Spirit Soul

While advancing ahead, the young Aeroa's speed was so high that his wings cut the surrounding branches.

His speed was extremely high and exceeded Kyle's by far and large.

As such, there was no way for him to use his biggest advantage to the fullest.

This was quite annoying, but Kyle didn't allow this to affect his mindset.

Instead, he calmly looked at the young man in front of him before shooting out the compressed crescent wind blades the moment the Aeroa reached Kyle's range.

While two wind blades were thrown in a curve at the young Aeroa to reach his abdomen that pointed towards the ground, the remaining two wind blades shot upward, leaving the view of the Aeroa merely a moment later.

Kyle didn't stay idle either as he jumped backward without losing sight of the foe that was staring at him with cold eyes.

As he made use of his wind affinity, Kyle didn't directly fall to the ground the moment he missed the tree branch he wanted to reach.

The distance he had to cross had been several meters but luckily he found an empty space and jumped towards it, causing the Aeroa to look at him in confusion.

In fact, the young Aeroa had issues focusing on Kyle, the wind blades that curved upward after Kyle had shot them below him, and the other two wind blades that had been shot towards the top of the biggest tree.

Forced to reduce the numerous things he had to pay attention to as it was distracting, he reverted his attention to controlling his own wind affinity expertly and ignored the wind blades that had left his sight.

He even forgot them for a few seconds the moment he noticed that Kyle had jumped into an empty space.

It had made him believe that his opponent wanted to flee.

Yet, contrary to his expectations, Kyle made a second jump from the empty space.

This astonished the young Aeroa only to sense a paper-thin compressed platform of wind that Kyle had manifested.

'He can even do that?'

For those who were unable to fly, fighting against the ginormous gravitational force was extremely difficult.

Even most Aeroa were unable to fly without the use of their wings, at least not without having reached the Krysal stage and experience of several years with the use of the wind affinity!

However, owing to the fact that most Aeroa awoke their wind affinity at the Vitae stage the earliest, and on average at the Krysal stage, the young Aeroa, whose only pride was his early awoken wind affinity had been completely shattered.

He had not expected to meet someone as good as him in making use of his affinity.

Both Kyle and the young Aeroa faced each other, knowing that they were proficient in the wind affinity while having awoken it at a very low cultivation base.

Thus, they were supposed to be even more vigilant of each other's affinity usage and proficiency.

Yet, what the young Aeroa seemed to ignore was to learn how to multitask other than the usage of one's own movements, including the utilization of the wind affinity.

Being able to use martial art techniques, while flying and using an affinity was taxing on the mind as it required superior multi-tasking skills.

Nevertheless, there was far more someone would require to become a prodigious combatant, including great observation skills of the opponent's actions, predicting their moves, and coming up with counterattacks.

The latter would allow a proper combatant to create a plan that was supposed to work against the scheming of one's opponent.

Unfortunately, this was something the young Aeroa had missed out on the moment he forgot about the existence of the two wind blades Kyle had shot towards the treetop.

After evading the two compressed crescent wind blades that reached the Aeroa from below, he even destroyed one with the use of the dagger that had manifested in his hand.

This had been much harder than initially presumed, causing his wrist to hurt as the compressed wind blade didn't shatter even after colliding with the dagger.

The wind blade had continued to advance, forcing the young Aeroa to use far more strength than he had wanted to make use of.

'These wind blades are far more durable than ordinary ones!'

His final conclusion was pretty simple.

The attack that had seemed ordinary was compressed and on par with the materialization of his own wind affinity around his wings.

Upon understanding this clearly, the young Aeroa kept his gaze fixated on the second wind blade that changed its trajectory before shooting towards the back of the Aeroa.

With a smooth turn, the Aeroa manifested a total of ten ordinary wind spikes that were around the size of an adult human's forearm before he shot them at the wind blade.

Despite colliding one after another on the blades, only the eighth wind spike was able to break the second wind blade, allowing the young Aeroa to sigh in relief.

However, it was only a moment later that he realized something important that made him curse out loud.

"Fuck!! I lost him!"

Losing sight of one's opponent was extremely bad, to put it simply.

It not only allowed Kyle to flee but also to change his position in order to initiate a counterattack.

While he would never flee from the battle against the opponent in front of him, the latter was something Kyle had expertly managed to do.

Additionally, there were still two wind blades that had been shot towards the treetop of a specific tree!

Materializing several platforms of compressed wind currents on which Kyle was able to run freely, he made the young Aeroa stare at him in shock.

The Cultivator was able to sense the energy fluctuations of the newly materialized wind platforms and instinctively knew that Kyle was about to launch an attack.

