Land of the Elves
Land of the Elves
Fay ran.
She felt the warm wind curl around her, felt it gradually pour new strength into her limbs, and kicked off the ground.
A system window invisible to her eyes. She did not know it existed, but with every gesture Aslan made, the girl grew faster.
As divinity seeped into her body, her form slipped incrementally beyond the bounds of reason.
One step, and the ground flew beneath her.
Two steps, and she hung in the air for more than two seconds.
Three steps, and her speed climbed until light and landscape warped into a long tunnel stretching forward.
And the fourth step. Fay aimed her body like a projectile at the scene unfolding in the distance.
Her sharpened senses carried the distant events straight into her mind.
Tiyamal and Fay both possessed a Luck stat of five.
Their base perception was comparable, but they specialized in different directions.
Tiyamal's Luck excelled through tactile sensation across his skin and the intuition it produced, while Fay excelled in every other sense and a profound sixth sense.
So Fay, sprinting while wreathed in divinity, perceived the situation with a sensitivity Tiyamal would not have matched.
Aslan was fighting a priest. Things had deteriorated in an instant, and the other companions were in no position to assist immediately.
That meant it was Fay's turn. Wrapped in divinity, she grew faster with each footfall.
Each burst of speed fed into greater acceleration, and each increase in acceleration lengthened the time she spent airborne.
Her air time grew so long that after ten paces her feet barely touched the ground.
She hurtled forward as if flying.
Already a speed no human could perceive.
Within the distorting scenery, Fay made her final micro-adjustments toward the distant body of the Chimera using only sight and her sixth sense.
Just as Tiyamal aimed and loosed his bow through the full-body awareness of his scales.
Fay fired herself like an arrow, all senses engaged.
Shiiiiiiiiiiiek!
Acceleration. The speed of a loosed bolt itself. Relentless pressure hammered her body, and the bone and sinew fortified to Health 5 endured it.
At last she reached subsonic speed.
Distance seemed to collapse, and her body closed to point-blank range before the Chimera.
Then came a slashing attack.
A strike launched without killing her momentum. Acceleration redirected. Speed reoriented by transcendent technique left even the sound of parting wind behind as her blade scraped across armor.
Karararak!
Two blood-red blades scattered through the air. Dozens of sword-traces etched themselves across the target. Before the Chimera could react, Fay pivoted and drove her leg into its exposed face.
Crunch. A thunderous impact.
The body flew. As the mass propelled by a kick bearing all her acceleration slammed into the ground, Fay landed lightly and smiled.
A surge of absolute power flooded through her.
Clang!
Two swords that spat sparks when they clashed. Twilight and Dawn.
Fay held both and watched the hairpin that had kept her braid in place snap, sending her hair flying loose.
Normally the loose strands would have been a hindrance. Right now, it didn't matter.
She simply faced the enemy, suffused with Aslan's presence at her back.
The Chimera rose with a scream.
While accelerating its thoughts to assess the situation in an impossibly brief span.
The Chimera, who had spent a very long time as a priest, was strong.
Strong enough that without a powerhouse like the Dragon-king in the way, it would have become a high priest long ago.
And that strength was backed by experience.
It had killed monsters carrying all manner of divinity. It had killed heroes.
It had swelled its body with the slain. So it understood, now.
The Elf before it was dangerous.
Every bit as dangerous as Aslan.
If it did not deal with her first, defeat was certain.
The Chimera vented plasma from its nozzles and accelerated. Fay bounced lightly on her heels and then threw herself forward.
"Fay—"
Before Aslan could finish calling her name, the two collided.
A ringing clang!
Red beams of light clashed against golden lightning. The first exchange was the Chimera's thrust.
Of its dozens of arms, it selected the fastest few for a plasma-javelin lunge.
Death closed in, sharply compressing space.
Fay's eyes flicked rapidly toward the incoming spear.
Her blue-violet gaze darted here and there, and then her body followed. The trajectory she drew was simple.
Thunk!
She drove her blade precisely into a joint, stopping it cold. In the brief instant the arm slowed, she tilted her head and evaded.
A plasma sweep. Before it could touch her, she battered the wrist with the flat of her sword and deflected it. The searing arc scorched a semicircle into the ground.
A hand reached in close to seize her wrist. Fay glanced at the grasping fingers and stomped on them. Before the other hand could snatch her ankle, she leaped and slammed her knee into the Chimera's head.
Crunch!
Metal fragments flew, and the Chimera reeled.
The speed was entirely beyond expectations.
Still, it was certain this was her maximum. Without a running start, without a full sprint, she could not accelerate any further than this.
Once it had assessed that, it simply altered its plan. The objective shifted to exploiting the gaps after her attacks, and the shape of its offense changed.
