Tyrant of the Ruined Sun - Chapter 233

Chapter 233: The Hilltop Duel 2

*Booooom*

Axe head met quarter staff, obsidian collided with copper and silver, black clashed against imperial purple, miasmic divinity screeched, clawed and snarled against prosperous holiness; and the laws the Gods so lovingly drew into existence, began to scream and die in agony around us.

The once still air shattered like glass, and hurled in a wave of disquiet, carrying the stench of true horror in it’s frantic stampede to escape. The sturdy stone beneath our feet shook like the dry leaves it always ridiculed in autumn, while the morning dew began to ooze like foul blood down grass blades and messy hair of the men staring horror struck at us.

Even the sun seemed reluctant to continue stretching it’s golden tendrils across the sky, that was impatiently awaiting to return to it’s royal cerulean blue again.

All the while, the noise that once surrounded us instantly vanished, as though the voices of seven hundred roaring, jeering men were plucked from their very mouths, leaving their throats barren of all speech; while a single note of torturous continuity, monstrously mocking the laws of physics stung their ears with a haunting ferocity, as our weapons unceasingly, mercilessly, continued to rent the space between us with blinking slashes of Tyrian purple and skeletal white, that drew a painting of murderous intensity in the thin veil of sunlight coating us.

Yet all of this I only came to know many hours from now, and from the swearing tongues of my most trusted and loyal friends and subordinates, as for now, my sole focus, my whole world was the all consuming thoughts of vanquishing the fearsome foe before me.

My blows were accurate, shamelessly straightforward grabs at his soul, ruthlessly aiming towards the most vulnerable points on his body; torso, throat, head, inner thighs and groin. While his were winding, annoyingly conniving strikes, aimed for crippling rather than killing, as his quarter staff seemed to twist unnaturally in his adept hands, aiming to slither behind my guard and crush my knees, ankles, wrists, elbows and shoulders.

Yet all was not well, my palms started to tingle by the hundredth exchange, and by the one hundredth and fiftieth a pulsing ache began to take it’s place.

Neither of us had moved an inch from where we initially clashed, yet despite utilizing the full extent of my third gated power, seventh rank martial prowess and far more extensive battle experience, it was still barely able to level the scales of strength between me and his fourth gated power and third rank martial arts.

Something he seemed to realize as well, as evident by the widening smirk on his impudent face, and the cold gleam in his purple emblazoned eyes.

The howl of the wind our bodies swayed to suddenly changed, the cruel gleam of his aura coated weapon sharpened, his surging divine power billowed like a furious typhoon; the very norms we’ve just solidified in our duel shifted on it’s heel.

No longer was his staff targeting my joints, for they now were obstinately trained on claiming my life with a single, insolent strike.

He jabbed at my Adam’s apple, stabbed at my eyes and brandished his staff at my temples and the base of my skull when he thought he could; and for the first time in this fight our positions shifted from where they began, as I began to take steps back.

‘He was testing me at first, but as the reports said, he is an impatient man; one who wants to finish me off quickly and without further hassle.’ I emotionlessly thought, my mind soaked with a cold cruelly I had not realized until this moment I missed the feeling of, as I too began rewrite the boundaries of our deadly dance.

I lowered my posture, and ground my feet into the now utterly bald stone, it’s once luscious grass mane having long been ripped from it’s roots at our duel, as my weapon seemingly continued it’s quest to deliver his death, but only the observant realized that I no longer sought a quick, clean kill.

Fallen Nemesis rushed to eviscerate his stomach, to mangle his lungs and rupture his spleen, to grind his spine and impale his eyes, to lacerate his forearms and shred his hamstrings.

Something that caused his lack of experience and reported excessive pride to immediately play against him, as he very clearly did not expect me to display such an abrupt variation of fighting style, that all but dwarfed his own, as my blade finally caught a whiff of his blood, tearing a small gash at the edge of his stomach, just below his ribs.

The cut was too shallow to even call a flesh wound, but I had drawn first blood.

A realization that clearly infuriated him to no end, as his once smug face twisted into a satisfyingly ugly mask of embarrassment and retribution, as he rushed at me again, his blows more savage than before.

