“YUKI!” She ripped her hand free from his grasp and slashed repeatedly at him. What little he didn’t dodge didn’t make it very far thanks to his mist. At the end of the flurries, a blunt shape from the mist jumped out slamming into her stomach. Eudokia flew back through the air, but quickly came to a stop. She crouched low hanging at an odd angle in the air.

‘Those claws…’ The usual sword that he had come to be familiar with from Ayumi couldn’t be found. Much of what felt common to her was painted away. Anger soaked into every crack and hole of the canvas that made up her being. Yuki couldn’t recognize the woman before him.

“Ayumi…I don’t want to have to fight you.”

“Only conditions I accept are you sitting on the Throne!”

“Ayumi…” Yuki could sort of understand her desperation with the weight of an entire country on her. But he couldn’t agree with the methods. “Fine, I’ll put an end to all things. The last two months…Ayumi…”

Chapter 274 – The Corrupted Past

Jumping off her perch, Eudokia clawed out at Yuki. She bounced quickly from side to side. However, none of it really mattered when she couldn’t even break his mist barrier. “Bastard!” She pushed herself even harder as though it could make a difference.

Yuki barely even did anything to stop her. More than anything, he just stared at her. There was an odd sense of reversed positions that didn’t go unnoticed by Yuki. ‘She’s like I was… So enraged that she can’t even think straight. It dulls our powers… She can’t win like this…’

“Don’t give me your pity!” Ice grew over more of her body. Expanding over her face, it covered up her eyes leaving only her mouth and chin exposed. Her speed managed to increase even more, becoming a streak through the air. However, speed wasn’t the answer.

Wrinkling his brow, Yuki had trouble watching Ayumi’s self-destruction. She continued to rip apart every piece that he thought he knew about her. “…Ayumi…”

“Stop calling me by that fake name! That’s not who I am!” Eudokia stopped up in the air above Yuki. She directed dozens of ice shards at him. Though they shattered against his mist, the ice dust rained down expanding suddenly to completely encase him. She threw herself down at Yuki. “My name is Eudokia Ismene!”

Held in the ice, Yuki didn’t even flinch when she crashed through the ice. He grabbed her hands the moment he was free of the prison. “My memories are with Ayumi, not Eudokia. You’re Ayumi.”

“Shut up!” She kicked at Yuki to break free from his hold. Landing a short distance away, she glared at him. “It was all just a lie! Everything you know was a lie! I planned out every little detail!”

It seemed the right time actually to get some more details out of her. Yumi told him she hid stuff from them, but he didn’t know how much. He knew well enough that Ayumi’s personality was fake, but he wanted to believe part of her real self made up the fake. “I know you brainwashed me. That much I’ve gathered from how you talked, but when did you do it? Even if I didn’t notice, someone else should have.”

Smirking a little, Eudokia paused in her attack to indulge Yuki. “Since the beginning. I’ve been slowly working on your mind for the last two months!”

“Two months?!” It actually shocked Yuki to hear that she had been planning so far back. He never really realized. It seemed impossible, but with her power, he had to accept she could have done it.

“Did you really think I’d risk you saying no to me? You still had a deep stubborn streak when it came to those close to you. But I was able to overcome that in time. Especially recently…”

Yuki thought about her words. It hit him quickly when he realized it. “The entire time we were flying to the Capital. You were…”

“Saki was easy to get rid of, but Haruo, he seemed to know something was wrong. So I had to get rid of him.”

“…Ayumi…” Yuki needed a moment to take it all in, but she didn’t give him that time. She charged at him trying to break through his defenses. Even with his mind in a swirling mess, the mist gave him more than enough defense to stop any attacks. He knew how much weaker Ayumi was compared to him from all of their training. His power was simply on a different level. She could never compete with him.

“What else?” His mist batted her away allowing it time to gather back up. “What all have you been lying about? What about the assassins?”

Eudokia stopped again with a dark stare pointed at him. “All a fiction, necessary elements to force out your power. The Council doesn't even know you exist. They never did! No one knows you exist! Everyone believes the King died without any heirs!”

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Both Yuki and Yumi fell back in shock. Neither could believe that everything that they were fighting for was a complete lie. The fights through all of Atlantis were pointless. Those that died empty. They had no reason. They never should have been here.

Yumi stared over at Yuki with the same look of borderline despair over their actions. They suddenly felt the weight of them heavier than ever before. ‘We…We really are like they said…just terrorists!’

Yuki had a little more trouble with things. His body shook thinking about everything that happened. So many things made a strange amount of sense now. But it meant that he couldn’t trust anything he knew. The entire last two months was a complete and utter lie.

His life was a lie.

Tightening up his hands, he looked back at Ayumi again. He needed to know something. “If they never knew about me, then what about everyone that attacked me? Who were they?”

“They were all my subordinates or freshly picked recruits out of the academy.”

“What?! You killed your own subordinates?!”

“They had only one purpose which they all failed at. They were supposed to awaken your power. It was still locked away and uncontrolled when I found you. I didn’t have time to waste on a slow training with the Rite of Succession in two months.”

