Chapter 367
Chapter 367
The shadow dagger in Dinah’s hands mysteriously doubled. She took one in each hand and made a swift, sudden attack, her eyes cold as ice.
{Are they fake? No, both of them are real!} – Kyon concluded. The very name of the dagger suggested that it could create its shadow copies. As expected, a gift from the goddess was a real treasure.
Dinah blocked Kyon’s attack with one dagger, sending him 8 meters away. She threw the other dagger at his neck, infusing it with the wind element for speed and the dark element for devastating effect.
{Has she acquired the fourth energy?} – Kyon remarked sadly and bowed his head to take the dagger with his tough forehead. The blade cut his skin and got stuck in the skull. After that, it magically dispelled, turning into a curling black fog that the voracious key of darkness soon absorbed without leaving a trace.
Lovr couldn’t be happier with himself for finding this treasure in the tomb. He would have died three times without it: at Yegorka’s hand at the qualifying test, at Timothy’s hand at the families tournament, and now that this wretched energy was aiming at his brain to destroy it.
Dinah watched the cut on Kyon’s instantly heal and snorted thoughtfully: «My great master has warned me about your tough head and your immunity to the darkness. You should thank heaven that I hadn’t mastered the piercing shadow technique yet, or your brain would have turned into purulent drainage.»
«You can’t screw my brain out in any sense of the term.»
«There’s nothing to screw out! The miserable remnants of it don’t work properly, anyway!» – Dinah spread her arms, casting a fine black string strewn with shadow daggers like a garland. It hung in the air in the most mysterious way.
Kyon could feel his hair move… with static electricity. That’s how Dinah must have been controlling the line and the daggers. It didn’t look good. He had barely coped with two blades, and there were hundreds of them!
«They say that the head works better if there’s enough iron in the blood. I will take care of it!» – With a venomous smile, Dinah started performing an elegant shadow dance. The string vibrated and twisted… Three daggers separated from it in Kyon’s direction at high speed. They weren’t too powerful but strong enough to pierce his hard skin.
~bam~ ~bam~ ~bam~
Kyon fended off the daggers without turning his head: «Strip off if you want to take care of me. Fully dressed dancers have never turned me up, you know. You used to do it better, but I see you’ve been slacking off recently…» – Kyon shook his head, admiring the enchanting performance of the shadow dance.
Dinah’s beautiful face flushed with embarrassment. The ugly fat freak’s stare was disgusting, as if a nasty slug was crawling all over her body. She remembered that stupid thing she did a little less than a year ago… How could she give this dirty bastard a lap dance just like that! When her master warned her about his abilities, Dinah realized that he had simulated his passion, making her strip dance for him even with his hands tied! She was so ashamed that it hurt. Dinah would never wash off this humiliation, even with his blood.
«You will choke on your words, asshole!» – Her dance became more aggressive. The string whirled, sending the daggers flying at an impressive speed one after another by dozens and by hundreds per second. All of them were aimed at Kyon.
Kyon’s eyes sparkled excitedly. He held the Scourge tight, spinning like a top and fending off all the daggers flying at him, except for those that aimed at his head. At this speed, he was nothing but a motion blur. Anyone within a two-meter distance would be instantly chopped into tiny pieces.
Lovr had created three most effective ways of using his ultra-heavy sword:
Falling Scourge, a pointed crushing attack, had a single requirement – the opponent should stand still. Kyon had destroyed Prince Charles’s stone dragon this way.
Scourge fracture, a thrusting, shocking attack, much faster and more powerful than any other but requiring a lot of strength and immobility. Kyon had killed Prince Charles this way.
Scourge storm, a spinning attack, covering the entire attacker’s field of vision in all directions. Being a massive attack, its radius was limited to the length of the sword if no liquid light / darkness was used. It was a bit more powerful than a usual attack but required a lot of strength, making it impossible to move quickly while it was activated. Kyon was using it at the moment to protect himself from the daggers, reaching him from all sides.
~bam~ ~bam~ ~bam~ … ~bam~ ~bam~ ~bam~
When Dinah was out of daggers, her face distorted in surprise that quickly changed to anger: the fat freak hadn’t got a scratch! He had fended every single blade! The dance of thousand shadows that she was so proud of turned out to be useless against him.
~bam~
At the last moment, Dinah noticed the sword flying in her back and managed to infuse the place where it would hit with pure energy. The sword knocked her to the ground, but she rolled away just in time, or she would have been trapped under its frightening weight. Before she knew it, Kyon had attacked her again…
~woosh~
Kyon swung the sword that had just appeared in his hand, but Dinah had disappeared in the black fog. However, hitting her wouldn’t have changed anything.
Dinah took ten steps back, infusing the future bruise with pure energy, and shouted furiously: «How did you do it, jerk? I had been watching you!»
Lovr shrugged and said with sarcasm: «I don’t know what you’re talking about, dearie.» – In truth, he was mentally screaming with disappointment: it almost worked! If the sword had crushed her under its weight, he would have won! Anyway, throwing the sword wasn’t as effective as Kyon had imagined it to be. The Scourge slowed down according to the mass it regained as soon as its weight returned.
Dinah clenched her teeth. She could clearly see that Kyon was holding the sword in his hands again… Did he have two of them?
{Wait… Shouldn’t his sword be scarlet? What?} – Dinah gasped when she realized what was going on. The goddess had warned her not to underestimate the enemy, but it took her a while to discover how insidious he was:
First, Kyon took advantage of her position close to the border of the arena: he approached the opposite edge and threw his sword at her while he was in her blind zone. As the arena was actually a closed loop, the sword flew in from the reverse side, covering only a few meters of the way.
