“I understand not wanting to fight me, but what do you mean you have no quarrel with me?” I asked. “I am the Demon King of Pride. Your master is the Demon King of Greed. How would we not have quarrel?”
“Ophelia is my employer, not my master,” he said, opening his eyes for the first time. “I have no obligation to put her convenience over my life.”
“...Okay, so now what? Do you want me to just let you go then? Turn around and pretend I didn’t see you? Let you finish up whatever the hell you’re doing here and get back to her without trying to stop you?”
“That would be preferable, yes, b-”
“So you think I’m a fucking idiot?” I said. “That I’m just going to give up after following you into one of the most dangerous places on the planet? Even if what you said is true, and you don’t have any loyalty to her, why should I let you live? Even if you’re just an ‘employee’, as you put it, you’re still important enough that I can’t just let you walk free.”
“No, I-” he started.
“I’ll give you one chance,” I interrupted. “Surrender now, and give me your blood, or prepare to fight. I don’t care how much you dislike Ophelia. I don’t give a fuck about whatever your sob story is, or why you’re doing what you’re doing, or how she tricked you into serving her. Your mistakes aren’t my responsibility. The bottom line is, we are enemies, and unless I am absolutely certain that you are incapable of attacking me, you are not leaving this Dungeon alive. Now choose.”
He waited a few seconds to make sure I was done before speaking again. “I’d like to offer you a truce.”
“Does your truce involve giving me your blood?” I asked.
“No, but-”
“Then you’d best prepare for battle. I’ll give you a minute. Stretch, warm up, hand me your will, or whatever you’d like. But once that minute’s up, I’m attacking, whether you’re ready or not.”
“I can give you information,” he said. He remained seated, and outwardly, appeared calm, but I heard his heartbeat begin to quicken.
“I can get that information from you after I make you my thrall,” I said. “45 seconds.”
“It is not possible to enthrall me,” he said. “I have safeguards. If I cannot stop you from taking my mind, I will simply die.”
“Oh well,” I said, shrugging. “If you don’t want to die, disable them. 30 seconds.”
“If I get enthralled, my contract with her will be broken, and if that happens, my family will be in danger.” His face remained unchanged, but I heard his heartbeat begin to quicken.
“Don’t care,” I said. “20 seconds.”
His face hardened and finally, he decided to stand up. “You’re making a mistake,” he said. “The information I can give you, you won’t be able to find anywhere else. Of all her subordinates, only my contract allows me to divulge everything I know.”
“How unfortunate,” I said. “Time’s up. Any last words?”
He hesitated for a moment, then got into a fighting stance. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but instead charged. He was upon me almost before I could react. I had known it was coming, but I had expected at least a little bit more honor than that, given that he was a knight and a war hero. But then again, he was desperate, and up against a Demon King, so it was understandable.
My [Agility] was far too low to dodge the attack, but my newly increased [Vitality] combined with my already over-levelled [Willpower] gave me plenty of aura to to block with. I put my arms in front of me like a shield while forcing as much aura into them as they could take. If Natalya had been present, she would have been appalled at the sloppiness and inefficiency of the move. We hadn’t spent much time on aura, since she herself was not too accomplished in it, but the few lessons she did give were centered around efficiency, and using as little aura as possible to accomplish my goals. Given the circumstance, I couldn’t afford such luxury, but in the milliseconds before Casimir’s fist met my arms, the thought did amuse me.
His aura slammed into mine and I had a brief moment of panic when I began to fly backwards as I realized I had not properly anchored my feet. My back had still been to the tunnel I entered through, so I soon found myself hurtling back down it. I did a quick flip in the air so that when I connected with the wall of the tunnel as it curved away, I landed feet first. I considered using the rebound to rocket back toward the man, but quickly decided against it. No doubt a man with his experience would be prepared enough to catch me, and as powerful as he was, if he managed to grab onto me, there would be very little I could do about it.
