Soul of Blades - Chapter 41 & 42: The God of Duels - Part 1&2 (Patreon)

Authors note: A bit of a long one. (6k words) This and the next were all supposed to be one chapter, but it turned out quite lengthy. Enjoy

Chapter 41&42: The God of Duels

The remnants of the thorax-womb swelled and a long tear formed at the centre, a woman stepped out of it. The Queen.

But changed.

She looked…vaguely human. She was lean and tall, like an Olympic runner with a humanoid form. But well-muscled, the kind of form you would find on short-distance sprinters, those that cleared 100 meters in bursts of speed. But her two legs were long and inverted at the knees. She had long hair and a human face, oval-shaped with a nose and lips that if taken in isolation, one could confuse for the palest of women.

Alex’s brow creased. He spotted something odd about her arms at first glance – it looked like she had just had one on each side. But no, there were actually three, the extra two hugging the main one so tight they almost disappeared into it. These extra limbs, pressed against the main like intricate sleeves and left only the central hands free on each side. Her spare hands secured the main wrists, clasped tight light the cuff links, reinforcing strength and stability.

Parts of Her skin was grey, or at least the very thin lines Alex could see beneath her bright white plates of exoskeleton. Her plates of chitin were uniform and symmetrical, ergonomic and aerodynamic. The plates looked vaguely like the sleekest of armour and made no sound as she twisted. The plates still held porcelain qualities - they were sturdy and thick but immensely reflective. Every inch of her was covered in bright white and glossy plates of chitin, in pure contrast to the usual black carapace of her kind. If she were in battle, she would’ve stood out amongst her kin like a beacon in the dark.

Her many eyes opened, eight or ten—no, sixteen eyes. More than sixteen of them arrayed atop her head like a crown of stars.

Her finger touched her new form curiously and the three moved to strike, but cautiously. Because Alex was sure that at least one eye was still looking at them.

The Queen ignored their presence and spoke in resigned tones. She glanced at the remnant of her past form, her thorax, dying egg sack and its amalgam of living, dying, and dead eggs and grimaced at the sight. Some were devoid of life and consumed, others lay dead before her. Few remained undamaged. Dead eggs for a living mother. “I had only ever consumed the weakest and most broken of swarmlings before today. They had been the ones at fault, they were not true Arachnae. I would never have consumed assets or those of us who had proved themselves true members of our species.” Her voice quivered at every second word.

It was clear for all to see that her metamorphosis had come at great sacrifice. It looked as though she held some semblance of maternal love for the swarm, in her own twisted way. “They will punish me for this.” She said.

Alex was unsure what had happened, but he knew what he had to do. Whatever humanity she showed did not erase the monster he had faced moments ago and would not revive the lives of countless humans he had witnessed slaughtered by her hand and on her orders. he took the lead in their approach, his senses strained and wary of any sign of attack or enhancement from her evolution.

She ignored them still and spoke in soft tones “With the first Queen, you would not allow us to live. You would not even trade your dead for our children.” She spoke softly, yet her voice echoed through the chamber to all present. The queen cradled the cord erupting from her stomach as one would hold the most cherished of treasures- of children.

“you would not accept her peace.” She said. “You burned her swarm as repayment for her compassion and You forced us to hunt you. You forced us to fight.” she squeezed the cord tight.

“And now you have forced me to take action from which neither I nor my swarm will ever recover,” Her pale hands squeezed, and the cord snapped with a dry crack, like wood breaking. All present tensed at the sound mid-stride, bracing.

She took a step forward, and at the light from the bioluminescent Arachne that lined the walls dimm as they each tried their best to meld into the background, to be forgotten lest they become collateral. “my womb is broken,” she pointed, all of her eyes twinkling like stars- or are they glistening? Alex wondered as she continued. “Barrenhood is all that awaits me, I can no longer spawn more eggs, only consume them all for power as my sister did. But solitary power will not save us.”

“After those eggs are born, there will be no more new members of the hidden hive.”

Alex felt a cold tingle up his spine and judging by the way he sensed the hairs along the back of the girl behind him rise, she felt the same. Their steps turned into a racing charge.

