Alarion could feel it. The push and pull. The ebb and flow of two combatants so evenly matched. It was a familiar sensation, one driven into his very bones by bout after bout against the phantasmal dragon. Strangely, that familiarity bore with it a certain level of comfort. He had never fought this fight, but he knew this fight.
This time he was stronger, while his opponent was faster. He had better durability, while his enemy could only be defeated in a specific manner. The Steelborn had better ranged options, but Alarion was more mobile and capable of bringing his primary weapon to bear. It was a fight that either could win, a fight that either, or even both, might lose.
He needed an edge. Fortunately, he had one strapped to his wrist.
Alarion could practically hear the shrug.
“Lan va so it ka?” The Duke said, his deep voice echoing off the pyramid walls.
Alarion closed the gap between himself and the Duke in three quick strides, pressuring him with two quick swipes of his greatsword, each met with a corresponding parry. If the Duke was offended that Alarion did not wait to parley, its body language did not show it. Alarion might have stayed his hand, if he thought there was some line for peace between them, but he knew a stalling tactic when he heard it.
A minute, maybe more until the slivers could strike again. He had to use his time wisely.
On the attack, in melee, Alarion had the distinct advantage. His Awakened body had been reforged for just this sort of combat and his unusual weapon of war had the Steelborn off balance. The resizing weapon defied the conventional rules of melee combat, it allowed Alarion to attack faster than he should have been able, from angles that would not normally be possible at such speed. It let him slip out of a blade bind and into unarmed combat in an instant, letting the human set the pace of their encounter in ways that it could not match.
The problem was finishing the fight. This Steelborn was no fool, it knew that there were only two ways Alarion could defeat it. He could smash its head, or he could dismember it to the point where it could not defend itself. And then smash its head.
This knowledge allowed it to make strategic sacrifices that Alarion could not. It could afford to trade an arm for an arm, since it could rehabilitate the injury in moments with access to the arm, while he very much could not. That willingness to sacrifice like for like bound Alarion’s movements. A small opening wouldn’t do, he’d need a wide one to do meaningful damage and the machine was unwilling to provide.
Around him, the tide shifted and a new bout began.
The slivers sprung into action as Alarion’s turn on offense came to a close, zipping near silently through the air in their ‘All Range Attack’. He pivoted, leaping backward as he swept his sword out in front of him. He hoped to catch one of the slender bits of metal, to bend or break it. But to no avail. They were too quick, or he was too slow.
Crack!
A sharp pain blossomed in Alarion’s side as a round tore through him. It was not a lethal attack, barely a sixth of his HP according to the notification, but it was a bad omen and a painful lesson. He’d been too focused on the swarm that had been so crippling in their first bout that he’d missed the threat of the cannon that had been only a marginal threat on its own. A stupid mistake.
Not that his awareness of the situation was all that helpful. The slivers were all around him, penning in his movement for shot after shot. Only careful blocks with his bracer or last minute teleports kept him from being struck again, but neither did anything to keep the damage from compounding as the slivers chipped away at his HP. Only time was in his favor as the shards suddenly withdrew to their source once again.
Thirty seconds on, a minute and a half off. As the battled waxed in his favor, Alarion knew he needed to finish things in this bout, or drown in the coming tide.
He threw his weapon toward the Steelborn then flickered to it almost instantly, baiting out a counterattack well outside of its reach. Or, at least, what he thought was outside of its reach.
Mid-swing, the Duke’s mace extended, its foot-long hilt tripling in size as a hydraulic mechanism triggered within. The resulting attack was awkward, but effective as it drove Alarion to one knee despite a desperate interception with his own greatsword. The follow-up attacks were more elegant, carefully measured two-handed blows that struck, struck and struck again, battering Alarion’s defenses and shattering his attempt at offense.
In the heat of battle, Alarion did not have time to consider the words. He could either obey or refuse, not debate. And to his own surprise, he obeyed.
Even with his eyes closed and guarded, Alarion still saw the world pulse with light. It was beyond bright, as though he’d somehow stared into the sun with his eyes closed. His wrist felt hot, and for the first time he heard the Duke grunt in something akin to pain. An afterimage of the sudden flare still lingered in his eyes as he opened them and pressed his attack with a single wicked cut that sent the Steelborn’s arm, and its primary weapon, spinning off to the floor below them.
Alex’s reply was strangled. Difficult.
