The World's most Overpowered Side-Character

Chapter 258: Talent Vs Hard Work.

"After this, is there any chance of me being able to catch up to her again?" Arla watched alongside everyone else as Dina made a real-time simulation of Sol's technique to counter Keele's fighting style. "I am happy for her.

I have always seen and nurtured her potential, but this goes beyond even what master had envisioned!" She mused in shock, watching the ground around Dina rise and fall with her breath, condensing and creaking before she vanished like a trip of thunder, leaving a singular footprint where she was prior.

"Hm," Sol hummed when Dina crashed recklessly into Keele and was parried away easily but disappeared and reappeared where she was a moment before her attack and dropped her heel, causing Keele, who had barely recovered from her parry to bend a knee as she blocked the kick with her arms.

"An entire attack as a feint?" He wondered, seeing Keele spin from beneath Dina and strike at her abdomen with her palm again and then clicking her tongue in annoyance when Dina blocked that as well.

"Dina is closing the gap between not just their speed but their strength as well," Ikaris narrowed her eyes as she carefully watched the two exchange blow after blow unsuccessfully coming to what appeared to be a stalemate.

"Well, not quite," She added with a slight huff when Dina slammed her bare hand against Keele's raised guard and mana exploded from her palm, igniting the cold air and setting off a massive chain explosion that sent the woman flying into a mountain made of ice and leaving a great indenture the shape of a crater in the side of it. "Dina still has access to her destructive power," She stated.

"And Keele has been gradually removing her limiters to ensure a fair fight, if she truly wanted to win from the start she could have ended the fight with her first strike, I wouldn't have shown interest in her skills if even Dina could beat her, she hasn't shown any true percentage of what she's capable of yet," Sol commented, and Ikaris looked up at him and then back at the woman curiously.

"I haven't seen you praise anyone's skill like this since your fight with Sorath where you admitted to her being a more skilled warrior and paid your respects," She smiled, "you are a hard man to impress, but this woman seems to have captured your interests, do you perhaps like her?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Ikaris," Sol scoffed and pinched her cheek.

"I'm only interested in her skill, she's been in the Emporium army for a total of thirty years, she's one of the youngest captains and she is also one of the weakest, yet despite her many reservations she managed to maintain her 2990th position without losing rank or respect amongst her peers, that is because throughout the entire army on a whole, she is undefeated.

"Even the likes of Flint?" Ikaris looked at Sol and he glanced at her weirdly; there was a sense of familiarity to the way she said the man's name.

"Especially him, he would have ordered a retreat, but when he found out where I was attacking he requested that she do everything in her power to keep me there, when I found this out I entertained the idea that there was more to her than meets the eye, and I turned out to be right, she has honed her fighting skills to perfection, that's not something Dina is going to overcome in their first fight, we have a prodigy versus a grinder, talent versus hard work."

"Unexpectedly, I forgot that she was capable of using more than just her fists because of how she has leaned onto the fight adaptively, I let my guard down..." Keele pulled herself from the rubble and landed on her feet slightly leaning her head and raising her palm to the side where her face was catching Dina's palm and bending her hand until her glowing palm was pressed against her own abdomen.

"That's not a mistake I intend on making twice." She stared at Dina's shocked expression before her attack backfired and sent her crashing through another cluster-type explosion lodging her into the opposite mountain this time.

"She's easily capable of killing Dina," Arla furrowed her brows. "Master, is it a good idea to allow them to fight unsupervised like that?"

"Keele isn't stupid, she was prepared to abandon the Emporium on a whim to ensure the safety of her homeworld, she's aware that I'm easily capable of destroying them even more than the empire ever was, she's not gonna double-cross me."

"Are you certain of that?" Ikaris smiled at him and Sol confidently nodded. Experience tales at m v|l e'-NovelBin.net

"The fight has to lead to a victor somehow, and it's clear that Dina won't win; not unless she does that, which is what I'm banking on." Sol smiled.

"You want her to do it?" Arla gasped. "She has been terrified of using that power ever since it was gifted to her-"

"Exactly, I want to know where her true limits lie, if she hesitated in the wrong moment it could lead to her death, she needs to embrace the chaos inside of her, it's been growing proportionally large, almost at the same speed as her personal growth, inside of Dina lies a parallel power that could essentially topple an entire galaxy in one fell swoop but she's keeping it at bay because she's afraid of the consequences."

