Chapter 505 - The Price of Borrowed Power II
The arena made a few final adjustments as it raised the combatants atop a pair of branches, each large enough to hold a carriage. About a hundred paces apart, they stood at just the right distance to strike a balance between swords and sorcery.
A timer appeared in the air following their relocation. Exactly three seconds later, the bell chimed, driving both parties into action.
The boy made the first move. He would have liked to draw a pair of hilariously long swords out of thin air and best the pureblooded cottontail in a battle of speed, but the event's organisers had explicitly asked that he avoided any powers derived from the proxy war's combatants. So he played his father's trump card instead and crafted a powerful barrier.
Though the shield lacked the power to ward off a fighter specialised in brute force, it stopped Duke Evander's blade dead in its tracks. Frowning, the rabbit twirled around the halfbreed and struck at the back of his neck with his pommel, but a second protector intercepted the invisible attack. And then another and another and another. Julius continued to swing his weapon, taking care to deliver only the most refined attacks, but neither his angle, his speed, nor the grace of his execution had any effect on the final result. Every attack he threw was blocked by the automated defense.
It was an obnoxious skill belonging to a high-level veteran, just like the accompanying counter. The boy's fists were lightning fast, quick enough to keep the duke on his feet, but that was only because he'd traced one of the monks that had nearly made the cut.
Evander frowned. He was going to have to destroy the accompanying artifact—the beaded bracelet that had appeared around the halfbreed's wrist—if he wanted to disable the ability.
After delivering another brief flurry and finding it still automatically repelled, the blademaster hopped back to his starting position and returned to a neutral stance with his blade held up to his visage.
Priscian took the opportunity to go on the offensive. Summoning another artifact, a fiery broach, he simultaneously emulated two of the Valencian colosseum's most popular casters and cast both their signature spells.
One summoned an elf whose body was made of flame, a fire elemental in the shape of the spell's centaurian designer. The other made a giant magic circle overhead. Three giant flaming heads emerged from the summoning spell crafted in the image of a species long lost. The dragons opened their mouths, gathered mana between their jaws, and unleashed a scorching apocalypse.
It was not a true dragon breath, nothing but a pale imitation with neither the right form nor function, but it scorched the arena nonetheless. The whole tree burned. Its leaves evaporated as its bark turned black. Smoke billowed into the sky, but unable to escape the battleground's barrier, it hit the invisible ceiling and fell back down into the ring, obscuring the fighters as they hopped from branch to burning branch.
Priscian snuck a gas mask onto his face as soon as he broke line of sight. Like everything else, it was an artifact he'd crafted, something he'd spun up on the spot with a snap of the fingers.
Just enough time for his foe to close the distance.
Having dodged the incoming magic with ease, Julius had compressed his legs, taken a breath, and lunged at an unseeable speed. He went straight through the central trunk that Priscian had hidden behind and tore it right in half. The boy's shield manifested between them, but it shattered the moment his blade made contact. It was hard to tell with their surroundings dyed red, but his sword was alight, the runes that adorned its hilt glowing in the faintest of purples.
The attack outright obliterated Priscian's shoulder and sent his arm tumbling into the ground as the rabbit slid to a stop behind him. Smoke drifted from the places where his feet made contact, and not on account of the surrounding flames.
His recovery only lasted for a split second. Spinning around and compressing his legs again, he launched straight into another full-power lunge.
Such was the springblade's bread and butter, the classic pattern in which all its users happened to fall.
The art's greatest weakness was the delay between the consecutive attacks. It worked especially poorly on Cadrian warriors, who could easily regenerate if not immediately put to the axe. Even Priscian, despite being under five hundred, healed in the time it took for him to null his momentum.
And that was why the royal style in particular demanded another class slot.
A second cottontail struck a moment after the first, followed by a third, a fourth, and a fifth. Their bodies were translucent, seemingly made up of the very same smoke that flooded the fighters' surroundings.
Like so many of the style's masters before him, Lord Evander had combined a dancer class with an illusion mage class and further merged it with a thousandth level warrior-rogue hybrid.
The result of his carefully planned progress was Blade Phantom, a powerful, dexterity-based fighter class capable of projecting and controlling perfect copies of his form. The clones were only half-corporeal. They faded in and out of reality, switching between the two on a loose timer. The caster could tweak the exact duration that they remained in each phase, but they could never be shorter than a second or longer than two.
In Evander's case, he'd waited for the moment where all of his copies were true—the opportunity to deliver a sevenfold strike and activate his tertiary class' ars magna. Landing it meant selecting seven of the target's metrics and reducing them to a seventh of their value. Strength, height, weight, health. He was free to change anything that wasn't his target's level.
The duel was over. Or at least, it would have been had time not stopped right before his seventh strike landed.
A giant pocket watch hovered in the space above them, its magic radiating into their surroundings. Like Evander himself, all six phantoms were frozen, locked in a temporal prison. It wasn't quite stasis. He could still feel his heart beating and his blood flowing through his veins. His magic circuits struggled against the spell. His spirit worked overtime, fighting back against the effect as it would any poison or status, but he didn't break free before the boy pulled a potion out of thin air and fixed his mangled body.
