Chapter 295 - The Raging Storm

The city-turned-crater was filled with the sound of clacking heels as she approached the marquis with a haughty smile. There was an almost painstaking delay between each step. She moved gracefully, waiting for each sound to fade before creating another.

“What have you done?” Pollux spoke as she drew near, his throat raspy and his words shaking like a leaf in the wind.

“Nothing worth crying over.”

“Nothing worth crying over? Nothing worth crying over!? You have just snuffed out a million of our people’s lives!” he shouted through gritted teeth.

“The number was closer to eight hundred thousand,” she said nonchalantly.

“Surely you do not truly care so little.” The taunt was met with a glare. “Do you not understand the gravity of what you have done? You have just destroyed so much talent, so much technology! It will take decades to regain what we have lost.” A breath calmed him down. Not completely, but enough that his next words returned to a normal volume. “If vengeance was what you wished for, then you should have simply struck me down.” His eyes were hollow, welling with frustration. “There was no reason to inflict such needless atrocity upon your own people.”

The caldriess nearly rolled her eyes. “I don’t have a ‘people,’ Pollux. Are you really so dense that you can’t get that simple fact through your head? I don’t care for Cadria. I’ve never cared for Cadria. It’s a stupid, barbaric nation with half a set of morals between its entire population.”

“Barbaric? We are not barbaric! If there is anything barbaric, then it is only what you have done!”

“What I’ve done?” A contemptuous, mocking laugh escaped her lips. “I’ve done nothing but squash my enemies underfoot. Is that not the Cadrian mentality?”

“You murdered everyone. The scholars, the childre—”

“How is that different from any of my father’s killing sprees?”

“Your father is a compassionate man. Every citizen he stabbed was like a knife to his own heart. He only cut down those that he had no choice but to slay, and even then, it was in the interest of the greater good. You, you are simply a monster that feels joy in place of remorse.”

“What did you feel then, when you killed my cat?” Claire narrowed her eyes.

Silence.

Silence that only fueled her rage.

“Get up.”

She snapped her fingers and undid his restraints. The block of ice that surrounded his body vanished in an instant, shattering into a thousand pieces and scattering beyond the stars.

Though his mind was certainly clouded, Pollux did not charge her as soon as his fetters were removed. The warrior stood his ground instead, carefully examining the caldriess with an eagle eye. His lack of a weapon had little to do with his caution—he continued to remain where he was even as his flagpole was thrown towards his feet.

It was the expected behaviour. He was not just a trained Cadrian soldier, but a warlord that had seen the nation through a millennium of service—a tenure even longer than her father’s life.

Claire was not nearly as wary. She barely paid him any mind, opting instead to scan the changes to her abilities as she summoned Boris into her hands. Even in his lizard form, the living weapon fit like a glove. Her claws slotted perfectly between his spines, and his tail was just the right width for her hand talons to wrap around it. A premeditated crime on the goddesses' account.

She fiddled with his familiar heft, shifting him between a few random shapes before removing her shoes and kicking off the ground. Her agility hadn’t changed, but the world almost seemed to fly by. She was behind him before she knew it, skidding to a halt with her weapon yet unswung. Her eyes spun as a throbbing pain spread through her body, pulsing through each of her magic circuits in turn.

Something was wrong.

Her body had been rebuilt from the ground up, forged anew with the change to her race. Her flesh had grown resistant to divine energy. Her circuits had, at least supposedly, been repaired.

But the ether’s side effects continued to haunt her. Everything hurt. It took clenching her teeth just to pick herself off the ground. Still, she swung her weapon. She grew his length by a hundred meters as she spun around and delivered a heavy sweep. Pollux stood firm. He blocked the blow with the back of his fist. Half his fingers were broken, but they were restored just as quickly. Flexing the digits, he grabbed ahold of the mace, only for it to vanish like a ghost.

It was back in her hands, only one meter long with its lips a dopey smile.

And as for the caldriess? She was in his face, her grasping claw extended towards his chest.

Thinking nothing of it, the centaur stood his ground. It was standard practice. He could easily take a deadly blow from a monster over a thousand, often enduring even their ars magnae without a care in the world.

His flesh was temporary. He could regrow his guts a hundred times a second.

