Essalina and the Darkstalker had separated at that explosive exchange. They glared at each other across the arena, each drinking in their respective audience’s cheers.
Then the battle resumed.
Essalina wasn’t intending to go toe to toe with the monster. Instead, she summoned her flames from her Domain, creating them as dozens upon dozens of orbs floating through the air around her. A series of fireballs that she immediately pelted at her opponent.
Of course, Essalina would have performed her own preparations, conducted her own research into her opponent. She knew as well as Rieren how a Darkstalker functioned.
The scion of the Arteroth clan hadn’t repelled the Abyssals from her entire home region without adequate knowledge.
Darkstalkers were powerful monsters that only existed as B-Grade or higher. They had two properties that made them more dangerous than the majority of their counterparts. One was their musculature, capable of generating enough Abyss Aspect fuelled strength to tear through entire mountains in a matter of moments.
The other was their near impenetrable defence. This defence was maintained through bone manipulation. Like a cultivator channeling bone Aspect, Darkstalkers could manipulate their skeletons, both internal and external, and shape their bones however they wished.
Bone chilling… It seemed the commentator was well aware of the Darkstalker’s powers as well.
But Rieren and the Darkstalker had talked before about the approach Essalina would likely take to defeat it. They had formulated a counter to this exact scenario, and any variation of it Essalina might hope to use going forward.
A hundred bones burst out of the Darkstalker’s body. They were small, no wider than fingerbones, but they all extended several paces into the ground.
Just as the dark fireballs came flying at the monster, it ripped apart the ground and sent a tidal wave of dirt flying in its opponent’s face. All the fires were immediately smothered. The black-and-gold flames exploded, setting off another little tremor rocking the arena.
The Darkstalker took advantage instantaneously. It ripped through the dirt cloud before Essalina could use more of her flames.
Fast. So incredibly fast. Rieren figured the Darkstalker could give even a Blightmane at the same Grade a run for its money.
But Essalina was prepared for this scenario. The Darkstalker rushed in, creating an enormous blade of pure bone to impale its enemy with. One of Essalina’s skills empowered her in direct, physical exchanges. Rieren had made sure to emphasize that part to the Darkstalker. As a counter to that, they had decided that it would be to the Darkstalker’s to use powerful, overwhelming blows.
It seemed they hadn’t counted on Essalina’s pure physical prowess being far, far greater than they had originally thought.
She slapped aside the gigantic bone blade with her own thin greatsword with hardly any effort. Rieren almost wanted to believe there was some skill like Earthfall Blade at play, but the Arteroth scion hadn’t used anything like it against her.
Essalina’s follow up was quick as lightning. Her responding swing would have likely cut the Darkstalker in half, but it had changed the momentum of its charge with more bones jutting out of its body at the last second. As it was, Essalina’s strike still uprooted a great deal of earth and left a trail of explosive flames in its wake.
Realizing that her flames would only be doused with ease, Essalina leaped at her opponent to fight face-to-face once more.
The Darkstalker’s armouring exoskeleton thickened in response. While it would enhance its defence, the extra weight was going to slow it down. Something Essalina took rapid advantage of by closing the distance in a heartbeat.
What followed was a series of exchanges that played out exactly as Rieren had feared they would. Essalina’s blows grew more powerful with every blow. Eventually, she grew strong enough to crush through the thick bone armour. One of the Darkstalker’s arms bent awkwardly as the monster was blasted off its feet to strike the distant arena wall hard enough to cause yet another tremor.
“Surrender, beast,” Essalina yelled. “And I will cease before I’m forced to crush you entirely.”
The strike had made the crowd roar in approval, drowning out the monsters with ease, especially since several of them had gone silent at the blow. That hit had been hard.
But the Darkstalker clambered out. Injured though it appeared, it could fight on. “Never!”
It charged. This time, it made sure to keep its distance, instead opting to attack with two bone spears that were three times as long as it was tall.
Essalina was well aware of the strategy, however. She batted away the monster’s attacks without difficulty. It appeared as though the Darkstalker would at least be able to keep her at bay, but that hope died within seconds too.
Her cape of flame fluttered off her back and flared bright. Rieren grimaced. She recalled just how dangerous and annoying that living cape of Essalina’s had been.
Rieren had warned the Darkstalker about it, of course. But they hadn’t been able to formulate any better method of dealing with it other than doing the utmost to stay away from it. The Darkstalker was forced to revert a good deal of its attention to the extended cape that shot at him like a flying guillotine of flames.
Which allowed Essalina to evade the bony spears, close the distance, and resume her furious blows head on.