The Queen paused to inspect her new form and its segmented, bright white sections. It rippled and flexed as she moved, like a second skin more than rigid exoskeleton. A poor reward for a heavy price. “We just wanted to live,” she muttered, her voice low, yet heard by all, “is it a crime to be born? We did not ask for this.” she stepped away from the remnants of her past form at the words. It was then that Alex reached her and struck.

Alex slid toward the queen on both feet. He crouched low mid-stride and performed a tsuki, a penetrating thrust aimed at the queen's neck with the intention of a swift end. The girl followed some distance behind and rocketed into the air, careening down toward the queen with the stolen bronze sword clasped in both hands. John stood back, gawking.

The queen stood in complete disregard for her opponents, distracted by her loss. And Alex sought to capitalize, to end it in one fell swoop.

The remade Queen reflexively tried to jump back and twist away, but Alex barrelled into her. Her left hand clasped onto his wrist and halted his blade from piercing her neck. He dropped the blade and caught it with his left.

Her hand clasped his wrist, his free hand clasped a blade and hers did too. A struggle ensued.

A swing, a duck, a parry, a strike, and a block. Evenly matched. They continued, tied together in combat.

“One hundred years in hiding and many more in battle, ruined.” She said, mid-swing. “The first consumption will always trigger an evolution, usually once the entirety of a being is consumed-” She swung her blade and Alex ducked “We usurp the essence of our first meal. Their qualities-“ Alex stabbed upward and the queen leaned back to evade, her grip on his wrist unshaken as the flat of his blade kissed her chin without injury. “— their soul is stored within us, diluted. and a portion of their traits are passed on to us, an echo if you will-” She tugged at his wrist to throw him off balance, but Alex steadied his footing and swung again. “It is our ‘Source’, that’s what we call it. The source of our being.” She flipped over him, still holding onto his wrist. She spoke in mid-air as if she was stood on ground “-It forms the core of our being and alongside our arachnid core and remains throughout all evolutions; whether it be keen reflexes and intuition, or lost memories.” Alex swung at where she would land and tugged back to yank her from the air. She twisted so his blade passed below and landed on her hands and feet. Just one hand touched the ground, though. The other still held Alex’s wrist in a death grip. “-In rare cases, fragments of martial mastery are transferred between an arachnae and its first consumption,“ she continued.

Alex pulled and swung. She rose and locked blades with him while still holding onto his wrist like a vice on iron as they struggled, their evenly matched strength at an impasse.

“Do you know from when and for whom the first half of my core was formed?” She asked between grunts and pulls. “She died in one of the Great Wars, the greatest of them, some say. Her swings were magic and none could beat her honourably, not knights, not masters of aura, not even kings.”

So she just wants to talk? Why? Alex wondered. He couldn’t allow this to continue. He pulled with all he had and she didn’t move, She pushed with all she had and he didn’t budge. Of course they didn’t. She had his strength and was using it to delay him. “-My source was among their best.” She grunted. “And we claimed her, used her to create what you’ve forced me to become once more.”

“She was called the ‘God of Duels’.”

John sucked in a breath at the name and went pale, muttering about a legend of the black wars who disappeared 200 years ago. Alex could barely hear him.

“And they called me the ‘Death of Men’.”

The queen spoke her forgotten name and swelled with pride despite the melancholy that bathed her tone. John paled even further, seeming to lose strength in his knees. “We’re doomed.” He said.

For a heartbeat they stood in stalemate, locked by blades and clasping hands, until the drifter girl fell from above on both with her sword swinging. The queen raised the golden sword in her free hand defensively in response and Alex saw the blade glow.

“How-”

The drifter girl’s bronze sword stopped in mid-swing. It didn’t slow down, and it was not blocked. It simply… stopped moving, losing all momentum as if some force had pressed pause on the world. The girl‘s body did not receive the same treatment. Her eyes widened as she realised she was falling into a suspended blade and she turned in mid-air.

Too late. She crashed into the blade and spun to roll on the ground, groaning. The spin had saved her.