Where its assault had been a relentless, omnidirectional pressure meant to force openings, it now became a persistent barrage of low attacks.
As if compelling her to leap. As if it meant to burn her to death if she refused the invitation.
An inescapable gambit. If she dodged backward, javelins would chase her down. Confident of this, the Chimera swung its dozens of arms even faster.
"Aaaaaaah—!"
Its target was the airborne moment when her feet left the ground. The split-second opening in which it would impale and incinerate her. No matter how fast she was, she could not accelerate in midair.
Fay fell for the trap.
Thwoom!
She evaded the javelin trying to melt her ankle by stepping off the Chimera's body and springing upward.
As Fay's hair scattered in the air, the Chimera thrust its spear, and Aslan shouted and lunged forward.
"No!"
Aslan and the Chimera both misjudged, convinced Fay had been lured into a fatal mistake. Fay alone moved with serene composure.
Thwoom!
Agility 16.
Not supersonic, but reaching the sound barrier.
At subsonic speed, the empty air that should offer no foothold became a solid wall.
Acceleration that should not adhere while stationary was drawn out through rotational force and surplus momentum.
Already at peak velocity, Fay stepped on the void and leaped. She twisted her body in midair, changing direction to evade.
A resonant boom!
A javelin carved horizontally through empty space. An opening. Fay immediately wrenched her hips and planted a spinning kick into the face.
A thunderous crash!
The Chimera was hurled to the ground with the shriek of breaking machinery. As it staggered upright, Fay pressed the offensive.
"Aaaaaaah!"
Between the screams, only metallic sounds filled the air.
Fay stepped off a wrist and leaped, and her blade sliced open the armored plate that passed for a cheek.
The Chimera swung a javelin in response. Fay evaded by kicking off the empty air, then used the follow-through force of her sword swing to rotate.
Craack!
Another kick. The face crumpled under the impact. Fay channeled the force of her kick into her next sword swing.
Crunch!
It looked as if a crimson radiance was devouring the Chimera.
An impossible sight.
A combat method no ordinary human, not even one who had reached 16 Agility, could accomplish.
It was a fighting style only an Elf could execute: one who had reached the final level of 20 in both Combat Art and Swordsmanship, and whose Agility had passed the 15 threshold into the semi-divine realm.
A new combat method born solely from Fay's genius.
The Chimera and Aslan both felt it and saw it and understood.
In this situation, the Chimera had no way to turn the tables.
That left few options.
The moment Aslan seized the Beast at his back and lunged, the Chimera vented plasma from beneath its nozzles.
A burning roar!
If it could not win on the ground, it would take the fight to the air. It would incinerate them with the same wide-area plasma it had used before.
Aslan charged with the unfurled Beast in his left hand and Purity in his right. Fay spun in the air, preparing a slashing strike.
The Chimera moved to hurl javelins and hold them both off, but someone stepped in before either could act.
"Hup!"
A young man's kiai. An approach that slipped precisely through the gaps in awareness. A gap-closing technique achievable only through high-level martial arts.
The moment Richard closed in and seized the superheating nozzle, the Chimera finally registered his presence.
The attention it had lost while fighting Fay and tracking Aslan. A momentary lapse. Richard had slipped into that opening.
What he executed was a single, simple technique. A fundamental move of martial arts.
"Ha!"
A kiai burst from him. Richard gripped the nozzle and wrenched his body. Heaven and earth inverted as the Chimera's body flipped and was slammed into the ground by the full force of its own booster acceleration.
A devastating crash!
"Aah—"
Clang!
Before the Chimera could right itself, Richard kicked its head.
He punted the skull as if it were a football, and the Chimera's optical module shattered and scattered as its body went flying.
A brief blackout. Recovery wasn't difficult, but a gap of several seconds was inevitable. In that gap, the Masters closed in.
Thud, thud, crash!
Fay pursued the flying Chimera. She struck the ground, leaped, and delivered a dropkick.
The body halted under the speed-laden blow. Then the next fastest, Angie, closed the distance.
"Hyraaah!"
A greatsword. The beloved blade of the God of War and the God of Victory, the ultimate weapon for a powerhouse: Victory.
As Victory descended along the arc she drew, the Chimera's body collided with the greatsword and slammed into the ground.
Its left flank split away and fell. Amid the clattering scrap metal, the body bounced back upward.
A brief airborne moment. Aslan unfurled the Beast and swung, as if he had been waiting.
A ringing clang!
A horizontal slash. The body flew sideways. Exactly where he had aimed.
The Chimera thrashed its dozens of arms, trying to right itself. This time it was Ereta.
A searing hiss scraping across the ground.
Before the Chimera could register the sound, Ereta swung upward, and more than half the dozens of arms were severed.
