Chapter 377 - Sophie vs Tacita (Patreon)

Sophie is unable to control her any longer as Tacita changes her field, and the mute girl disappears.

Even while that is happening, Sophie keeps moving her hands and setting up her web. She does it very quickly, the floating constructs the size of bees moving around wildly, pulling nearly invisible threads of mana.

Sophie detects something and waves her arm, the ground a few steps away from her bulging out and a spike pierces high into the air. She spins swiftly and another three spikes pierce from three different spots.

It doesn't seem to cause her trouble to focus on multiple things at once as even while she does it, her web continues to set up and more constructs surround her.

For a moment, Tacita appears, dried blood under her nose, ears, and eyes, and the skin over her collarbone bleeding down her shirt. She stands there calmly, her dagger coated in her own blood. Tacita changes her grip and takes a step. Did Sophie just force Tacita out of her stealth skill?

Towards Tacita, a dozen or so constructs shoot, each functioning like a trap, ready to have their effect triggered when they are destroyed. The arm holding the dagger turns into a blur and all of the constructs disappear, every one of them cut multiple times in the span of a second.

When the spikes pierce the ground, Tacita avoids them gracefully, jumping from side to side, avoiding them with ease while dancing between the threads of Sophie’s web.

Every second she is moving closer to Sophie, who throws everything she can against her. Her web, constructs, earth spikes, wind slashes, and even the air over Tacita changes, attempting to focus the light and burn Tacita like an ant under a magnifying glass.

And every time Sophie tries to use her mind manipulation, Tacita creates a short dagger out of mana and throws it at Sophie in a beautiful straight line. The dagger leaves a trail of blue mana in its wake, forcing Sophie to defend against it as it pierces through multiple barriers with ease.

When Tacita gets just a few steps away, Sophie shrinks her web, pulls the constructs even closer, spins threads, and attacks the mute girl.

The web seems to affect Tacita’s movement now, trying to restrict it, pulling oxygen out of the air to not allow her to breathe, changing the temperature, and seemingly even the density of the air.

Seeing all that, Tacita still continues to walk slowly, playfully dodging all the attacks when she has to, and only her arms move in a blur dealing with the attacks. She seems angry. The angriest I’ve seen her yet.

One step away from Sophie, she moves her arm and stabs her dagger into Sophie’s neck.

Sophie tries to grab Tacita´s arm, which would allow her to strengthen her manipulation, but Tacita pulls out the dagger, cuts off Sophie’s entire arm, and takes a step back. 

Then they face each other. Sophie bleeding from the neck and cut-off arm, and Tacita staring at her, waiting for her to die.

There is an invisible fight we can see or sense, and I’m sure [Manipulation] and Tacita’s skill or trait are clashing even now.

Gradually, Tacita squeezes her dagger, blood once again flowing from her eyes as that hand moves. Turning the dagger against herself, the tip of the blade pierces the skin over her heart.

Then the movement stops, and in a lash-out-like movement, the arm swings, sending Sophie’s head flying and turning her into shiny particles.

Soon after, Tacita also gets teleported outside.

The crowd under the screens becomes extremely loud, with different groups of people chanting the names of the girls. Some of them celebrating, others complaining as they rush to check their bets.

Sophie doesn’t seem to be happy but quickly gets into a conversation with others, not wanting to show it to her sister who I'm sure can still feel it.

Waiting for another fight to start, I create a black orb over the palm of my hand and, as always, it tries to fight back while I shape it, creating a projectile, dagger, and other constructs. Mana Cycling helps here a lot, a technique left to me by that cockroach-like Absolute. Plus, the progress I made with my duplicate and all the training I did here.

Closer to the end of the tournament, I plan to do more tests. The combination of black mana and my [Mana Crown] and try to use it to power some skills in interesting ways.

The result will most likely be… well… explosive. Excited as I am for it, I decide to put it off to try to improve my control just a bit more before attempting it.

Lately, I’ve thrown a lot of effort into trying to master black mana while I have a feeling my basics are lacking. It might not be a bad idea to slow down a bit and improve on these basics. In the long term, it will be better than just hurrying and trying to use powers I barely understand.

Then there is also Miwa and her arm and her desire to meet Tent… the first-ranked crafter, damn it.

“Maya is against Savant,” Izzy pokes me, back to watching the screen after talking with Sophie she still calls dumb.

“Why is Noodle growing that slowly, he eats a lot of mana,” I ask her and turn towards the screen.

“I told him to not grow too quickly so I can carry and pet him! He is cuter when he is this small.”

I see, that makes sense.

Poor danger noodle.

On the screen, dark blue armor surrounds Maya, and before the helmet covers her head, I notice that cold focused expression on her face. She must know she doesn’t have much of a chance, but that doesn’t stop her from trying.

Maya activates her [Boost], and her high dexterity increases even more as she charges Savant, two short swords in her hands.

This time, Savant doesn’t use his domain and only pulls out the broken Sword of Aeons, not caring it has only half of the blade. He uses it like a longer dagger or very short sword.

His strengthening and short bursts of mana he uses to reinforce his body are nearly perfect. Better than anyone from Hell difficulty, he strengthens his body with his mana. For very short bursts, he is almost as quick as Tacita.

With extreme accuracy and sometimes only by a hair’s width, he avoids the attacks, stepping to the side, jumping back, and tilting his head.

