Chapter 285 Independence -14
Chapter 285 Independence -14
Chaang!
Jiha and Lowchen's swords clashed, watched by hundreds of high-society elites.
Having crossed blades before, each knew the other's strength.
Brute force was equal. The power behind their swords matched.
But Mana? That was a different question.
When Jiha flooded his blade with Mana, Lowchen scowled and answered in kind, summoning his own.
As the monstrous torrents of power collided, the swords vibrated against each other and gave off an eerie hum.
Bwooong!!
High-density Mana crashed at a single point, sending out formless ripples.
The invisible vibration shook the party hall itself, blowing the onlookers' hair back.
A shockwave born from pure Mana against Mana. That was a rare event in Warsland.
To produce a phenomenon of that scale, the Mana involved had to be at the Unique level, and the fighters had to lock weapons in close quarters.
High-grade battles were typically decided by Special Abilities.
But Jiha had started with bare hands and climbed the ranks step by step. Close combat was his forte.
And Lowchen, it turned out, was no different.
A clash of Mana fueled by mutual pride and a lifetime of combat experience. It began evenly but was decided in moments.
"Nngh..."
The one who fell back with a groan was Lowchen.
Seizing the opening, Jiha slammed a kick into his knee without hesitation.
Lowchen quickly summoned a Shade to block Jiha while he recovered his stance.
Jiha tore the Shade apart with a single sword stroke, then lowered his blade instead of pressing the attack.
"..."
The distant celebrities watched the fight between Jiha and Lowchen, some with cold sweat beading on their skin, others utterly fascinated.
Not running?
Jiha looked at him, incredulous, and Lowchen answered.
"You seem to think you'll win. That doesn't guarantee you'll walk away unscathed."
"I'm not a killer like you. I kill because I need to."
"Same goes for me."
"No, there's a difference..."
Jiha shook his head.
Both had led lives that didn't flinch at the sight of blood, but a decisive gap separated them.
"I spill blood to rule. You try to rule by spilling blood. That is the difference between you and me."
Jiha was a conqueror who used battle to harden his world. He meant to rule with war in one hand and politics in the other.
Lowchen was simpler. His mindset was that killing everyone with a sword solved everything.
"So what?"
Lowchen brushed it aside, unfazed.
"You die here today regardless. That's it."
"And then you'll raise a Shade from my corpse?"
"I'll get something better than anything I've raised so far. Might even summon the Night King's avatar."
One of Lowchen's reasons for wanting Jiha dead was that stronger corpses produced better Shades.
Though there was also a premonition that Jiha would obstruct his path.
"You're too small a vessel to hold me."
Jiha shot back and raised his sword.
He had the edge in Mana reserves.
After accumulating Mana bit by bit from draining Uniques, Jiha could now use Wind Blade six times in a row and still have enough left for body enhancement.
He had grown immensely stronger compared to the days when one Wind Blade emptied his reserves.
But did raw Mana decide a fight? If it did, Jiha never would have overcome the Uniques in the first place.
The problem is the Gravity Field...
If Lowchen's Gravity Field caught him, it was dangerous.
Lowchen was moving cautiously too, remembering the time Blink had countered him, but...
Ultimately, the duel between the two men hinged on when Lowchen laid down his Gravity Field and how Jiha would dismantle it.
Lowchen could maintain one Gravity Field. He didn't activate it right away; he watched Jiha's movements.
Fine, then...
Jiha approached calmly, deliberately at a moderate pace, and swung his sword at Lowchen.
Lowchen gave ground to evade, trying to read Jiha's intent from his expression.
Overwhelm with Mana quantity.
That earlier exchange had already proven that Jiha held the advantage in a head-on Mana slugfest. Lowchen would want to avoid direct blade contact.
Reading that thought, Jiha pressed him with something close to recklessness.
"Hm..."
Lowchen sighed in frustration and kicked a chair from a nearby table at him.
The chair slid toward Jiha's lower body, but Jiha never broke his offensive momentum and simply kicked the chair leg aside.
He struck with an upward flick of the foot, and the oncoming chair was knocked into the air, spinning toward Lowchen's head.
"Nothing wrong with using the furniture."
Lowchen swept his arm and caught the flying chair with an exquisite hook. Then he thrust the chair forward to meet Jiha's downward-swinging gladius.
Crrrrack!
A somewhat absurd defense. Jiha's sword split the chair in two.
Lowchen threw the two halves at Jiha with a split-second delay between them.
Crunch! Crrk!
Jiha shattered the first chair piece in midair with a Mana-charged fist.
But at the instant he broke the second piece, Lowchen came gliding in like a shadow and stabbed at Jiha's ribs.
Object-based attacks like this threw an opponent off guard the first time. If the same pattern repeated, they would reflexively repeat the same counter.
Lowchen had aimed for that: two consecutive attacks on purpose, then a variation.
This bastard...
Seasoned, Jiha had to give him that. Even as he acknowledged it, he brought his hand down in a knife-hand strike against Lowchen's arm.
It looked simple, but it was so packed with Mana that Lowchen's wrist would snap even if he blocked.
Bwooong.
But in that moment, a Shade wrapped itself around Lowchen's arm. Seeing it, Jiha twisted his body sharply aside and evaded the thrust.
But Lowchen grabbed Jiha's clothes with his bare hand and aimed another stab at his flank.
Wham!
