The Legend Of The Rune Master

The enraged lynx had erected large dome of ice, trapping them both inside. The dome was seven meters tall and ten meters wide. And just looking at the ice one could tell that it was a few inches thick! The temperature began to drop significantly while a layer of ice covered the ground. The wind began to blow and snow started falling.

Dragx gulped as he took a step back. The lynx had changed the environment into one that suits her and slows down her enemy. Dragx was protected from the cold but he could feel his body become weak and sluggish.

The lynx grinned wickedly, as it was her time to shine. This ice dome was her most formidable technique and no beast or man had ever survived inside for too long. In fact she was going to play with this annoying creature before she killed it.

She had completely forgot about finding somewhere to rest; she was a savage beast after all, and she was out for blood.

While the lynx was thinking of ways to toy with her opponent dragx was conversing with Zayde.

"It seems as though your in a tight spot."

"Yeah, I can see why the lynx is so sure of herself. This  dome turns the environment to her favor, not only is this place her natural habitat, it slows down anyone else, especially a weak fire elemental."

"I told you we should have left! Now you should beg master to clean up your mess!"

Dragx sighed as he blocked out the annoying chicken's voice.

"Damn, I have zero chance of winning inside this thing, Agni's fire magic is weak against ice magic and I don't even have my sword!"

"I'll just have to fly over to it or at least turn this fight into an aerial battle." Dragx thought as he spread his flame wings.

"Oh No, you don't!" The lynx shouted as she pounced as fast as lightning and slammed into the ascending dragx.

After dragx was knocked wickedly to the ground the lynx landed over him. She lifted her crystal claws and slashed dragx's c.h.e.s.t.

A bloodcurdling scream pierced the frigid howling air as the lynx's claws tore through dragx's armored c.h.e.s.t. He wriggled under her as the blinding pain surged through him.

The lynx gleamed blissfully as the howls of pain reached her s.e.n.s.i.t.i.v.e ears. Dragx tried he best to escape her but her huge paw was firmly pressing down on his legs, not to mention the terrible pain he experienced in his c.h.e.s.t when he twisted.

The lynx got bored as she was now hearing angry grunts instead of horrified screams.

Thus she raised her paw again and clawed at dragx's face.

She experienced greater resistance because dragx had fortified  and strengthened his suit.

Unfortunately it wasn't enough and her claws sank into the helmet and slowly clawed along the left side of dragx's face, starting from his forehead and across his eyelid. Dragx roared as the this happened.

His eye burned, not because it was pierced but because of the blood that gushed up from the other wounds. He tightly closed his eyes while thrashing around. His mind was blinded by pain and he was trashing around trying to find any way out.

But the large paw pressing him down wasn't going to move an inch. The situation was quite dire as it seemed that the lynx would slowly rip him apart.

"Get a hold of yourself kid!" Zayde shouted.

Zayde's metallic voice tore through his mind and focused him. He quickly remembered one particular lesson of his training, when one is in pain he should use it to focus on the task ahead.

Utilizing this, dragx stopped all move and concentrated on producing as much fire magic as he could. As the energy built up in him he quickly condensed it in his hands.

While this occurred the lynx had become enraged as her victim stopped struggling, in fact it seemed to be giving up. She raised her paw once more to tare off a limb, hoping to hear more screams.

But before she could dragx shot his open hands forward and released the condensed energy. The force of the blast sent the lynx flying a few feet away. Seizing the opportunity, he rose to his feet and with the flick of a wrist, a magical ward inscription appeared in his hand.

The lynx was quickly advancing as dragx activated the inscription. A hazy light distorting shield appeared around him followed by a loud bang as the lynx clawed at the shield.

The ward was a top grade shield so it could probably hold for a few minutes. Dragx deactivated his circuit and cautiously removed his torn and bloody shirt, wincing as wound stung him painfully. He removed some pain elixirs,a piece of powdered weeping willow root, a cloth and a water skin.

He downed the bitter elixir and soaked the cloth, he then used it to carefully wipe up the blood on his face. After cleaning the wound to the best of his ability he tried to open his eye.

After a couple tries he was finally able to open his eyelid a few centimetres and was happy that his eye wasn't damaged. Dragx quickly rubbed the willow root powder on the burning wound to increase healing.

All while dragx was tending to his wounds the lynx was clawing at the ward viciously, but dragx paid on attention to it as his mind was constantly trying to strategize a way to walk out of this situation alive.

He furiously looked around and came to the conclusion that the only way to get out would be break out.

"But how can I break out of a structure made of my element's weakness and a sadistic beast chasing me." He thought.

After a few anxious moments dragx smiled and removed four slips of inscription paper, a rune brush, a bowl and some deep orange gems.

After thinking through various strategies, dragx decided to weaken the structure by using his latest invention, the failure bomb, or fire grenades.

He calls the inscription failure bombs not because they didn't work, but because of how they worked. He wouldn't be making complicated rune inscriptions, he would be drawing simple seals with disastrous mistakes.

If a seal isn't formed properly it would become unstable and explode, throwing out the contents sealed inside. Dragx was very, very familiar with this outcome and he thoroughly detested it, until he realized its potential. Even though the explosion wasn't very large, he  could increase it by sealing explosives inside.

Actually dragx was going to create the deadliest set ever, he'd then bind them to the sides of the dome and activate them.

He used the cloth and slowly wiped up the spilt blood off his c.h.e.s.t wound, after soaking the cloth in he then squeezed it inside the bowl he then dropped a few of the orange gems in it.

These orange gems, which are called dragon stones are very, very rare and valuable. When they are stimulated with fire magic, they release a wave of fire. Dragon stones are highly sought after by fire mages as  dragon stones can increase their attack ability and power.  Dragx was quite lucky to stumble upon a huge amount in his travels.