Empowered with aura, my legs absorbed the impact easily, and I fell softly to the ground and prepared myself for the coming onslaught. To my dismay, his next attack was also too quick to dodge. I blocked again, this time anchoring my feet properly, and the sound of the impact echoed throughout the cave. I leapt to the side, further down the tunnel and added 500 points to [Agility].
My [Perception] had already been high enough to see all his attacks coming, but with an effective 1000 point boost to my [Agility], I was finally able to dodge his third blow, and his fourth as well. I grinned at him while backstepping away from the fifth, but rather than getting angry at the taunt, his fighting style suddenly became much more subdued. He was still aggressive, but rather than being recklessly so, like he had been in the beginning, charging forward like a bull as if to overrun me, his aggression was controlled and precise. My smile quickly faded as I continued to be pushed further down the tunnel, unable to find any way to damage him.
True to his name, the Fist God used only his hands to strike, but that limit didn’t make him any less dangerous. His arms were longer than my legs, and when he swung the aura shot out even further. Fighting up close was not an option, due to the threat of being grappled, and fighting out of the range of his fists wasn’t an option either, because he would simply punch the aura and fire his aura outward like a cannon. The first time he did that it caught me off guard enough to break my arm, even through my defenses.
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After less than a minute, I decided to give up on trying to beat him with aura alone. Not that I had ever really thought that would work, but I had hoped that I would at least have a chance. However, I was wholly unprepared for high-level aura combat. At low levels, it was hardly any different from mundane hand-to-hand, just faster, and with the occasional special move to watch out for. Against Casimir though, it was like every move was a special move, and his aura reserves felt limitless. With every strike, his aura extended beyond the reach of his physical body, further exaggerating our size difference. I could do the same, but without the [Strength] to back it up, my attacks might as well have been puffs of air against his defenses.
I cast [Blink] to back up out of his range, and then began sealing the tunnel off with Earth Magic. Seeing this, he charged forward like he had to open the fight, but he was too late. By the time he reached me, the walls had grown in, completely blocking the passage, and I had teleported behind him and begun sealing it from the other side.
Waves of aura began rolling off him violently, threatening to disrupt my casting. It would do nothing against my teleportation since I had [Authority]. But it did slow my sealing of the tunnel to a near halt as he dashed towards the gap behind me. Rather than blinking behind him again, I instead cast [Earthen Spike] directly below my feet and flew backward. The spike shattered against his chest, but with my closer proximity, the closing of the tunnel accelerated again. By the time Casimir reached the section of the tunnel I was in, it had shrunk to the point that even I would have to hunch over to get through.
Unfortunately, this was not enough to stop him. He enveloped his body in a thick layer of aura and crashed through the solid stone, barely slowed. I had to teleport away again, though not before a shard of the broken tunnel shot into my shoulder.
“Fuck,” I cursed as Casimir continued running back to the chamber he had been meditating in.
Once I switched to using mana instead of aura, I had stopped shielding myself. Mana shields would be like paper against his fists, and maintaining my aura defenses while doing complicated casting was beyond my current abilities. [Rapid Regeneration] was doing its best to repair the damage, but as I wasn’t in the habit of getting injured, it was still at a low level, so if I continued to take damage like that, he might eventually kill me.
I teleported back to the large room at the same time that he emerged from the tunnel. As soon as he was inside, I started sealing off all the tunnels in the room again, but instead of stopping to fight, he just scooped up his bag and kept running, crashing through another of the stone barriers I created.
“Coward!!” I shouted down the tunnel.
For a brief moment, I considered chasing him down, but almost immediately decided against it. It was obvious what he was trying to do. He was trying to get me to chase him, and continue attacking, slowly bleeding me of my [MP] until all I had left was aura, at which point, his victory would be assured.
“Two can play at that game,” I muttered.
While he may have had the upper hand in direct combat, and I could not afford a drawn out battle, I had one distinct advantage over him in a war of attrition: biology. He needed to sleep. I did not. As long as I kept him on the run, eventually, he would be too worn out to continue, and he would collapse.