A huff of annoyance. The Queen pulled Alex’s wrist and swung her blade, Alex threw up his sword to block the blow.

Hard. As hard as he could hit. But that light, a Skill? Impossible. How did she do that?

She was—fast. But only as fast as he could be. Still, She came at him like lightning and they fought—until she jumped and kicked out with both feet. With one wrist still locked in her grip, Alex could only raise his remaining limbs and blade to block it. An impact, and the powerful blow sent him back some distance, though he landed without issue. The queen watched him from afar, both of her hands bare and disarmed. Alex had kicked the gold sword out of her grip as her blow connected.

John still stood back, gawking. Alex rose from his crouched position and saw the Queen-

With her back to them, although Alex knew too well how she could see them through other means if she wished.

She looked regretful and forlorn. Staring with sadness at the remnants of her womb while feeling at the cord that had connected her to it. Then she turned and stretched both of her arms wide, summoning her bronze and gold blades. The swords flew into her open palms with a slap.

She took a step forward, eyeing them as she crouched and all present with a blade shifted at her movement, raising their weapons instinctively.

“Now I am a Queen of nothing.” She muttered the words, closed her eyes and took one deep, long breath. Then she tensed with her new legs and leapt.

Through the air she soared, a streak. Alex charged to meet her in turn, his sword held low in preparation for an upward swing. The queen, gripping her bronze sword, swung it downward. The sword elongated, slicing a path through the ceiling before descending towards Alex with unstoppable force.

Her speed and strength had been limited, constrained. She had been Barred from the system's influence. Barred from its boons. She moved through the air with speed and strength that perfectly aligned with Alex’s.

She was slow, even.

Alex could see her swing as clearly as if it was his own. He raised his blade to deflect it, and at the point of impact her blade shone brighter.

Her bronze blade carved through his blade as it would through butter.

Alex’s eyes widened in shock. He threw himself from the path of her descending blade, spinning around to land on his feet. His blade lashed out without thought as he spun, aimed unnervingly at where his senses told him the Queen's head would be. She was bent over, having finished striking the ground, her sword still embedded in the cracked stone floor. She’s vulnerable- he thought.

mistakenly.

Her gold sword swung at an angle that would break human shoulders and blocked his blow with perfectly equal strength, then she rose from the ground and kicked and Alex’s world lurched. His world spun not from nausea but from flight, as her kick had sent him flying as his kicks could send her.

Alex could still sense the structure of the world around him as he tumbled through the air. Though it spun to his eyes the world remained stationary to his senses. He landed on his feet like a cat would and his bones creaked, bruised and most likely fractured, but not broken.

A red circle painted a bloody tattoo on his shoulder, but he felt no pain. He rolled the joint and a thin disk of skin and muscle tissue fell to the ground with a wet smack. A perfect cut.

The queen frowned. She had been intending on cutting him in half. “So, we fight without the new magics. A pity,” was all she said.

Alex winced as the cold air of the chamber embraced his open wound. In the instant his blade had broken he had almost attempted to use his ‘Boundless Dodge’ skill out of instinct, forgetting he was as stymied and removed from the system as she was. It would have been his end if he had attempted it.

The ground cracked beneath him in a line that smashed through the far wall, reopening the door that sealed them in. The line traced the path of her blade, stemming from the impact of her strike, and cut so deep into the earth it gave glimpses of other sections of the cave system, where Alex saw distant dark figures of arachnae battling far below.

Alex couldn't hide his shock. His skill ‘Duel of corruption’ had erased the system's influence on them both, it had created a field without the system. A domain that separated and clung to them even as they left it. He could see it now, faintly, the air was more vibrant wherever they moved and mana was wrenched free from the system’s control wherever they ventured. He had banished it completely. They had no skills, no feats, no classes and equal stats.

She was still moving at his speed. Still swinging as fast as he could. So how did she do that? How was her sword glowing? How had her strike caused such decimation?

