As he closed, the coloured balls of light came at him at ridiculous speeds. Its range, unfortunately, was more like ten metres than three. There were only four coming at a time because that seemed to be the limit of its control and it was focusing on his legs and arms. It had obviously believed all that shit he had said.
Once he was close enough, he used Spark, but it was like targeting plastic. There was no way to run the current through it in order to hurt it, and it was also clear this was one of the body types his stun wasn’t going to work against. He shelved the idea and decided to dedicate his magic to healing, a trump card he would use only when the beating he was receiving became too much of a liability for him to continue to fight at his normal speeds.
Tom ignored the projectiles unless Danger Sense flared a warning or if it targeted his chest - only then did he dodge. The first was because he didn’t want to die, and the second to preserve the illusion of his armoured chest area being a weakness.
It was like he was being struck repeatedly with fast balls in a professional baseball game. They hurt, and welts formed at the impact points immediately where they hit bare flesh. Then he was right next to the monster, and he instantly lunged forward to target one of the larger internal spheres. Power Strike, with a point of precognition mana invested to help with shield-breaking, covered his weapon in an aqua glow.
An inch-thick shield popped up to protect the targeted sphere, but his power strike burst it just as it always did against the magical shields in his training with April. Then the spear tip dug into the large ball and it exploded fragments.
“What the hell? How did you do that? You’re weak and pathetic, you’re not supposed to be able to hurt me.” it cursed in response and its relentless assault against his legs briefly halted. By the time it had finished its spiel, he had shattered another two of the larger spheres.
What sort of idiot stopped to monologue mid battle, Tom thought dismissively. It had just stopped fighting and had stood there while allowing him to attack. It was unbelievable to someone like him, who had spent years in life and death contests. But not so surprising that Tom hadn’t been able to take advantage.
Then it realised it wasn’t fighting, and all of its attacks immediately switched to focus on his torso. Internally, he smiled and concentrated harder. He wanted to push his advantage while he could, and he had another three strikes before skill exhaustion would become a problem.
As he went for his fourth, a purple ball, the enemy reacted with magic. Three different shields shifted into position between his target and his spear tip. Precognition-enhanced shield breaking or not, that was too much. Each of them broke as his weapon hit them, but they each bled off a bit of his weapon’s momentum. By the time the spear tip hit the surface of his target, it was moving too slowly to break it. The purple shell shuddered, and a crack spread briefly over it before it healed.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Those cracks were a weakness, and he instantly redoubled his efforts. He struck at it again, and, just like before, it responded with multiple defensive shields, but this time he used Spark in front of his weapon. The lightning broke the first shield, and the next two didn’t slow his spear enough.
The ball shattered.
Knowing that skill exhaustion was close to kicking in, he retreated. The balls of energy smashed hard into his back. Tom smiled. If it had gone for his legs, he might not have made it, but the momentum imparted by each strike actually got him to safety faster.
The monster, because even though it was sapient that was what it was, was swearing at him and tried to follow, but it was clear that its main body moved too slowly to match Tom’s.
A fast jog allowed him to avoid its attack range.
“Come back, you coward.”
Tom ignored it and instead focused on measuring it to see what the destruction of four of the larger balls had done. None of them had reformed yet. It was hard to tell, but he was pretty sure it was weaker.
He stayed away for ten minutes as the crowd became more and more irate.
The devil was suddenly next to him. “You’ve had your fun. If you don’t close with it, I’ll have to reduce the size of the arena you have to battle in.”
Tom nodded and recognised that a change like that was not something he could afford. He went in for the kill. His chest and back were pummelled, but it bought him the time needed to break another two of the larger spheres.
He pulled away and regenerated his willpower and his mana.
“Five minutes are up. Go fight.” The devil whispered in his ear.
Without hesitation, Tom did as ordered. Half an hour later, his spear destroyed the remaining large ball, and there was a shattering sound as all the minor ones broke apart.
Tom stood there, panting, while he healed the latest set of bruises. The fight had been painful even if it hadn’t felt particularly deadly. The creature’s offense had, however, come from the smaller orbs, which had remained at full strength the entire time. At the end, they had still been hitting as hard as they had at the beginning, and his ruse around weak spots had been discovered for the last two times he had closed, because it had stopped focusing on his armoured chest and gone back to targeting all of him, and that had hurt.
If it had not fallen for his stupid gambit, the result might have been different, but probably not. With his shield breaking expertise and ability to tank the blows, the fight had never really been in doubt.
It was all academic. It had been tricked, and the important thing was that he had won and stretched the fight for as long as the arena manager had allowed him to. A single point of fate had regenerated, and he was halfway toward getting another. He was incredibly proud of that small achievement.
The devil appeared next to him and tried to talk up his victory, attempting to rev up the crowd, but Tom ignored it as he analysed the battle to see what he could have done better.
Then the world changed, and, a moment later, he was back in the same hall as before with the other contenders. They had arrived at the same time as him, and all of them were staring in horror at the four empty spots, just like he was.
The presenter had warned them of the dangers, but it was something else to see them.