When attribute-less magic stimulated dragon stones, they would melt and form a gooey liquid, but the only medium between physical materials and attribute-less magic was blood because attribute-less magic didn't work with incantations.

Dragx held his hand over the bowl and activated his magical energy in his blood, causing the dragon stones to liquefy and change the colour of blood from crimson to orange. He then wet his brush in the mixture and used it to draw a simple seal on four slips of inscription paper while leaving a few mistakes in the rune formation. He also sealed a few of the stones inside to maximize the explosion range and power.

Afterwards he drew a bind inscription on the back of the slips so that they would stick to the sides of the dome. He then slowly treated his wounds to the best of his ability.

When he was finally ready to face the lynx again he smiled and gathered everything he needed. Beautiful reddish-orange fire coiled around his body as he activated the circuit. He clutched the seals in his hand and smiled as he secretly exited the ward.

All this while the had been furiously clawing at the ward and trying to destroy it, she could not see that her prey had left due to the light distortion effect of the ward and kept on banging.

This meant dragx had ahead start to bind at least one of the seals. He quickly and silently approached the dome, he then stuck it to the side.

As he did a huge explosion sounded as the ward shattered. Dragx's head whipped around to look a the large beast. The lynx was bubbling with rage as she saw that her prey wasn't inside the ward, she was being tricked all this time and had been ruthlessly banging herself at the damn shield for nothing. She charged at him with the intent to kill.

"Shit!" Dragx cursed as the the lynx approached him at breakneck speeds.

Dragx tightly formed a ball of fire in his hand and thew it at it at the enraged beast. The ball grew in size as it rushed to the lynx. Without waiting dragx darted off to another side of the dome as he knew that weak F class fire magic wouldn't hurt the celestial, the fire ball was mainly a detraction.

He quickly bound the inscription to the wall and faced the incoming beast. He removed some dragon stones and poured fire into them, he then hurled them towards the lynx. A large explosion sounded as the stones exploded;  throwing the lynx several feet backwards.

Dragx ran around the thrashing lynx as she clawed herself, trying to extinguish the flames. He then quickly bounded yet another seal.  

"One more to go!" Dragx thought.

Dragx spun around and looked at the charging lynx. It appeared as if it had lost all reasoning and intelligence, it seemed as if it's beastly instincts had fully taken over. And thus it mindlessly approached dragx head on despite having no previous luck.

Dragx took advantage of this and shot a plume of red flames. But this time dragx willed them to web together and form a net; which eventually caught the lynx.

Dragx ran past the lynx as she was furiously snarling and tearing at the net. He bounded the final inscription to it's calculated position. While the lynx had finally broke free from the net and was once again running towards him; but this time the lynx was covered by thick looking ice armor.

Dragx waited until the lynx was a only few feet away before he unexpectedly spread his fiery wings and flew several feet away from the lynx and any of the failure bombs.

Wasting no time, dragx detonated the four bombs simultaneously. The dome shook violently and large cracks spread throughout the structure while sizeable chunks of ice fell around them.

However despite this the dome didn't collapse! This showed the tyrannical power the lynx possessed. Dragx had already expected that the dome wouldn't be destroyed and had already formed a plan to demolish the structure.

The lynx was thoroughly stunned, never in all her years of fighting had her formidable ice dome been damaged like this! To make matters worst, this weird beast's magical signal was that of a F classed beast!

She was so shocked by the power wielded by dragx that she temporarily forgot about pursuing him.

The lynx was so distracted that she didn't notice that dragx had formed five small orbs of fire around himself. These orbs where positioned strategically around him so that he could fire them and destroy the weakened dome for good.

One orb was above him while the other four surrounded him in a cross formation. He gnashed his teeth as he tightly wrapped his fire magic around them. The orbs shook due to the monumental amount of magical energy that was stored within them, dragx felt his control lessening as the red orbs blazed brightly as if they were little red suns.

Seeing that the lynx had come to her senses and was once more charging towards him, dragx relinquished his control over the orbs, causing them to fly off in their respective directions.

One of the orbs was zipping towards the lynx at the speed of light. In the state she was in the lynx was far too slow to dodge the small scalding sun so she used the last of her magical reserves to form an ice shield in front herself.

Unfortunately the orb was just too powerful and it tore through the thick shield like an arrow through paper and lodged into her abdomen; and then slammed her into the ice dome which was once a few meters away. The orb then forced her body through the cracked ice and sent her a few feet away from her crumbling master piece.

But by that time the other orbs had also bombarded the dome's interior and had successfully compromised the structure, and afterwards continued flying and burnt through various obstacles before extinguishing. Dragx had retrieved his sword and was dodging and slicing the falling ice shards.

The area looked even worse, with large chunks of ice laying about and various demolished trees. The ground had become muddy due to the melting ice.

Dragx stood and while blocking the pain from his burning wounds. He was greatly surprised that the lynx was still alive as he could still sense her signal. He walked towards the wounded lynx. She was laying on the ground with blue blood pooled around her body. Cyan blood was dribbling down her jaw and nose as her breathing was forced and laboured.

She weakly looked at him as he stood over her, she was defeated and by natural instinct he was now her master, but they both knew she was dying today. The battered lynx wondered if this was how her victims felt before she ended it. She closed her eyes as dragx raised his sword; she had already accepted death.

But as the sword pierced her neck and she felt her soul being pulled into her core she only helplessly thought,

"I don't want to die."

But it was too late. Dragx coldly watched as the lynx drew her last breath as he knew that the lynx wouldn't spare him if he was in her situation. With the flick of his wrist the lynx was stored in his ring.

Ignoring the unimaginable pain, he flew away from the location....