Chapter 206: Ill Fated (12)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 206: Ill Fated (12)
While Cloud and Shedia were each fighting their own battles, Neria was also in a fight of her own.
Whoosh!
Neria’s sword sliced through the air. Just as Gis grinned and lunged with his dagger, a white lion snapped its jaws, aiming for his neck.
“Tch.”
Gis clicked his tongue and backed away. He dodged the pursuing lion’s attack with nimble movements before plunging his dagger into its neck.
The white lion dissipated into particles, and Gis, hidden by the shimmering dust, threw two daggers.
Thwack! Thwack!
The daggers struck two other white lions squarely between the eyes.
The two lions collapsed, dissolving into particles just like the first.
Gis immediately drew new daggers, but by then, Neria had already summoned another white lion.
He clicked his tongue again at the sight of the lions baring their fangs menacingly.
“The Lion King’s Armor, was it? Damn, that thing’s annoying.”
Instead of responding to his complaint, Neria pulled out a mana potion and downed it. The white lions were useful in many ways, but they also consumed a great deal of mana.
It was a considerable burden for her, a mere knight who was neither a mage nor a magic swordsman.
Because of that, she’d had to bring a large supply of expensive mana potions.
It was a good thing Cloud had lent her the money. Otherwise, her mana would have run dry, and she would have been defeated by Gis long ago.
“By the way, as I recall, that armor is something that bastard Cloud squeezed out of Lorian. So why are you wearing it? You, who can’t even use it efficiently.”
Muttering to himself, Gis clapped his hands as if he’d realized something.
“Aha! So Cloud gave it to you, trying to protect his precious, weak little girlfriend!”
“...”
“Must be nice. Getting such a valuable gift from your beloved?”
“...Shut up!”
The Cloud of now wasn’t the real Cloud. The real Cloud was dead—because of none other than Gis and Neria herself. Of course, Gis couldn’t possibly know that, but the very fact that he was spouting such words made her blood boil.
Neria kicked off the ground and charged toward him.
Gis smirked.
‘Falling for such a cheap taunt. What a fucking idiot, same as always.’
There was no easier opponent than one who charged in headfirst.
Watching Neria rush forward with her shield raised, Gis licked his lips.
‘Now, how should I cook you up?’
First, he’d sever the tendons in her legs to take away her mobility. The bitch would panic and send her lions forward. The lions themselves weren’t that strong, so he could kill them in an instant and then take her potions.
After that, he could have some fun with her.
Just as Gis gripped his dagger in a reverse hold, ready to put his thoughts into action, Neria suddenly dug her feet into the ground, braking her charge.
Krrrrrunch—!
The stone-paved road scraped and shattered, sending fragments flying into the air. Neria swung her shield, batting them straight at Gis.
The flying stone chips obscured his vision.
“What the...”
Gis scowled, batting the debris away with his arm. The moment his vision cleared, he saw Neria’s sword swinging down at a diagonal.
“You think that pathetic trick will work?”
Neria’s blade met the flat of his dagger and was smoothly deflected. In the brief opening created, Gis spat out a poison needle he had hidden between his molars.
The poison coating the needle was extracted from the fangs of a Silver Viper.
It was a grade more potent than the Cockatrice poison he had used before.
Even someone as sturdy as Neria wouldn’t escape unscathed if poisoned, but...
“You dodged?”
Fortunately, she twisted her head and avoided the needle.
“Let’s see you dodge this next one.”
A smirk twisted Gis’s lips as he lowered his stance.
He stepped forward with his right foot, then used his back foot to pivot his body. A thrust empowered by rotation. Neria raised her shield to block, but the powerful impact sent her stumbling backward.
“Ugh...!”
Just blocking a single thrust with her shield made her arm throb.
As Cloud had said, the physical difference between Gis, a Hero, and Neria, an ordinary human, was extreme. In a straightforward fight, she could hold her ground, but she could never win.
However, Neria had a way to navigate this disadvantageous battle.
—If you move after you see it, you’ll be too late. Read his movements.
It was something Cloud had always emphasized during their training.
Neria lowered her shield and looked forward. Gis’s right shoulder twitched.
—A thrust.
Neria immediately ducked. A dagger sliced through the space where her shoulder had just been.
As she ducked, her gaze naturally fell lower. Gis’s feet were planted, and she saw no sign of a dagger sweeping up from below.
—A downward dagger strike, or a knee kick.
To counter both possibilities, Neria threw herself to the side. Rolling on the ground, she pushed herself up and confirmed the attack Gis had made.
It was a downward strike with a reverse-gripped dagger.
“...Looks like you haven’t been just fooling around, have you?”
Gis looked slightly surprised.
To see that expression after she’d only dodged a few attacks... just how much had he looked down on her?
But Neria decided not to let it bother her.
What mattered was the result.
“Well, you have no talent, so you have to work hard. Right?”
She wouldn’t let his taunts get to her.
“Ah, but there was one thing you were good at, wasn’t there?”
Not that one, either.
“Sucking dick. You’re fucking amazing at that, aren’t you?”
Or that one.
“That bastard Cloud must have had a taste by now, right? So, what did he say?”
