Moment

Like a cleanse from the devil himself, when Professor Richard's body disappeared from the junction node, Lera felt her body becoming lighter and lighter and her mind becoming clearer. The flood gates to her tears were busted open, and yet the next thing she knew, her hands had already moved on top of her Book of Casts.

"Lightening. Strength Enhancement. Brightening - Set." With her now signature quick casting, she leaped into the air like a nimble cat. However, Jiyu had already spotted her through the reflections over the transformed piece of Tablet as he turned at the last moment and attacked.

SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! WHAT WAS I THINKING?! Lera cursed under her breath. She essentially moved without a plan, and now.....she is just throwing her life away, exactly like how Professor Richard told her not to do! But if that's the case......why did her body move just like it did, and what is this deadly calm that she's feeling.....?

Legend has it that those destined for greatness all eventually go through a moment like this. A moment in time where it felt like the entirety of the future is dependent on it, and a moment in time that decides the fates of both those people and the entire world.

And now, Lera's staring at that moment in the face.

To be honest, she's too busy to panic. With her mouth only opened with a tiny gap, she lets out a slow breath and ignored her tears that are fogging up her vision slightly. Look at the opponent in front of you, and combine all of the information you have obtained so far.

From the spiraling pattern that looked like a winding serpent over his right eye, it is clear that he is in fact a Manifester, one of the four types of Wave Users, and the most unpredictable kinds alongside the mysterious Outliers.

Unlike Casters that organize and control the Wave using pre-set Casts, Manifesters, from her memories of learning these categories as a child, all enter a trial of sorts before having their manifestations settled by the time of their adulthood, and all of them, without fail, show their Mark of Manifestation over their right eyes. Their manifestations can take the shapes of literally anything and responds to their internal commands as a companion made purely of Wave outside their bodies.

It appeared that the manifestation of Jiyu is a serpent of sorts, and that manifestation is more than strong enough to be used as a grappling tool for him to move around.

With her fist wound back, Lera wondered if a Strength-Enhanced punch from her would work on him. An instant later, she already knew the answer.

If the Serpent can knock aside a desperate blast of the concentrated Wave energy from Professor Richard, then her puny punches are just a death sentence. It's not like she's a Channeller or somebody that has inherent super strength.

Wow, time sure is moving slowly when she's rapidly thinking and casting.

Ditching aside Plan A of punching the bastard, Lera knew to survive, she had to choose another way. In the meanwhile, as she wrestles with her strategies of attack, Jiyu's body had already partially turned around and the Serpent already looking at her straight in the eye.

"Shit. This ain't it."

Even when in the zone, Lera can still feel the god of death swiftly moving closer and closer to her, the blade from hell practically brushing against the back of her neck.

Legend also has it that those not destined for greatness just die during those moments.

Which one would Lera be? Is it already too late? As the Serpent slowly opened its mouth, and a shot of venom already started gurgling behind its throat, a small flash of light in the stone ring caught Lera's glance.

Her eyes traced the lines of writing on the Stone Ring, and a bright idea went off in her head. Instead of trying to force this fight with her weakness, she will instead use her strengths. That being her understanding of how the Portal works, up to a point.

In fact, from reading the lines over the portals and spotting out where the massive amount of Wave energy are channeled and run through, Lera is more confident in breaking the Portal than doing anything useful with it. But at this point, to stop whatever Jiyu's doing, that's the only choice she has.

"FLASH!" Everything returned swiftly to real-time, and Lera set off the Brightening Cast that she has set up a while ago. Her body shined briefly like an exploding sun in the base of the of the Tower. Jiyu grunted painfully and instinctively covered his eyes and pulled his other hand away from the tablet and the portal.

In this single moment of opening, Lera reached both of her hands towards the lines closest to her. However, before her fingertips made contact with the ring itself, Jiyu's Serpent hissed loudly and spit out the ball of venom that took out the security guard in a single shot.

The viscous fluid splashed against her shoes and started to corrode away the fabric when Lera's fingertips scratched along the surface of the stone ring.

"Store, RELEASE!" Lera shouted, the specialized Cast within her Book of Cast springing to life according to her voice, and a small ball of condensed Wave energy was released directly over one of the Junction Nodes that's already pulsating rapidly.
"NO!" Jiyu shouted, his hands reached out and trying to stop what Lera's doing, but it was all too late. The tiny ball dissolved into the node like a stone dropped into a pond, and a ripple was sent through the rest of the Stone Ring.

