Lightning crackled through the ruinous cavern and the wind swirled as Trexin’s deep cackle danced on the winds and reverberated off the walls. His mana swirling alongside the wind and pressing down on everyone and everything in the cavern, regardless of whether it was friend or foe.
On his hands and knees, muscles tensed and veins throbbing from the sheer effort he was putting in just to stay that elevated, Peter grit his teeth. A quiet grunt of effort forced out of his clenched jaw as the ground beneath him rumbled slightly and nearly sent him flat onto his face, beads of sweat rolling down his face and neck and dripping to the ground as he tried his best to look up towards the laughing creature.
‘Come on! Move body. You can’t protect yourself, let alone your friends, if you don’t move! Just….Move!’
Slowly his neck craned, and his arms budged, raising his head just a scant few centimeters. His eyes sharpened into a glare even as they turned ever so slightly red from both irritation and the exertion he was trying to force out of his body.
“Ohhhh?” Instantly the dark eyes of the winged behemoth snapped onto Peter and his struggle, a spark of intrigue filling his eyes as he raised an arm to stare at a tattoo inscribed on the inside of his forearm.
Through the sheer exertion it took to keep his head raised, the buffeting winds that made his eyes tear up and the slight lack of focus that his vision was afflicted with from how irritated his eyes had become, the teen was unable to make out any kind of writing on the tattoo, but what he could see was seven sets of twin symbols inscribed on his arm. But whereas the bottom five of those sets seemed faded and shattered, the other nine were in perfect, bold ink with no damage or weathering in sight.
‘Tattoos? Some are faded, maybe magic stuff?’
Over the buffeting winds and crackling lightning, the lips of the winged menace moved minutely, words uttered that were unable to force themselves over the travelling gusts. A confused look crossing Peter’s expression as he tried, and utterly failed, to make out whatever it was that Trexin had said.
“Hey, hey. I feel left out here.”
Air quickly, mercifully, rushed into Peter’s lungs as all the pressure weighing down on him disappeared in a single instant, a silver-blue tint over his eyes as his arms shook and trembled. The mana in the air hadn’t decreased, in fact it had only gotten worse, as far as the teen could tell, but for some reason, it didn’t feel oppressive anymore.
“Hah. Using your own mana as a shield for all these weaklings? How noble of you.” Trexin laughed, his gaze dragging Peter’s alongside it to find Tristana taking slow, relaxed, steps towards the towering creature.
Held at her side was an immaculate silver blade unlike anything that the [Iron-rank] adventurer had ever seen. A single edge to its blade with a few small spikes on its spine and what appeared to be a snow-white crescent moon for its handguard and a pommel that looked almost like a miniaturized moon.
“Well what else was I meant to do? You were gonna kill them and I don’t wanna deal with that lecture when I get home, you know?” Tristana joked in response to Trexin mockery, getting a twitch of his left eye as his wings began to slowly stretch out and his lips stretched into a wide, intimidating, grin.
“Oh, there’ll be not ‘getting home’ for you, human.”
“You wanna bet?” She asked, an eyebrow raised and a cocky grin on her features as she stopped walking forward and raised her blade to point the tip at his face. “Because I think that you asuran’s aren’t going to be returning to your home. Whatever dark, damp hole that may be.”
“Hot air and empty words.” Trexin grit out, even a blind man able to tell that he was taking the woman’s confident words to heart far more than she was taking his malicious mockery.
Tristana, seeing that her own taunting was far more effective than the Asuran’s, grinned darkly and opened her mouth to say something else, only to lurch forward at the exact same moment as Trexin lurched to the side. A set of two bone white blades exploding out of the old, moss-covered ground beneath them and landing firmly in his grip as he moved.
In a catastrophic clash of might, the two met only five meters from the red-haired teen that Trexin seemed to have taken some interest in. Tristana’s momentum proving too much for Trexin’s to handle, sending the both of them flying away from the teen and through the wall of a building.
“How dare-“ It was a simple swipe of her blade, small glittering lights of silver-blue following behind like the trail of a comet, but the force of the strike blew the behemoth away from her like he was a piece of paper in a hurricane.
The ruined building that once stood above Tristana shattered into particles so small that not even dust remained, a large crevice opened in the side of every building in front of her. Perfectly in line with where the edge of her blade had swung through the air.