So he prepared to retaliate with a heavy kick.

A plan that lasted until her magic flared.

Mana erupted from her arm after she buried it in his chest. Everything from his ribcage down was blown away, evaporated in an instant by the ensuing attack.

He wasn’t sure what happened. One moment, all of him was there. And then in the next, it was gone. There was no splatter of blood, no scattered flesh. It was like he had been outright removed.

Still, he was unconcerned. It had only taken a tenth of his total HP. It would only take a second to see it all restored.

He looked up as he fell, expecting another heavy blow, but she didn’t bother, only kicking him away and staring with her father’s freezing glare.

That was when he realised that his body had failed to return.

His flesh was bubbling. The wound that had transformed him into a chest, two arms, and a head leaked blood as it violently convulsed, twisting and turning as it struggled to regenerate.

Glancing at his status revealed that all but a sliver of health had returned. There was nothing in his log to denote the abnormal condition.

It wasn’t until a few seconds later that his torso suddenly regrew. Everything from his hips to his back suddenly appeared, sprouting from his guts like a tree from the soil.

She attacked as he regained his footing. Her second rush was more precise, but she refrained from using her claws. The lizard was held in both hands instead. He knew what she was up to. She was experimenting, testing her abilities and toying with him as a cat would a mouse.

An absurd, cocky mistake.

And one he knew all too well.

Pollux had done the same, many times, throughout his extended tenure. And each time, his prey had struck back with surprising strength, and each time, taught him the err of his ways.

It was precisely those lessons that had culminated in the catgirl’s demise.

He knew better than to let a cornered rat bite.

And he would make sure to subdue his foe before she learned the same.

The marquis began by meeting her head-on. She was fast, but even with a blade in hand, her attacks were pitifully unrefined. They were closer to those of a feral beast’s than a trained warrior’s, wild and lashing, driven more by instinct and momentum as opposed to anything that could even remotely amount to technique.

And precisely because they were so simple, he found them easy to predict. It was trivial, even with her weapon’s shape in flux.

He blocked her sword, parried her spear, and sidestepped her hammer. None of it took any effort. On either of their parts.

Claire was simply stretching her limbs and confirming the changes in Boris’ biology as she swung him. Before their ascensions, his response times had served as a limiting factor, but the coin had flipped when their bodies were remade.

Boris was lightning fast. It took him no more than a tenth of a second to complete a change from one complex shape to another. It was only because Claire was explicitly ordering a longer delta that it was more gradual. And even then, it was just for aesthetics. She would have easily thrown them to the wayside and abused his maximum speed if she was going for the win.

Accompanying the upgrade was a whole library of arms. Every weapon he had ever consumed or otherwise studied was listed in his possible transformations. For the most part, the catalog consisted of kitchen knives, forks, and plates, but sorting by type revealed a deity’s dagger, a crimson blade, and a Paunsean sword.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Claire chose the shortest weapon following a moment of contemplation. A tail sprouted from its rear and wrapped around her arm as she gripped it in her hand. In the meantime, its blade extended, growing to a full two-meter length. According to the lizard, it was a part of the dagger’s function. Vella had simply hidden it away, set it to awaken only if its wielder was on the brink of death. But Boris bypassed the requirement. It wasn’t a modification. His Infinite Armoury could fix weapons and restore them to their undamaged states, but changing them was beyond the scope of its powers. Activating the hidden feature, however, came as naturally as changing the shape of his blade.

The attack delivered with the weapon was heavier than most. Though it was a casual swing, it had enough power to knock him off his feet and launch him across the broken city.

Claire chased, closing the distance between them in the blink of an eye. The exact set of choices that the marquis had been awaiting.

He flapped his wings and righted his balance. Waving his flag activated a whole slew of skills, over a dozen buffs that enhanced everything from his perception and his reaction speed to the amount of raw damage dealt.

On the battlefield, his purpose as flagbearer was twofold. The first was to draw enemy fire. That was why his ability scores were skewed so heavily towards his vitality, and why he could regenerate even when hit by a fortress-felling attack. The other was to inspire his allies and bolster their ability scores, so they could function like the elites they were.

With the city in the state it was, he had no allies to buff, but the marquis was unconcerned. To fly a flag alone was precisely the condition he required to enter his most powerful state.

