Elemental Cats

Scrael and the Stone Demon stared at each other. Purple lightning began flickering around Scrael's body, and sparks flew off her fur.

The Stone Demon was doing the opposite of Scrael as it retracted the demonic energy that swirled around it. After withdrawing all its energy, the Stone Demon really looked like nothing more than a stone statue. Even its eyes looked as if they were carved from stone, despite the feeling of life coming from them.

The mana around Scrael kept building, and the Stone Demon's body grew more rigid as it slowly took a defensive stance. It seemed as if it wasn't the Stone Demon's first time facing someone with the lightning element. Or maybe it was just a cautious demon.

But to Scrael, it didn't matter what kind of stance the demon took. None of her previous targets hadn't been able to defend themselves merely by holding their arms upright in front of their bodies and widening their legs. Even if her previous targets had managed to defend themselves before she could attack them, they hadn't been able to resist her attacks.

Although the Stone Demon's imposing calm and sturdy, muscled body spoke of its toughness, Scrael didn't have a reason to think that the Stone Demon would be impervious to her attacks. But she still played it safe and charged her body with more lightning than usual.

Eventually, Scrael decided it was enough. The Stone Demon looked like it could wait forever, but Scrael was getting impatient and eager to unleash the lightning surging around her body, filling her with energy and urging her to attack the Stone Demon.

Her body, almost ablaze with white-tinted purple lightning, twitched. Scrael flew forward like a beam of light, increasing her speed with each step she took. But due to the distance between herself and the Stone Demon, she only managed to land twice before she reached her target. An afterimage of a lightning bolt hung in the air in the path that Scrael traveled.

But the thunderclap that rang out when she arrived blasted away the afterimage.

Scrael hugged the ground closely as she zipped past the Stone Demon, lashing out with her prosthetic leg and swiping it against the Stone Demon's calf.

Scrael stopped a few meters behind the Stone Demon and looked down at her prosthetic paw. She flexed it to make sure it wasn't damaged by controlling the mana inside, and then she turned her gaze to her throbbing shoulder.

She couldn't feel things with her prosthetic leg directly, but the sensation of impact traveled up to where her real leg ended. And her attack didn't feel like it had succeeded. At all.

Scrael was confused since it was the first time she felt so unsatisfied after attacking someone with close to her full strength.

However, the momentary burst of confusion was interrupted by pellet-sized gravel piercing through the air straight toward Scrael's head. Scrael heard the air whistling and instinctively dodged, only to see another burst of stones out of the corner of her eye.

Scrael stopped focusing on useless things and roused her lightning to dodge the repeated bursts of gravel targeted at her head.

Since her first attack had been useless, Scrael wanted to try again, but when she tried to get close, a dense shower covered the Stone Demon's surroundings, preventing anything from approaching it.

Scrael and the Stone Demon were in a stalemate. Scrael couldn't approach the demon, and even if she could, she couldn't injure it. But the Stone Demon couldn't hit Scrael with its gravel. Scrael was at a loss for what to do, but she didn't stop moving. She continued to dodge the Stone Demon's attacks while looking for an opening. Unfortunately, every opening was too small for her to make use of, and even if she could get through an opening in the Stone Demon's curtain of gravel, she didn't have the confidence to do more than scratch its skin.

However, Scrael quickly realized that the Stone Demon prevented her from approaching, even when it took a lot of its stone attribute demonic energy to do it, so she guessed that it had to have some kind of weakness. Thinking that maybe it couldn't attack and defend at the same time, Scrael kept looking for an opening she could use.

Thinking that she had found a way to beat the demon, Scrael grew more confident, and her aimless dodging changed. Instead of simply avoiding the next hail of gravel that came her way right before it struck her, Scrael continuously increased her speed and ran around the demon.

As she increased her speed, Scrael also began building a trail of lightning behind her, filling the area with the hum of electricity and the purple light of her magic.

Running made it easier for her to control the magic, and Scrael almost ended up entering a trance as she solely focused on increasing the power of her magic and her speed in order to make use of one of the openings that the Stone Demon habitually revealed.

As she continued building her magic, it eventually stopped expanding. The sparks and bolts of lightning escaping her control and striking the ground lessened in number. Instead, her fur started glistening, and her eyes began glowing with a purple light.

Scrael turned into a cat of lightning as she continued concentrating and compressing her magic into her body, focusing all of its power on enhancing her speed.

However, she began losing control of herself. It was hard to keep up, and she started moving faster than she could handle. The lightning buzzing through her eyes reinforced her sight as well, but she still moved so fast that everything she saw turned into blurry lines. The only thing still clear was the Stone Demon, who continued flinging gravel around itself. It had given up trying to hit Scrael directly since she moved faster than it could see.

It seemed like the Stone Demon didn't have any intentions of changing its means of attack. Probably since if it let up on the storm of stone around itself, it would open up for Scrael to attack it. But it didn't mean that the Stone Demon didn't have any other ways of attacking or defending itself, so Scrael didn't let down her guard, even if her mind was consumed with the exhilaration of running faster than she could see.

But since she was gradually losing control of herself, Scrael decided it was time to make use of the lightning she had accumulated inside herself and do more than simply run around.

However, now that the Stone Demon was more intent on defending itself rather than attacking, it had decreased both the number and the duration of the openings it revealed.

As Scrael focused all her attention on the Stone Demon's every move, time seemed to slow down, herself being the only exception. The gravel flew through the air like dandelion seeds. Scrael even felt like she could see the air itself move.

It was a mystifying feeling, and Scrael was about to lose herself in it when she remembered the Stone Demon. With how she saw the world now, landing an attack with all her might wouldn't be a problem.