The next time they engaged, it was with the same weapon and speed. They clashed in midair, the tips of their rapiers sliding past one another as they both emerged unscathed.
Their recovery time was identical as well. Both fighters skidded to a stop, spun around, and immediately lunged once more. Again and again and again they repeated, leaving blurry trails in their wake as they zoomed around the collapsing tree. The crowd roared with every iteration, its members cheering at the supposed test of skill. Even though Prisican's skill was fake. Borrowed. Copied. Stolen.
It stemmed not from practice, but the hallucinated artifact in his hands, the sword that embodied Lord Evander's skill.
It was on their twentieth exchange that the duke finally changed gears.
Rather than meeting the boy in the middle of the ring, he simply prepared his weapon and stood his ground. His legs rippled as they clashed, bending first to absorb the impact before springing back with all the force returned twice over.
He pulled the blade attached to the back of his waist, a parrying knife, and drove it straight into the half-thorae's gut. It pierced straight through his shield. Had he been any smaller, it surely would have shattered his spine, but given his four meter size, it didn't make it any further than his stomach. Still, the force of the blow created an opening.
Evander changed his angle right as the attack landed and rose with a skyward twist. His blade glided through the boy's flesh, splitting his chest and his chin alike. Another blow followed as the kid stumbled backwards, a rapier swing that went straight to the neck and took his head clean off.
The duke wasn't one to finish his foes—he didn't like putting talent to waste—but as it didn't matter with Ragnar watching, he leapt into a spinning strike and went for the execution.
Only then did he recall that the boy had summoned a servant.
But it was already too late.
The humanoid fire spirit burst from the surrounding flames the moment he committed to the attack. It leapt directly above him, clasped its hands together, and smashed its fists into the back of his head. The impact was so heavy that he blanked. For a moment, he forgot where he was or what he was doing, but he snapped back to attention and pushed himself off the ground before it could strike again.
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Gasping, wheezing, he parried its next strike with his knife and cut it in half with his rapier before rolling to his feet.
From there, he launched his body straight up. The lack of fresh air was making him dizzy. Perhaps, he might have been able to heal off the damage had there been anything present, but the smoke was hardly so potent, only a mild annoyance at worst.
Of course, simply escaping into the sky would never serve to relieve his lungs. If anything, the smoke was more concentrated at the very top of the invisible cage. It gathered at the highest point, forming a massive cloud before precipitating back down onto the arena. And in fact, the decision was half made because Evander was becoming delirious. He surely would have simply cleared the air around him had he been perfectly rational, but he waited instead until he was at the top peak of his jump before spinning at such a high speed that the smoke was blasted out to the edge of the arena.
He transitioned from the top-like movement straight into a diving stab.
It was not one of the usual, practiced movements that he'd spent the fight performing, but a wild, violent strike backed by only the faintest hint of technique. It was only natural that it would be countered by the boy who copied his form.
But unlike his earlier decision, his rush was not made under duress.
A thin strand of mana pulled his body out of harm's way right before the boy's blade landed, while another yanked his arms. The unnatural movement slipped straight through Priscian's guard and severed the tendons in his ankles. He went for a second blow, a cut to the wrists that would part the boy from his status-boosting weapon, but the clock appeared above them again and stopped him in his tracks.
Roaring, Priscian slammed a knee into the duke's buck teeth.
But Julius activated his primary racial ability again, and without touching his body, moved it out of the way.
His course was fixed. He moved in exactly the opposite way that he did to arrive at his current position. It almost looked like he was going back in time; his already healed teeth broke themselves again as they lurched forward, his blade moved through the same space in reverse. Paying close attention to his frame revealed a thousand tiny strings, each of which had stored the exact sequence of movements that each part of Evander's body had made.
The reversal culminated in the duke rubber-banding back into the sky, above the battlefield, so he could do it all over.
And that was exactly what he did. Lord Evander descended from the heavens like lightning, over and over again. It was a battleship tactic, only manifested without a flying fortress and made even more effective. After all, unlike a soldier descended from a dreadnought, Evander didn't have to rewind all the way up with every iteration. Sometimes, he let himself fall from the height of a meter, but with the force of a thousand—that too was preserved by the racial spell.
He invoked his doctor class' abilities as he landed. His circuits flared to life as the magic rushed to his eyes. Suddenly, he could see everything. The exact position of each of the halfbreed's tendons, organs, and bones. The places where the boy felt the most pain, and the microscopic tears invoked by his movements. Even his synapses were clear. Evander could see his thoughts as they were fired through his nerves in real time. Discerning their precise meaning was impossible, even for a doctor over a thousand—he was no seer or soul warden—but it was clear enough. A jolt down the arm meant that the limb would soon take action and any amount of increased brain activity evidenced some manner of cognition.
But while such information proved useful for diagnosis, it was mere bloat upon the field of battle.