“How did I do that without the system?” She spoke as if reading his thoughts but merely sensed his expression. Alex’s arm was shaking as he stared into the chasm her swing had created. “You caused this, I think.“ She said. “This return of the old magics. It’s all because of you.” The Queen looked disinterested by the notion of it, though. Detached.

“That was not a skill.”

***

The Queen swung a second time and a violent burst of unbound mana ravaged the air where Alex had stood. He had felt the blades of mana and air shooting at him and launched himself aside, now eyeing his surroundings with the entirety of his remaining senses.

What does she mean that’s not a skill?!

Alex was lost, adrift in an endless sea of questions without answers. His glitched skill made no sense, it removed the system and both his and his opponent's active skills, feats and class completely, but it didn’t remove his passives for some reason. His passive skills still worked albeit in a limited and weakened form. They were not as powerful as they were when he’d been connected to the system; His multitude of senses were slightly dulled, and he could still feel the space around him in 360 degrees although not in great detail. He couldn’t feel his inventory, it was no longer a space he could clearly envision as it had been when the system’s complex mana still infused him. Instead he felt nothing at all that would indicate he had an extra-dimensional space connected to him. But he knew it was there, if it wasn't wouldn't all of the items he’d stored fall into existence at the system's removal? The fact that his passives still worked in weaker form suggested that some element of them had nothing to do with the system and that the system's presence merely enhanced them. It was fortunate he’d only placed swords and healing potions in his inventory. A flex of his will could place and pull items out of it at random with no idea what item was being pulled and no way of enforcing choice in the matter.

Three and a half minutes left. Alex thought, Can’t let her use that long-range attack- how is she doing that?- we need to end this before she gets her stats back. Alex raised his sword to close the distance.

The queen cut through his thoughts with harsh words. “You have killed my swarm.”

She still hadn’t moved from where she stood rooted. Despite the violent outburst, she didn’t seem angry. She felt… lost. Her voice was solemn, broken. Her fists trembled and shook her sword.

Alex positioned his sword for a downward slash, preparing to cleave her head or split her torso. He watched her every move as he drew near, studying her static form with confusion. She seems- are those tears? A myriad of wet streaks dripped across her features. Alex didn’t quite know what to make of it.

“You have made me the second Nomadic Queen,” She said. “Which of you shall I repay first?”

He sensed a surge of mana, saw her weapon begin to brighten and swung his blade with urgency. The Hidden Queen launched off the ground under his swing. Alex halted and reversed the blow to cleave backwards.

But she was gone. She shot straight past him, crouched lower with her next step and leapt, soaring into the air and not so much as glancing at him. Straight past Alex’s speeding form she flew, high, and all heads raised to pursue her flight. Her speed matched and maintained the distance between them perfectly.

She shot past Alex and past the stunned drifter girl; straight for John. John was staring at her falling form and belatedly realized she was heading at him and not the others.

He ran.

“Oh fuck,” Blood swelled at his feet, launching him away from her descent with each step. “ohfuckohfuckohfuck.” He was headed for the gap her first strike had broken in the door, hard blocks of blood and ichor forming on all parts of his form with each step, pulled from all corners of the chamber. Mana infused each block to enhance its stability and resist foreign forces, it surged within each of his constructs. The intense fear of his impending death had propelled him to alter the system's limits on his skills through raw emotion and will, somehow. John’s weakness had revealed a unique aptitude for skill mastery that could make the system's elders' chests tighten in envy.

By the time she crashed in front of him and barred his escape, he had become a seven-foot defensive behemoth of hardened blood, a crystallized golem that stared down at the queen's much smaller form and trembled in fear still. Despite the fear engulfing him, John swung a fist, which soon became a blade of blood that painted a line of destruction in any stone that met its path

“Sacrificial Bl-”

The Queen removed her swords from his stomach before he felt the pain. The tip of her swords had cut through inches of hardened blood as firm as metals as if they had never been there. She stepped back and looked at him as he froze. John fell to the ground in two pieces, his legs removed.

“The first,” she said, her voice strained and distant- pained.

John struggled on the ground, grunting in pain, his blood flowing back into him just as fast as it left his form. He fought with every ounce of mana to will his blood to return to him and to stay alive. a losing battle.

