Soul of Blades - Chapter 70: The Sovereign Clone (Patreon)

Alex's eyes focused, muscles tightening, and tensed. His grip strengthened on a spare sword drawn from his Inventory. He charged into the fray.

A deafening clash of steel rang out like the chime of a bell, and Alex found himself flung backwards by the sheer force.

The tremendous force of the draconic man's blow was more than he had anticipated. Skidding on the rough terrain, His boots scraped the earth, his palms too, scraped against sharp unforgiving stones, a Phoenix Leap arrested his fall. Recovering, he stumbled, eyes widened in surprise. His clone, however, had fared slightly better. The clone was launched skyward by the impact, but instead of sailing away, it sank its monstrous claws into the draconic man's steel gauntlets, grounding itself with a fierce churn of metal that sounded almost like a growl.

Claws? Since when did it have claws? Alex's eyes widened in surprise, his jaw slightly ajar at the sight, but he had no time for explanations.

Feral and merciless, the clone fought unlike anything Alex had seen. It slashed with wild abandon, every motion a savage display of fury and bloodlust. It bit, it raked, and it clawed. Sparks flew as dark claw met gauntlet, then scales, and then skin, a miniature storm of fire in the light of an foreign sun. The draconic man recovered from the intense assault and used his strength to seize the clone, halting its frenzy. But then, it headbutted him immediately when grabbed, ramming with its head, striking with its horns, its entire being suffused with bloodlust.

A feral beast.

The clone was appearing more beastly and feral with each passing moment. Blood splashed against its ink-black form as a result of the headbutt, and it lapped up the crimson liquid staining its form with a relish that made Alex's stomach churn.

The draconic man stumbled back holding his head and paused, visibly taken aback by the strange adversary. His face twisted in disgust as he spat out, "What is that thing?"

Alex was equally stunned and could only watch, slack-jawed. It was surreal to witness his own weapon, a mere extension of his magic, morphing into something so primal, so untamed. But there was no time to question, and no time to wonder. They were in the middle of a battle.

And the man was strong, that was evident. Yet Alex had faced formidable opponents before. Skill, precision, knowledge of the opponent's strengths and weaknesses, and the fundamentals. Those were what counted in a battle, not just raw power. Shaking off his momentary stupor, Alex lunged back into the fray.

With Outer Focus and True Sight working in tandem, Alex felt and saw a surge of mana, the air around the draconic man rippling with energy.

A powerful strike was coming.

Without a second thought, he activated Boundless Dodge as the man unleashed a punch filled with fiery energy. Alex's body moved of its own accord, a ghost slipping through walls of force, dodging the strike by a hair's breadth as it was unleashed.

A tear formed in the ground behind them where the impact of the strike travelled for several metres. That was a longer ranged skill.

Phoenix Leap Alex thought, as he leapt back to reassess the situation.

"Let's see how you handle this," Alex murmured to himself, taking a step forward. The rough ground crunched under his boot, each stone a fang sinking slightly into leather, and his grip tightened slowly around the hilt of his spare sword. His eyes never left the man standing across from him.

Alex moved his left foot, then his right. He stepped diagonally to the side. His opponent didn't move. His expression was cocky. His gaze, mocking. He was waiting for Alex to make the first move.

Leaping forward, Alex accelerated with Phoenix Leap, leaving a faint ethereal trail of blue mana in his wake. The world blurred, and all he could see was his foe.

One strike, a test.

His sword swung in an elegant arc, Mana Blade activated, the air hissed as the supercharged weapon cut through it. The attack was swift, intended to land a surprise hit, but the draconic man parried, countering with a whip-like tail he'd previously had wrapped around his waist, a jarring impact against Alex's left shoulder.

Pain lanced through him. Teeth clenched, he resisted the urge to stumble back. Mei had warned him about this new world. Still, the raw power, the brute force of the blow was startling.

"Phoenix Leap," Alex whispered.