And it was with that power that he swatted her weapon away and raised his banner overhead.

Titan’s Grasp—his tank class’ ars magna—embodied the concept of empowerment. It summed his already-boosted ability scores and applied ten times the value as a bonus to his strength.

Castle Crusher—his knight class’ ars magna—allowed him to manifest a siege weapon’s purpose by nulling his enemy’s defenses. Be it a suit of armour or a massive wall in his path, his attacks would plough right through and strike directly at his target’s flesh.

And Loyalist’s Might—his flagbearer class’ ars magna—epitomized a patriot’s heart. It allowed him to borrow a single ability from the man whose banner he flew. And he knew exactly what to choose. If there was anything that could assure his victory, anything that could destroy his foe in a single attack, it was his master’s technique, the ars magna that could split its target in two.

The overhead strike was aimed at her head.

His master would surely mourn. But Timaios took no chances.

For a moment, it looked like she would die.

But the head he struck was not the head he had made his target.

She had parried the blow with a second lizard, which had suddenly appeared in her open hand.

No matter to him. Castle Crusher bypassed the toy. It split the metal reptile in half and encroached upon the Caldriess’ arm.

To create a scenario in which their concepts clashed.

The true ice in her bones was indestructible. But severance could cut anything. It was a direct conflict, one that ground the system to a halt.

There was a lapse in time, an infinite moment of which the participants were all aware.

The unmangled lizard looked at his other body in horror.

The flagbearer pressed harder on his weapon, driving it to cut that which could not be broken.

And the caldriess smirked.

She already knew the outcome.

Titan’s Grasp was useless because ability scores would not reflect in a clash of concepts.

Castle Crusher was useless. The ice was not a defensive measure, but rather part of her body—precisely the entity he had hoped to attack.

And Loyalist’s Might was useless because the marquis had chosen the wrong ability.

True ice was a rare elemental power source hand-crafted by the gods, its unique properties bestowed by their divinity. It was hardly something that could be denied by some mortal’s ability to lop random objects to pieces with a conceptual knife.

And it was precisely with that decision that the moment was ended, with Flitzegarde reluctantly ruling in the caldriess’ favour.

A snicker escaped her lips as time resumed. Wasting not even a second, she drove Boris between his ribs and severed his lower half again.

With no magic to impair it, his regeneration immediately healed the wound, bringing his two halves together while she repeated her attack. Each strike was delivered with more force than the last. But he neither broke nor died. His mind regained its function after a brief delay. By the third hit, he was parrying again, retaliating with sweeps and slashes of his own.

He was able to ward her off even as she held a Boris in each hand. Hardly a surprising development.

Swordplay was the one place where he had absolute confidence as her superior. It was his last bastion of hope, the only ability that he could still trust, and no doubt the saving grace that he had assumed would secure his win.

Exactly as she had planned.

She backed off after a brief exchange and nocked one Boris against the other. The first was transformed into a massive bow, a whole three meters tall. The second became an equally large arrow, long as a spear and heavy as a harpoon. The lizard’s body lit up. Icy blue waves radiated from his frame as she charged him full of magic and pulled back on the string.

Boris practically teleported as he was unleashed, drilling a hole in the centaur's face and melting half his brain. The remaining flesh was frozen, transformed into an icy prison that took him a second to break.

He found her in a dual-wielder’s stance by the time his eyes had returned. In one hand, she held a blue rapier and the other a crimson Cadrian sword. She led with the second blade. It was thrust straight at his eyes, its edge glimmering with the same magical strength that adorned her clawed arm. Cautious of the crimson light, the marquis prioritized evasion. He twisted his head out of the way, only for the limb that held the blade to change directions. It was like it ignored the laws of physics. One moment it was flying straight, and the next, it was moving in a backward arc, cleaving like the moon through the night.

He was able to parry it, but only barely. A twist of the flag knocked it away, but her second sword was quick to take its place. The rapier spun like a drill, crackling with her magic as she drove it towards his core.

He moved to intercept, waving his pole-weapon, but again an impossible maneuver threw his defense for a loop.

It was like the sword had been mirrored. It didn’t stop, nor even slow. It simply went from going in one direction to going in the other.