Alex and The girl arrived before the Queen in whirls of fury.

Their blades came out like an enraged artist's painting. A tableau of two strokes. One—a sharp stroke, swift and striking, aimed straight for the queen's head. The other, to ram through her chest and scar it red. Or black. They moved in unison, one slower, the other adapting their pace to match and confuse her seamlessly.

For a moment, they achieved perfect harmony, the type one would expect from conjoined minds

They struck.

And Alex was the first to falter, he saw the queen's Bronze blade cleave through the girl's weapon as the gold one parried his own, saw how both weapons hummed with inner light, saw how her legs lashed out to kick them both the moment he moved to counter, and saw how her perfectly timed move sent them both to the ground, countering them as though she had faced such an onslaught a thousand times before.

They slid across the ground in separate directions, the man and the girl.

Alex summoned a sword from his inventory at random, a crystal blue blade that seemed to hum with raw mana of its own, vibrant and alive. But it was mana he couldn’t access. Without the system, he didn’t know how.

Before he could even rise he sensed the ground tremble and the air part in multiple streaks toward him. The nomadic Queen had swung her golden sword, causing gold shards to manifest from the raw unbound mana that surrounded them both to shoot in his direction. Then she swung her other hand and her bronze sword elongated to cleave at him from afar, causing Alex to frantically evade somewhat successfully, his every deflection and step harried. A spin through the air caused the stretching bronze blade to only cut into his back rather than split him in two and the shards missed their mark. Without using his eyes, Alex perceived her charging at his distracted form, even as a spray of golden spears bombarded him. The final shard zipped past the moment Alex Landing with his back turned to her, facing the far wall. He cursed internally, spun-

A sword pierced him to the wall-

The queen nailed his shoulder into the stone with such force that the sword snapped. “Too soon,” she said, “Not yet.” The woman turned away.

“You shall be next, youngling.” The Queen pointed her sword at the girl, who paled, raising a broken blade with trembling hands. The queen walked to face her.

“You do not know our history, you don’t know how many times humans have betrayed and destroyed us. How could you? You don’t understand their capacity for evil.” she struck out and Gold cut through steel, an impossibility.

“How could you? You weren't there to witness Kings and human heroes massacre our surrendered. And You’re incomplete, you didn’t kill your source, did you?” Her aura-enhanced blade sheared off a thin layer of the tip of the girl's blade with each of her swings, she was toying with her.

The young drifter girl with queen-like capabilities tried her best to fight back and swung with all she had.

***

The Queen looked down at the girl with a human appearance and powerful limbs, swinging a sword wildly. The girl who trusted humans. It pained her to witness such a sight. Still, she struck. “Every member of this hive is irreplaceable, now. so I won’t kill you. I will just take an arm. separate them and offer one to me.” She raised the bronze sword high, “It will not be painless, I will make sure of it.”

The girl remained mute, stifling a cry of pain and refusing to whimper. Instead, she tightened her grip on her chipped sword, her knuckles whitening.

The queen swung at the girl, a punishing blow aimed to loop off her arm and inflict pain. The girl attempted to mimic the human males' earlier deflections and tilted her sword with a jolt on impact to redirect the blow. It surprised the queen, but only in its novelty. She had barely deflected her and lost several fingers in the process.

The beginnings of justice. It paled in comparison to what the drifter girl had helped enact. A Queen's womb would never regrow, once it was destroyed the swarm would be doomed to die out no matter what evolutions they achieved. Only the queens could reproduce, and to force a queen to remove that capability was to deal a direct blow to the entirety of their kind.

Queens were rare, there were only ten of them. And now, two of their numbers were incapable of reproduction.

“You don’t even know what you did, do you?” The queen struck again and a sheet of metal was carved from the struck blade. “Without another queen, all of them are destined to die in this land. They cannot survive without us. You cannot survive without us.”

The girl didn’t reply—but her chipped sword kept going and swept to cleave off the Queen's head.