Second, Kyon had gradually and secretly changed the color of the Scourge with the earth element so that it looked exactly like the late prince’s sword. Dinah would have noticed at once if he had created a fake sword. Instead, he instantly took the prince’s sword from the ring, misleading her.
{He is more dangerous than he seems… I must be alert.} – Dinah pressed another attack. This time she was going to use the shadow style to the full.
{I see you! The same trick again!} – Kyon saw through Dinah’s attempt to turn into a shadow and quickly changed the direction of his attack, but her silhouette was a false one. – {From behind!}
~bam~
The dagger smoothly entered Kyon’s back, sending him a dozen meters flying. and melted heavy on Earth. He fell flat on his face with a dangerously torn lung. Kyon’s eyes welled up with tears in unbearable pain. He had to raise his pain threshold. The bitch must have wanted to take her revenge for the bruise, or she would have pierced his heart, infusing it with darkness or ether. Anyway, Dinah’s tactics weren’t much of a surprise for him.
The technique she had learned from the goddess was too good. Kyon’s spiritual scanning, echolocation, hearing, vision of various spectra, and even smell… It all did not work. She could disappear and reappear wherever she wanted.
«Any regrets you want to share with me before you die?» – Dinah whispered with hatred, fiddling with the dagger in her hand. – «If you beg me to forgive you for the nightmare I had to go through because of you, I might take a pity on the wretched bastard and give you a quick and painless death…»
Kyon grinned glumly: «I’ve already told you this, so I will repeat: I don’t regret anything. Even if I could go back in time to change things, I would leave everything as it was because I love you!»
Dinah stood rooted to the spot. She had this nasty feeling that she experienced the day she gave the wretched bastard a free lap dance. A repulsive, hateful feeling: «You never learn, do you? I guess I will have to pierce your dick next time!»
When Dinah once again turned into a shadow, Kyon used his trump card that he had been getting ready all this time. It was a matter of milliseconds. At first, he activated the Eyes of Truth to see energy in color.
{I CAN SEE YOU!} – As soon as he determined Dinah’s location, Lovr used the flash of light along with the flash of darkness to increase the effect. At the same time, an incomplete annihilation sphere appeared at the tip of the Scourge that aimed at her chest.
The closed area first filled with a dazzling white light brighter than ten suns. Then the light suddenly went out, and there was an eternal impenetrable darkness.
There was complete silence for a while.
Then a malicious smile lit up Dinah’s face: «What a fool… I am a master of shadow style. It was a mistake to use darkness against me… However, it was impressive, I’ll give you that. You had missed my two attacks to make me drop my guard. I have no idea how you could know that I would not kill you… As for the third attack, you put to work your shining eyes that can see my shadow maneuvers…»
Kyon closed his eyes, cursing to himself. He didn’t have any more cards to play. The flashes had recharge for an hour, the Eyes of Truth had been revealed, the trick focus throwing the sword across the edge of the arena wouldn’t work again. No elements would help him against the lord phaser. He would lose in the game on endurance, he was already running out of energy. His hand was throbbing with tension. Things were bad… very bad… There wasn’t a single ray of hope.
«Hmm… I like your gloomy face…» – Dinah whispered, biting her lip. – «However, it was better when it belonged to that handsome boy, not this ugly fat freak. By the way, why don’t you change back? I will take my words back and won’t stab you in the penis then.»
«You will have to defeat me first if you want to see the face you always have on your mind!»
Dinah flinched. For some reason, his words had hit home. Only, her thoughts about Kyon were full of hatred and the desire to take revenge, while he meant a totally different thing.
«If you haven’t learned how you should talk to the Great Goddess’s student, I will cut off your sprout and shove it down your throat as I’ve been meaning to do for so long!» – Bloodthirsty determination was written all across Dinah’s face. She pressed a furious attack, no longer holding back.
A fierce, deadly fight began.
Dinah was extremely concentrated. She carefully used the shadow style, taking into account that her opponent could see her every movement. She doubled the dagger for distant and close attacks, using the strong string to confuse the enemy…
Kyon activated the ether and magnetism barrier to free himself from the omnipresent loops of string that encircled around his neck and limbs. The Eyes of the Truth showed him every direction Dinah’s shadow moved so she couldn’t take him by surprise. If not for them, he would be lying dead in one of his own traps.
Lovr was doing his best to come up with a successful action plan, all to no avail. He had been standing against the incessant disasters that kept going his way, but it couldn’t last forever. The permanent change of the Scourge’s mass and sticking to the floor required a lot of energy, and each fended blow took the precious energy from his right hand.
Five minutes later, Lovr was soaked in sweat. His lungs were burning with the lack of oxygen, his right hand was numb after losing a third of the energy. Soon, he wouldn’t be able to withstand Dinah’s blow, and it would be the end of him. Anyway, the Scourge would break even sooner. Before that, he would run out of energy. It remained only 10%. He didn’t want to die. Was there a chance that the goddess was trying to make him stronger, using Dinah to motivate him? It would be nice, but the chance was slim.
The fat freak’s bone-tired face told Dinah that she was nearly there. She couldn’t get to him, but she didn’t have to. Dinah still had half of her energy, so it would be only reasonable to take advantage of his exhaustion.
{I can’t wait to see the despair on your face!} – Dinah thought in a flutter of anticipation.