The only parts of the overlay that mattered were the pulsing black tendrils. For they were the lines that any good doctor was best off avoiding. They represented the parts of the body to which the soul was anchored. That alone made no difference. They were as easy to repair as anything else, save for the case that one was to land an attack placed orthogonally to one of the lines.
Any such strike would deal far more damage than was expected from the corresponding wound; an extra chunk was ripped straight out of their health, the size of which corresponded directly to the original damage inflicted.
The phenomenon was referred to as a critical strike. And for most, they manifested more or less at random, but foes that fell into similar species and archetypes often had similar enough lines that one could learn to deliver such a blow over time. But even in such a case, the end result was effectively random lest one was a high-level doctor.
Evander could tell. He could see both the lines and the paths that his blade needed to take in order to strike them. And after unlocking the class' capstone ability, he'd even gained the ability to follow the critical path. By engaging it, he could ensure that any attack he landed with the ability active would have the critical effect retroactively applied.
And it wasn't just living, breathing creatures that his ability could treat. He could see the weaknesses in the artifact that allowed Priscian to emulate his abilities. And simply by clashing their weapons together, he could whittle away at its durability.
He recalled his new faith as the tempo fell into his hands.
Priscian was the perfect sacrifice.
The perfect person to feed the god that he had come to worship.
A smile crossed Lord Evander's lips as he leapt up to the halfbreed. Tentacles sprouted from the back of his neck as his head changed shape, becoming a giant, cylindrical mass with a circular jaw.
An inhuman laugh escaped his lips as he manifested Azathoth's maw, opened it wide, and sank its teeth into his opponent's face.
It was a shame that the boy's skull was still present.
That was the only thing stopping him from reaching the piece that the deity demanded. So with his surgical skills, he began to peel it.
His parrying dagger as his scalpel, he shaved away at the boy's flesh. He carved into the bone and dug out everything that there was to be eaten. And then, with his head split into a pair of massive jaws, he devoured the vital organ.
The taste of flesh was so delectable between his lips that, for a moment, he almost forgot who and where he was.
But he knew.
The deep dark demanded its sacrifice.
The sleeping chaos demanded both of their souls.
And he was ready to offer.
He stuck his hand into his chest, ripped out his still-beating heart, and shoved it between his demonic lips.
And then, he collapsed, waking only as his racial skill kicked in and pulled him back above the world.
The state of the battle left him completely and utterly confused.
He was certain that he'd just experienced the sensation of devouring the boy's brain, certain that his head had taken his deity's form, and certain that he was about to transform into the horror that the cold one embodied. But his face was still fuzzy and there were no tentacles reflected in his blade, and his eyes were without the subsequent strain that followed his doctor skill's activation.
None of it had happened.
It was all a delusion.
For a moment, he thought that the boy had done something, that he'd either affected his mind or rewound time with another one of his ridiculous abilities.
But it was really only for a moment.
He soon recalled that it was the usual effect—the chronic damage that he'd been stuck with ever since the time he'd dueled the fox and fallen victim to the Song of the Cosmic Abyss.
And the very same reason he'd asked the council not to select him as one of the seven. Though, he didn't quite know why he had bothered.
He was fine. Everything was fine. There was no shame in his infinite faith. Perhaps, had he visited a temple or doctor, he might have been able to correct the defect. Not that there was one. He was a doctor, one of the best in the nation, and he had diagnosed himself as being in perfect health. And even if he wasn't, he didn't see anything to be gained from reverting to his unenlightened state.
His head throbbed.
A cackle escaped his lips.
The organisers had requested for him to hold back for at least one minute. They wanted enough footage for the slowed down, analyzed version of the battle to last them the rest of the day. But Evander didn't care anymore. He was done putting on a show of strength for nothing but entertainment's sake. He wanted blood. His god wanted blood. And as the blind dreamer's disciple, he had little recourse but to feed his master.
And so, he unshackled the rest of his strength.
Mana flooded his body and corrupted his blood. His sword, the sword of the seventh star, responded in kind. Growing seven tendrils, it entered his flesh and melded with his veins. They bulged, growing threefold as the artifact came to life.
It was one of Vella's—one of the spiders born of her brood, fully matured and transformed and attuned to his being.
Shedding its rapier-shaped shell, the spider blossomed into a unique weapon. Technically, it was still classed as a sword, but it looked more like a mace. Blades made of beams erupted from its metal core, each about half the weapon's original length. They spiraled up its length growing at an outwards and upwards angle almost like a pine cone's scales.
Had the man a more applicable ultimate, he surely would have unleashed its power, but alas, he could not. His was to bestow an enhanced version of his snap-back ability to any soldier that marched beneath his banner. Every single man possessed by his power could do a full day's reversion, starting from the moment that they were first bound.
Instead, he simply drove his weapon into the boy's flesh.
His body froze shortly after making contact. The pesky watch had come back into play.
But it only lasted for a moment.
Flexing his muscles, Evander broke free of the spell and speared the boy straight through the neck. He hammered at his corpse, attacking over and over and over again, until one of the referees screamed loudly enough to force him back to his senses.