Before Alarion could structure another question, the Duke made itself known once again. Its eyes were gone, the once green orbs sparking with short arcs of lightning, but that victory was short lived as a thin red visor slid down to replace them. It pulsed once, as if in rage, as the one armed Steelborn advanced upon him.
There were no words to show its anger, just an abandonment of formal combat in favor of unrelenting violence. It raked him with sharp fingertips, struck him with eerily familiar low kicks and abused its sheer bulk to bully him in close combat. But for all the sound and fury, the attacks were largely ineffective. It had one arm and the damage to its vision must have been considerable, given how many of its attacks were drifting to his left.
Specifically to his left arm.
He realized the danger a moment too late. Their arms clashed, a small grapple ensued and though Alarion struck several telling elbows to the Steelborn’s head in the scuffle, only it came away with a true victory. A small, lightly flashing wristband in its grasp.
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Alarion didn’t try to barter. He didn’t beg. The young man met like with like, violence with violence. He threw his all into a series of brutal reprisals, hoping to end the fight before the Duke could even think to threaten his new hostage.
It was not to be.
Alarion’s sword carved through the blackstone frame in half a dozen places, but none of the strikes were disabling and none of the strikes were lethal. The once proud Duke stood in tatters, but as the seconds ticked by he stood all the same. A pressurized hiss of air announced the return of the slivers. It announced the Duke’s victory.
One the Steelborn celebrated by crushing the wristband, and discarding Alex over the railing like so much trash.
The emulated man was dead. Alarion was nearly certain of it. The core of the wristband had made a particularly nasty crunch within the Duke’s closed fist. Even if he wasn’t, the self-destruct they had set in motion would need to be reset in seconds. The correct decision was to chug his last potion, to force his way through the slivers and to smash Alex’s murderer into a few dozen pieces.
It was the correct decision, but it wasn’t the one Alarion made.
Even the Duke seemed surprised as the young man vaulted over the railing and plummeted to the floor below. The fall was survivable with his current HP, probably, but Alarion did not leave that up to chance as the slivers raced after him. He pivoted in midair, judged the distance and threw his greatsword upward, shifting toward it a moment before he hit the ground.
Bssht.
He emerged from the shift with all the original momentum of his fall directed not down, but up. His stomach lurched at the sudden change as he ‘fell’ upwards for a scant few seconds before gravity reasserted itself and dropped him the last few feet to the floor in an undignified heap.
Alarion did not wallow in the pain. Not with Alex nearby.
The band was in three pieces, the ‘straps’ broken off and twisted beyond recognition while the central core was cracked and flickering. Flickering was probably good. Better than the alternative, certainly. Alarion brushed away cracked and broken glass and double tapped the wristband’s core.
Nothing.
He tried again. Then again. Then twice more. It continued to flicker, but it was impossible to tell if the shifting brightness was a reaction to his touch, or simply the dying embers of the device.
If the man inside gave an answer it was drowned out by the resounding thud that marked the Duke’s return to the battle. It had dented the floor where it landed, its footsteps announcing the end of him as it stood upright and leveled its weapon in his direction.
Alarion did not hesitate. He kicked off the ground at a near sprint, dodging the first shot as he lined up one of his own.
His weapon flew through the air with the sort of accuracy only the System could provide. And the Duke was ready for it. It had seen enough of Alarion’s tricks to know what to expect. It swatted the greatsword into the ground then stepped away, its weapons trained on where the boy was soon to appear.
Which left Alarion with just enough time to close the distance the old fashioned way. And punch it in the face.
Two more punches shattered stone as the Steelborn’s visor cracked, a neon red liquid spilling down its cheek like a trail of blood.
It tried to retaliate with its own fists while the slivers rained down from above, but Alarion shifted in the space between breaths. He appeared behind the Duke and shattered the underslung rifle on its remaining arm with a vertical swing, only to be punished with a sweeping kick that sent him sprawling, his weapon at the feet of his most hated foe.
The slivers peppered him with new cuts as Alarion recovered, his System notifications flashing with a concerning warning as the autonomous weapons retreated.
Attention! Warning! HP Critical!
Less than 20% of his HP left, which meant he was already well into the negatives. That explained all the pain as he struggled to his feet, drew the last crystal vial from his bracer and downed it without hesitation. A 20% malus to all attributes was a small price to pay for a full HP pool, going into what he knew would be the final bout.
Especially given that he was now unarmed.
Part of the pain hadn’t gone away when he’d drank that healing potion, and a quick glance at his status explained the issue. His HP wasn’t the only pool that had been near depletion. His mana had run dry on that last attempt, and his stamina would not be far behind if he had to block any more shots with his shield. He wasn’t teleporting to his weapon any time soon.