I merely smirked behind my faceplate at the foolish man’s blind idiocy, giving the most ideal set of circumstances to best him. Yet despite this, I still remained unable to deliver a satisfactory strike to him, proving himself a surprisingly agile worm, who continuously managed to miraculously to crawl his way from each trap I set him.

I cut him three more times, once more in the torso, a long gash just above where his right lung lay, and another miniscule two on his shoulders, before I felt another shift to the battle’s tempo, but this time I was not the conductor of it, and my infernal eyes thinned to pinpricks, as I felt an eruption of aura directly beneath us.

His right foot came at my face with a thunderous roar, coated in both his divine power, and most shockingly, a sixth rank aura.

‘He was a master of unarmed martial arts?!’

I barely manged to evade, when he carried the energy of his missed attack through, using it to twist his entire body in the air, and then directed another leg against me. I did not dodge this time, and instead had Fallen Nemesis block, yet so surprising this variation was to the battlefield, that I didn’t have a minute to realize that the entire equation had all but changed now, and I could no longer simply parry his blows.

I was thrown back, my hand burning as though lightning shot through it, when he was upon me again. I would not make the same mistake again; I dodged, throwing my entire weight to the side, but it was as though I was now facing four different men, each launching blows against me at odd, nearly impossible to predict, intermittent angles.

“Enough!” I roared, reaching to grab his coming kick, as wrath and hate replaced the blood in my veins, and a small, torch sized flame erupted in my hand.

Eviduir was a reckless fool, yet even he wouldn’t dare touch hellfire so carelessly, as he, in a show of surprising dexterity, he paused his blow just before it found it’s mark and rushed back with a high leap, but it was now time for me to go on the offensive.

I did not even hesitate, as my flaming hand reached Dark Majesty, and unsheathed it, instantly bathing it my fifth rank sabre aura and all my hellfire.

It was a complete inverse of the scene a few seconds ago, as I chased down the southern patriarch with my weapons in wide arcs of white and black, as the arena around became unrecognizable to it’s former self, with it’s once mighty pillars collapsing around us in mesmerising arcs, and the stone floor cracking and breaking beneath our rising bloodlusts, contesting skills and contending divinities.

I barely even registered when Fallen Nemesis tore into a pathetic sleeve one of the few marble pillars still stubbornly standing around us and Dark Majesty shredded deep trenches into the boiling, steaming floor.

And yet that is how we found ourselves stuck in an impossible to resolve conundrum. He was undeniably stronger than me, yet he dared not charge at me recklessly, while I held a power that could easily become his undoing, and yet I could not seem to catch him to utilize my hellfire.

Now most would have taken a breathe, realized that no victor was to be crowned between us today, or at the very least, paused to think of a different strategy to attain that sweet triumph from the jowls of that who is more bitter than defeat, draw, rather than continue wasting energy; but not me, for I had a final trump card I decided to entrust victory to.

Human error.

He and I are demi-gods, part divine, part perfect; and yet we remain half human, half flawed, and that is the side of us I decided to gamble on one of us stumbling against first.

He was generous, gregarious, ambitious, but he was short tempered, not easy to let a slide pass, and vindictive.

How do you think such a man would act when pushed to far?

When someone he not only presumed weaker than him, but was objectively so, and had undoubtedly flaunted it before others, suddenly began to effortlessly push him around before hundreds of thousands of eyes?

He would eventually snap; throw caution to the wind, all in the blind effort to tear a chunk from his hated foe.

And indeed, Eviduir he did not disappoint.

He bellowed out a roar full of hate and shame, as his eyes hardened to something far more dangerous and launched himself at me, like a wounded lion gone berserk, the most dangerous form of beast imaginable; and yet I smiled.

I smiled as the object of me quarry, that elusive temptress known as victory, finally revealed herself to me at that moment, so much so that I thought I could even smell her now, as I responded in kind to the frenzied man’s attack.

Fallen Nemesis and Dark Majesty were poised at his lower stomach and upper arm. I could already feel the sensation of steel biting through taught muscle and viscus blood, of fire burning beyond ash his fragile organs.

But then it was nothing but a clashing spectrum of blood-red and silverish white fire, before my sight was robbed of me and I felt my body being thrown back with a force I had absolutely no chance to resist.

My eyes had yet to even regain their light, when I roared into the deafening silence “ARGUS!”