That attack, one of her simplest, was known as Lunar Dust. An attack that she had a Power Stance for, but preferred to use it as just the base technique due to the speed that the attack could be used with. Besides, she had plenty of other techniques that worked better as Power Stances and a few spells to boot, having one technique that wasn’t turned into a Power Stance wasn’t exactly a loss of attack potency on her end.
“Well now…” Trexin’s voice rumbled from the shadows of the building that he had been blown into, slow steps echoing through the cavern as he walked back out.
Unlike before, the giant of an asuran was far more wary of a sudden advance from the woman, both of his blades raised into a loose defensive stance and his legs crouched ever so minutely to lower his center of gravity and prepare him better for a sudden kick-off.
Honestly, Tristana found it to be quite an ego-boost. Who else could claim that they’d managed to break the arrogance of a creature like this in just one, technically two, attacks?
“It seems like I’ve been in stasis for quite a while if a human can match me in pure physical ability.”
“Heh. Did I bruise the Lord’s ego?” She mocked, gesturing for him to come at her with two fingers.
Once more the winged asuran’s mana swirled around him, but whereas before it had been an all-encompassing, oppressive aura, this time it was a thin, fiery flame that seemed to almost make the veins beneath his skin glow.
‘Yeah, there we go. I thought so.’ Tristana grinned to herself, swirling her blade once, leaving a strange trail of silver dust in the air, and levelling her own stance at the man as he roared and charged her.
The surrounding area turned to naught but craters, gashes and ash as the two of them began to battle. Gouts of fire, explosions of silver and super-compressed blades of air shot through the vicinity with every moment that they continued their battle.
Silver met white again and again as the two slashed at each other; Trexin began on the offensive, and continued to do so whenever space was made between them that he could then close, but within moments every time, Tristana met and matched his intensity and more. The, comparatively, small woman deadlocking his blades as if he wasn’t double her muscle-mass and nearly double her height and the monster of a man swinging each of his blades with a speed unnatural for such a large, muscled form.
Off to the side, Peter stayed hunched down at the sides of his sister and friend, his feet dug into the ground and his arms wrapped behind both girls to keep them from flying back or falling over from the violent, whipping winds. Across the cavern from them, he could see the red-skinned fighters doing much the same, hunching down to weather the winds and huddled together to stop any unfortunate accidents.
So far, the combat was being contained by both of the monster’s interest only in each other, but all it took was one area of effect too large or one dodge mistimed and the rest of them were going to be dragged into this as well. Whether they wanted to be or not.
A stinging pain lit up Peter’s cheek as the air in front of his face seemed to explode briefly, his eyes focusing immediately on the forms of both Tristana and Trexin as they separated with a shockwave that cratered the earth beneath them and both slid to a stop.
The wet feeling that rolled down his chin from the stinging pain made it clear exactly what that pain was, but its cause eluded him; at least for now.
“Well, ain’t that unusual?” Tristana chuckled, her eyes seeming to glow ever so slightly in the shadows of her fringe as she adjusted her grip on her blade. “What business do you have with our dear little adventurer over there?”
“I hardly see why you should know.” Trexin scoffed, fizzling out of reality to Peter’s senses, only to reappear twenty meters away with both of his blades crossed to defend from Tristana’s one.
“Cause I’m curious.” Tristana purred, the ground cracking beneath the two of them as their muscles bulged and their mana flared. “You’re asleep for who knows how long and suddenly wake up with a vendetta against a kid that’s –at most– 19? Oh, that reeks of something going on behind the scenes.”
To the side of the two behemoths of might, Elise’s eyes widened in shock and fear at seeing their Lord, spoken of so reverently in the stories of their people, deadlocked against an adventurer of the modern day. The sheer sight, the sheer thought of such a thing just didn’t compute in her mind after all the stories of his might that she had heard of.
The Asuran that had transcended the entirety of humanity, the Asuran that had lead their people in their Holy Crusade, the Asuran that had been such a threat that even the greatest coalition of Krinvoth’s warriors at the same time couldn’t hope to kill him.