It had just the devastating effect as expected. The Darkstalker was bashed backwards after a few seconds of fighting. This time, Essalina had destroyed its left arm, crushing not just the exoskeleton but the entire limb. A quick, hard tackle with her elbow sent the monster crashing to the ground about forty paces away.
The monster rose back up to attack, relentless and irrepressible. It didn’t help. Essalina was already on top of the Darkstalker. She beat her opponent back, over and over, crushing through any defences it threw in her way.
It tried other tacks too. Spears of bone shooting out of the ground, sudden spiky protrusions seeking to get past Essalina’s armour. Aat one point, the Darkstalker simply leaped high into the air and threw down a barrage of bony spears well out of Essalina’s destructive reach.
None of them worked. Through a combination of her cape and the other flames summoned, Essalina made every attack from the Darkstalker utterly futile. The few that got and actually struck her did no damage either. Her Essence armour was powerful.
Except for one, surprising blow.
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At one point, the Darkstalker had once more created some space between itself and its opponent. Essalina had beaten it down well. Its skull was partially crushed and its chest exoskeleton had been broken inwards so that several bony shards had pierced into its flesh.
But that wasn’t stopping the relentless Darkstalker. Instead, it had carved out an opportunity for its own attack.
Thanks to the space it now possessed, the Darkstalker was once more able to take to the air with a high jump. It shot out both arms to one side. One was broken, the other reduced to a mere stump thanks to black-and-gold flames. But the monster didn’t care. In place of its regular, now-defunct limbs, it created two enormous, bony variations on either side.
Then it swung both in at Essalina.
She looked like she was about to dodge, but she froze. Apparently, she had caught that one gigantic bony arm was coming in delayed. If she moved to evade one, the other would be in position to catch her.
Essalina course corrected within a heartbeat and held her sword horizontally by the middle. This had the effect of blocking both of the overlarge white arms as they sought to clap her like she was a mosquito.
At the same instant, she counterattacked. Her flaming cape expanded outwards and shot like a beam straight at the Darkstalker.
It let go of both its bony arms and dropped to the ground. Essalina’s cape changed direction to follow it towards the ground too. But the monster had summoned several bony spears bursting out of its body to strike the ground and lever itself straight at its opponent.
Rieren wasn’t the only one whose mouth gaped open as the Darkstalker managed to close the distance in time. Its good arm extended with a bony protrusion to hammer Essalina.
The monsters’ stand erupted with enormous cheers as she was sent flying almost twenty paces. Rieren couldn’t help but grin too. Maybe it wasn’t as hopeless as he had thought. Maybe the Darkstalker could—
Everything went aflame. Black-and-gold flames lit up half the arena. The Darkstalker shrieked out even as it threw itself back and into a safer zone with no devastating fires.
Essalina burst out of the blooming cloud of fire the next moment. Rieren’s eyes widened. There wasn’t a single scratch on her. All the Darkstalker’s blow had done was leave a small dent on her armour. That was it.
As the human crowd cheered hoarsely at their champion’s return, Essalina struck. She was too fast. Too powerful. The Darkstalker wasn’t prepared to deal with her at all. It barely brought up and arm to shield itself against her sword strike, trying to quickly create a barricade of thickened bone.
Essalina’s blade slashed right through the arm, sending half of it flying across the arena.
The Darkstalker screamed out. It retained enough of its mind to leap backwards and create some space. Or at least, attempted to.
Essalina followed relentlessly, refusing to grant her opponent a single heartbeat of breathing room. The Darkstalker grew desperate. It tried to ward her off by bursting a dozen spiky bones out of its body all at once. A deterrent that would have meant spearing herself on its bones in the few places her flesh was exposed, like her face, if she got too close.
But the Darkstalker hadn’t counted on all the other powers Essalina possessed. She didn’t need to cull it with her sword.
Not when her living cape of fire flew over her head to slam into her opponent.
If the Darkstalker had stood there and tanked Essalina’s attack, that might have been the end of the bout for the monster. It was forced to pull back all the bones to dodge. Even then, a bunch of the dark, gold-flecked flames still left heavy burns across its midsection.
But worse than that, with the bones pulled back, the Darkstalker had opened itself to physical attacks from Essalina. Something she saw and took advantage of in a flash.
This time, when Essalina’s strike crashed past the Darkstalker’s bony defence, it was the monster’s head that suffered the worst. Her sword crushed the entire right side of the Darkstalker’s head, blood and bits of bone and flesh spreading out everywhere in a gory mess.
The Darkstalker had to be attempting to scream again. Even at this distance, Rieren could sense its mental disarray. That devastating blow had destroyed half its head, for crying out loud.
But no sound came out. However Essalina had struck the monster, it couldn’t summon its voice any longer.
