II
“We are in a hurry,” Felix said. “Let’s begin without delay.” He raised his sword to point it at Nefer, who pushed his hands out in front of him to urge Felix off. “After all that? What are you up to?”
“Aren’t you curious?” Nefer asked. Silence followed. That alone was as clear as any verbal affirmation. “Of course, the old man came here planning to kill you for fighting side by side with the Deep Folk girl. But after listening to him, I’m sure you understand. Deep down, he still hasn’t given up on you. He was always the most smitten with your talents. In any case—this is where it’ll all be decided. There’ll still be plenty of time for us after the two of them have fought it out, don’t you think?” he asked, then added, “Regardless of who wins.”
Felix’s eyebrows shot up. “‘Regardless of who wins’?” he echoed. “Now this is strange. Eradicating the Deep Folk is everything to the Asura. I imagine your comrades would have a lot to say if they heard you just now.”
Nefer laughed. “You’ve gotten funnier, Felix. Of course, those comrades you mention have already snuffed it, all thanks to you.” Felix was silent. “You look lost. Well, the truth is, I’m confused myself. What I do know is that there’s no way in hell I’d survive a fight against that Deep Folk girl.”
After seeing Olivia in battle with his own eyes, Nefer had quickly realized that in terms of strength, she was in a different class than her mother, whom he himself had laid low. Olivia was beyond human.
He shook his head. “Anyway, now that’s cleared up, let’s go find somewhere to watch where we won’t be in the way.” Without waiting for agreement, he leaped over to a nearby boulder. Felix followed about two breaths later. He observed the two fighters while keeping his distance from Nefer.
If even the likes of me can see it, there’s no way you, the so-called second coming of our first great master, can have failed to understand. How the dice will fall on this battle, none can say...
When Zebulla first laid eyes on Olivia as she ran through the ravine, he knew immediately that he was the only one who could end her. The reason why, despite this, he had quietly stood back and allowed his subordinates to attack her was to get the measure of her. It all came down to that. Zebulla set his legs far apart and pressed his fists together in front of his chest. He focused his Odh in his belly, causing his whole body to radiate with a pale amber glow.
First, let’s see her reflexes. He kicked off lightly, silently closing the distance between Olivia and himself. Rather than moving in a straight line, he shifted from point to point using a special way of stepping—Illusory Step Cicada Shell. This art was the twin of Swift Step—it made the user appear to move instantaneously, throwing even the mightiest warriors off-kilter. But Olivia stayed where she was with her sword hanging down loosely and showed no sign of moving. It wasn’t that she couldn’t move, Zebulla decided—she chose not to.
In that case—
In order to provoke her, he deliberately took a step into reach of her blade. The moment he did so, her ebony blade flew into a wild dance that threatened to engulf him. She moved with the perfection of flowing water, more beautiful than the finest art, so that Zebulla could barely tear his eyes away. Spectacular! he thought.
Utilizing every muscle in his body, Zebulla repelled her every slash with his gauntlet, then struck at Olivia with an uppercut. Olivia jumped away, bending her upper body back in line with the trajectory of his fist as she went. As a result, he only barely managed to graze her armor. Except—
“Huh...?” Olivia looked at Zebulla curiously as a trickle of blood ran down from her lip. “You only grazed me, right?”
“You wouldn’t still be chirping away if I’d gotten a direct hit.” Zebulla’s punch was anything but ordinary. Ignoring any and all defenses to directly strike at his opponents’ bodies, this was the Apogee of Destruction. Even armor forged by the world’s greatest smith would be as good as useless before it. There was no counter to it other than to evade.
“Huuuh. Guess I don’t want to take a proper hit, then...” Olivia wiped away the blood with the back of her hand, then slid her left leg back into a deep stance. Leaning forward, she rested the ebony blade against her left hip. It pointed not forward, but back.
She’s going to attack. Zebulla focused on— No, not the ebony blade. He looked at Olivia’s legs. Her blade seemed to come out of nowhere to a degree that far surpassed simple mastery. But to Zebulla’s mind, the greater threat was the baffling variation of movement that her footwork made possible.
In the same instant that Olivia appeared to have three overlapping legs, Zebulla felt every hair on his body prick up like needles as the ebony blade closed stealthily on him out of the corner of his eye. He dodged the deathly blow by a hair’s breadth, thinking as he did so that she had to be abusing Ultimate Swift Step. But she had been too quiet for that.