A part of it didn’t make any sense. He recalled another scene with Ayumi, that he actually fought her over. “Then what about that one you killed that you said you were protecting me?!”

“The Council has been trying to locate and arrest me since I left.”

“You’re saying that…”

“When I fought to protect you, I wasn’t actually protecting you. I just made it look like that because they had no interest in you. They were after me. It wasn’t until Akakios, the assassin with the plants, found me that they started attacking.”

The main fights he had protecting his family and friends went through his mind. He remembered the plant assassin and everything that happened to Saki. Even the assassin that came after Fumiko, Ayumi’s mentor. ‘I can’t believe anything I remember…’ He then thought about the most important one. “Did you even order Demosthenes?”

“He disapproved of my methods. However, he couldn’t undo what I had started so he insisted on being the one to take the burden as he called it. The death of your friend was exactly what I needed!”

He felt his legs buckle a little. ‘Momo, Jun, Ken, Fumiko, Saki, Seiji…everyone…’ Yuki ground his teeth. His lips separated a little as he felt his heart starting to pound harder. It was difficult for him to hold himself back. ‘She tried killing the ones close to me…’

Yumi could see the rage building up. She knew the feeling too well. It made her want to kill Eudokia all over again knowing what torture she put Yuki through all for her plan. “Yuki…” Like him, she felt like a hypocrite even thinking about telling him not to want to kill her. Yet it was still the truth, she didn’t want to see him like that. “Yuki! Don’t give into the darkness!”

The sound of her voice was enough to calm his heart. He sighed a little, remembering how he had to stay in control. ‘She’s right…but it’s so hard…Momo was hurt because of Ayumi!’ His struggle didn’t get any easier. He tried not to think about the images as they came back to him. Everything inside his heart told him just to rip her apart for everything. Even while his mind told him to keep control.

“Yuki!”

‘I’ve got Yumi worrying about me…’ He tried controlling his breathing. He just needed to hold on to something, anything to keep himself from going insane. Yuki stared over at Yumi. Just the look of her face and how much she worried about him calmed him down. He wasn’t completely sure why, but it soothed him a little. “Thanks, Yumi. I needed that. I don’t need to be going berserk again, especially when this is hardly a fair fight already.”

“Fair fight?” questioned Eudokia. The shaking rage in her voice seemed to have disappeared. While she explained everything and exposed all of her lies, it actually seemed to give her calm. Now, she looked more lucid than she had for a while.

Eudokia laughed, but it was no longer the sound of a crazed woman. Rather, she seemed to know something. Something else that seemed to give her confidence still, even against Yuki. “You’ve grown rather arrogant, Yuki in experience.”

“Huh?” Yuki quickly realized that Ayumi recovered herself. He understood partly what she meant. He hardened up his mist as she came in for the next round of attacks. Unlike everything before, her claws had greater cutting power. He could see that she actually made it through part of his defense. She quickly bounced around even faster than she had before, but now with frightening precision.

The repeated blows pushed him back a little as he tried to accept the new Ayumi. ‘She’s stronger and faster now… The difference of a clear mind is almost staggering how much it corrupts our abilities…’ It actually made him laugh to himself a little. ‘…so much for the notion of hot blooded warriors…fiction and reality really are quite different…’

Despite the better results from Eudokia’s focused mind, nothing made it through to Yuki. And even worse for her, he seemed to have been holding back. Once she sharpened her attacks, he quickly adapted to the change. It was only moments before her attacks became as ineffective as before.

He didn’t want to sound arrogant, but Yuki could tell the difference in their power. Even as skilled as she was, she could never breach his defenses. His control improved too much for that to happen. “Give it up, Ayumi. You can’t beat me. You’re far more experienced with your powers than I, but I still can easily overwhelm your Field.”

Eudokia came to a stop. She landed on the ground with all of the ice retreating. “You really think you’ve won. There’s something you’re forgetting.” A smirk came across her face.

It was Yumi that figured it out first. “That’s right! Yuki! Heard that she hasn’t actually been honest about her true power.”

“That’s shocking,” Yuki said, almost deadpan. “How strong could she possibly be?”

Suddenly ancient Atlantean symbols appeared on Eudokia’s body. Light came from the symbols quickly growing brighter. They all retreated from her extremities gathering at her core. Building out in front of her body a complex array appeared casting a red light on Eudokia, one that didn’t match with the array.

Eudokia slammed her hand up against the array. She pushed through the array as the light sank into her skin. The red lines all over her body flowed in reverse suddenly drawn in by the array. In moments, everything had been pulled out of her. She pulled her hand back a little, resting it at the center of the array. Her hand squeezed at the center causing the whole thing to shatter.

She fell to one knee panting from the effort. Sweat beaded up on her face. It didn’t take long for her to recover fully from the exertion. Eudokia rose to her feet and fixed Yuki with a new look.

In a flash, flames erupted everywhere around them. Eudokia slowly marched with menacing and merciless intent towards Yuki. “Your confidence will be shattered to pieces now! I am the strongest MP alive in Atlantis right now!”