Hello Scrolls and Nazarins, continuing another fighting chapter in my fanfic The One Who Came Back.
Evileye will have to learn new tricks and Gargaran is offended.
With you
The One Who Came Back
Chapter 84: Vampire vs. Time / Force vs. the Immovable
North Gate
"What happened?" thought Evileye.
The vampire couldn't understand the situation. One moment, the bard was speaking, and the next, there was a hole in her stomach.
"Did the boy throw something? No, there was no sound, not even of air moving. So, how did he do it?"
Evileye put her senses on alert. If something threatened her, she would notice. That's why she realized there was another person alive somewhere nearby.
A girl was trying to hide behind a pillar and was trembling as if she might faint. She didn't seem to be an attacker, despite wearing strange clothes indicating she was a foreigner, probably another Theocrat.
This thought took a fraction of a second, and her distraction came at a price. Evileye felt pain, and when she looked at her belly, she saw a perforation identical to Godia's. Not only that, her arms were also pierced at least a dozen times.
"AAAAARRRRHHH!" she screamed.
Such holes shouldn't be a problem; her vampiric regeneration had become very efficient since she started consuming human blood. But for some reason, the wounds weren't closing. In fact, they burned and smoked. And if that wasn't enough, some of her mana had disappeared.
'This can't be! He's using silver. This guy Turbulence's weapon is silver. H-how? Does he know about my nature? No! It's just a coincidence. If he knew, he would have pierced my heart. I have to figure out how he's doing this.' - "Crystal Spear! Crystal Barrier!"
Large crystal spears appeared around Evileye.
Her magic was mainly based on creating crystals for attack and defense. It was primarily crystal magic that she studied for a hundred years in the library of her palace. Her dedication made her the strongest mage that existed until she left the lost kingdom in search of a cure for her family and people.
Despite her strength, her magic, and her mana reserves, she had no experience, leading to her defeat against Rigrit, who forced her to join the Blue Roses, where she really learned what it was to fight.
The spears flew toward the swordsman while the barrier surrounded her in a dome, with only a small opening on the opposite side, a point where Evileye could protect herself and see the coming attack.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the spears hit where her target should have been, but he had vanished. At that moment, she felt the blows again. She was pierced in the legs, causing her to fall to her knees, and the barrier crumbled.
As she struck the air, she realized that Turbulence wasn't even close to her. He was walking casually around the bard, sword in hand, that thing with the spiral pattern.
'Wait, the spiral, it changed color. Part of it, before the pattern was almost all silver, only the tip of the spiral was blue. Now, it seems almost complete.' - "Crystal Arrow!"
A rain of arrows flew, so wide that there was no way to dodge, but they passed without hitting anything. And the boy was now sitting high on the wall, laughing, casually swinging his strange sword.
"That's it! The blue spiral has shrunk again. It's some kind of mana marking when he uses it. And his name, Temporal Turbulence, his power must have something to do with time. He stops time?! Apparently, it also consumes a lot of mana."
"AAARHH!" Evileye groaned as she was pierced another dozen times.
The boy, now sitting on a barrel at the foot of a ladder, had the biggest smile of his life, and his sadistic look seemed like that of someone gone mad.
"So that's where my mana is going!" thought the vampire as she saw the sword with the spiral fully blue again. "He's stealing it from me!"
Temporal Turbulence had never felt like this before. Using the sword's power was tempting, but it consumed a lot of mana.
The Time Needle was a voracious devourer. The longer he stayed in the Temporal Flow, the faster it consumed the stored mana. That's why he needed to make short jumps. This made the power last longer. But now, he had found a mana deposit. The sorceress had already recharged his sword three times. At some point, she would be exhausted, and then she would lose her usefulness and die.
The sadistic boy liked to make his victims suffer whenever possible, especially girls. He loved tormenting them, and the tall brunette had some power. He was almost out of power after killing a hundred soldiers. Draining almost everything from her gave at least one more short jump.
He wanted to kill the sorceress with a few blows, but when he pierced her, he felt the power flow into his weapon, fast, very fast, filling it completely. His astonishment turned into sick joy. Playing with the sorceress was an immense pleasure.
Now, he could stay in the Temporal Flow constantly, recharging himself with each attack. The feeling there was incredible and intoxicating, like a drug.
He just didn't stay there all the time for two reasons: his mana limitation and his breath.
There was no air in the Flow. Every time he tried to breathe, the spell would break. So, for now, two minutes holding his breath was the maximum time he had stayed in the spell, but not so many times in a row. With the stolen mana, he could experience this unique sensation.
Maybe he would make the sorceress his slave, keep her trapped, and indefinitely drain her power.
West Gate
The light bothered Gargaran. She was having such a good dream, but the pain in her body made it feel like a building had fallen on her. When she slowly opened her eyes, she realized that was pretty much what had happened: the debris was burying her.
With some effort, the warrior tried to free herself from the rubble, but it took more strength to gather the memories of the last few minutes.
"I remember being struck, URGH! No, that was the last thing... what did I do first?"
When the pair arrived at the gate minutes earlier, they found the wall guard fighting. Almost everyone ended up dead by a single man, big, strong, with a massive body. He looked like a gladiator and dressed like one, wielding something. On one arm, there was a heavy tower shield, and on the other, a short shield, fastened in a way that it could be used to punch.