And now here he was, stalemated by a human woman of all things, being pressured both in combat and to reveal the targets of the Asuran people. She couldn’t let this keep going on, she couldn’t let all of their work be for nothing, she wasn’t strong enough to stand by her Lord’s side, but she didn’t need to be to be useful.
“My Lord!” Despite the crushing pressure of the woman’s mana, her own flaring mana and the adrenaline coursing through her body allowed her to move.
Her kickoff was quick and the blade in her hand properly prepared to swing, her mana coalescing into the necessary shapes and patterns within the metal of her blade to activate the single technique that she knew. The distance between the two of them seemed to disappear at a snails pace as the mana surrounding her pressed down on her entire body at once, her pupils dilating and her sense of time warping under the cognitive enhancing effects of adrenaline and fear.
It happened faster than she could even fathom, her body hitting the ground like a sack of bricks as everything failed to react to her mental commands, a pillar of stone nearby shattered explosively and a dark grin crossed the features of Trexin as he lowered his mysteriously outstretched palm.
“Hold a blade.”
There was a clang of metal on stone from the dust cloud that had once been the stone pillar, an interested hum resounding out of the cloud as Trexin approached Elise.
“So this is how it feels….freaky.”
“I admire your bravery, girl.” Trexin spoke quietly, leaning down and picking her up by the back of her shirt like an unruly kitten. “You allowed an opening that otherwise would not have shown itself. But you are not permitted to enter a battle of this level.”
“I- Um…Y-Yes sir.” She stuttered, trying her best not to sound too awestruck or scared as she meekly nodded her head.
She had acted on instinct and nothing else, the fact that she had gotten out of it with only a shallow scrape and not evisceration was already a miracle.
“Now, all of you, leave.” Elise yelped as she was flung back into the chest of Captain Betaro with an idle flick of Trexin’s arm.
“You think I’m gonna let them do that?” Tristana’s voice called out, a swirling tentacle of dust shooting out of the cloud, only to clear and show Tristana as she landed in a deep crouch only about four meters from the asuran Lord himself.
“Surely you must realize now that you can’t hold a blade, do you truly believe you still hold the power to challenge me without it?” Trexin grinned, levelling a blade at her, only to flinch back on instinct, barely avoiding the uppercut that the woman shot at his chest.
“All that and more, sleeping beauty!” She crowed, her mana flaring around specifically her fists as she stepped in and struck the man’s stomach with her left, her right snapping up to swipe a blade away before it could make contact.
The next strike of hers met the flat of Trexin’s blade and stopped dead in its tracks, Tristana ducking low to avoid a swipe at her head and spinning on one leg as an axis to bring her other leg up and around. Silver-blue light trailed behind her foot, leaving the image of a crescent moon behind it as her heel struck the raised forearm of the asuran.
Silver light exploded out of her foot as it made contact, separating the two for only a moment before she was rushing back in, jumping over the rushed swipe at her hips and kicking out with both legs. Her first strike hit the flat of the man’s right blade, her body twisting with her momentum to bring her other leg around and down, only to meet the hastily raised flat of the man’s other blade. Once more she spun with her momentum, bringing her first leg back around and hitting the man in the jaw as the shockwave from her first two strikes blew his arms away, leaving him unable to block and scoring her, her first truly clean hit of the skirmish.
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The back of the asuran Lord’s head met the ground before even his feet were able to get the memo, his wings flaring out and curling around to defend himself as she flipped forward in the air and brought her heel down on the defensive cocoon that he had formed. Once more the image of a crescent moon flashed in the air behind her leg as she brought it down.
The explosion of silver-blue mana that engulfed the two of them tore into the ground and gnawed hungrily at everything that it touched, stopped just short of the onlookers as the sound of a heavy impact was heard and Tristana flew out of the dissipating mana with her arms held in a strong blocking stance.
Hitting the ground feet first and sliding back a few meters, Tristana lowered her arms and whistled, impressed at her own display of power, as she watched Trexin’s wings flap, bringing him up and out of the crater she had used him to –partially– create. The woman swaying on the spot as Trexin closed in on her and jolted to one side suddenly, throwing off the timing of the man’s attack and leaving him open to the punch that she dug into the side of his ribs.