A single blue pulse traveled out from the node initially, blowing Lera backward slightly before the massive cracks grew out from that overloaded node and spread throughout the Portal. Before anybody can say anything, an explosion of white light swallowed the entire base of the tower.

"Bubble Bubble!!!" Speaking her favorite command, Lera tried to shield herself with a bubble made of the most amount of Wave energy she can muster right now before she was sent flying back by the blast.

As her body was slammed onto the ground, the bubble absorbed the majority of the impact of her fall before breaking. However, everything's dark around her, and she appeared to have been engulfed in an elastic bag of sorts.....Is that what the venom has turned into?

Lera tried to poke through the surface, and her fingers went right through. Tearing up through her body bag, she sat up in the middle of hell.

Well, it just looked a lot like the hell that's commonly described. The beautiful structure of the Portals are nowhere to be seen as the entire tower of Constellation seemed to have been blown away. Massive pieces of stones are scattered all over the place, and the shelves filled to the brim with books burned around her, forming a wall of fire and smoke as the ground sizzled with heat.

Ironically, the bag of venom that's supposed to digest her slowly actually shielded her from the majority of the explosions, and the impact itself also weakened the integrity of the bag of venom.

That worked almost too well.

She tried to look around to see what's happening, and that was when Jiyu emerged from the smoke as a bloodied figure and roared. In the meanwhile, Darl, the muscular Channeller that came with Jiyu also rose up from the ground, knocking aside one massive piece of rubble that was pressed over his chest. Then, she spotted a piece of the glowing tablet next to her body, and on there, a message was displayed.

"YOU!" Jiyu said, his body completely facing the wrong way as he's still affected by the effect of her Flash Bang attack before the explosion nearly completely disintegrated his body, "Is this what you want! A pointless death?!"
'Jiyu!" Darl said, clapping his hands together, creating a massive blast wave and clearing the rising smoke temporarily before he spotted Lera sitting with the bag of venom around her like a sleeping bag, "She's still......alive!"
"HUH?!" Jiyu spun in the direction of Darl, "Kill her then!"

Darl moved, and at that moment, Lera did too.

Reaching over to the surface of the tablet, Lera sent in a jolt of Wave energy and confirmed the message displayed upon it.

A second blast traveled out from the Tablet, blasting away the charging bull that is Darl but ignoring Lera in the process. Then, a set of light rings formed in mid-air, hovering around her eye level as she's sitting down.

"NO!" Jiyu shouted, sensing the massive shift in the local Wave before he turned and shot his Serpent flying out towards Lera, "NOT YET! IT'S TOO SOON! THE PREPARATIONS AREN'T COMPLETE!"
"I can't get any closer......" Darl said, trying to force his wave through the expanding blastwave, but was eventually blown back and tossed onto the ground.

Jiyu's serpent crashed into the Wave front, and it bit onto the semi-transparent wave of energy before it itself also blew up as Jiyu stumbled back with blood streaming down his right eye.

This......no......
Holding onto his right eye and ignoring the visceral pulsing pain and blurry vision, Jiyu bit onto his lips started bleeding just as much as his eyes before his teeth are ground together.
All of my preparations......All of my previous experimentations......All my previous theories.....No.....they are going to kill me if the real savior is summoned this time.....

"THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE MY LIFE'S WORK! We are supposed to summon someone to our side......." Jiyu said, reaching his fingers out towards Lera, hoping to choke her from this distance with his manifestation temporarily destroyed, "HOW......HOW COULD YOU HAVE TAKEN THIS FROM ME? How could you have known how to control the Portal......"

"You are wrong." Lera said, turning to look towards Jiyu as the ring of lights spun ever faster before it was split horizontally into a pair of hovering rings, "I merely learned enough to overload it. You are Jiyu, right? I have read your work......and the dozens of work after yours.
"You thought you have the latest insights, and you prepared as if the assumptions you had all those years ago still stand true until this day. But why will the universe care what your assumptions are? Knowledge moves on, and so does the world.......Those with the latest iteration of truth...... win......."

As the light ring split apart and revealed a boy the same age as Lera with short black hair, a golden-brown skin tone, and a dazed look on his face, she couldn't help but smile at him.

So it did turn out that she is going to be his guardian. Just what sort of adventures will the two of them go on?

Oh right, and the message displayed over the Tablet was as follows:

Do you confirm the summoning of the fourth savior as the Fourth War nears?