Chapter 985: This Is A High Level Fight
Mother lowered her hands and I was given the chance to inspect the devastation that a few short seconds of their fight had wrought.
The trees around here had been completely uprooted or disintegrated entirely.
The devastation was so big that I'm pretty sure that they would have to redraw the map and place a lake here because the crater would definitely form into a lake after a rainfall.
I was just about to go to Mother thinking that the fight was over when the blood that was the result of the umbrella girl exploding from Mother's spell gathered back up in the air alongside her supposed corpse.
The blood then flowed back into her corpse and she reformed herself, making it seem like nothing had happened at all.
Even her clothes that had been torn apart had reformed themselves, leaving absolutely no trace of her earlier explosion.
The umbrella girl lifted her finger to her mouth to lick off a small drop of blood that had been there before turning to look at Mother once more while floating in the air.
"It seems like I may have underestimated you."
Mother giggled at her, not even bothered that she managed to heal herself from that attack, "Ufufufu~ Aren't you an annoying one?"
The girl opened up her umbrella to hold it over her shoulder, "It seems like I might need to be a little more serious then."
"Ufufufu~ It's the opposite for me since you don't seem like much after all~"
"You really are pushing your luck huh?"
The two of them looked like they were just about to clash again but I quickly interrupted them.
"Hey? Maybe it's not a good idea to fight since you two are destroying the landscape here? The place here is already ruined from your earlier exchange, you know?"
Both Mother and the umbrella girl paused to look at me before inspecting their surroundings to realise that I spoke the truth.
I honestly didn't expect both of them to stop but surprisingly, even the umbrella girl relaxed her stance slightly.
Mother giggled, "Ufufufu~ It seems like Mama might have got a little carried away~ Let Mama fix that~"
She raised her hand and turned her wrist, almost like she was turning a dial.
The area around her shifted and blurred, like those old television screens experiencing a flickering.
I blinked and all of a sudden, I was standing in the forest again, the crater completely filled back in like their fight had never happened in the first place.
I couldn't help but shudder at the clear display of power from Mother. I had already been with Mother for more than a decade and I have still yet to understand just how much power the strong has over everything around them.
At my current level, I'm pretty much just an ant in their eyes.
Mother wasn't even done yet as she then clapped her hands and a wave of white came out from underneath her feet, enveloping the entire area and bringing us to a pure white space.
"There we go~ Ufufufu~ You didn't think that I was going to let you go now, were you?"
The umbrella girl scoffed, "You think too much of yourself."
She hefted her umbrella over her shoulder again and a blood red orb appeared in front of her.
"This enclosed space works for me just fine," She boasted, right before the orb shrunk into itself and disappeared.
The area above us had been completely empty before but clouds suddenly started to form and droplets of rain began to fall from the sky.
The only issue was that this rain was a blood rain.
This umbrella girl really likes blood type magic huh? Maybe it's a specific school of magic and she's the best at it?
Leaving that aside, I was a little worried about being drenched by the blood but surprisingly, there seemed to be an invisible shield around Mary, Kisha and myself which prevented the rain from reaching us.
I'm guessing this was done by Mother since she also had a similar shield around her that stopped the rain from soaking her.
In an instant, the previously white space was now dyed red except for where Mother and our group was standing.
I was wondering if this was the extent of the spell when things started to sprout from the ground, forming into some kind of plant with a bulbous head at the top.
Mother did not seem that keen on letting them grow as she waved her hand in an arc and fire started to burn all around her despite the blood rain that was still coming down on us.
The plants were burned to a crisp and the umbrella girls seemed annoyed by that before the clouds overhead shifted to form a single cloud, raining down just on a specific spot in between them.
Despite the fire that was still burning on the ground, a single one of those bulbous plants sprouted out and grew rapidly.
But then Mother sliced her hand in another arc and the plant was cut into half, stopping it from growing.
Mother giggled, "Ufufufu~ You are not going to sprout a Blood Rose right in front of me like that~"
The umbrella girl said nothing and merely closed up her umbrella before redirecting all the blood from the ground to form into another orb in front of her.
The space around her began to crack before shattering like glass, leaving holes in the space around her that seem to lead to some red and black space.
At first I thought they were portals and the girl was trying to escape again until the red and black space shifted to reveal giant irises in them, all of them focused on Mother.
The ground began to shake and black particles started floating up from the ground.
I felt myself floating up for a moment as though gravity was reversed for me before the feeling disappeared, making me believe that Mother changed the shield protecting us to nullify that effect.
Mother floated up into the air and the eyes followed her, the girl making a show of swinging her umbrella forward to point the tip at Mother.
She muttered a single word and I felt the hair at the back of my neck stand, "Erase."
The eyes around her widened to occupy the entire crack and the area around Mother contorted and shifted, like the perspective of the space was going haywire.
There was a sudden pop before Mother returned back to normal, right before a gale was churned up to rush towards Mother.
It took me a while to realise that the umbrella girl's spell basically erased everything in that area so even the air around Mother was erased which created a vacuum around her. That then caused the rest of the air outside of that space to rush to fill up the void that it created which stirred up that gale.
But Mother's only reaction to the spell was to just brush her shoulders like she was getting rid of some dust before smoothening her dress that had been slightly ruffled by the wind.
She then raised her hand to point her palm at the eyes and the irises shrunk before they started spasming in the cracks that they resided.
The umbrella girl turned to see blood start pouring out of the cracks before Mother clenched her fist and the space repaired itself again, returning the air back to normal.
The only evidence that the eyes even existed were the drops of blood that fell to the ground after the cracks had disappeared.
The umbrella girl turned back to Mother and it seemed like she wasn't as ready to fight as before.
"Who… Are you?"
"Ufufufu~ Now you care about my identity? Isn't that a little too late? Or is it because you had believed that you were superior to me before that you took that attitude?"
The girl shifted her umbrella to the side, "You have successfully gotten on my nerves. I simply wish to know who you are to have been able to annoy me so much."
"Ara, ara? Still being obnoxious I see~ I suppose I will really need to punish you~"
Mother lifted her hands in front of her and pushed her palms together like she was holding an invisible wall.
She then started to squeeze and the umbrella girl let out a pained gasp as her body seemed to squeeze into itself just like what Mother was doing.
"You… You dare?!" The girl gasped.
Mother giggled, "Ufufufu~ What are you going to do about it? I'm not letting you run either so you can stop trying~ This space is enchanted to prevent teleportation~"
The girl struggled against her invisible restraints until she let out a yell and the blood on the ground flowed up to form into a blade.
I thought she was going to launch that at Mother but the blade spun around and stabbed itself into her chest instead.
The girl's figure seemed to be sucked into the sword before it exploded, leaving blood red crystals to rain down on where she had been.
I thought Mother was the one who did that until I heard her mutter, "Ara, ara~ Seems like she actually got away after all~"
Err… So she ran away?