I checked my HUD once, then set off down the tunnel after him. His footsteps had faded into the distance, and with the echoing of the cave, I couldn’t tell how far he was, or whether he had taken any turns, but it didn’t matter. My nose was better than a bloodhound’s, and his scent was fresh and clear.
I followed his trail for about half an hour through a seemingly random set of passages and rooms, occasionally coming across the pulverized corpses of demons that had been foolish enough to stand in his way, and while I was certain that there had been others in the rooms with the corpses, by the time I arrived, they had all fled the presence of my [Demonic Aura].
Soon, the sound of his footsteps in the distance completely vanished, even to my ears, so I picked up the pace a bit. There wasn’t much hurry, but I didn’t want to let him get so much of a lead that he would have time for a nap. I put a few hundred of the remaining stat points I earned in the Kraken battle into [Agility] and shifted up from a light jog to a full run.
A few minutes later, his scent trail began to grow stronger as I ran, rather than weaker, which meant I was gaining on him. However, I still couldn’t hear his footsteps, which meant he must have stopped. I accelerated to a sprint, not wanting to give him a chance to get a proper rest. A couple dozen forks and open rooms later, I came to a halt, as I heard him again.
He was not moving, but I could hear his heartbeat from within my tunnel. Judging by the smell, he was in another of the sulfur pool-lined chambers, and he had already killed whatever demons had been in there originally. His heart had calmed back down, and as far as I could tell, he was waiting in the center of the room, like he had been when I first found him. I tried to use my [Sphere of Influence] to get a picture of the interior, but it was rebuffed by his own, much more robust sphere.
I walked slowly down the winding tunnel and cautiously peeked inside. For a split second I saw Casimir standing in the center of the cavern, surrounded by broken-off stalagmite and stalactite heads, before I had to duck back as one of the sharp stones came hurtling toward my face. It shattered against the wall, showering me with pieces of stone that bounced off my aura defenses.
I considered for a moment, then decided to sit down. My peek had been enough to get a good picture of the room, and if I wanted to, I could have teleported inside, but why would I? [Demonic Aura] made it impossible for him to forget I was here, so as long as I didn’t move, he would be forced to stay awake and alert until one of us either attacked or left.
It didn’t take him long to realize that I wasn’t going to attack or try to enter. I stood back up as I heard him set the stone down, and not a moment to soon, as he immediately dashed into the tunnel. We engaged in a brief exchanged, in which he attacked, and I did nothing but dodge backward. I tried my best to use nothing but my aura, but I hadn’t recovered much since our last engagement, so it was only a minute or two before I had to use my magic again. I teleported to one of the tunnels I had followed him through that was just outside of his range of detection. I heard him shuffle his feet a few times in hesitation before lumbering back into the chamber he had been in.
For the next fourteen days, we engaged in a dangerous game of chicken, neither willing to fully engage, and neither able to leave the other alone. As the hours stretched on, he began to grow more aggressive. I was needing to teleport away from him, which used my [MP], but the rate I was using it was not enough to outspend his stamina. Still, it was closer than I would have liked.
Toward the end of the second week, he was dozing off frequently, but the moment I got too close, he would snap awake and attack, forcing me to teleport away. When his reactions started to get slow and sloppy while I still had nearly a third of my [MP], I knew it wouldn’t be long until I won.
On what I estimated to be the morning of the fifteenth day, I stepped into the room and found the enormous man passed out on his feet. I walked toward him, and he did not react until I was within twenty feet, at which point his eyes fluttered open. He looked at me, but his eyes kept falling in and out of focus.
“Please,” he said softly, speaking for the first time since our first conversation. “My family… My children… They need me.”
“Then they’ll have to learn independence the hard way,” I said, crossing my arms. “This is your last chance. Let me make you my thrall, or die.”
A single tear rolled down his cheek as he raised his fists in preparation for his last stand. I got in a ready stance as well; he was exhausted, and very close to his limit, but I knew better than to underestimate him. He raised his foot and took a step toward me, the sound of his boot echoing around. Then, he fell, hitting the ground with a crash.
I had won.