Another shockwave of mana and wind cracked out of her fist and the man was hurled away from her, Tristana hot on his heels as she chased after his ragdolling form and ground her heel into the ground as a ball of dark red fire bloomed to life between them.
There was a crackle of lightning through the air once more as the ball of fire detonated, consuming Tristana entirely in its heated grasp. The giant, muscled form of Trexin barreling out of the thick black smoke at the same moment with his gaze locked on Blessed Catalyst.
Haley, the only one of Blessed Catalyst that even had the capability to begin reacting to such speed, was only able to get a single half-formed crystal of ice to form on the ground between them before he was within striking distance of the four. His blade raised and bloodlust in his eyes as the arteries beneath his skin glowed a brilliant orange.
Two hands wrapped around the horns of the asuran Lord and his upper body jerked forward slightly from the momentum of something landing on his back.
Both feet of Tristana dug into the spine of Trexin as she pulled on his horns with all her might and jerked her body back, forcing the monster of a man to follow alongside her inertia and tumble back. Leveraging the position on his back that she had managed to gain, the woman forced his back to curl as far back as she could make it amidst his fall and levered his feet off the ground using nothing but her own mana-enhanced strength.
Now upside down and midair, the woman brought her feet both in and kicked out, letting go of his horns at the exact same moment to launch him away with a shockwave and a vapor cone of air.
Landing with a single hand on the ground, Tristana grinned and struck a quick pose while upside down before tensing her arm and flinging herself back into the air and onto her feet. The woman’s lack of movement, for once, allowed everyone else to see the injuries that she had sustained from the battle so far.
Which, in their visible totality, numbered only a few small pink marks along her arms, legs and face from the fireball that had consumed her entirely only a few seconds prior.
‘Damn, for a guy of his strength he’s really pushing me hard. Though my lack of a blade definitely helps him out.’ The [Platinum-rank] adventurer thought to herself, crouching slightly as she felt a stir in his mana and leaping towards him as he made a charge once more.
She had expected him, as he had done earlier, to make a charge towards the red-haired teen and his party once again. Whatever beef this ancient monster had with him was evidently something serious and something that he wouldn’t be letting go anytime soon.
At least the kid himself seemed just as confused as she felt; meant that he didn’t have some kind of deep dark secret that she’d probably have to try and pry out of him after this.
Yet instead of what she had expected, he instead made a beeline dash directly for the other adventurer party that had crashed down here with them. The three of them having made their way out of the zynthan sphere’s influence and currently aiding their armoured companion out of their ruined armour while simultaneously healing them.
It was a smart move, targeting one party enough times for her to start anticipating it and suddenly make a break for the other party without warning. If she had still been a [Tungsten-rank] adventurer, it may have been a viable option. However, she also knew, in her heart of hearts, that his hatred for the red-haired teen wasn’t something faked, nor was it something easy to ignore.
Her left foot impacted the right wrist of the man and ground both of their inertia to a dead halt as she flipped back and he spun on the spot, the edge of his second blade just barely nicking her as it slipped underneath her arm amidst her backflip. Landing on the ground she followed her momentum without letting it die off just yet, crouching low and swiping out with a foot that just barely missed his own as he raised his leg.
Rolling back along the ground to avoid that very same foot as he tried to stomp on her head, the woman rolled on a suddenly uneven piece of terrain and flipped herself back to her feet with a small wobble.
A blur of white to her side forced her attention on it involuntarily, her eyes on sheer instinct moved to track the sudden motion that she had caught in her periphery.
It was one of Trexin’s blades, no doubt thrown in the brief moment that she had been avoiding his stomp. Its form flipped smoothly directly towards the crowd of teens crouched nearby; unable to move due to the sheer power output of the two and the destruction that followed their strikes.
If she had still been a [Tungsten-rank] then this little ploy of his may have been successful, however one didn’t become a [Platinum-rank Warrior] of any kind without some form of magical proficiency.
It took barely a fraction of a second for her spell to spring to life, not even a magic circle spawned in doing so. Such was the sheer knowledge and proficiency that she had with her spell, a spherical dome of silver-blue mana that, like everything else she had done, held a remarkable likeness to the moon.
With a hiss not unlike that of a hot metal rod being dunked in water and the sound of glass cracking, the blade buried itself halfway into the spherical shield, stopping with a good fifty or so centimeters until it would have struck Peter head on. No doubt ending his life instantly with no hope of recovery.