With a sudden surge of energy, he rocketed off the ground, his form a blur against the battlefield. Another Phoenix Leap. He descended swiftly, a strike aimed at the draconic man.

Parried again. But this time, he expected it.

Alex immediately reacted, Boundless Dodge! he thought, his body moving like liquid metal, shifting to evade a counterattack with split-second timing.

Alex spun, heel digging into the ground. 

"Infinite Body,” he breathed. A blue crystal blade materialized, aligning sharply with his shin as he extended his leg.

His leg arced upward, the blade, cool and blue, slicing through the air to strike the Draconic man’s  exposed head. The serpentine man raised his arms within the second to block the attack. The impact sent cracks spiderwebbing through the scales, some bursting apart, chipping with sharp snaps.

The draconic man's hands immediately clamped onto Alex’s extended foot, seizing him. As his grip tightened, a faint glow emerged from the depths of his throat. A luminescence building silently amidst the darkness of strange organs Alex couldn’t make heads or tails of. Light crept forward, winding its way through the crevices between his jagged teeth, shining between the gaps on his scales and casting brief shadows of the beings inner workings, against the light beneath his chest and tightening neck muscles. 

Inside him, the glow intensified, a crescendo of light amassing just behind his bared fangs. The air around them tingled with the charge of impending fire, the atmosphere dense with the energy of a forthcoming storm. 

The Draconic man's mouth began to open. As his jaws unhinged, the scales around his neck tightened, a subtle shift as they braced. His chest expanded slightly, muscles tensing under the scaly exterior, each scale slightly lifting in anticipation. the temperature shifted slightly, a subtle heat. But Alex felt it all keenly— there was a sharp shift in the air, rising in invisible waves. A spike of strange chemicals that tasted like ash. It was as though he stood before an inferno without heat.

A deep rumble grew, resonating from within, vibrations barely visible. It intensified, a crescendo of energy gathering, aiming for release. 

It happened in a second, but trapped, tugging in vain against his vice like grip caused it felt like minutes. Alex watched, straining, his mind calculating the trajectory of the imminent blaze. The glow behind the man’s jagged teeth shifted subtly, then brightened, hues of deep orange and red mingling as they prepared to break free, intensifying, filling his mouth.

A flash of light, and flames spewed forth from his open jaw.

"Sovereign Executioner," Alex called out, just as the flames reached him. Reality fractured and rippled between them as his mana construct, the Executioner, emerged between him and the fire. It mimicked his stance, absorbing the fiery assault, dissipating the heat in an explosion of mana before its deadly embers could touch him.

A Phoenix leap sent Alex soaring back, another reversed his direction, and sent him speeding towards his opponent and his clone once more.

“Mana Blade," thought Alex. The world blurred as he catapulted himself towards the man. His blade, alight with mana, sliced the air as it cut towards its target. The man retaliated with a strike of his own. A giant metal fist, burning with strange mana.

“Kaeshi-do” Alex whispered to himself, as if summing a skill of his own creation, familiarising himself with the kendo move even as his body moved instinctively. A move designed to exploit the opening created by deflecting an opponent's attack, to use timing and precision to seamlessly transition from defense to offense. Like a snake striking after recoiling, the counterattack springs forth from a deflected assault

Alex twisted without the aid of mana, or Skill, and used his lifelong skills to hook the blade to the edge of the man's gauntlet, and throw it aside.

The Kaeshi-do had redirected his opponent's attack, and the next stage of the art, was simultaneous retaliation.

Alex spun, and slashed.

“Sovereign Executioner.”

The man, with his partially scaled body, attempted to move. His movement was less a dodge and more a stagger. He was faster, and yet woefully unprepared, ensnared by simultaneous assaults. Alex's blade cut mercilessly into flesh to score a shallow but painful wound across the man's chest, despite mana blade being active.

The man roared, the sound resounding around them to fill the space with thunderous indignation.

