664 10/11 2:53 (Autumn, Day, Midrar)
An invisible message was sent out from the Lunarian, taking advantage of the distraction caused by her temporary imprisonment to send a signal to her Mates unnoticed.
Her eyes meanwhile were examining the seven upright steel pillars that formed the boundaries of her cage, noting down the Runes inscribed on them with much higher interest before pulsing a Counterspell around her at the lowest setting, the one that disrupted only Attribute-having Magic.
The trap did not react as both the lightning and the steel pillars counted not as Manifested Matter but Natural one yet she did not increase the Potency of Counterspell to deal with the Runes that actually directed the lightning to form her cage was the simple fact that while she was certain some of them had the purpose to both Paralyze and create a Seal to contain her, others served to guide the lightning itself towards a stable form.
And without said Runes, the lines of electricity that stuck her in a single place would detonate, damaging and opening her up for further while, so long as she was inprisoned, her enemies would need to be extremely carefull of any large-scale or even particularly Energy-dense attacks or risk freeing her in advance themselves.
They probably intended to buy time to recover as much as possible and to be able to overwhelm her Status Alteration Nullification to inflict her both "Paralysis" and, more importantly, "Seal".
Luna watched the Runes, studying their placement only briefly before huffing, understanding that she could only see a small quantity of them with the rest buried as they were within their shafts, and considering that the seven pillars themselves looked exactly the same and she was unable to recognize their function or even which ones were true or false.
Having memorized the placement and looks of the Runes for later analysis, Luna concentrated towards the real threat of her current situation.
Not the being trapped in a single place while her enemies could prepare and recover for the next round, especially considering how they could not risk major attacks, or even the eventual overcoming of her Status Alteration Nullification reguarding the "Paralysis" that the Runes were trying to inflict on her that would cause a weakening of her Resistance to the Lightning-Attribute and slowing down.
No, the real threat was the application of the "Seal" Status Alteration on her and its effects to progressively weaken and then Seal her Skills entirely excluding her Unique one, her use of Energy, her ability to move and then even to think at all, Sealing her very Soul in place.
She highly doubted that he was able to ammass or manipulate enough Mana and Vital Energy to even reach at Sealing her use of Vital Mana but she could not be certain of the limit to his preparations or knowledge and even if her assumption was correct, she would be too limited under her new restrictions to fight back effectively in a one-on-one against an opponent that already possessed experience in how she fought.
And her fight would not be a one-on-one but at least a three-on-one, considering the one that constantly used her psychic powers to support her two opponents.
While she could interfere directly with the third one's Soul and stop her from interfering in this battle anymore or even to disrupt the Seal through the link between their two Souls, this would show all of her opponents the existence of said Link, thing that she didn't want to if she had any other way out.
And fortunately for her, she had already prepared another way out of her situation without resorting to something that her time traveler opponent was evident didn't know about, her influence over the Magic Eye-having one.
Before she actually executed her plan to escape the Seal, she first rose one of her legs before stomping down hard on the ground beneath her feet, causing not the noise of ground behind struck but of metal, the dirt being revealed to be now more like a broad slab of dense metal.
Not only that but as she noted the shockwave of her attack not only did not move the seven upright pillars but did not even reach them at all, stopping a small distance before them.
Casually she punched forward, her fist stopping against what looked to be nothing at all yet felt like an incredibly solid wall, electricity sparking around and in her fist, a second punch crashing down against the air with much greater strenght, causing it to flash bright yellow, revealing that in truth the Seal was composed by the seven pillars that created a sphere surrounding her body while reinforcing the ground beneath her feet and isolating the inside from the outside, physically at least considering how she could still feel and comunicate with her Mates.
Luna breathed in deeply a couple of times, noting how the quality and quantity of the air around her was slowly lowering, caused by the Lunarian rapidly consuming the air for her breathing, confirming the complete isolation of the barrier.
The white-haired one nodded to herself, her attention focused on studying the expressions on her opponents, noticing the unsurprised one on Mark's face and the slight insecurity on Grug's own, eliminating the last one from being the creator the more functional of the Runes involved.
Vital Mana flared around her body, trying to seep in the ground to find the limits of the sphere surrounding her only for it to being drained at a much higher rate than before, not only that but her Vital Mana was actually being redirected to fuel the barrier itself.
This made no sense as the drain of the ruin was far from significant enough to impact her active use of Vital Mana at such speed unless an additional function of the barrier itself was to concentrate and greatly amplify said anti-Vampire draining effect upon her.
Luna's body was enveloped in her Aura, her Vital Mana condensing within her own body as she launched a full force blow against the barrier again, causing its upper half to be completely illuminated, flickering for a brief instant before fully stabilizing, allowing Luna to feel the Vital Energy and Mana being drained away from the ruins to the steel pillars, fuiling them and confirming the link between them.
She stretched lightly, calculating out the speed and quantity of Energy that would be transfered to the pillars to repair the barrier, figuring out how much and how fast she would need to damage it to escape, however she had no idea about the amount of Energy currently stored within the ruin and so this method was way too risky to use this method and exhaust herself before her fight continued and giving her opponent more time.
Especially considering how she did not need to do this.
Under the attentive gazes of the two Humans, Luna showed them her rings, letting them see the irregularities within the gems before Summoning her Familiars, being carefull to show their now dull gems.
Instead of simply attacking the barrier with her Familiars, however, she simply grabbed the necklace hidden beneath her shirt and showed her opponents, being carefull to demonstrate the dullness of the gem at its mouth.
The two Humans were barely able to understand what she meant before a crash sounded down from one of the pillars, a mass of Black Blood shaped like a thinner, taller Luna attacking one of the pillars, grabbing it before starting to pull it up and away from the others.
Mark activated his Unique Skill, the World graying down again around him to stop the Familiar yet feeling himself being struck in place despite apparently nothing holding him.
He deactivated his Unique Skill, finally seeing the strands of Black Blood that, having been now destroyed, shifted back to their regular color instead of being transparent, turning towards the Lunarian, meeting her knowing smile.
"You can move during your stopped time, don't you? Yet you do not wear specialized Artifacts to allow them to move in stopped time nor can you grant anyone else the possibility of moving in stopped time." Luna calmly affirmed. "Conseguently your ability to move despite your clothes is not derived by your Aura as no Unique Skill depends on another Skill to be functional, especially one as rare as "Unleash Aura". In other words, your Skill automatically allows certain objects to move with you.
"It was easy for me to understand then, that the way your Unique Skill recognize if it can bring an object with you without damaging it is extremely simple to understand, it depends entirely on if an object offers in any way a resistance to your movements, and in that case I could just bound you with threads with no momentum nor force applied to it. To trap you, I just need to apply force on my threads the moment you start your Unique Skill."
Luna calmly affirmed, her eyes narrowing in the expression of a predator about to devour her prey as her Familiar-Image outside the barrier that grabbed the steel pillar finally was able to fully pull it up from the ground, taking advantage of the psychological attack launched by the Lunarian to start dragging it away from the ground and the rest of the pillars.
The further away from the rest it was, the more the barrier started to destabilize, flickering wildly around Luna.
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