But instead of attacking directly, Kyle manifested a seemingly simple ball of wind currents within his robe before shooting it to his right.

Through this, his robe was pulled away from him before being revealed to the young Aeroa, who instinctively shot newly materialized wind spikes at the already punctured robe.

To his misfortune, it was only a moment later that he realized that the masked man was not even inside the robe anymore.

A fraction of a second later, Kyle emerged from the left side of the same tree with strong wind currents that were enveloping him.

Using the muscles in his body to the fullest, he pushed himself up from the branch into the air.

Catapulting towards the young Aeroa, Kyle manifested two more highly compressed wind blades that shot out to the right and left.

Their designated target was the green feathered wings of the Aeroa.

Kyle knew that the wind blades wouldn't be able to cut off the wings as they were enveloped in distinct wind currents of his opponent that acted as an added layer of protection.

However, that was not what they were ought to do, to begin with.

Using himself as an additional distraction, Kyle also made use of the two wind blades as bait in order to prevent the Aeroa from hearing what was about to happen.

Reaching the spot near the large tree Kyle had picked as the spot to launch his surprise attack, he readied himself while the Aeroa was still oblivious to what was about to happen.

Initially, the young man would have never expected that a being at the Low Vitae stage was able to fight against him, the most hardworking Aeroa, who had already reached the Peak of the Vitae stage.

It made him angry as his own weak points were clearly visible, and his talent to cultivate and to fight in an overwhelming manner was challenged!

As such, he didn't hesitate to shoot towards Kyle, as a second small dagger manifested in his free hand.

Dozens of wind spikes emerged around him as he shouted out in rage the moment he instructed the wind spikes to pierce through Kyle.

"DIEEE!!"

The wind spikes shot towards Kyle, but all of a sudden a bright silver shining blade was unsheathed as he cut through the few wind spikes that reached him.

Even though it looked like he was moving with the speed of a snail, Kyle's movements with the Starbreaker Katana were extremely smooth and fluidic.

It looked almost as if he was dancing gracefully, never missing a step as he was not even required to materialize new wind platforms to step on while advancing.

This caused the envy and rage of the young Aeroa to only increase, and it was almost as if he was losing his sense of reasoning.

Having endured the pressure of working relentlessly only to be barely considered semi-prodigious by his own race for several years had already been annoying. And to rub salt on his wounds, someone who didn't even have the training or resources as him was giving him a tough time.

After all, everyone knew that he had no talent, no power, no connection, not even money as he had to use every single bit of the fortunes he procured in order to strengthen himself.

Since he had begun to socialize with his peers, there had not even been a single day in which he had not been ridiculed for his non-existent talent, and there were only two times in which he had been happy.

Only two events had made him feel as if he was not trash, in his entire life of close to 20 years!

The first time was when he had awoken his wind affinity while breaking into the Vitae stage six years ago.

His control over it might have been extremely bad, and it took him a very long time to learn the basics of the foundation of his knowledge.

However, contrary to his peers, he had awoken his wind affinity, which meant that he had become someone, who was special, someone belonging to the minority!

Unfortunately, even that had not been enough to allow him to gain the respect he had hoped to receive from his peers.

But even then, he never gave up on himself and had patiently awaited his next opportunity, and the days when he was finally able to show everyone that he was far stronger and better than anyone else.

And it was as if the opportunity had walked to him on its own when the news about the mutated Licara flower seeds, and the Brawl had reached their kingdom.

It was almost as if this event had been created in order to nurture Kinan, the young Aeroa, to allow him to soar above everyone else!!

However, all of this seemed to have turned futile as the masked man didn't want to yield easily.

None of them wanted to die and lose what was important to them.

This caused the young Aeroa to grit his teeth as his entire life seemed to flash in front of his eyes, causing him to relive the countless memories in which he had been humiliated and treated like trash resurfaced in his mind.

This caused his anger to increase manifold as he was unable to hold back anymore.

"GIVE ME THE SEED!!"

It was just at this moment when Kian shouted out in anger, revealing his deepest emotions, that his eyes widened in shock as he heard a thunderous rumbling from above him.

He was giving his all to obtain what he desired, only to miss the most important of all- his observation ability of the surrounding.

At this exact moment, he looked up to see Kyle who was hovering a dozen meters away from the young man.

But his eyes gleamed brightly as he mumbled quietly to himself.

"Checkmate!"

Not even a second later, various huge and small branches that had been freshly cut fell from the huge tree, only to be followed by the two wind blades that the young Aeroa had forgotten about.

'Ohh…nooo!!'