"HEY!" shouted Gargaran. "What do you think you're doing?"
The man looked around, seeing his work, and shrugged.
"Chasing away the flies, there were too many of them," he replied.
"I see you don't mind talking," said Brutt.
"As long as you don't interfere," said the warrior with shields, staring at the pair who had just arrived.
"I am Brutt, and I protect this city. Who are you?" questioned the monk with metal gloves.
"I am Cedran, the 8th Accent of the Black Scripture. And if you're protecting this place, I must say you're not doing a good job."
The man taunted, since the job there had been easy so far, and he didn't need to worry about saying who he was. After all, everyone in the city would die.
Brutt didn't fall for the provocation, but-
"We stopped for a snack, you know, I don't like kicking ass on an empty stomach," mocked the warrior with the warhammer.
"And who are you?"
"Me? I'm offended. I thought I'd be recognized these days. I'm Gargaran, the Adorable Warrior Full of Mysteries of the Adamantite adventurers Blue Roses," she proclaimed with a smile.
"Ah! The man-woman, I've heard of you. I thought you were bigger!"
The warrior's face soured.
"I hate it when people say those things. A woman can't assert herself without being called a man."
"If you want, after I'm done here, you can pull down your panties and show me there's nothing there," the man seriously provoked.
"RAAAAAAAHHHH!" roared Gargaran, swinging her warhammer.
"WAIT! THAT'S WHAT HE WANTS!" shouted Brutt, but it was already too late.
The heavy warrior attacked Cedran directly. He remained in the same position he was in, bent his legs, and waited for the blow.
The heavy warrior attacked Cedran directly. He remained in the same position, flexed his legs, and waited for the blow.
Vile Iron struck directly at the heavy shield. The force would have been enough to break rocks, but instead, the entire blow seemed to rebound back into Gargaran's hands.
"A rebound! This shouldn't happen unless the shield is magical."
Again, she attacked, spinning her body to add more force, and again, the heavy shield was there to defend. But this time, an opening was left... and Cedran took advantage of it.
The Warrior of Countless Barriers struck with his other shield directly into Gargaran's ribs. The sound of something breaking was audible, and that punch sent her rolling toward Brutt, who seemed to be trying to study their opponent's fighting pattern.
"Are you done?" he said, extending a hand to the fallen warrior.
"I'm just warming up," she replied as she got to her feet. "He's fast, very fast for someone his size. But he seems to focus on defense and close combat. The two of us can... WOW!" she shouted.
Brutt had thrown himself on top of her, knocking her down. Above them, something very fast flew by and hit a nearby wall, creating a hole.
"What was that? Did he throw the shield?"
"No, he still has both of them."
"An attack spell?"
"Maybe, but there were no magic circles. I think... I think he struck the air. That was air pressure!"
"How strong is he to do something like that?" Gargaran frowned. "No, he can't be a Godkin. If he were, he wouldn't be just Adamantite. The shields, they're magical and must be enhancing him too."
Gargaran might not be the smartest person, but as an experienced warrior, she knew how to analyze her opponent.
"I believe that too," said Brutt. "Look at his legs, they're in an attack stance, one in front of the other. Before, they didn't move from the defensive position, parallel. I think that's a condition to use that power."
"Then let's break it," said the warrior.
Both moved at the same time, dodging those pressure strikes. Each reached opposite sides to divide Cedran's attention and attacked simultaneously.
Gargaran had several reinforcement and protection items. Brutt had also acquired some throughout his life and had gained better ones from his instructor CZ. But none of these items compared to what the Theocrat was using, the relics of the Six Gods, divine objects. Even a monkey would become unbeatable using them. And Cedran wasn't a monkey; he was a highly trained warrior.
As the two of them punched directly at the warrior, he maintained his defensive stance, rotating only his torso and arms to defend against multiple punches and hammer strikes. Sometimes, he delivered opportunistic blows with his shields to his opponents until he was jolted. His shield had gotten stuck on something. Looking down, he saw that Brutt was holding it with a smile, giving an opening for Gargaran to return the blow she had received.
But the Warrior of Countless Barriers skillfully rotated his legs to launch an attack. In a fraction of a second, with the smaller shield, he punched Brutt in the chest, sending him rolling on the ground.
Gargaran was about to hit Cedran with Vile Iron but was struck by the pressure blow from the heavy shield, which sent her flying away.
...
"Right, that's what happened," she said, emerging from the rubble as she finished recalling how she ended up there.
Gargaran was on the top floor of a building nearly fifty meters away. In front of the gate, she saw Brutt using a huge beam as a battering ram against Cedran.
"Okay, what do I do now?"
...
Author's Note
Evileye had the misfortune of finding a tailor-made opponent, right, having little information about Turbulência, I took the liberty of creating my own antagonist for the vampire, basically everything about him is non-cannon.
Regarding Cedran, he used verbal provocation because perhaps he didn't want to use magic to force his opponents into his range.
Brutt didn't fall for the taunt, Gargaran seems to have, but I think he has his own way of extracting information from his opponent, pretending to fall for the taunt and learning the style in practice is his way.