He matches Maya’s speed, and every time their weapons clash, he doesn’t even use that much force, instead absorbing the force of the attack with his skill. He even uses that absorbed energy and releases it later to strengthen his attack.

I think the skill he is using is something like [Absorption], [Counter], [Redirection], or skill with a similar name. That skill allows him to absorb attacks and store them for a while at the cost of his mana. The longer he stores it or the more powerful the skill is, the more it costs him.

His skill must be really good too, as it was even able to store [Disintegration]. Either that or it is a much higher level than Lily’s skill, and Savant used a lot of mana.

It doesn’t worry me that much. With my reserves, I should be able to overpower it quite easily. There is no chance he can endure it with his pitiful reserves.

Savant dodges and his sword slashes, the edge of the blade glowing in the gentle orange light of his domain. It easily cuts through Maya’s armor and causes a serious wound.

Without hesitation, Maya creates a patch made of mana to stop the bleeding, and instead of using [Boost] to enhance her healing, she uses it to attack again. She constantly keeps changing her weapons, from daggers to hammers, all to catch Savant unprepared.

At times she even creates additional limbs made of mana from her back and attacks.

It still isn't enough and the fight ends a minute later with Savant barely warmed up and Maya's armor flickering as she starts losing control. At that point, Savant ends it with a few swift swings of his sword that cut through Maya's creations like it's nothing.

“So who do you think is stronger, Nat or Savant?” Aaron asks Maya when she gets out.

It takes a few moments before Maya gets out of her state of deep concentration and then a few more as she stares at the blonde boy.

“Savant is ridiculously skilled, but Nat is crazy to the point of being suicidal.”

“So Nat?”

“It’s hard to imagine Nat losing, but I don't think that Savant showed everything he can do, so he will most likely come up with some nasty surprises.”

“So Savant is a smart kid for whom it's easy to study and Nat is a dumbass who spends the entire night brute-forcing himself to remember the lessons?”

“No, Nat is someone who sets the class on fire and then uses that distraction to cheat while getting terribly burned.”

“The fuck?” Aaron reacts with what I also want to say.

For now, I decide to ignore the pokes at my surely normal personality.

On the screen, the scrawny man who beat Min-Jae wins the fight and becomes the finalist of his group. I think he is from Bendover’s group. A similar assassin build, but unlike the around 30-year-old Bendover, the scrawny man is over 50, not like it matters that much anymore with the stats.

A few more fights after that, the group fights are over and 16 finalists are decided.

Congratulations on becoming the winner of your group. The finals will start in 1 hour!

Group 1 - Swordmaster

Group 2 - Noname

Group 3 - Brainiac

Group 4 - Bard

Group 5 - Gareth

Group 6 - FoodFood

Group 7 - Wanderer

Group 8 - Zenith

Group 9 - Savant

Group 10 - Rook

Group 11 - Meridian

Group 12 - Sset

Group 13 - Tacita

Group 14 - Vesper

Group 15 - Luminary

Group 16 - AnotherOneHere

Seeing the groups in their full beauty, I can think of how unlucky Group 4 was. A lot of them met someone from our group or Beyond, preventing them from getting to the finals.

There are even two people from Hard difficulty who were lucky enough to get groups without anyone from Hell in them, Zenith and Meridian.

The duels are announced as well, the participants split into two groups.

Group 1 - Swordmaster vs Group 2 - Noname

Group 3 - Brainiac vs Group 4 - Bard

Group 5 - Gareth vs Group 6 - FoodFood

Group 7 - Wanderer vs Group 8 - Zenith

Group 9 - Savant vs Group 10 - Rook

Group 11 - Meridian vs Group 12 - Sset

Group 13 - Tacita vs Group 14 - Vesper

Group 15 - Luminary vs Group 16 - AnotherOneHere

It looks like I will need to win against Swordmaster and then against either Brainiac or Bard. Then I will probably face Gareth or Biscuit. The winner of this mini-group will go against the winner of the other mini-group. Most likely Savant, Tacita, or Tess.

“Are you happy with your group?” I ask Tess who also is reading from her system window.

“Well, I need to win my fight and then I will go against Savant. It’s a shame, I wanted to try to fight Tacita, but there is nothing I can do.”

“Already giving up?”

“Of course, I will throw in my best, but I think out of us only you can face that guy.”

“He didn’t show off that much until now. He got an arcane weapon during the first event. Had high [Restriction] during the second and third.”

To that, Tess laughs shortly, “I think even that much was enough to make a judgment for people like us, right?”

“I guess.” I sigh.

Then I look at the mana stone I get out of my pocket. It's the one Savant gave to Lily in exchange for restoring his arm. The stone contains research on healing made by Hella, a disciple of Champion Tristan.

Knowing Savant had it since the second floor, it's obvious that he saw the research as well. There is a lot about body modification, more than healing or regrowing limbs and organs.

Things like taking body parts of someone else and making them your own by “healing”. Simply, making your body accept them.

All of it is nasty, talking about taking corpses of long-dead Champions and trying to use them. Changing limbs, transplanting hearts and flesh of more powerful humans, even the body parts containing traits. It talks about the risks of such procedures. Rejected traits, the body fighting back against foreign organs. Such procedures are extremely dangerous if the body part is rejected.

And I wonder how much of this knowledge that guy used and how much of that body is still his own.

***

Next Chapter