Arc#3 Chapter 83: Struggle (Patreon)

Gwen watched in abject awe as Sienna's body vanished without a trace, teleported out of the battle stage by the esteemed Sword Star. She had seen what would happen too, but — and she hated to admit it — everything was too fast for her to respond to.

'That damned old man...'

Donovan hadn't informed them of these massive domain techniques. A lack of information wouldn't have been a big problem, since they could simply remain on guard for them, but Gwen had explicitly asked her former instructor if the prince had any wide-area spanning techniques she had to watch out for. This was a perfectly ordinary thing for her to ask since those types of techniques couldn't be dodged, and hence, put her at a disadvantage because she couldn't capitalize on her special gift.

And yet, the former instructor had said that the prince didn't have anything like that. It was with so much confidence that Gwen immediately accepted it as fact.

'Two. He has two wide-area spanning domain techniques.'

The first one was the dark-attributed technique that hindered movement while utilizing the resource-absorbing aspect of his bonded spirit beast.

Now, there was this one.

'A composite domain combining the absorption aspect, a dark-attributed corrosive effect that is burning my lungs right now, and a frost-attributed effect that was worming its way into her armor by corroding it and then freezing its way deeper into my flesh.'

The absorption effect aside, it was enough to call it an advanced domain — something only Ascendants could wield. Even Gwen hadn't gotten that far.

'We need to end this NOW.'

The three of them had been slightly frazzled by the sudden group battle. They were primarily duelists, after all. Gwen knew next to nothing about her sudden colleagues and she didn't know how they fought. Recklessly doing whatever they wanted was a good way to hit each other with their techniques. Although she coincidentally went on some missions with Villago in the past, they hadn't fought on the same battlefield back then.

That's why just as the second prince felt them out, the three knights were also getting a feel for each other.

'Was that part of the second prince's plans too?'

If so, he was truly brilliant. He had shot two birds with one stone. Not only could he utilize his domains better by fighting against many at once, but he had also indirectly crippled them for a while by forcing them into such an unfamiliar situation.

In hindsight, they should have just chosen one knight to duel him close up while the other two offered ranged support or something. It would have been even more effective since Sienna was apparently such a ridiculously capable cleric.

'Too late for that now.'

"Hey." Gwen telepathically communicated to Villago. "I'll duel him up close. Try not to get in the way and try not to have him suck you dry. Just try to support me."

"Oh? Sure thing. You do all the work." Villago happily agreed as wings made of shadows spawned from his back. He flew up high, away from the second prince's domain. "Still, this is kinda annoying. Why'd they pick you and me for this anyway? We can't turn invisible because our princely highness over there can see through it. How annoying."

'You can say that again...'

Gwen knew better than to telepathically voice her agreement though. "Turning invisible isn't all that we can do. You must have other trump cards that made Sir Donovan choose you for this."

"Hmm... Perhaps."

"Stop holding back and pull it out then."

"It's going to make things very difficult for me when I go back to Argonia though... Bah. Whatever. Fine. I doubt I'd miss, but try to keep him in place. I can't keep flying for too long and my killing technique takes a lot of essence. We should end this now."

"I know."

"And try to go for his nuts. The prince is still a man, after all. Make him flinch."

Gwen frowned from within her helm but agreed that it was, indeed, a viable tactic. One that would deliver the maximum impact when the first time it happens.

Before Gwen could charge back into melee range, she caught sight of the second prince aiming a pistol at Villago. Lightning arced along the weapon, undoubtedly charging the projectile inside with electricity.

'Railgun? Troublesome.'

Gwen's body erupted with light as numerous orbs of luminescence appeared all over the stage, lighting up all traces of darkness that allowed Prince Reivan to use his dark attribute so freely. They were rapidly corroded by the domain, but it didn't matter. She could create them with little effort.

In this bright environment, where the sun freely shined upon her and all darkness was abolished, she could use << Lightspeed >> relatively freely. The problem with traveling roughly at the speed of light was never the essence cost, though — it was controlling your body so you didn't ram into a wall at high velocities.

Such a thing wasn't a problem for Gwen though.

The scenery around her changed in an instant as she reappeared a sword's length away from the second prince's exposed back. She focused on the prince, her third eye telling her that he would ignore her completely, firing his gun at the flying Villago.

And just as foretold, a loud bang echoed out as a lightning-charged bullet ascended into the sky faster than it had any right to be. At the same time, her rapier pierced straight into... the second prince's afterimage.

'Shit.'

Gwen used << Lightspeed >> to move far away from her spot and scanned the surroundings. Her eye landed on the second prince, a few paces away from where he should have been. Her target reacquired, she once again sped toward the prince as a streak of light, her rapier point held forward like a lance to skewer her liege's son.

