Single Mother of a Werewolf Baby novel Chapter 272

Chapter 272: Eleanor’s First Loss

Eleanor moved like a phantom. Sliding beneath a hammer arc, she drove her fingers crackling with Lightning Touch into the strained joint. The electricity did nothing, but the focused physical force, guided by Killing Precision, struck true. There was a sharp pop and a grunt of genuine pain from Barrock. His left arm went momentarily slack, the hammer dipping.

She pressed her advantage... unrelenting, methodical. A flurry of brutal, exacting kicks crashed into his leading leg, each aimed at the knee. His dragon scales flared to defend, holding firm, yet the concussive impact left microfractures spidering through the surface. He was being worn down; the immovable fortress chipped away piece by piece.

Frustration and pain finally broke his disciplined guard. His eyes flared with psionic light... Petrifying Gaze!

A wave of crushing psychic weight slammed into Eleanor’s mind. It wasn’t illusion but domination: a direct command from a primordial creature to stop... to become stone. Her muscles seized, her body freezing mid-strike.

But her mind, shielded by Clarity Veil, remained her own. It howled against the imprisonment of her flesh. She fought back with the will of an Alpha and the will of a Mind Reaver. The psychic feedback was immense. Veins bulged across Barrock’s temple; blood trickled from Eleanor’s nose.

With a gasp that felt like tearing her own lungs apart, she shattered the effect and stumbled back.

They stood panting, a dozen paces apart, the platform between them a wasteland of craters and fissures. Both were bleeding from multiple wounds. Eleanor’s regeneration faltered, her body a map of bruises and shallow cuts. Barrock moved with a pronounced limp, his left arm hanging at an awkward angle, his face a mask of blood and grim resolve.

She no longer had the strength for subtlety. Her eyes widened, and something within them shifted. The brilliance of her intellect remained, but it was now eclipsed by a vast, terrifying emptiness. Eye of Wisdom.

For a heartbeat, Barrock felt as though a predator beyond comprehension was gazing upon him. A hollow infinity yawned before him, threatening to devour his spirit whole. His will was his pride, but he felt it was being wavered.

It was the opening Eleanor needed. Gathering the final reserves of her strength, every last spark her body could muster, she lunged. This was her perfect strike... the culmination of every motion, every calculation. Her hand, charged with a Lightning Projectile at point-blank range, shot towards the centre of his chest, seeking the heart that beat beneath his unyielding defence.

But in imposing her will upon him in showing him the void... she had, for a fraction of a second, broken her own Mental Lock. She no longer saw as a predator, but with the detached clarity of the Eye.

It was a mistake Barrock’s primal instincts would never allow.

The void she revealed awakened something deeper... an ancestral terror, the dread of extinction. It triggered a survival response beyond thought or strategy. As her hand flashed towards his heart, his own instinct took command. Granite Fist.

His attacking arm encased itself in stone, swelling into a boulder-sized construct of solid rock. He didn’t aim to strike her... he struck the space she occupied. No precision, no restraint. Just pure, concussive force.

Her lightning-wreathed hand was mere centimetres from his chest when the Granite Fist collided with her torso.

The sound wasn’t loud. It was a deep, sickening thud... an impact that reverberated through the coliseum, heavy and final.

Eleanor’s eyes widened in shock. All the air in her lungs was driven out in a soundless gasp. She felt her ribs, her sternum and everything in her upper body simply break. The force lifted her off her feet and hurled her backwards like a discarded doll.

She struck the ground twenty feet away, skidding to a stop against the cracked boundary post. She didn’t rise.

Barrock stood where he was, swaying slightly from the recoil of his own strike. The Granite Fist crumbled into dust and pebbles, raining down around him. The backlash of pushing a bloodline art beyond its limit... combined with the psychic feedback from Petrifying Gaze and the accumulated damage finally took its toll. His arms fell to his sides, the twin hammers dangling limply from his hands.

He looked at Eleanor’s broken form. There was no triumph in his eyes, only a heavy, exhausted respect. He took a staggering step, then another... not towards her, but towards the edge of the platform. He needed to hold on to something, to prove he was still on his feet.

Eleanor clasped his hand firmly. "Same to you. It was a good fight. We can have a spar again when we both have time."

"Sure," Barrock agreed readily. "My grandfather always says a serious fight reveals a person’s true character. I liked yours. Don’t get me wrong," he added with a laugh, "I’ve no interest in mating with you. Besides, my clan forbids intraspecies marriage."

He chuckled, then went on, "I’ve never visited the surface world. Once I become an Ascendant, I’ll be allowed to travel for a few years. I hope you’ll spare some time for me then... and show me your domain as a friend."

Eleanor smiled politely and nodded. "All right. Let’s be friends. Contact me when you’re free to roam the secular world."

Ophelia had already finished her fight and joined them, so Eleanor ended the conversation and walked over to her other friends.

Phoebe had won four matches, like Eleanor, but had lost to Ignatius Emberfall... the tournament’s top contender. Fire-school professors and combat instructors had praised him beforehand; his classmates called him a genius. Phoebe’s defeat, then, felt justified.

Marsha had won all her matches. Ophelia had lost two and won three. Izumi had the same record as Ophelia, while Maíra had lost three and drawn one; she felt somewhat down about it, and the others tried to cheer her up.

When they left the academic building, the group met Jaciara and Kiara, who had been waiting for them after watching the fights in the auditorium. Together they headed to the dining hall with the rest of the students.

That evening the videos of all the matches were published, and the group gathered in Maíra’s room to devise countermeasures for their opponents. Everyone wanted Eleanor’s take... she had a knack for deducting an opponent’s style piece by piece, and they valued her analysis. What they didn’t know was that it was really Nora doing the heavy lifting. She could analyse the footage frame by frame, spot minute flaws in each fighter’s technique, and suggest ways to exploit those weaknesses using their own styles.

The girls knew nothing about Nora, and Eleanor would never reveal her. Nora was her ultimate secret. To them, all the battle analysis came solely from Eleanor, the prodigy who could dissect any opponent’s technique at a glance, no matter how subtle the flaw. It fit perfectly with what they already believed of her... that her bloodline granted her extraordinary perception and combat insight.