"The skill could kill her-"

"I can't always be there in the moment to protect you."

Sol's words came out dry and sudden, cutting Ikaris's statement off and eating away at the comfortable atmosphere.

"Ikaris, when you were in labour, I was nowhere near you, when that general and his captains attacked, if they hadn't seen value in you and Talia I'd have returned to corpses, Dr'ul and the others failed, Arla and Sara nearly died, Dina was at death's door more than the rest of you were, and I was too occupied in another fight to do anything about it, I didn't even know; I could have lost all of you in an instant." He admitted.

At Sol's admittance the air around his body became charged and his eyes and hair turned golden, reacting to his loss of composure.

Keele blocked several of Dina's attacks head-on and then parried her leg throwing her off balance and slamming her head into the ground several times before pulling back her elbow and delivering a single punch that caused the ice to explode into dust as Dina was sent cratering through it like a rock through water.

"Lumi warned me, and I see it now after they've set their sights on you; the Emporium is terrifying."

Dina arose from the ice in another explosion, floating out of the crater with her hands slightly lowered at her sides and her feet together in ascension taking the form of what appeared to be a godly figure as her eyes glowed in obscured light.

The land of white around them was darkened into night because of her powers brightly manifesting.

"Are you that afraid?"

Keele dodged Dina's initial attacks and then parried a randomly spawned [mana spear] far into the air where it exploded harmlessly, slipping to the side and avoiding several hundred more when they all came crashing through the explosion at her while she was still locked in a fist-to-fist engagement with Dina, she knew these were less likely to explode with the caster being right next to them, so she grabbed one and slammed the body into Dina's abdomen and then tossed it to the side and leapt out of the field of them when Dina was far enough to safely detonate them.

"Ikaris, I'm not scared; I'm terrified; the thought of you getting hurt keeps me up at night; the thought of Talia..." Sol stopped talking and took a deep shaking breath.

"I want to fight them and destroy them all to make sure that they don't come after you; I know you're capable of protecting yourself and Talia, or at the very least, you can avoid getting caught and run away with her," He admitted.

[PULSAR]

Keele's eyes widened in horror when she felt the energy build and release at nigh blank range from her after she had managed to corner Dina, but then Dina and everyone else watching stared in shock and disbelief when the woman took a deep breath and stood her ground rather than avoid it, she seemed to weave the very fabric of reality around her as she curved her hands and diverted the beam causing the cosmic death-ray to bend and rip an arc behind her as she maintained the technique.

Dina was so captivated she missed Keele moving again until she was right before her.

Keele's eyes burned with a strange passion, and her lips were folded in focus when she decked Dina in the jaw so hard it caused the air around them to implode thrice and then explode in a dome that covered the entire mountain range as she was sent crashing clean across the snowy terrain and into the surrounding rocky flatlands.

Neither of them had any idea how large the environment Sol had sent them to was but for Dina, her cascade felt endless as she uncontrollably crashed across mountains and valleys tearing through them and then regaining her footing after she ripped through a dense forest and ended up in a crater on the side of a cliff, she shook her head and staggered out of the crater stopping short of the edge and staring into the chasm as she held her jaw, snow had been replaced by an endless rocky desert.

She had just survived what was essentially a planet-ripping punch.

She didn't hear the approach of her opponent until she was right before her again, Sol, Ikaris, Arla, and Sara winced when Dina received another three of those punches consecutively, leaving evident marks across the mega planet from outer space before Keele caught her by her leg and smashed her chest-first into the ground before she flung her clean off the planet itself causing her to rip a hole through a great moon that hovered above them.

"How heavy do you think it is?" Ikaris stared at the moon as it rapidly descended the skies turning the night white as it began burning the atmosphere, Keele had never seen anything like this, she had never witnessed destruction on this level, her outpost was smaller than that moon.

"They think I can teach anything to this monster?" Keele asked herself as she balled her fists and prepared.

"It's roughly twice the mass of earth..." Sol had his hand to his chin while Ikaris and Sara copied his posture; all three stroking their long white beards and nodding in disbelief while Arla gasped in horror.

"Mhmm~ she's definitely not holding anything back anymore." The three of them hummed in unison.

"This is overkill, Dina!"