So he’d have to borrow one.
The duke’s arm, and more importantly his mace had fallen on Alarion’s side of the room. While the Steelborn stooped to retrieve Alarion’s blade, Alarion moved to retrieve its mace. Which turned out to be easier said than done.
The Steelborn had fought with the weapon as though it were an extension of its own body. In Alarion’s hands, it felt heavier than his first greatsword, all those levels ago. He could lift it, but it took both hands and considerable leverage on its long grip to bring it into a proper combat stance.
He stared across the field at the Steelborn with a shared animosity and a shared respect. The situation was familiar, a twisted deja vu flowing across his mind as he stared down his one armed foe.
And in that moment, Alarion understood. He’d been fighting the wrong way.
The push and pull, the ebb and flow, they were so similar to his triumph over the dragon that he’d mis-categorized himself. His foe was faster. He was stronger. He was more durable, but his enemy had a near endless ability to try again. He was the dragon in this equation, but he hadn’t changed how he’d fought. He’d relied on clever tactics, on attritional damage that always cost him a little more than it cost his opponent. What he needed was decisiveness. Stubbornness.
Single-Mindedness.
Alarion shouldered his mace, and met the Duke’s visor.
And he charged.
The two met in the center of the room, and the Duke drew first blood. The tip of the greatsword struck Alarion on the right side of his abdomen, piercing through cloth, skin and muscle as it delivered a pain he had never felt.
Had he been unawakened, the blade would have sunk to the hilt and killed him outright. Had he a lower vitality it would have done so anyway. If he’d not chosen [Survivor’s Endurance], the bleeding condition that resulted might have been the end of him. If he’d killed a few less soulless, his feat of strength wouldn’t have reduced the damage. If he’d not been so pig-headed in his skill selection, he wouldn’t have been able to live into negative HP, let alone stay standing.
And if he hadn’t followed his heart, he wouldn’t have resisted damage while on the attack. But deep down, Alarion knew that the secret to survival was a good Offense.
The mace slammed down with every ounce of weight Alarion had been carrying. Its damage reinforced by the near-fatal injury Alarion had received, the mace did not crush the Duke so much as it shattered him whole.
> You have slain [A̴̗̥̋̍F̶̯͔͆M̷̨͂̅͑͝-̶͇̐́D̸̹͂͝-̷̺͎́̓̇̊͠0̶̼̈́̃̑̓̕0̴̰̙̣̥̋̉̕͜8̵̡̡͎̘̫̈ ̴̢̱̥͆̑͜-̵̡̯͈͂̏̓̉͜͝ ̴̙̱̘̣̜͗͋D̷̜̥̩̭̾͑ư̸͍̳k̸̤̰̑ĕ̶̴̢̧̡̺̘̈́͛͗͐̕ – UCL Error]
> Exception: Unexpected Subject
> Full Traceback
> Re-categorizing
>
> You have slain [The Duke – UCL 212] – Bonus Experience earned for slaying an opponent above your UCL.
> Level Up! Congratulations, Your Stubborn Swordsman Class has advanced to Level 22! STR +24. AGI +24 VIT +6. INT +6. PER +24. WIL +18.
>
> Level Up! Congratulations, Your Orphan Class has advanced to Level 12! STR +10. AGI + 15. VIT +10. INT +10. WIL +10. Luck +189.
> Skill Grade Up! Imperial Greatsword Mastery (Common) -> Oversized Weapon Mastery (Uncommon)
>
> Skill level increased. Oversized Weapon Mastery is now Level 2 . STR +12.
>
> Skill level increased. Thrown Weapon Mastery is now Level 9. AGI +4. Per +4
>
> Skill level increased. Pig-Headed Resilience is now Level 4. VIT +16.
>
> Skill level increased. Survivor’s Endurance is now Level 7 . VIT +4.
>
> Skill level increased. The Best Offence is a Good Offense is now Level 3. STR +16.
Alarion slumped to his knees as the assault of notifications filled his vision, reassured that he’d successfully put the Steelborn down. One hand moved to his abdomen to put pressure on the wound as Alarion checked his HP with a frown. He’d hoped the sudden jump in vitality might have put him above zero, but apparently a higher max HP didn’t translate to an immediate gain in hitpoints.
It was good information to know, offset slightly by the open stab wound in his midsection. Still, he’d live.
Yes, he would live. And so would Alex.