Sweat dripped down my face as white flames danced all around me.
Samuel’s attack wasn’t an explosion caused by the handheld sun he created like I first thought. It was more like a handheld flamethrower that directed all that plasma and force in my direction for a few seconds.
If I had gone for an all or nothing defense…that probably would have killed me.
Lucky for me my go to defense wasn’t all or nothing.
The four remaining layers of Rho Aias shattered and vanished as I dismissed the Noble Phantasm.
“Unlimited Blade Works.” I finished the invocation of my Reality Marble and then winced from the several new wounds throughout my body since the backlash from the broken layers was no joke. Still, better than getting turned extra crispy.
Rho Aias was fantastic, but sometimes I really didn’t like its drawback.
“Wh-what is this? What did you do!?”
I looked around the surroundings, mostly ignoring Samuel for a second.
My soulscape wasn’t looking much better than the last time I saw it. Kinda expected considering the damage fighting Aizen had caused and the fact I was still working my way back up to the level I was when I fought him. Besides the newly created cone of blackened or glassed ground from Samuel’s attack that I instinctively knew was mostly cosmetic – there were still massive cracks running through the landscape and other signs of damage partially hidden by the fields of swords and weapons littering the ground.
Damage using the Reality Marble in its current state was no doubt going to get worse.
Oh well – a little delay and some pain was worth having my full arsenal at my fingertips again. No more struggling to Trace weapons since they already existed in my Reality Marble and were only a thought away.
“Welcome to the Unlimited Blade Works,” I said, returning my full attention to the Dragon Rider. “If you want to be scientific you can think of it as me overwriting a small section of reality with a dimension of my own. If you want to be poetic you could call it a manifestation of my Inner World.”
“Reality manipulation? I call bullshit.”
I shrugged. “I don’t really care. If you prefer, you can just call this place your grave.”
Samuel scowled and adjusted the grip on his sword. “You didn’t win shit yet.”
I won the second I pulled him here. He just didn’t know it yet.
-o-
Feinster was in chaos.
The Varden had attacked in the middle of the night, the Sun Witch leading the charge onto the walls. When Rider Samuel finally flew out to drive her off many of the Empire soldiers rejoiced. Not out of any great love for the Rider or the King, but out of hope that their home would survive another day.
They quickly stopped rejoicing when the Rider’s great red dragon began rampaging through the city trying to hunt down the Witch while the Varden managed to retreat off the walls largely unharmed despite the dangerous assault only to turn around and continue a more conventional attack.
Without magically created ramps that let the attacking army literally walk over the walls or their leaders getting picked off by magically accurate arrows, the defenders managed to hold off the attack better than they had during the daytime but morale was getting low.
It was hard to feel like you were winning when there was an army in your face and two of the most powerful fighters on the continent were destroying the city behind you. Especially when the one seemingly causing the most damage was supposed to be on your side.
But the soldiers couldn’t give up.
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For some that was very literal. The oaths they were forced to swear meant they would keep fighting as long as someone higher ranked didn’t order them to stand down. For others there was simply no choice. Their whole lives were here, and they did not trust the Varden to not destroy those lives should they take the city. Especially when they saw the monstrous Urgals fighting alongside them. And for a silent few? They didn’t give up because they didn’t see a way to escape. The axiom ‘a cornered animal will fight anything’ applied perfectly to them. Surrounded by the enemy and soldiers that wouldn’t hesitate to cut them down for cowardice, they had no other option to keep fighting while looking for a way out.
Feinster was in chaos.
And then the second Dragon Rider arrived.
Initially there was a lull in the fighting as everyone tried to figure out where the distant roars were coming from. The Empire’s soldiers looked up hoping that Samuel had defeated the Sun Witch and was coming to finish driving the invaders off, while the Varden’s warriors were hoping the two were still fighting.
Then another roar accompanied by a bright tongue of blue flame appeared in the sky and both sides knew it wasn’t Samuel’s dragon roaring.
A cheer went up from the Varden’s forces and they threw themselves into battle with renewed vigor.
Eragon Shadeslayer had arrived and with him the tide of battle changed once again.
Feinster was in chaos, and it only seemed to be getting worse.
-o-
It felt nice to fight at one hundred percent again, if only for a little bit, I decided as I parried a desperate slash from Samuel with one hand while cutting through a nasty looking spell with a blade that ate magic.
I was swapping swords so much I wasn’t really paying them much attention beyond what abilities they had at the moment.
A gust of wind exploded outward and scattered the wall of blades I had created as a makeshift arena only to be almost immediately replaced by more materializing in the air and stabbing into the ground a moment later.
A roar followed by a flash of red out of the corner of my eye made me Flash Step to the side. Samuel’s dragon landed on the spot I had just occupied, looking pretty beat up with a broken wing hanging uselessly down his side and wide gashes in his limbs and body spraying blood everywhere.