The prince's face was a mask of impassive calmness as he vanished like a mirage, merging with the thin black smoke filling the entire stage.

Completely missing her attack, Gwen was once again forced into a halt. Impatience gradually threatened to consume her faster than the rate by which her skin was being frozen. Though the area was vastly illuminated now, preventing the prince from using << Shadow Form >> too freely, she didn't have the means to purify such an advanced domain. It was nothing like the first one, after all. Her essence was being sucked out of her faster than ever, powering the impressive domain plaguing the stage.

As if that wasn't enough, Gwen also still had to watch out for that mysterious attack that forced Sienna into using Sormon's Corona. For all the damage resistance her earth-affinity afforded her, Gwen knew she would be taken out immediately by an attack like that. And she didn't have a fraudulent method that would block just about anything.

'Damn... He wasn't supposed to be this good...'

Gwen was forced to raise her sword to block the prince's sudden heavy attack before he vanished once again. Even in her eyes, the young man had come out of nowhere. She had to focus on her target to view their future, so his constant disappearance was troubling.

'I can't tell where he is at all...'

She had always been proud of her perception, yet, it was as if the prince wasn't even on the stage with her — which was obviously not the case. Her intuition was crying out at the danger she was in and there was a barrier preventing the contestants and their attacks from leaking out of the battlefield.

"Having trouble?" Villago's amused voice entered her mind at that instant. "I think I have an idea."

"What do I have to do."

"That laser beam attack you used that one time. How many of those can you fire?"

Gwen thought about it for a bit as she once again parried another attack from the prince. This time, however, she was surprised to find that her blade was stuck to his sword as if both soul armaments had been melted together. The next thing she knew, a fist was right in front of her face.

She dodged it by taking a step back and letting go of her rapier. As soon as she did, the weapon reappeared in her hands and she lashed out at the prince's stomach. Her weapon — glowing with the golden light of << Spellblade >> — easily penetrated the prince's invisible armor and ignored most of his damage resistance.

If the prince was in pain, she couldn't tell from his emotionless face. He stepped forward, plunging her weapon deeper, then reached out and grabbed her sword arm with a vice-like grip — or he would have, had Gwen not seen it coming and backed away in time. Undeterred, he relentlessly chased after her with a heavy downward strike.

Gwen raised her sword at an angle, guiding the prince's sword away from her before following up with a lightning-quick riposte to the throat.

He momentarily retreated by transforming into lightning, changing his [Soul Armement] into a pistol and rapid-firing three rounds into her skull — which she calmly parried with her glowing rapier. Five spears of ice appeared above his head as his gun morphed back into a sword. The prince bent his knees for a moment before lunging forward.

Gwen stepped diagonally back to dodge two of the frost lances as she prepared to meet the prince's strike.

'Hm?'

Then something strange happened.

The prince was obviously lunging at her with the force of a thousand charging bulls and her intuition was likewise telling her that she shouldn't try to block that stab, but her ability showed her something very different. Despite the trust she'd grown to have in her third eye and intuition, Gwen was absolutely convinced that the prince was going to stab forward.

Yet her future vision told her he would sweep sideways.

Hesitation dulled her thoughts for only a fraction of a moment, but she hadn't reached her position for nothing. She chose to trust in her guts. Her mundane eyes had deceived her numerous times but her third eye always showed her the truth.

Instead of stepping sideways to dodge a lunge, Gwen stepped back at the last second to avoid a sweep.

And once again, just as foretold, the prince spun rapidly right after she backstepped, viciously rending the space between them. Gwen could feel the essence emitted by that strike. There was no doubt that the prince used numerous attack-modifying aetherblade arts to give his strike some extra lethality.

Gwen used << Lightspeed >> once again to create some distance. Attack modifiers lasted a few more seconds after they missed. It would be wiser for her to wait for those effects to vanish instead of risking an exchange.

'What was that...'

She released the breath she didn't know she was holding, simultaneously discovering that her skin was caked with a layer of sweat inside her armor. It wasn't as if the confrontation was too intense, rather, she was simply shaken at her hesitation.

'Is it because of his gift of lying...?'

It didn't take a grand scholar to realize what could have been the cause, given the information she possessed.

"How troublesome. My... feints don't work on you either." Prince Reivan muttered loud enough for her to hear. Despite his words, his countenance was still bereft of emotion, sending chills up Gwen's spine.

Gwen silently waited for the intense essence wrapped around the prince's blade to die out, not responding to his words. Her participation in this exhibition match was on a strict need-to-know basis — or it should have been if her mother and Sir Criston hadn't accidentally found out — so she couldn't let her voice out at all. Otherwise, she would be opening up the chance for someone to connect the voice to her, exposing her combat skills to anyone who shouldn't have been watching.

