***3rd pov***
"Tsk, don’t you know attacking someone who isn’t ready isn’t proper by anime standards?" I clicked my tongue.
"..."
"..."
That brief moment of distraction caused by his words, was all I needed to try to dismember the heretic, but all I managed was a long bleeding cut on the man’s arm that might as well be nothing to him.
"Stay one place and die, damn it." I gritted my teeth in frustration.
He took the proactive route this time, and appeared directly behind Rose, his dagger already swinging for the back of her head, but terrifyingly hot flames burst out of her back, managing to singe the heretic’s clothes together with his upper body before he managed to disappear.
I was already on him the moment he reappeared on a crumbling pillar, my blade slicing through his body, or at least where his body once stood, the bastard had managed to teleport away in the last moment.
He reappeared a distance away, his singed skin already scabbing and falling off, I wanted to rush at him again, but my mind said otherwise, and I was glad it did, because the next moment, flames flooded the area in spiral droves, immolating anything they touched.
The heretic appeared mid air this time, I coiled the muscles in my legs, and sent a large volume of aether into them in one quick burst, granting me explosive jumping power.
It was as if the distance between me and him disappeared as I arrived before him almost instantly. I swung my sword straight at his head, but he shifted his body to the left at the last moment. All I managed to get was an arm, a pity.
"Krrrkh!"
He reappeared a distance away holding the stub around his bicep with his other arm. I could see the blood already clotting, and the wound starting to squirm. But that wasn’t the only thing I saw, I also managed to figure out a flaw in his ability.
He couldn’t string a combo of teleportations. There was a lag between each of his teleportations, around 0.2 seconds, it wasn’t very noticeable, but it was there.
"Rose." I called out. "What?" she turned to me.
"Your flames are too slow, with his regeneration, they’ll never deal substantial damage to him."
"So?" she asked with an irritating glare.
I sighed. "He’ll heal that arm in less than a minute if we don’t act fast. What I want you to do is tuck your flames away, and continuously use every long range attack in your arsenal."
She threw me a weird look.
"That’s stupid." she said after a moment.
I raised an eyebrow.
"How so?"
"Long ranged attacks would never reach him, he’ll always see them coming." She stated matter of factly.
But I grinned.
"Not if there are hundreds of them, with each targeting different places all at once." We were going to go ballistic.
Rose frowned.
"Are you crazy? That’ll destroy the surroundings."
I looked around us, and the golden flames raging and eating at everything, then looked back to Rose.
"Really?" I tilted my head.
I could have sworn I saw her mouth twitched.
Most of the destruction and chaos since the heretics tried to assassinate us was Rose’s doing. Especially that huge pillar of flame I saw from the distance, and also the attack she made out of anger when the heretic said she called ’big brother’s for help.
I looked at the heretic, his forearm had already regenerated, all that remained was the wrist down.
Even though, the only way he was going to survive our next attacks, was if he decided to flee.
"Alright dear sister, let’s see how long he’ll be able to last." I said as our swords began glowing crimson, and a visual representation of a sun appeared behind us.
"Second art: Summer blaze!"
"Second art: Summer blaze!"
Rose’s and my exclamation echoed simultaneously.
Brilliant crimson arcs flew from our swords in successive waves, one after the other. Rose aimed at where the heretic stood recovering, while I aimed at another direction where I predicted he would appear.
He disappeared from our vision, just before Rose’s attack reached him, but didn’t appear where I predicted.
But we didn’t stop there, we kept sending one after the other, in unpredictable directions. Some high, some low, and most deliberately off target.
Boom! Boom!
Our attacks that met the ground carved hissing sword marks on the grounds, and those that met the stone buildings in the area shattered the stone bricks.
The bastard slowly grew more sloppier, and more frantic. Each blink now required second guessing, so as not to run headfirst into a decapitating attack.
And he did just that, he teleported right before one of the arcs, and ended up getting his other arm chopped off before he could blink away.
Then an arc struck the ground next to him the moment he reappeared, sending him stumbling to the ground.
Before he could regain his bearings or even try to teleport away, Rose was already there, her blade falling on him.
A soft mutter escaped her lips.
"Third art: Fall."
Bruuut!
A jet of blood burst out as her sword split the heretic diagonally, from the head to the shoulder.
Not wanting to take any chances, I reached there before the body would fall, and cleaved the rest of the head off the body, before finally cracking into motes of light.