“I’ll ask you once more,” Essalina said, loud enough to be heard over the roaring crowd. “Do you surrender?”
Her sword was pointed at the retreating monster. The tip of her blade promised death. But the Darkstalker never answered. Essalina neither received a confirmation of its defeat, nor a defiant refusal to give up.
So, she took it as the latter.
“Have it your way,” she growled. Rieren was almost certain Essalina was grinning ferociously. “I’ll make you surrender.”
She attacked. The rest of the battle was almost difficult to watch. The Darkstalker was unable to muster up any sort of defence against. Anything it even attempted to try was broken through or bashed aside with next to no trouble from Essalina.
One exchange saw one of its legs get crushed, another had its midsection gored with her greatsword, yet another had had one of its bony chunks impaling the monster through its gullet.
And yet, after every devastating hit, Essalina posed the same question.
“Are you ready to surrender?” she asked as she crushed one of the Darkstalker’s shoulders.
Her flames flew into the hole in its guts she had carved out. “Will you surrender now?”
“How much longer must I kill you?” She ripped out a chunk of what looked like the monster’s spine. It fell to the ground, barely moving any longer. “How much longer till you surrender?”
“Impossible,” one of the monsters in the stands shouted. “The Darkstalker can’t surrender. You destroyed the mouth!”
More shouts rained down from the monsters’ stands. Rieren grimaced. There was no point. Their cries and clamors weren’t going to reach the arena, not through the tumult of the human crowd all around them.
The Darkstalker was trying to rise. But not fully. Unable to speak out, it kept its head bowed down.
Rieren swallowed. A surrender. If that wasn’t a display of surrender, she didn’t know what was. She didn’t blame the monster for giving up. It probably would have done so earlier had it been capable of speech through the destruction of its head.
Around her, the monsters slumped. Another defeat. And this for the Darkstalker, an Abyssal whom the rest had hoped would make it deep into the competition.
Rieren could taste the disappointment pervading the air, the despair that seasoned it liberally impossible to miss.
In contrast, the rest of the crowd was cheering hard. Victory was their champion’s. The monster had been felled low, as it should have been.
Essalina kicked the Darkstalker hard.
The entire arena erupted with riotous noise as Rieren stared. Why? The Darkstalker had clearly given up. It had surrendered, had appropriated a position of defeat to indicate its loss. All that was needed was the match official’s words, which he would no doubt have delivered since he was on his way to the exact location where Essalina and the Darkstalker were.
Or had been. Essalina’s powerful kick had sent the monster flying almost thirty paces away to crash to the ground.
“I heard no surrender,” she said. Her voice rose over the tumult, over the humans insulting the Darkstalker and the monsters screaming outrage. “If you intend to take this to end, then I won’t hesitate!”
Essalina charged. Her sword trailed the ground, fames leaping along its wake. From the cloud of dust that had arisen at the Darkstalker’s impact, the monster suddenly burst out. It was brandishing several bony spikes jutting from all over its body. With a soundless roar, it flung itself straight at Essalina. That horrid, Abyss-cursed woman wasn’t going to accept a surrender.
So, with a final desperate attempt, the Darkstalker tried to save itself from annihilation.
Essalina’s sword rose and fell in one quick, final slash. A blast of her black-and-gold flames erupted from the strike, crushing through the bones and the monster behind them to slam her opponent against the distant wall of the stands. Another tremor rocked the arena. The last tremor.
The Darkstalker fell to the ground, completely unmoving.
Essalina didn’t move. The match official hadn’t stopped his run, and now he reached the location where the Darkstalker had fallen. With some quick technique, he dispelled the flames burning on the monster’s body. A little mercy, before he signalled the end of the match.
“There you have it, folks,” the commentator yelled. “The winner of today’s bout is Essalina Arteroth!”
They cheered. Essalina raised her arm, triumphant. A victory that had been more or less assured from the very beginning. For once, Rieren found the taste of being right ashen.
It was more than just her victory. More than just the loss the Darkstalker had suffered. Rieren could sense it all around her, could feel it in a spiritual sense in the rage emanating from all the monsters who had watched the match.
Essalina hadn’t just defeated the Darkstalker. She had toyed with the monster. Had purposefully crushed its mouth to prevent it from speaking then mocked it with the idea of surrendering.
She had insulted every single monster with one little battle. She had deliberately made everything worse.
Rieren might not have been able to feel much in her current state, but a feeling spike of hatred speared into her. A brief flicker of what all the monsters around her were experiencing. A wish for destruction. For retaliation. A wish that was almost familiar in a way.
Before the feeling could solidify into something real, Rieren turned and left.