"Hey, little Miss Prettyface." Villago's lazy voice once again snaked its way into her mind. "I asked you a question, ya know? I'd like an answer before I invest anything into my plan."

"What, dammit?" Gwen answered back in annoyance. Then she remembered what the man had previously asked. "Laser... I can fire that however many times I want."

"Why ain't ya using it then?"

"Because it takes far too much essence to fire a strong one, and as you can see, I'm not doing well on that part. He can probably dodge it easily too... Or worse, turn the laser right back around with an ice mirror."

"Point. Alright, use one."

Gwen's brows furrowed. "Excuse me?"

"I've got a plan. Relax. Just fire one. Point it away from the prince though."

She wanted to retort, but Villago was her senior when it came to serving as a knight. It wouldn't be too difficult to give whatever plan he'd cooked up a chance.

Gwen raised her left hand as light-attributed essence condensed into her palm. After a fraction of a second, a thin golden beam of light, somewhat similar to the one that Prince Reivan had fired at Sienna before, shot into the sky.

"Great. Thanks!" Villago called out through their telepathic link.

'What's his plan...'

Gwen glanced upward for a moment, only to see her laser caught by what looked like a plate of water. Or perhaps it was a bowl, though its insides were a bit too shallow for that. Instead of shattering the water plate, the laser bounced off of it, eventually meeting yet another water plate.

Belatedly, Gwen discovered that there were plenty of these water mirrors floating all across the stage.

"Gwendy~ I could use a few more of those! I'll take care of the aiming."

'Don't call me Gwendy, dammit...'

Gwen realized what Villago intended and acquiesced, She fired dozens of laser beams at the water mirrors, watching as they all shot across the air in erratic patterns.

Prince Reivan also seemed to find them troublesome, as a frown finally colored his previously calm expression. As expected, he formed ice mirrors of his own to deflect the concentrated beams of searing light essence and even froze the water mirrors Villago produced, obtaining control over them.

In response to his efforts, Villago banished the water mirrors the moment they finished reflecting the beams, not giving the prince a chance to turn them into ice.

The prince was now under constant pressure by Villago's relentless assault. The knight was even following up with a rain of arrows that the prince had to either deflect with difficulty or dodge, serving to drain him of even more essence.

It was the perfect opportunity to go in and take him out for good.

Just as she was about to go back in for another attack, a spatial distortion appeared right above the prince's head, followed by a thick arrow that was aimed to drill a hole into his scalp.

The prince's eyes widened as he barely transformed into a dense bolt of lightning, becoming intangible and moving away from his spot. With not even a sound, the arrow that appeared out of literal nowhere easily penetrated deep into the stage, banishing everything in its path to the void. Only a gaping emptiness where the prince had just been was left in its wake, crackles of grey electricity flickered on and off as reality tried to mend itself back together."

"God. Fucking. Damn." Villago once again spoke through their telepathic link, his annoyance clear. "This is why I hate fighting against knights. Everybody and their mother has freaky intuition! Not that I'm that mad about it since I have it too, but man is it annoying to deal with. I'm fucking spent! Shit!"

"A spatial technique..."

"Yes. It's the killer technique I only use when I really wanna kill someone... which just so happens to be a lot. I'm kinda famous for it in Argonia. Fuck. I hope none of those assholes get wind of this..."

"If their spies or even just informants managed to sneak their way here, then don't count on it. The entire country can see this fight."

"FUCK! There goes my job. I guess I better start thinking about switching departments..."

Gwen also sighed. Light and Darkness were the two attributes closest to "Spatial Manipulation", which was the domain of Transcendents. Still, it wasn't something mortals like them could easily play with. Even she couldn't do it, despite having the light attribute. The fact that Villago could use one, even just once, was amazing.

'And the fact that the Prince can deal with it makes him even more so.'

With determination, Gwen decided to use her trump card too. Or rather, she had already been preparing it since a while ago. It wasn't anything all that impressive like Villago's space-rendering arrow. And it took a ridiculous amount of time to prepare too.

But she had never lost once it activated.

Gwen felt the "anchor" of essence she'd shot straight into the depths of the earth reach a suitable distance from the surface. She spent a moment reinforcing the "chain" connecting her to the "anchor" as she watched Prince Reivan jump up and eliminate Villago — who lacked the essence to defend himself.

After finishing off the archer, the prince's attention returned to her, the last adversary he had to face, Gwen completed her technique and shot into the sky, weaving through the prince's attacks.

Faster than even she could control, she rammed straight into the prince and transferred the "chain" to him.

'Done.'

Gwen activated << Gravity Anchor >>.