I Was Exiled to Die, Now I’m the God of Sickness and Salvation

When the beads exploded and all three elemental mana surged and filled the colosseum, Ben made his move.

His ultimate skill took a long time to cast because he needed to gather the necessary amount of mana to be able to use it.

The controlling part wasn't the truly difficult part for him due to the nature of the spell.

And what the pearls did was exactly what helped Ben to bypass the mana gathering process and instantly skip to the manifestation step of the spell.

Even without his hands, Ben was still able to cast the spell.

He raised the two stumps that used to be his hands and started chanting,

This time, Ash was too far away to do anything to him, and Ben himself didn't spend that much time casting the spell.

With just 5 seconds of casting, a time that Ash was barely able to close the distance between himself and Ben by half, Ben had stopped his chants.

The magic words and the glow surrounding Ben's body exploded into the surroundings.

Unlike other spells that would make the glow dim as the spell manifested, this certain spell made the glow even more intense before releasing the spell into the world.

The wild, surging mana all around him was touched by the glow, making them answer to Ben's call as the spell built itself by using the ambient mana all around him.

And the result was nothing short of amazing.

Even Ash had to nod his head in appreciation.

The wind mana now circled around Ash and Ben, trapping them inside a visible circular wind wall that looked as sharp as wind blades.

Flames manifested onto the ground of the colosseum, and the patches of flames continued burning despite there being nothing to burn on the dirt and sand flooring.

They just stayed there, waiting, but still having all their strength. As if they waited for the right time when their master gave them a command to strike.

But the one thing that made Ash almost clap in amazement was the lightning spell that Ben had cast.

On the ground, there were the patches, the garden of flames. On the side, sharp wind blades were acting as a baleful wall that would cut everything that touched it.

And in the sky, or in this case, the air above Ben's and Ash's heads, crackles of lightning continued appearing here and there.

Each of them appeared from one side of the wall shooting to the other side.

It looked exactly the same as the explosion of lightning that had blown Ash away a few moments ago.

The only difference this time was that the lightning kept on appearing as if it had unlimited charges.

Ben's strongest spell, a spell that even the audience and the Grey Leash members had never seen before, was worthy of being crowned as a fighter's ultimate spell.

"LET'S SEE YOU SURVIVE THIS!"

Ben's shout became the gong that started the chaos that descended upon Ash.

He had no hands to aim his spell, but Ben had other ways.

Using the chants as commands to the elements around him, he controlled each of them meticulously.

With a few words, wind blades shot out from the wall, threatening to dissect Ash's body into several pieces at once.

Ash had to make sure that he didn't stand too close to the wall, as the wind blades were made out of wind. A naturally fast moving element in nature.

It would be hard for him to outrun them without his berserk skills activated.

The wind blades were annoying, but they became weaker the further you were from them.

Ash didn't even need to create a complete shield wall using the steelbark.

Ash just had to make sure that he swung his vine at the correct time, when the wind blades had gotten weaker from traveling a certain distance.

And he also needed to make sure to hit the wind blades right in the middle of the blade to disrupt the whole structure of the attack.

With a well placed and timed attack, several wind blades were easily dissipated by a single swing of steelbark vines coming out of Ash's body.

But the wind blades weren't the only thing that Ben had up his sleeves.

Just like the first attack that Ben threw at Ash, the patches of flames weren't just there to light up the arena and make the vibes more cozy.

Using more commands, fireballs would shoot out from the patches of flames.

And Ben wasn't even limited to only attacking from one patch of flame.

His gestureless command was able to command fireballs to manifest from different patches of flames, attacking Ash from 4 different directions simultaneously.

Ash didn't have eyes in the back of his head, and he couldn't physically see the fireballs coming from his back or his blind spots.

But what he could do was to use his high mana sense and echolocation ability in tandem to be able to focus on the things he wanted to detect with the echolocation.

When his mana sense felt several surges of mana coming from multiple directions, Ash stomped his feet, using the feedback of sound to see the shapes of the fireball being constructed in his mind using the bat's echolocation.

And adding the fact that the fireballs weren't as fast as the wind blades, Ash was able to dodge the fireballs pretty easily by using his vines and roots as a propeller.

He hit the ground with them and launched himself in a direction to dodge the fireballs.

With proper timing, even Ash could change his direction mid air and continue moving by using the vines to grab onto the ground and yank himself.

The wind and flame spells were dangerous and annoying.

But what made Ash want to curse out loud was the lightning crackling above his head.

He had gotten a little taste of the lightning before, being zapped and thrown away.

It wasn't painful, and it didn't do any real damage to him.

But he still felt a slight numbness when the electricity hit his cape.

The titanroot turned out to be a good isolator for electricity, but Ash's skin beneath the titanroot still felt them.

And when there were many of them hitting him continuously, it couldn't help but make Ash annoyed as hell.

It was the exact same feeling when an annoying classmate poked you in your stomach again and again just to get a reaction from you.

And no matter what you said, they wouldn't stop.

It was that kind of similar feeling.

The only difference was that the poke was actually a lightning strike that happened every other second.

And there was no way Ash could dodge or run away from the poke.

Ash felt the surge of mana coming from above his head, he knew the lightning would be coming.

But different from the fireballs and wind blades, there was hardly any time for him to react.

The second he felt the surge from the crackling lightning, in the next split second, the lightning already hit him before Ash could even think of his next move.

As if the lightning had marked him after being hit the first time, the next ones were even more unreasonable.

The surge didn't come from above his head this time. Instead, it came from the wall of wind, the source of where the lightning manifested.

He felt the surge, thinking that another windblade was coming in his way.

Ash was about to whip out his vine to dissipate the wind blade when what greeted him was lightning instead.

The lightning hit him squarely on his chest, jolting his heart a little as he was once again blown away.

But Ash didn't plan to let himself be thrown across the arena this time.

Of course, he didn't want to run headfirst into the wall of wind that had sharp wind blades constantly circling around the whole wall.

He was forced to stab his vines deep into the ground, pulling himself back into the ground.

Away from the wind wall and patches of flames strewn across the arena.

Ash barely took several breaths to keep himself calm when another surge of lightning came his way once more disguised as another wind blade.

"Fuck you!" Ash finally cursed out loud as he grew titanroot from his feet and created a steelbark shield to defend against the lightning.

The shield completely dissipated the lightning, and the titanroot planting his body onto the ground was able to make him stand strong.

The lightning did nothing other than leave a burnt patch on his steelbark shield.

Ash rested the shield on the ground to make it firmer and easier for himself to defend against the pushing force of the lightning, but this act had turned out to be a surprise for himself.

When the lightning hit the shield, Ash didn't feel the electricity to his body at all.

It was broken apart by the shield and the charge was sent to the ground, saving Ash from being zapped by the residues.

A smile bloomed on his face. The thought of getting rid of the lightning problem had lifted a great annoyance from his mind.

However, Ash wasn't the only one who had a working brain in this fight.

Ben shouted. His voice boomed to the whole colosseum despite the loud blowing wind and the crackling lightning.

"I see you can deal with the three elements quite nicely, but how about ALL OF THEM TOGETHER!?"