When Lowchen got greedy for a combo, Jiha drove a short strike into his solar plexus and forced him back. Lowchen retreated with a frown, but he hadn't dropped his sword.
An ordinary human would have had a hole punched through his chest. Even a Rare Grade fighter using Mana defense would have suffered internal damage.
But apart from a slight stagger, Lowchen was unharmed.
"You had a trick like that?"
"..."
Lowchen didn't just use Shades as shields or stall tactics. He could layer them over his own body.
The Shade that had protected the solar plexus Jiha struck dissolved into dark-blue particles and vanished.
"A literal meat shield—no, a shadow shield?"
"I don't use this much, but it seems necessary."
Lowchen's voice was dead calm. He was acknowledging that Jiha was genuinely dangerous.
Even so, he refused to back down, already thinking about how powerful a Shade raised from Jiha's corpse would be.
The night is still young...
If it were only about killing Lowchen, Jiha could go all out without a second thought.
But once this fight ended, Alex would make his move. Pour too much into Lowchen and the fisherman would reap the reward.
Jiha glanced around the party hall again.
The celebrities were watching the duel like a novelty show. The number of guards had been reinforced here and there around the room.
Alex's thinking is...
As Jiha tried to read the situation, Lowchen made a point of summoning a Shade over his own arm, reinforcing it, then letting it disappear.
Showing off that he had plenty of reserves in stock. Boasting he could chew up Jiha's Mana-quantity push and still launch a counter.
It's not entirely limitless. If it were, there'd be no need to show off. But...
Jiha made his decision and moved.
He approached with off-beat footwork that subtly shattered the rhythm, then swung his sword horizontally. Lowchen met it, wary but committed.
Jiha had already been shown a countermeasure, yet he was charging in again. So Lowchen responded by the book.
But Jiha didn't settle into a crossguard grind—the kind of fight that inevitably became a Mana war. He kept swinging his sword, kicking out, throwing elbows.
Lowchen, being pushed somewhat onto the back foot, went cold-eyed.
He had concluded that Jiha had read his earlier performance as empty bravado.
"Running wild, aren't you."
Lowchen spoke icily and activated his Gravity Field.
Unlike before, the field spread out centered on himself—the same method Pairan used.
Jiha had been about to swing again. The crushing force made his movements slow.
As for that Special Ability he had shown last time, Blink—with the Gravity Field now originating from Lowchen himself, it wouldn't be much use.
"My Gravity Field can also manifest centered on me. I'm the superior version of Pai."
Lowchen watched Jiha's arm make a sluggish rotation toward his flank and adjusted his grip on his sword.
No matter how strong his willpower, it meant nothing against the physical reality of gravity.
Lowchen was about to swing his blade and take Jiha's head...
"Superior version? I'm your hard counter."
Jiha grinned.
A reflexive alarm went off in Lowchen's mind that something was wrong... and in that instant, Jiha's arm flickered like lightning.
The Gravity Field was suddenly ignored. Full power restored in a single motion.
"What..."
Lowchen hurled his body backward on reflex, but blood still sprayed.
Shlllaaack!
A huge gash opened in Lowchen's flank as he retreated, hand clamped to the wound.
A long laceration running across his abdomen. His suit soaked red, blood dripping steadily.
"Meant to cut you in half. You lived."
It wasn't just a shallow cut. Jiha had felt the blade bite through muscle and fat beneath the skin. Lowchen was pressing his side with both hands, unable to move.
One rough motion and his guts might spill out. A serious injury.
If he kept fighting without healing magic, his life wasn't guaranteed.
"I don't take surrenders."
"...What was that?"
"I don't do explanations either."
Jiha had countered Lowchen by activating the Special Ability he'd gained from biting Pairan: the Reverse Gravity Field.
Pairan's Gravity Field had overwritten Lowchen's.
Gravity Fields could counter each other, and a self-centered manifestation took priority.
The Gravity Field was a powerful ability, but it could be overwritten—meaning it could also be neutralized by a Reverse Gravity Field.
Though the self-centered manifestation was the problem...
Jiha's Reverse Gravity Field was also self-centered. If Lowchen had used a targeted-area Gravity Field, he might have only given away information.
So Jiha had acted as if he'd forgotten Lowchen's Gravity Field, as if he was charging in recklessly on the strength of his Mana reserves alone.
Lowchen had tried to counter with his Gravity Field... and Jiha, having read even that, countered with his Reverse Gravity Field.
A counter to the counter. Jiha's victory.
"...Hooooh."
Lowchen kept his grip on his sword, but his breath was growing ragged, his complexion worsening.
To continue battle beyond this point meant staking his life.
Jiha looked at Lowchen, frozen in place, and adjusted his sword.
"Well, then..."
About time he showed up, wasn't it?
Just as Jiha was taking in the situation, applause rang out from behind him.
"My, I had no idea a show like this would suddenly break out. Everyone, isn't it magnificent?"
A bright voice rousing the silent crowd. The boyish, clear tone seemed to lighten the very air.
"With Chairman Jiha here, I can rest easy. Truly."
"..."
Alex had appeared.
He'd probably been waiting nearby, expecting something like this to happen, and came running.
Seeking the fisherman's prize.
Jiha turned, and Alex smiled.
"The situation is over. We'll have to investigate what caused this chain of events and who stands behind that man, won't we, Chairman Jiha?"
Alex laid his scheme bare.
Just as Jiha had calculated.