What is this...? He realized that his hand was shaking. Like water gushing up from the ground, it wouldn’t stop. In all his sixty-five years of life, Zebulla had never experienced such a thing before. Ah, so that’s how it is... he thought with a silent chuckle. He clenched his fist as though to interrupt his euphoria. The speed of Olivia’s strikes intensified still further, but he saw them all coming and parried them with his gauntlet, even as he concentrated his Odh in his vocal cords.
“I rebuke thee!!!” His roar hit Olivia at point-blank range and sent her flying off far into the distance. Without a moment’s pause, Zebulla concentrated Odh in his belly in volumes incomparable to before. The muscles of his back bulged violently, then four arms emerged, all clad in amber light. When all four arms were fully extended, he took a single breath, then turned to the darkness and muttered, “It’ll take more than that to kill her.”
As though in response, Olivia came charging at him, slicing through the darkness. The two of them danced in and out of range, six fists and one sword clashing like wildfire. Neither would back down, but Zebulla quickly turned the back-and-forth battle on its head by playing his final card—Limitless Self. This was the simultaneous activation of Ultimate Swift Step and Supreme Illusory Step. It had been conceived by the first Zebulla, and since then none had been able to master this special illusory art. Fifty years earlier, he had cast the previous Zebulla from his throne, and now, he moved faster than Olivia’s reflexes could keep up with. A cold laugh rose up from his throat—then he heard the sound of wind. His breathing was horribly ragged. He tried to move, but his nerves refused to obey him. It seemed that the part he could still control was his eyelids, so he opened them. His eyes met Olivia’s. She held the ebony blade planted against her chest.
At the same time as his awareness swiftly caught up with the situation, confusion also reared its head.
“All six of my fists should have hit you directly. Why aren’t you a lump of meat?” He hadn’t meant to say it; the question simply slipped out as it occurred to him.
“Yeah, I knew after the first time you got me that that attack was dangerous,” Olivia replied obligingly. “So obviously I came up with a counterdefense.”
The corner of Zebulla’s mouth curled slightly. “How did you do that?” He had seen no sign of it during the fight, nor did he think that he had given her any openings. More importantly, Apogee of Destruction was not a technique to be avoided with some ad hoc defense.
“I imagined my Odh as a thin film covering the inside of my body. Obviously I didn’t just make one—I layered them over and over. Having to keep it up through the whole fight was pretty exhausting. I figured that seeing as you were attacking with Odh, I could cancel it out with Odh. Though it wasn’t actually as straightforward as it sounds.”
“By building up numerous layers of Odic defense, you were eventually able to neutralize the effect...” Zebulla couldn’t help but be astonished—not only by her manipulation of her Odh, which defied all conjecture, but by the sheer volume of Odh required to make such an absurdity possible. He could now understand why Krishna had called her a monster. Of course, even if the realization had come earlier, it would have changed nothing.
“Um, I don’t really have time to chat, so if that’s all your questions, I’d like to wrap this up. That okay?”
Zebulla closed his eyes and said softly, “So it must be.”
Facing for the first time an opponent against which he could give his all, he had, unbelievably, found joy in their battle—so much, in fact, that he had forgotten his mission as an Asura. It was the most basic mistake there was, and the results had been disastrous. Yet strangely, he felt no regret.
“I seriously don’t get how you can make that face.” Just as he was about to cast off the last of his consciousness, he heard Olivia’s puzzled voice.
The look on Zebulla’s face as he lay dead in a pool of blood was one of absolute serenity. Without those involved having anything to say about it, the war between the Asura and the Deep Folk, which had raged in the shadows of history, approached its end. The moment the outcome of Olivia and Zebulla’s battle became clear, Nefer, who was bathed in the light of the moon, had used physical hyperactivation, moving behind Felix.
“You needn’t bother calling me a coward,” he said as his black claws rushed down like an evil omen. But they cut only empty air.
“I won’t,” Felix replied calmly. “Not in this battle.” The voice came from above Nefer’s head, and was accompanied by a great surge of power that overwhelmed his hyperactivated form. Nefer smiled softly. What that final smile meant, no one would ever know.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login