Very slowly he fell backwards from the crouch that he had previously been in, landing on his butt with a small ‘oof’ and an expression drained of both colour and exuberance as his eyes focused on nothing but the tip of the blade in question.
“Hey, don’t look so scared.” Tristana appeared outside her shield as if she had flickered out of, and back into, reality instead of actually moving, her right foot lifting and looping on a notch in the handguard of the blade. “After all, you’ve got me here to protect you lot!”
Her shield shattered as she kicked forward, ripping the blade out of the magical construct and throwing it across the cavern and directly into the waiting twin blade of the man in question. Both blades struck each other in a crack of wind and an explosion of sparks before he was able to throw them both up into the air, grabbing them both with slightly heavier breathing as they flipped through the air and fell back towards the ground.
‘This woman, what the hell is she? To not only match my power but push me back too? This is inconceivable, but the truth can’t be ignored. If this keeps up, she’s going to kill me and everyone else that freed me from stasis.’ Trexin scowled to himself, able to still sense that none of his subordinates had moved from their previous position.
Despite him giving the order for them to do that, he was hardly surprised to sense that they hadn’t. They likely hadn’t moved for the exact same reason that none of the Twin-Continents adventurers had done so, it would make them a target more susceptible to being caught in the crossfire of his fight with the woman.
Now, the only question was what could he possibly do to get himself and his subordinates out of here alive?
‘This big guy is no joke. To last this long against me is no small feat, blade or no. But I can’t let the fight go on for too much longer. The mana in the air is already beginning to spark and rise. Even without synchronization occurring, we’re both outputting so much that we’re about to hit the threshold for amplification. The moment that happens, we can say goodbye to keeping any of our allies safe.’ She quietly clicked her tongue as she thought over her options.
She couldn’t allow this to go on any longer but just deciding to stop the fight wasn’t exactly a viable option either, no she had to figure out something else to do to end this quickly. Even another thirty seconds of combat at the level that they had been going at it…
“You…are strong.” Trexin finally spoke, getting a raise of one of her eyebrows and a confident grin in return.
“Yeah, I like to think so, thanks.”
“I can tell that you don’t want this fight to continue either.”
‘Oh? Is he going to try and strike a deal with me? Perfect, if he lets his guard down to offer or demand something, one strike to the heart or kidney should be able to do it.’
“Yeah, that’s one way of putting it. You gonna try and demand I stand down or something?” She snorted, cracking her neck with one hand to brace it.
“Despite my appearance, I am not a simple-minded brute.” Trexin huffed, clearly unamused by her comment, and even less amused by the grin she shot him in response. “Create a magical contract with me that you will allow myself and my subordinates to leave unharmed and I will answer any three questions that you ask beforehand.”
“My Lord no!”
“Silence!” The roar of the winged asuran was more than enough to shut down the horned asuran that had called out; a clean-shaven, muscular man that looked to be the leader of the asuran’s squad.
‘Ok, this offer puts a damper on the instant-death plan.’
Those three questions were, ironically enough, probably the only thing he could have actually offered that would have given her pause. Since getting information out of any asuran was infamously difficult, with any knowledge gained done so in spite of their vehement denial to treat them as anything but mortal enemies.
“Lady Promethea…” The soft murmur of one of the girls nearby, with red hair and pink eyes, snapped her out of her internal musings, allowing her to finally make her decision.
“Deal. I shall allow you and your subordinates to leave these ruins unharmed given that you answer my three questions truthfully.” She spoke taking a few steps forward and holding a hand out, a small flame of mana igniting around her outstretched palm.
In response to her words, the man merely clicked his tongue in annoyance, no doubt having hoped that she was be stupid enough not to notice the easy backdoor he built into the wording but stepped forward and clasped hands with her regardless.
“Very well. I, Lord Trexin, agree to these terms.”
“Great!” She beamed, knocking both of their hands up enthusiastically and taking two steps back as both of them cut out their outputting mana to allow everyone in the cavern to move around without that pressure weighing down on them.
“Lady Promethea, are you sure this is wise?” One of the more powerful adventurers, a black-haired young man from the part of three, asked cautiously, looking between her and Trexin.