I actually felt bad about that.
Now that I had the ability to, the first thing I had done was hit the dragon with Rule Breaker to cut any magical ties to Samuel or Galbatorix forcing the poor thing to fight me in hopes that at the very least I could get him to sit the fight out and eventually recover from a lifetime of abuse. Unfortunately, breaking the chains that forced certain behaviors didn’t do anything to change those behaviors when they were the only thing the dragon knew and his mind had never been encouraged to grow enough to think for himself.
The dragon I wasn’t even sure had ever been given a name was nothing more than a mindless animal trained to hunt everything but Samuel. Nothing I tried convinced the dragon to listen to me or even pause in its attacks. All it knew how to do was follow orders.
I was going to have to kill the poor thing, I grimaced at the thought.
“How are you doing this? HOW ARE YOU THIS POWERFUL!?” Samuel screamed, taking advantage of my slight distraction.
I furrowed my eyebrows and frowned. “I feel like we had this conversation before.”
“It doesn’t make sense!” Samuel ranted, ignoring me. “Even if you got some bullshit other magic system, I’m using hundreds of dragons as a powersource! One person can’t keep up with that. You shouldn’t be able to get stronger like this out of fucking nowhere!”
“Not a fan of shounen anime, were you?” I snarked. “But anyway, you made one big mistake about me getting stronger.”
“What?”
I gave him a nasty smile as a certain sword appeared in my hands, the mere appearance of it making Samuel’s dragon crouch down and back away. “I’ve always been this strong. This whole time? Since the first moment I appeared in this world, I’ve been forced to hold back because of some injuries. But because of the Unlimited Blade Works, I can fight at one hundred percent for a little bit.”
“...so you’re saying you’re on a time limit, huh?” Samuel sneered. “Pretty stupid to tell me that.”
“If you had a chance, maybe it would be.” I twirled the sword in my hand and let muscle memory take over. “Thy dragon, originating from sin,” Normally this would require either being closer to the target or a horse to close the distance. A Haste powered flash step was a decent substitute. “See the truth of Ascalon!” A perfect line of yellow energy cut horizontally through Samuel’s dragon’s chest, followed by a vertical one that formed a cross. I pulled the sword back in preparation of the final blow and sent a silent apology to the young dragon that didn’t deserve this. “[ASCALON]!” The now glowing blade stabbed right through both the center of the cross and the middle of the dragon’s chest. A second later there was an explosion in the dragon’s chest.
The dragon looked down at its utterly ruined chest and let out a hiss that sounded uncomfortably close to a relieved sigh before falling over, dead.
“You utter BITCH! What did you do to my mount!?”
I saw red as a faint buzzing sound drowned out any other words.
A red spear barely had time to form before I snatched it out of the air and hurled it at Samuel.
He was expecting the attack and had a hand already up, ready to cast a shield against whatever I threw at him.
Gáe Dearg didn’t care and easily cut through the magic, Samuel’s wards, and the black pit where his heart should be.
“...wha-?”
I wasn’t done.
Six massive spell circles appeared in the air around him.
“Solar Burst: Supernova.”
Bombardment spells a level above the Nova Blasts I had used on occasion all converged on one spot.
I don’t know if it was the nature of the spell itself since I never tested this outside my Reality Marble or the fact we were currently in a manifestation of my soul, but there was no massive explosion as more mana than I ever put into a single spell bar the fight with Aizen went off with a massive surge of light so bright I actually needed to shield my eyes from it.
When I managed to look again there was only a crater in the ground and some ash on the wind.
-o-
I groaned as a soul-deep ache pounded in my chest and my head.
Using the Unlimited Blade Works didn’t mess me up like it had against Aizen since I wasn’t overcharging myself on mana like I had back then, but it still wasn’t easy and I was still more damaged than when I used it then.
Wouldn’t be using it again for a little bit but then again I probably wouldn’t need to.
I looked around the destroyed marketplace and noticed that there were still sounds of fighting in the distance, definitely inside the walls which meant Arya’s plan had worked out. But…I think I was tapped for a little bit.
Taking out the enemy Dragon Rider should be enough to earn a ten minute break – right?
After that I could–
A sudden pressure on my mind forced me to my knees and for a second I panicked. I did not want to deal with another fight right now! But when I noticed the Hōgyoku wasn’t reacting, I realized this wasn’t an attack and paid attention to what was being blared in my mind.
ALG-184-G ERROR 901 : Rouge Avatar Resolved
Cause : Terminated by Avatar Template #29872
Contacting Administrator -ERROR:notfound- for retrieval
ERROR : Admin undefined
Scheduled : Automatic removal of Avatar Template #29872 in &^# : #^& : ^@%
“...well…fuck."