That one, too...
“I’m asking you. How did Cloud like that blowjob you practiced on my cock? What did he have to say about it?”
...I have to ignore it.
I have to ignore it and focus on the fight...
But she couldn’t.
Every time Gis said Cloud’s name, every time he paired it with some vulgar remark, heat flared through her body and her chest twisted into a knot.
She wanted to rip that mouth of his into eight pieces and sear it with fire.
But she didn’t have the power, so she endured.
However, she couldn’t completely control her surging emotions. Seeing her hand tighten on her sword hilt and her eyes become bloodshot, Gis let out a small laugh.
“Don’t tell me you two still haven’t done it? Seriously, that bastard Cloud... acting like a fucking eunuch.”
“Shut up! If you say one more word about Cloud—”
The moment Neria, unable to hold back any longer, opened her mouth, Gis shot forward as if he’d been waiting for that exact instant.
“Hah?!”
She hadn’t been completely unprepared for a surprise attack, so she wasn’t overly flustered. But it was also true that her reaction was a little slow.
Whoosh!
Gis’s kick sliced through the air toward her.
‘Too late to dodge.’
No choice.
I have to block it.
Neria moved her shield into the path of the kick.
Thud!
A dull thud echoed from the shield as Neria lost her balance. She was the same Neria who had been pushed back by a simple thrust from Gis. The fact that she only stumbled for a moment instead of being knocked over by a kick loaded with power could be considered a decent defense.
The problem was that no one was around to acknowledge her effort.
Regaining her balance, she quickly looked for Gis.
—A spinning roundhouse kick.
Immediately after the first kick, Gis was rotating his body to launch another. Neria hastily moved to the side.
Whoosh.
The top of Gis’s foot grazed the mane of Neria’s helmet.
—A back kick.
As soon as his foot touched the ground, he spun and launched a back kick. She dodged it by leaning her upper body back. His heel grazed the bridge of her nose.
Her nasal bone rattled, and blood trickled from one nostril.
That was just from a graze. It was clear she couldn’t afford to take a direct hit.
The alarm bells ringing in her instincts snapped Neria back to her senses, and she began to read Gis’s attacks.
It might have been difficult against anyone else, but reading Gis’s attacks wasn’t so hard.
It was thanks to Cloud, who had trained her by perfectly mimicking Gis’s fighting style.
After fighting hundreds, thousands of times, even she was bound to learn.
—A downward headbutt. Settle his stance, then a dagger attack. Upper-left slash. Thrust to the center of the chest. A spinning diagonal slash.
Gis’s movements were perfectly clear in Neria’s eyes.
The problem was that while she could read his movements, her body was too slow.
Right now, she was too busy just dodging his attacks to even think about counterattacking. A single mistake had put her in a precarious, dangerous state where every blow was a hair's breadth away from landing.
She tried to find a way out, but Gis’s assault showed no signs of letting up.
She tried to use the white lions to create an opening, but his fluid combos targeted both her and the lions simultaneously.
Neria could dodge, but the lions could not.
The lions died one after another, and in the process of their death and rebirth, Neria exhausted all her mana. She didn't even have a moment to drink a mana potion, so they were as good as gone.
This was dangerous.
If this continued, the moment she made even one more mistake...
‘It’s over.’
Once injured, she would be toyed with, humiliated, and then killed.
The thought made Neria grind her teeth.
‘...I will never let that happen.’
With what resolve had she trained all this time?
For what reason had she sharpened her will when it was about to break?
‘I’ll take at least one of his eyes.’
If things went well, an arm, too.
She would cripple him, make him live the rest of his life in frustration and agony.
That was what she had trained for, what this equipment was for, and why she had clung to life.
Just as she steeled her resolve, ready to use her ‘trump card’...
Fwaaaash—!
A brilliant light erupted from the city center, instantly spreading outward to engulf Gis and Neria, and then the entire city.
Their vision was bleached white by the blinding radiance.
“What the?!”
Gis’s confused voice cut through the light.
Naturally, his assault stopped.
This was her chance.
Neria unleashed the power contained within her armor.
Clank. Clank.
The armor began to emit a white mana, changing its form.
The helmet’s visor lowered, and a sharp, angular metal plate shaped like a lion’s face covered her own. The white mane billowed with condensed mana, claws capable of tearing through anything sprouted from the gauntlets, and the joints of the armor—once a weakness—were now covered in condensed mana, no longer vulnerable.
The Lion King’s Armor was unleashing its true power.
Neria trembled at the immense strength flowing through her body.
With this, I can reach him.
She could overcome the wall that had seemed utterly insurmountable.
Fwaaaash—!
The light that had swallowed the city faded, and their vision returned.
Gis, rubbing his eyes, looked at Neria and frowned as if he were seeing something grotesque.
“What the fuck? That armor can transform, too—”
The moment Neria saw Gis, she leaped. She shot past him at a speed incomparable to before.
Drip. Drip.
Drops of blood fell from her gauntlet. Neria turned her head. She could see blood flowing from a cut on Gis’s cheek, just below his eye.
“I was trying to gouge your eye out.”
She clicked her tongue as if in disappointment.