The 100 Units Vali received from landing the lethal hit would have encouraged her to go with a follow-up attack, but she didn't.
Something didn't feel right, and she wasn't thinking about how Rias' had suddenly turned stiff right before she tackled him with her sweep.
No.
When she delivered her punch, which she launched with the intent to do damage to even someone who had guarded with Aura, there seemed to be... no feedback at all.
As everyone was well aware, Vali was an Energy Former, a healer in fact, as was dictated by her unique bloodline that gave out high doses of affinity to the aforementioned class to everyone related to her.
Vali herself was different though. Not only did she have an advanced Class, her Family Technique, which she had experimented on, and refined further, was troublesome to say the least, especially when paired with her ridiculous level of Class Branching into Form Using.
Cellular Supremacy, was its name.
As the name suggested, Vali could manipulate cells, particularly blood cells. However, such a description would be selling her capabilities short. With her technique, she could mass produce and alter anything that cells could make up. Flesh, bone, organs, blood.
When it came to healing, and modifying bodies, she was an expert, quite honestly, a freak of nature. And when she exercised her power on others, the things she could do, were beyond the realms of sane.
During combat, especially when Vali was fighting opponents with powerful Auras, she would build up a massive amount of cells, and then flesh, and compress it around her arms before drenching it in mana. Her blows would be five times as strong this way, her flesh just as tough, if not more, and if her opponents guarded with Aura, they wouldn't be able to cull much of the force of the blows, since Incarnations didn't guard against physical attacks.
All this said, seeing her attack do nothing, caused her some concern, especially since Rias wasn't using Perfect Aura yet.
The blue haired woman gazed at the young man as he slid off the front most glass pane before the pillar of fire, and hit the ground, his body suddenly managing to tear away from the rigid stance he had used prior to taking a beating. His torso was bare, as the armour that guarded it had been ripped off, and only the protection around his lower body remained.
'Hmm. I was right,' Vali thought as Rias stood. His young skin was blameless, and his flesh as well as bones didn't show any signs that they had been struck at all.
But wait.
There, on his left arm, the one covered by a long, dark bandage with glowing symbols on it...
'Hmmm?' Vali hummed with interest.
Rias' arm looked mangled, bent at a hideous angle, and with blood seeming to be leaking from it rather profusely. If Vali didn't know any better...
'That's what I thought would have happened when I struck his chest, even if it wouldn't be considered lethal by his standards...' she thought.
Then, to her surprise, the mangled arm began to fix itself. In one moment, it bent back into place, aligning itself with the other bones in Rias' arm.
Before Vali could take a full, second breath, the young man's arm looked as good new, no more blood spilling from it!
She wasn't the only who noticed this oddity though.
Skullius couldn't help but begin to theorise madly in his mind.
Did the damage Rias was supposed to take from Vali's punch to his chest transfer to that bandaged arm of his instead?
It seemed likely, but Rias didn't give them enough time to figure it out. Instead, he turned to stare at Gabel, and the man stared back.
There were no words spoken for a while.
Quite a long while, as far as things had been progressing.
Skullius felt the silence grow increasingly tense.
Was he missing something?
Even Vali seemed to understand what the stare down meant.
Rias scoffed, and finally broke the silence.
"To think..." he said, and paused before turning away from Gabel. "...I'll have to take you both a bit more seriously."
As he said so, a voracious Aura blew out of him like a natural mist, featuring a vile green hue as it rose. At the same time, Rias extended his bandaged hand out, and a pool of this Perfect Aura gathered into it before shaping itself into a... into a...
...!!!
Vali, Gabel, and Skullius dashed back to the dying lake warily, their eyes and senses gaping at the massive head of a deer that had just appeared beside Rias!
It was pristine, a dazzling white that almost seemed holy tainting its entirety up to the long, twisting horns that stretched over a ten meter span from both sides of its head!I think you should take a look at
What was this?!
Skullius couldn't quite understand what he was looking at. He had thought that it was Rias' Genuine Incarnation at first, but that couldn't be right. The green bellowing around him like a thick, venomous blanket couldn't possibly be what made this brilliant large head, floating in the air.
Was it Rias' technique then?
The deer, with even its eyes glowing bright like white lanterns, opened its mouth wide to reveal a deep darkness within from which nothing could be glimpsed, much less seen.
Then Rias, surprisingly began to explain.
"My ancestors, as I have come to know, made our technique a bit complex. The stronger a technique is, the more it may require some form of conditions to be satisfied. Body mutations. Changes to the core. Long periods of preparation. It can be anything, really. One of these conditions, for every EverSword member, is to make sure they visualise what they want from the Imagining Technique. What utilities they desire."
Everyone remained rooted in place, a bit enthralled by Rias' words.
Even Grutus and Liura who had chosen to watch from afar, from the cliff, seemed stunned, and a fair bit frightened by the way Rias spoke.
"My older brother, Reon, was quite fond of swords, even though our Imagining Technique doesn't conform to a specific Class. I admired him, before he left us, and then... I found myself crafting something in his honour..."
...!
From the dark maw of the deer's mouth, the tip of a curved sword peeked, before soundlessly slipping out to fall into Rias' hands.
He looked solemn as he grasped the thick bladed saber in his hand; its blade nearly as thick as both his arms combined, and its hilt quite thick, such that he couldn't fully grasp it.
Skullius gawked at the sword with Crude Vision.
"You've got to be kidding me!" he voiced, beyond terrified.
The others seemed to be just as bewildered as him, but just didn't saw anything.
The blade was a distinct black, with a series of white eyes that blinked visibly on its surface. Instead of a cross guard, it had thick, silvery furs stuck between the hilt, and the blade, with three rings of light floating around this shaggy fur!
For some reason, maybe because unlike the others here, he was the only one to come across something like it, the Hybrid Luman sensed a stack of vivid presences similar to Baddan's around this sword!
Could this... could this mean...?
Rias raised the sword high with his bandaged hand, his face turning as sombre and apathetic as before.
But instead of attacking, as the trio would have thought, his Aura flared madly, intensifying the green hue featuring around this place, and then constricted to form a shape behind Rias! A lively, but horrible shape that roared with laughter!
A living type Incarnation!
As if the situation wasn't comically perilous enough – as Skullius could tell – the deer's head grew three times as large, the saber within Rias' hand growing longer, and larger, the presence it spewed out even more suffocating!
The clouds above growled loudly, and gathered as if called by the large sword.
They turned darker, and rumbled with prospects of destruction.
Rias materialising the deer, awakening his Incarnation and the clouds gathering, hadn't taken more than five seconds, despite seeming like it had occurred over a minute for the viewers.
...And then Rias sent the sword down in a slash.
A blinding, sun-like flare of light bathed the entire region, but only for a blink.
It emerged and disappeared soundlessly, and anyone who would have been watching for a safe distance would have been thoroughly petrified at what followed.
When the original colours of the world were restored, everything beyond Rias' sight was gone.
There was no dirt.
No trees.
No cliff.
No lake.
The only thing that could be seen, was a deep chasm of darkness that hid within it separate pools of mashed colours over hundreds of miles.