-------------
A few minutes back with the main casts, Fabian and I dealt with the remaining three heretics, and moved on to help Delilah.
When we got there, about seven heretics were on the ground lifeless, some with a wooden arrow still stuck in their skulls, and some with only visible.
Delilah was currently going hand and bow with a few heretics on the roof from which she had been shooting at them. Five, to be exact.
Fabian jumped at the rooftop, and since they were focused on Delilah, the heretics didn’t see him coming. His hand firmly clasped the neck of one of the heretics, the moment he landed.
The heretics instantly turned towards Fabian, but turning your back against an archer, wasn’t the most ideal move to make.
Two wooden arrows pierced the skulls of two heretics, before the rest got to their senses. But I also got to the roof at that time, a blooming spring cut off the head of one, while my sword went through the heart of the second. They were dead before they knew what hit them.
The heretic whose neck Fabian had clasped meanwhile, gradually grew emaciated, until only bones remained, before they also turned to dust. It started from the neck, and then rapidly spread to the entire body.
It might have seemed long, but all it took was three seconds. Terrifying power if you ask me.
I looked around me, even to the area where Rose and my reflection were still fighting. We had caused quite the distraction. It kind of left a bad taste in my mouth, it left me feeling bitter.
But as fate would have it, what was happening in the perspective of my reflection cheered me up.
"Oh would you look at that." I smiled.
Unknown to both Fabian and Delilah, my figure changed subtly, I went from sweaty and beaten, to being relatively fresh.
My reflection replaced me, and I found myself watching Alistair leaving Jayden in the woods. I waited around half a minute, before deciding to reveal myself.
"Ah, there you are!"
I said coming out of the nearby bushes. The turquoise haired girl stiffened, and turned towards me with a sharp look.
"What do you want?" She asked guarded. "In case you haven’t heard, your ringleader has decided to let me go."
"Hmph." I snorted, almost laughing. "Whose my ringleader? Alistair?" I asked amused.
"Well it doesn’t matter." I said when I saw her struggling to answer. "Here’s one thing that matters though." I continued. "Alistair spared you, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to do so."
She paled. She was out of aether, and she knew that I knew that. There was no way a confrontation would be coming out in her favour. But still, she summoned a dagger from a spatial storage.
"You hate Alistair do you not?" I asked even while knowing it was a lie she kept telling herself.
"What does that have to do with you?" she glared.
I smiled.
"Oh but it does have something to do with me. You see, I too don’t exactly like Alistair, in fact you could say I despise him."
"And what is that supposed to make us, birds of the same feather?" she rolled her eyes.
"You’re not entirely wrong, but you’re not quite right either." I replied.
"What I need from you is to be my spy in the dark cult, and in return I’ll help you kill Alistair."
"No!" she replied without hesitation.
I raised a brow.
"Surely you don’t think you can defeat him yourself do you?"
"That’s none of your business, and I’m not being your spy!" she spat.
"Oh well, I tried." I shrugged. "Bubbles, your turn." I said as the winged cat appeared mid air.
"And here I thought your charm would cut it." Bubbles chuckled in a I told you so manner.
"Tch, it’s only because she’s all about Alistair." I scoffed.
"W.....what are you doing?" The turquoise haired girl stammered as bubbles moved closer to her.
"Relax, when I’m done it’ll be like we were never here."
She swung her dagger at bubbles, but I firmly grasped her hand before she could even make it halfway. Then took her other arm and twisted it behind her back while pushing her to the ground.
It took herculean effort since she was two minor realms above me, and was resisting. I had to pump aether into my limbs to make it possible.
"Bubbles make it fast, I don’t know how much longer I can hold on."
"On it." he bobbed.
He placed his paws on her head, then her frantic resistance slowly grew dull, until her eyes grew hazy, and she stopped moving entirely.
After about a minute, "It worked." Bubbles took his paws off her head, and then shot into my body.
I was about to heave a sigh of relief, but just as Bubbles disappeared,
Shiiiiing!
The sound of something cutting the air sounded from my behind.
I wrenched the dagger free from Jayden’s hand, and turned to intercept whatever it was.
But before I could even see what it was, a longsword stopped an inch from my throat.
’Shit, of course it’s her.’ I inwardly cursed, glaring at the redhead. It was none other than Anastasia. What did this bitch want now?
"What the hell is this supposed to mean?" I growled.
She let out a soft chuckle, something I didn’t know she could do.
"My my, you’ve forgotten about this big sister, haven’t you little brother?"
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