At the same moment, Alex's clone attacked. There were no fancy techniques, no artful dodges. The clone was born of primal aggression. It lunged forward, raw and unrefined, its clawed hands swiping across the man's armored chest, exacerbating the wound.

As the man tried to repel the clone's assault, a surge of mana exploded within Alex. "Mana Blade." He repeated. He urged more and more mana into his blade.

If his skill was too low in mastery or rank to truly hurt this man, then he would make it more deadly.

Power, raw and unfettered, blazed through his blade, radiating intense light. His blade became a beacon, ablaze with fierce, raw power. Alex channeled more mana into its facets, his focus honed to a deadly purpose.  

Alex concentrated as his clone continued its assault, feeling his skill, Inner Focus work in tandem with True Sight, Bestial Senses, and Outer Focus. A bead of sweat trailed down Alex's temple, mingling with the dust of the battleground as he willed the mana blazing around his sword to become compact, to condense and pack back into the blade, to surge to the edge and spin, grow sharper with each rotation, until it formed a sharp, rotating chainsaw of deadly mana infused and concentrated at the edge of his blade.

Alex felt his mana reserves plummet.

[Mana Blade - Mastery 16 > 41%]

He was ready.

With True Sight, Alex could see it— No, he could feel it—the mana that thrummed in the world around him, in the draconic man, and in his Sovereign clone locked in relentless combat. His eyes moved, tracking the ebbs and flows of energy, predicting his adversary's next move.

Alex's clone was a whirlwind of savagery, a far cry from his own calculated strikes. Yet, they worked in harmony, the clone's ferocity creating openings that Alex planned to exploit with surgical precision.

But his enemy was resilient, still stronger than him. They had to escalate.

It was time to end this.

His body aching, Alex dove deep into the universal truths he'd come to understand. His Dao, a concept so vast, so profound, yet in this moment, as intimate as his heartbeat.

His sword transformed, embodying impermanence and transition, cutting through the draconic man's defenses and leaving a deep gash across his torso. Just as swiftly, the clone lunged again, claws ripping into the man's leg. Its savagery was relentless, an animalistic fury that left no room for reprieve.

The man collapsed.

The clone pounced, lapping, tearing, biting. Opening its metallic jaws impossibly wide to reveal sharp inhuman, shark-like teeth. Blood, dark and slick, painted the clone’s arms.

It was eating him.

[You have defeated level 513 Draconic Kobold (E) - additional experience points due to the level difference. Experience penalty due to rank difference]

[Level 70 > Level 71]

[Strength +4, Dexterity+4, intelligence+6, unassigned stats +4]

That’s a massive penalty, almost a hundred percent decrease, maybe two hun— Alex’s thoughts halted to a crash as he heard another, equally disturbing sound, accompanied by a flash of bright blue light intermingled with red, overpowering the horizon.

It was the unmistakable sound of magical explosions, and a gleeful giggle.

Turning, he found Mei obliterating the last of the wyverns, her petite frame illuminated by the light of her magical bolts. Her hands waved and twitched in different poses, a melody of movement that released a volley of magical bolts. He had to blink, the sight was a little too surreal. A small, petite, and dainty woman— a picture of meek innocence barely reaching his chest in height, giggling with glee as she decimated a giant wyvern.

And then, silence ensued.

The wyvern fell, its body riddled with magical bolts, having been turned into a bloody pincushion.

Amidst the charred carcasses of the wyverns, she stood. A petite figure surrounded by floating crackling magical bolts, giggling like a child at a fair.

A chilling yet strangely exhilarating sound.

It was unsettling and yet, Alex found himself unable to tear his gaze away.

Because behind her, a small band of draconic men, all identical to the man they had just fought and struggled against, charged at them.

The band was about thirty strong.

Before they could even react, his clone sprinted to meet the small army of Dragon-men.

“STOP” Alex yelled, ordering his clone.

It ignored him.