The drifter girl pivoted her left foot, grounding herself. Then, with a sharp exhale, she swung her sword in a wide arc, then turned it to a thrust, aiming directly at the Queen's neck. The blade sliced through the air.

Memories flashed through her mind: in the dim light of the cave system, Alex had explained the tsuki, focusing on its purpose as more than just a thrust. It was a culmination of balance, focus, and the precise channelling of force. He detailed how shifting one's weight forward, aligning the body correctly, and extending the arms not only maximizes the power behind the thrust but also turns the body into a conduit for that power. The theory behind the tsuki, he pointed out, was rooted in understanding the opponent's vulnerabilities and exploiting them with a strike that was both swift and devastatingly precise.

Alex demonstrated the move to her, then. She mimicked it perfectly now. Her tsuki-thrust emphasized her shift of weight from one foot to the other perfectly. She aligned her body just as Alex had taught her, and extended her arms fully, driving the sword forward in a precise, upward thrust.

***

The Queen saw the deadly cut coming and looked— Bored.

Before she had evolved to monarchy, the queen had studied many sword styles, driven by the urges of her past life. She had spent most of her life trying to recreate her source’s style; The god of duels Deific Blade, or the God Slaying Blade as its creator had originally called it. She had reconstructed the style from broken adopted memories. But what she had built was not complete.

She had never managed to completely recreate the lost style, but had studied many more in the process- the Giant Slaying Sword and The Rising Swallow were some of her favourites. As a result of half a lifetime spent studying the blade, she could easily recognise and assess a person's sword. It was clear to her that the drifter girl had learned the human male’s strange swordplay.

It was a sword style different from any she had studied in her youth. An amalgamation of many styles rather than a seamless integration of few. it had less pageantry. In their brief clashes the human males sword had moved in ways that only someone who truly loved killing would think of, there were hardly any wasted movements. An economy of form. It was quaint, but it lacked beauty. The only glimpse of beauty she had seen was in his final blow, but it had not been repeated. She believed all swings in combat should be beautiful, as did her source. All of her sword swings contained the essence of her art.

The fact that such an unrefined and impersonal sword had slayed her entire swarm offended her deeply. She would need to see more of it.

The Queen set her feet and raised her sword, the blade horizontal and it's edge angled to face the unseen sky. Her blade followed a stance she had not used in centuria and she cut down the drifter girl with the blow of the Third Stance of Arrivals- it felt apt.

The girl crashed to the ground disarmed and the Queen was on top of her, a foot pressing into her chest and holding her broken blade in her hand. The Queen stabbed the blade into the girl's stomach up to the hilt and then pushed further, pinning her to the ground as the blade dug deep into stone.

“You don’t understand why you swing your blade, or why your soul asks you to follow that worthless human.” The girl looked up with black blood on her lips as the fallen Monarch addressed her. “Your mimicry is hollow and your swings are dull. Without answers to the reason for your existence, you will never reach me. Or even him.”

The defeated girl absorbed the Queens words but failed to grasp them. What was the reason for her existence? How could it help her reach the same monstrous heights of swordplay those two displayed? Or surpass them? The girl knew that should she survive, she would spend every waking moment searching for an answer. But she could not see one right now, not through the pain- or the tears. She lay there, disarmed. bleeding onto the stone floor.

The Queen then turned and faced Alex at the instant he freed himself.

“You.”

She pointed—and Alex lifted his blade.

***

Three minutes. It had only been three minutes.

What should have been a simple monster-slaying had descended into chaos. John lay dying or dead, and the girl lay in similar condition; nailed to the ground in bloody purgatory.

Three minutes of battle, a difficult one but not impossible battle that should have ended when he’d sliced her in two. I should have double-tapped her. Always double-tap. He thought through the pain as he used a blue blade summoned at random to saw through the blade pinning him to the wall. His strength should have been enough to free him, but the damned monster had rammed him into the far wall with such force that the blade had curved and snapped, turning into a hook that held him in place like a gruesome trophy.

He heard a scream and saw the queen rise from the fallen girl. The girl hadn’t stood a chance. But she had fought well, for a novice.