“There’s adult things going on right now, just keep looking after your comrade and let me handle this.” She said, shooing him off with a flippant wave of her hand.
“Are you going to ask your questions or not, woman?” Trexin growled, aware that neither he nor his subordinates could safely leave until she did so.
“Touchy touchy.” She muttered, shaking her head. “Fine, for my first question. Where do the asuran people come from?”
Behind Trexin, she noticed at least three of his asuran supporters flinch at her sudden question. Good, she’d managed to hit a piece that they hadn’t wanted aired yet.
“Tsk. Starting off weak, aren’t you?” Trexin scoffed, crossing his arms and rolling his eyes as he held both of his blades under his armpits, trapped between his biceps and torso.
‘He seems a lot less worried about it then his supporters, was it more common knowledge when he was still around?’
“Just answer the question.”
“Fine. The asuran people come from the Continent of Rejection. Ask your next question.”
Tristana pressed her lips together, unimpressed with the amount of information that she had been able to glean from that question. Not a brute indeed…
“That ability you used to stop me from holding my blade. How does it work?”
The change in his demeanour was instant, veins in arms and neck bulging as his teeth grit together harshly.
The fingers in Tristana’s hand curled and tensed as she felt a timer begin counting down in her mind, more and more mana flowing into her hand as the numbers ticked down.
“It’s a racial ability.” Trexin finally spit out, his eyes zeroed in on her hand with a glare that could have set even water on fire.
‘That sensation…Even the art of contracts has improved since I last roamed the land? Three more seconds of silence and I would have incurred the penalty of the contract.’ That realization worried him, more than he would like to admit.
He had to get out of here, he had to get out of here as soon as he possibly could. And unfortunately, that meant playing along with this aggravating woman and her questions.
“The rejection of phenomena. By placing an open palm on someone or something and speaking what we wish to reject, an asuran is capable of outright denying the function or existence of whatever we desire.”
The moment that he said that, the man’s mouth clicked closed, a small hiss leaving the [Platinum-rank] adventurers lips as she realized that there was more that he was able to get away with not saying by the way that his mouth suddenly slammed shut.
Likely, it had something to do with the weaknesses or limitations of the ability, based on the fact that he refused to say it.
No matter, knowing them would be more useful but knowing that they existed was good enough for now.
“My final question, why were you targeting the red-haired brat over there?” She smirked, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder towards the teen in question.
Her smirk only grew when she heard an indignant shout from the teen in question at being called a ‘brat’.
“…Three gods slighted our people in the past. He displays signs of being blessed by one of those three gods. An unfortunate blight from an uncaring, unfeeling deity.” Trexin answered, his arteries glowing orange for a brief moment again before he turned on the heel of his foot to approach his subordinates now that the three questions had been answered.
It was unfortunate that she couldn’t do it herself, but by now every [Tungsten-rank] and [Gold-rank] adventurer was bound to be on high alert and gathered above. Even with nine of them there was no hope of them making it out ali-
Or they could just teleport away now that Trexin had the time to focus, that too.
With a deep sigh, Tristana’s palm smacked into her face and held firm, a deep grumble leaving her lips muffled by her hand as she cursed quietly to herself.
Leave it to her to actually take the mental effort to plan something clever and just completely forget about the simplest way out of the ruins. She was never going to hear the end of this once the rest of her party found out.
They would find out about this despite her best efforts, she just knew it.
“I’m blessed by a God?”
“The worst possible one, apparently. Great job.”
“…Unfair.”
“What a scoop!”
Tristana sighed once more and lowered her hand as she heard the voices of the teens behind her.
Now, after all that fun and excitement, she had to do the most boring part of this dumb job: clean-up. She really hoped that none of these kids were expecting to go through life as nameless, background adventurers that just showed up, did a job and left again.
Because, quite frankly, if they were hoping for such a future, it had just been shot out of the sky like a bird caught in a dragon’s breath after everything that had happened today. They would be lucky if they ever went somewhere without the Guild covering it from now on. Gods help them if they actually manage to do something impressive or noteworthy.
Though, she supposed that most teens would be pretty stoked with becoming minor celebrities –that also happened to have an eye of the Guild looking directly at them– by their age, right?