Chapter 118 – Power Game (part seven)

I jumped backwards to dodge Jeru’s horizontal slash that crushed more of the castle’s ruined walls, then tried stabbing his neck with my Odachi, but he dodged to the side. At the same time, Hannes tried hitting me with a downwards swing of his axe, but I parried it with my other Odachi.

Immediately after, I jumped into a thread and threw explosives at them two to create a cloud of smoke, then jumped right into the fray with my <Holy Demon Slash>.

However, both Jeru and Hannes were able to react appropriately by countering my attack with <Flaming Thunder Strike> and <Condensed Earthquake> respectively. The collision of our blows made a huge shockwave that blew up even more of what was left of a castle here.

“Aren’t we breaking way too much of this castle?” Jeru commented.

“I guess we are…” Hannes replied.

“It’s not like this is the only castle of the empire anyways.” I said.

“Well, that’s true…” Jeru agreed.

Even as we did this small talk, there was no time to waste as we all had <Divine Oaths> activated, which was quickly depleting our HP quickly, so we kept attacking one another non-stop. We already spent ten seconds with those skills active, and I still need to get the princess back after I’m done here, so I can’t afford to hold back.

I deflected a downwards swing from Jeru with my odachi, which created an opportunity for Hannes to hit his side with his axe. Seeing that Hannes left an opening with that strike, I made a cut on his belly with my odachi.

-Forty Seconds Left-

Both of them swinged their weapons towards me at once. I jumped over the horizontal swing of the axe and used both odachis to block the greatsword’s vertical swing, then I side stepped in order to not stay in the middle of them both.

-thirty-five seconds left-

Hannes lost his balance after his axe swing, so I made use of the opportunity to kick his side. Jeru tried to stab me at that moment, but I jumped back to avoid his attack.

-thirty seconds left-

Jeru spinned his body around as I dodged his stab to turn his attack into an horizontal slash aimed at Hannes, who blocked it. I made use of the opportunity to try beheading Jeru, but he ducked below my attack. Hannes made use of this opportunity to try hitting me with his axe, but I blocked it with my other odachi.

-twenty-five seconds left-

Me and Jeru clashed our swords and pushed each other back. I saw Hannes coming closer from the side, so I threw an explosive at him to delay his advance to give me enough time to dodge his incoming attack.

-twenty seconds left-

Hannes didn’t stop even after being hit by the explosive and delivered a series of attacks against me. I was a bit off-balance after clashing with Jeru, so it was hard to counterattack. However, when Jeru tried to attack me right after, I jumped past him and repositioned myself behind Jeru, putting him between me and Hannes, stopping Hannes’ attacks and giving me time to recover.

-fifteen seconds left-

I threw explosives and poisonous needles towards them both, but they blocked them all. We ended up jumping back towards the middle again, clashing with our skills once more.

-ten seconds left-

I tried to behead Hannes with the odachi on my right hand while blocking Jeru’s greatsword swing with the odachi of my left hand. Then, I got rid of most of the size of my shadow odachi to make it as small as a dagger in order to make Jeru lose balance and to use this opportunity to pierce his neck. He was able to jump backwards before I succeeded though, so I remade the Odachi.

-seven seconds left-

Hannes deflected another poison needle and clashed his weapon with Jeru, I tried hitting them in this meanwhile, but they dodged it.

-six seconds left-

Their backstep triggered my thread trap

-five seconds left-

They were both lifted up and crushed by the threads, but their defense was high enough to endure it.

-four seconds left-

Even if they weren’t killed by the threads, this still made it hard for them to defend themselves, so I rushed towards them with <Jet Propulsion>.

-three seconds left-

I used <Retaliation Sword> on my odachis to make sure the attack would be strong enough to kill them.

-two seconds left-

They were almost escaping the threads, but I was already close enough to attack them, so I started swinging my odachis towards their neck.

-one second left-

They tried blocking my swings with their weapons, but I made the shadow-made odachis disappear and phase through their weapons, and then remade the odachis immediately after.

-0.5 seconds left-

They were clearly surprised by how they couldn’t block my strike, but there was nothing they could do to stop me from beheading them!

They froze in place, not moving anymore as… My odachis disappeared, “Ah, morning arrived…” I said. It was a bit disappointing that the morning sun made the shadow weapons disappear, but I suppose it’s a necessary drawback for this kind of skill.

<Respawning Process Starting> The system message appeared for me, I’m sure it came for them too since we were all using Divine Oaths.

“Guess we ran out of time.” Jeru said.

“A shame we couldn’t settle it, but this battle was fun.” I told them.

“That it certainly was.” Jeru replied.

“As if this was fun!” Hannes exclaimed.

“Well, I was satisfied.” I told him. Hannes didn’t admit it, but he was smiling quite a bit right now, I’m sure it was entertaining for him too.

“Anyways…” The three of us said in unison. Jeru was rubbing his neck, Hannes was pointing his finger at me, and I pointed my thumb towards the ground, “I’ll kill you next time!” We exclaimed together.