I should have asked for her name, the thought occurred to Alex the moment he freed himself, his restraints now mere remnants of broken and twisted metal that fell clattering to the ground. His feet made contact with the stone floor, and his hands felt the soft warmth of the blue crystal blade in his hand, held as one would hold a life raft when submerged in wrathful deluge. A blade of pure mineral, blue and sharp enough to saw through metal while remaining unblemished. He’d pulled the blade from his inventory after stealing it from the queen's treasures. He couldn’t miss the way the blade swirled and hummed softly to his enhanced senses. It held a soft glow of its own mana source, separate from the rest of the world. The blade held a brightness and vibrance that made the blades he’d held before seem like works of darkness. To the naked eye the blade remained static, but he constantly sensed how the air shook in soft waves around the blade, sending waves of information crashing into him with each millisecond that passed. He could feel every inch of this blade as if it were his own skin. He had no clue what capabilities the sword held but sensed how the mana within screamed for release, to fulfill its purpose.

A purpose I need the system to fulfil, Alex thought as he rose. He was beginning to see further drawbacks to his skill, ‘Duel of Corruption’. The skill banished the system for both himself and his target, would alter one’s stats to perfectly match the others and would otherwise place them on equal ground. But the skill did not account for those able to utilise mana without access to the system.

In a world such as this one, a world where the people had spent hundreds if not thousands of years mastering the use of raw and untamed mana, the skill would not be a restraint but a tool for freedom. In a world such as this where the system was fresh and the memory of magic was not forgotten, they would be able to utilise ‘True magic’, as Kier had called it. In a world where the system had existed for millennia and True magic was forgotten, the skill would act as an equaliser to those within its level range.

But in a world like the one he found himself, where the memory of old magic was fresh, each use of the skill would be laden with danger and each time it was triggered a dance with death could ensue.

Time to dance then, I guess, he thought with grim resolve. All he could do was fight. She may be strong, but she was only as strong as he was. She may have been good with her sword- so good that each of her swings held magic, but he still had his Dao and he had seen better.

Without magic, his grandfather could have wiped the floor with her.

The clattering of broken metal caused the Queen to increase her slow pace, she shot forward, a streak.

Alex was on his feet. He exploded forward, crossing the distance instantly.

But the Queen was as fast as he was. She cut the air in half and Alex knelt as fifty scars crisscrossed the chamber in a line at his head’s height, this time less deadly than her first swing.

She swung again, careful not to damage the structural integrity of her chamber further, as Alex sidestepped and ducked, moving closer and closing the distance between them.

Her blow made contact with his blue crystal blade and her deadly mana clung to his blade after they parted, usurped and co-opted. So that’s what it does, a quick glance at his stolen sword and Alex’s eyes widened in surprise. He had released his dao and a remnant of it still clung to the blade, weaker but persistent, eager to remain. He slashed and it disappeared.

Blades clashed and Alex recoiled under the weight of her Aura. Then he pivoted on his heel, redirecting the weight of her blow, and her mana slipped onto his blade, empowering his next swing. His Dao followed and empowered it further. A magic blade that steals whatever energy it touches? Jackpot. He smiled, then- and swung with all he had.

The Dao surged through his blade and its blue shine intensified. His will guided his steps and the lives of his fallen allies fuelled his urgency. He ducked and twisted and slashed with a pivot, the dao within his blade causing a constant state of flux that cut through any and all it encountered. If only he could withstand it. His head pounded from the strain and his foe adapted to each use, targeting the hilt or base of his blade where the Dao was non-existent, or evading his blows completely whenever she sensed reality shift at the edge of his blade. But he was gaining ground. The Queen swung and Alex slashed, the ‘Insight of the Imperial’ at the forefront of his mind.

Today, he thought with a stab, elbows extended, his movement sculpting a path through her blade's range.

Now, he resolved with another step, his urgency as emphatic as his swings, his blade touched the carapace to draw a thin and shallow line, the first wound her new form had ever experienced.

She dies. He leapt with conviction.

With this exchange, he would end her and claim the system's boons.