Nicotris Sept

As soon as the signal for the fight started, Kiara dashed towards me. Her strength was in a league of its own even when compared to mine, but I held the advantage at ranged combat. Kiara knew this as well, so she rushed to close the distance between us.

Of course, there was no reason for me to let her take the initiative, so I dashed backwards while facing her, firing arrow after arrow at her. Unfortunately, they failed to pierce her magic-resistant scales, so Kiara kept rushing at me.

“Tsk.”

I clicked my tongue, then dispelled my bow. It clearly won’t hurt Kiara.

The fact that I am not fighting in the name of Lady Mett, Order and Justice, or the weak and downtrodden means that I do not get the powerful bonuses I usually get from [Paragon of Justice Lv. 23]. This shortcoming of my specialized class isn’t normally an issue since I don’t fight for reasons other than that often, but this is one of those rare occasions.

“What’s wrong, Nicotris?! All that barking and then you just run away with your tail between your legs?!” Kiara said, in what has to be a slightly less obvious attempt at taunting than a grade-school boy’s.

I ignored her as I continued keeping the distance between us until I figured out a plan. Fortunately, since I am a rank and two class advancements ahead of her, I am ahead in all attributes besides strength, so Kiara can’t catch up to me. The only ability of hers that is a grave threat is her black hole skill, but if I keep an eye out, I should be safe.

My greatest weapon is my incantations – the ability to wield magic and abilities from another being without cost; the catch being the limited number of times they can be used, the reduced power of said abilities compared to what their strength would normally be, and being at the mercy of the being that grants said abilities in the first place.

In my case, the only bottleneck is the number of uses of the incantations that I have – [Apostle of Mett Lv. 17] grants me the use of [Sanctuary] eight times, [Shield of Order] four times, [Fist of Justice] four times, and [Divine Judgement] once.

[Descent of the Goddess Lv. 12] is technically available as well, but using that is completely out of the question.

I am trying to teach Kiara a lesson in humility, not sacrifice my life to kill her.

Still, these should be more than enough to take her down; a plan was already beginning to form in my head.

Just as I was thinking that, a powerful force suddenly tugged me towards Kiara, jerking me forwards. Kiara then launched a fire breath directly at me, then fired a number of mana blades from odd angles to surround me. She grinned at me, as if I hadn’t accounted for such an obvious move.

“Naïve!” I yelled at Kiara, startling her.

I summoned golden armor to cover the unarmored parts of my body, giving me full-body protection like plate armor. Kiara’s mana blades shattered against it, and her breath attack was almost upon me.

[Fist of Justice]!

A massive golden fist punched right through her fire breath and was already nearly upon her.

Kiara used her gravity skills to dodge my attack by the flimsiest of margins, resulting in her crashing down into the ground and kicking up plenty of dirt in the process.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

[Sanctuary].

The familiar soft, golden light surrounded me as the force pushing me towards Kiara was forcibly removed, granting me the advantage in mobility once again.

Kiara pulled herself up from the crater she formed and spat out a mouthful of dirt. She stared at me for a moment then flew straight up, far higher than even where I hovered.

‘…What is she trying to do?’ I wondered.

After reaching a height of several kilometers in the sky, Kiara turned around and dove straight down at me. As she rapidly picked up speed, she opened her maw once more to launch a breath attack at me.

“Haven’t you learned your lesson yet?! You can’t win just by chasing me around and throwing fireballs at me!” I yelled.

Kiara ignored me as she fired a breath attack. To my surprise, this time it wasn’t a ball of flames, but a continuous stream of sharp rocks flying straight at me.

I rolled my eyes as I simply flew to the side. Moving with such ridiculous momentum will make it really hard for her to steer in any other direction. The stream of rocks fell behind me, as I flew away.

“Is that al-?!”

Before I could finish my sentence, space itself bent in front of Kiara, reorienting her direction back towards me without losing any of her momentum.

I cursed inwardly. I forgot she could bend space with arcane magic.

The stream of rocks behind me began to rapidly approach, and I rapidly needed a new solution. At this rate, it’s only a matter of time before Kiara catches up to me.

…Unless that’s not a bad thing?

I dodged in other directions again and again, making the stream of rocks coming from her breath attack miss each time, though it was becoming more and more difficult to time as the distance between us kept shortening. When it was almost a hundred meters, I turned around to face Kiara while flying backwards.

[Shield of Order]!

Her earth breath crashed into my shield fruitlessly, and Kiara did not have any space to cast her space warping spell in time.

My heart raced rapidly as I saw Kiara’s surprised expression through the golden shield.

‘Did I get her?!’ I asked myself for a moment.

Kiara then fired a breath attack at my spell that was saturated with raw mana, which blew a hole right in the middle of my shield, letting her cross through it!

Being able to infuse breath attacks with all of the elements was disgustingly powerful, as expected. I grit my teeth as Kiara was finally upon me.

“I’ve finally caught you!” she grinned maliciously as she descended upon me.

“Hah! We’ll see about that!” I scoffed and swung another [Fist of Justice] at her.

Kiara fired another arcane breath which blew a hole through the fist, shattering it, as she reached out to grab me with her claws.

Moments before her claws landed on my face, I grinned.

“Got you.”

Kiara’s eyes widened in surprise, but before she could react, a golden sickle-sword – my lady’s divine khopesh – appeared in my hand and moved like it had a mind of its own.

[Divine Judgement]!

A golden line flowed like fire and cleanly cut Kiara’s arms and legs off her body, launching her back like a meteor to the ground. The blade’s golden slash continued moving downwards until they reached the ground, causing a massive explosion of dirt that completely covered my vision even this far up. All the dirt that flew near me was blocked by sanctuary, so I did not need to cover my eyes, but I still couldn’t see where Kiara was.

I dispelled the golden khopesh and summoned my bow.

‘Now that her survival skill is triggered, I can finally finish her off. She has a single point of HP left, and her scales should be battered and bruised enough for an arrow to end the fight.’

Moments later, the fallout settled, and Kiara’s battered, broken body was at the bottom of a large gorge.

Her arms were cut off and everything below her torso was meters away from her. She will be bleeding out in any second now. However, since she had that obscenely potent regeneration skill that all dragons have, I shouldn’t count on that.

I created a light arrow, then quickly fed it with a lot of mana and used it to take aim at Kiara. The arrow was unstable and was going to explode soon, but that was only going to make the kill more certain.

Kiara looked towards me and gave me a bloody smile. Nearly half her teeth were missing, her nose was bent the wrong way, and her left ear was missing. Still, that only served to make it that much more intimidating.

Alarm bells immediately began ringing in my head as I tried to figure out where her next attack will come from. I used all of my senses to look around and below, but I still found nothing. When I activated mana perception, I felt a large and deadly mana construct above. I looked up, and I saw a black ball hovering over me, a mere meter from my head. Panic immediately took over me, but before I could do anything about it, the world suddenly faded to black.

***

I found myself laying on the floor, staring at the black dome above falling to the side and disappearing, revealing the arena’s ceiling. A few moments later, three pairs of footsteps approached the arena. I closed my eyes as the footsteps stopped near me.

"I lost."