ll see if I can find us a place to eat."

"Ohou~ Let\'s see… How about some grilled meats? After a hard fought victory I want to sink my teeth into some meat." Ria asked with an excited light in her eyes.

"Should be possible if we look around a little. This is a large city with one of the best Academies after all." Alice chuckled.

While the two were discussing what they wanted for dinner, Miki was completely silent having witnessed their full spar.

She had completely lost track of Ria during her last attack! Had she not seen this and fought Ria, she would\'ve been eliminated by Ria at that exact moment.

In fact, she doubted that there was anyone in the Combat Department that could match Ria\'s last attack except for the those at the very top. And even then, it felt like a coin flip whether or not they\'ll be able to counter.

\'Anomalies! They\'re anomalies! What kind of low rank Hunter showcases power like this!?!?!\' Miki cried out in her mind as her standard for how powerful a Hunter should be was completely shattered.