Balance tipped accordingly. As the body toppled, an axe was driven downward.
With the axe buried in its abdomen, the Chimera desperately gathered energy.
It would take damage too, but it could endure that much. Escaping this predicament mattered more.
But before that resistance could bear fruit, Rumel intervened.
"Haht!"
A spear wreathed in genuine lightning burst forth alongside her kiai. An indestructible weapon. It pierced precisely into the core within its chest.
An ordinary weapon would have been destroyed, taking the self-destruction with it, but the lightning coiled around Verdict disrupted the process.
Crackling. Plasma scattered among the arcing bolts. The energy it had failed to properly gather bled away in streams. Unable to detonate itself, the Chimera simply vented the power.
"Urgh...!"
"Hk!"
Rumel was thrown backward and crashed into Angie, who caught her. Ereta was driven back, carving a trench into the ground. In the brief moment the two were pushed away, the Chimera finally restored its optical module.
Plasma erupted from beneath the nozzles. The Chimera bared its malice through an expressionless face and crouched—
"Block it!"
Something flew in alongside Aslan's shout and struck the optical module directly.
High speed, short length, not an arrow, low power.
A crossbow bolt.
A common item used by ordinary humans.
That common item blinded it again.
It could not fly.
A single voice pierced the Chimera's panicked audio module.
"First time using a crossbow. Handier than I expected."
A mocking tone. When the Chimera wrenched its head toward the source of the voice, Fay appeared from behind it.
Shiiiek. Crash!
Two swords, held in reverse grip, bit into the Chimera's armor.
Two shortswords driven precisely into the junction of head and neck. If they had been slightly longer, it would have been instant death.
It was only natural that the Chimera, horrified, diverted the energy meant for optical restoration into raw strength.
When the augmented muscles twisted its body, Fay was thrown off.
Twilight snapped. Dawn was wrenched free. Fay's body floated in the air. For an ordinary human, it would have been an instant where counterattack was unthinkable. For Fay, it was possible.
Thwoom. Crunch!
In the split second of falling, Fay gained acceleration through rotation and swung her blade. She severed the arm that was generating plasma with surgical precision. Dawn shattered and scattered along with the limb.
Boom!
Plasma exploded as it hit the ground. Amid the blooming dust and searing heat, Fay kicked off the empty air where she had severed the arm and leaped again.
She aimed for an aerial back-kick. Her skin charred and flesh melted as she twisted her body and struck.
Her foot hammered the flat of the Twilight blade still lodged in the neck.
"Ah, aah— Ah!"
The Chimera's scream cut off. Fay gained follow-through momentum.
Enough momentum to snatch the airborne Dawn blade and drive it into the core.
Fay seized the blade, planted it precisely into the heart, and flipped backward to withdraw.
A low roar.
Flames erupted and devoured the surroundings. In the brief stillness that followed, the Chimera finally restored its optical module and saw.
Aslan closing in faster than it could assess the damage.
The Dragon-king's fist, wreathed in something like a pale aura.
Too late to defend. The core was pierced—a fatal wound. It could not produce enough energy even to push him back.
The Chimera registered this. In that instant when it tried to scream, full of shock and horror and obsession and twisted love—
'Thunder Call.'
A deafening thunderclap!
Lightning, dragged down from the sky, inhabited that fist.
It could not block. There was no way. The Chimera still tried to resist, but the fist was faster than any thought or action.
A fist that a certain being had accumulated over a thousand years and passed on without reserve to a noble successor.
Like the Executioner's neck slash: not a special feat, but a technique refined to the utmost.
Hawk Drop.
A forefist strike capable of shooting down a diving hawk delivered the thunder directly into the Chimera's chest.
A sickening, resonant crash!
The heart where Dawn had been embedded caved inward in a perfect circle and erupted out the back as scrap.
The clatter of falling metal. A broken blade ricocheted away. The blade embedded itself in the ground, and the Chimera gave a faint shudder.
With its barely restored optical module, it gazed at Aslan's face and opened its failing vocal unit. Aslan's face twisted.
"A—seul, laaa■■an."
A plaintive voice murmuring as it reached out with an arm not yet severed. A hand stretching forward as if to touch Aslan's face.
Just as Aslan moved to strike the hand away, a red beam intercepted the reaching arm.
Crunch!
The outstretched arm was severed and tumbled across the ground.
The optical module flicked toward the girl, its gaze still full of obsession. The Elf who had loosed that beam spoke.
"Don't you touch my Aslan with those filthy hands."
An Elf's emotions, rarely displayed. Unsparing hostility. Having growled those words, the girl turned on her heel and swung the Storm Sword.
Crack!
The blade carrying a grey-white storm severed the high priest's neck without the slightest resistance.