Even more confusing than the movement of her blade was that of her feet. She didn’t need to balance. It was nonsense. Half the time he looked, they weren’t even on the ground. And yet, her leg muscles tensed, like she was pushing off some surface or other, even though he saw no such thing.

The barrage that followed was every bit as baffling. He couldn’t wrap his head around it, even as she repeatedly tore him apart. Her defenses were just as enigmatic. Her body would move unnaturally whenever his weapon came close.

Sometimes, she would ignore her momentum. And others, it was like she was simply relocated, picked up by some invisible entity or other and thrown in a random direction.

She couldn’t be read.

Her stance, her muscles, her eyes, her limbs. It didn’t matter what he watched. It was all equally as uninformative and impossible to understand.

It would only be a matter of time before he was brought to his knees.

That was why he played his final card—the skill that demonstrated his mastery over his racial class.

He was a thunderhoof dreadnaught, not because he had the power to manipulate electricity, but because of the sound that was made as he tore through enemy lines. Following the line of thought, its ars magna was a stomp, a powerful, roaring stomp capable of shaking the battlefield and devastating all that stood in his wake.

He needed to catch her underfoot to ensure her destruction, but that could hardly be done without any way to interpret her movements. So he reluctantly raised his hooves and bashed them into the ground.

He expected a massive impact.

But they stopped in place.

When he looked back at his opponent, he found her eyes warped. The whites were black and the blues were red, pulsing with a powerful magic that commanded a budding, primal fear; he was a cat before a dog, a deer before a bear, a rat before a snake.

More enemies appeared as he struggled to regain control. All of them were lizards, identical to the one she had once in her hands. They were floating in the air, face down, tails towards the sky, encircling him in a rigid, hexagonal formation.

They all flew towards him when she snapped her fingers, autonomously diving into his chest with their bodies turned to blades.

They froze on impact, anchoring his body to the ground, but he pushed forward, ripping out his own intestines as he forced another attack on the lizards’ mistress. It was one of the cleanest swings he had ever delivered. The air parted before the tip of his flag, making way for a slash as smooth as butter. She didn’t react in time. It was a direct hit on her ribs, a crushing blow that could shatter any bone beneath its weight. But it did little in the way of harm.

She was knocked out of the weapon’s path, but having killed so many before, he could tell from the way it felt.

None of her bones were broken.

In fact, from the way she landed on her feet, still steady and unflinching, it looked as if she had hardly taken any damage at all.

The centaur began to tremble. The shaking intensified as she slowly approached again, her eyes as empty and uncaring as they had been before he struck her. The fear lasted until he steeled his nerve and dug his feet into the ground. Pushed to the brink, he delivered an even cleaner blow. It was an overhead strike that struck her skull. The force was poured straight into the catalyst that adorned her head. He tried to part it from her body. But it remained exactly where it was.

He continued with a flurry of blows, each on her person, and each to no effect.

It was because she redirected the force of his blows. Everything was poured into the air around her and dispersed before any damage was dealt. The first attack was the only one where she had botched the timing.

His attacks grew more frantic as he swung and failed.

But his desperation yielded no results. A clawed hand flew towards his shoulder, ripping it from his body with a magical blast. As with the first claw strike, he found his body only bubbling as his flesh tried to heal. A second attack, a sweep of Vella’s sword, removed his other arm and sent his weapon clattering to the ground.

It too, came with a destructive property. Neither limb could heal itself—a problem only further enforced as a ring of ice was tightened around his shoulders.

He took a step back when she marched forward.

And then a second, and a third. He flapped his wings, preparing to escape through the air until his wounds were healed, but he was frozen in place. The magic circles in her eyes were glowing, locking his ability to run.

And then a fist straight through his gut and a hand around his neck.

Pollux could feel his health draining faster than he could heal.

“You were right.” He squeezed the words through laboured breaths.

The numbers could not be refuted. It would only be a matter of time before his life was through.

“You really are his daughter.”

To her annoyance, the man’s face warped into a fearless grin as he cut his regeneration short.

“But know this, Claire Augustus. You will never surpass him with your heart as twisted as mine.”

He had already accepted it—the fact that he was slain by a monster of his own creation. And that once again, his master would have to pick up the slack that he had left behind.