*
Red, blue and black, their auras flared up, emanating off of their bodies like fierce undying embers. It seems like they were starting to finally get serious. After all, they've been saving up their energy for this entire journey. Their combat dresses also began to subtly change, a single frill at a time, a path of cloth changes colour, the Ruby Hero grasped her dark red handle tightly, shifting around the hilt over the scabbard.
Sease doesn't have such a fancy official title, but she would undoubtedly dedicate her life for this cause. She stands straight as an unbending metal pole, her back was as straight as a rod as her left elg stepped back. Her fingers grasped at the air inside her palms, as if she was holding onto balls. Wizard, the blonde blue cladded hero folded her arms as her sky blue cloak akin to a poncho fluttered violently under her aura.
Her baggy blue pants, pointed shoes and her shining sea blue metallic waist armour made an appearance under her cloak. With her left arm on her hip and her right arm outstretched in the air, she flicked her right wrist, pointing her fingers in a sort of gun shape 45 degrees into the air. A white book materialised and fell into those fingers, she grasped it with a vigorous swipe, before opening in front of her chest with practiced ease without using her finger. Multiple other books began to materialise in the air around her, their pages flutter from side to side violently.
The heroes began to engage with the Demon King and the last Heavenly king. Karell looks at Kaede, a hint of bitterness in her eyes.
"There isn't enough room for 2 kings, the prophecy said that much. How about it?" (Karell)
"Hmpf, not in a million years you idiot.
Humanity has gambled their future thus far by trusting the words of these 3 as 'heroes'. We've gambled on the existence and future of our species on some random prophecy.
But we've decided to trust them anyway, these heroes I mean. So if these special demon king slaying existences are real, so is the human King. This gamble is also the flag of hope.
It's with absolute faith that we've put our future into them, so naturally I'll extend that net of trust onto you too. " (Kaede)
Karell crushes her fingers into a fist, her knuckles stretched her skin tightly, the tension held in a tiny ball of flesh radiates into the air.
"... How are you so sure! I'll fight you, so get serious already? Wasn't this what you wanted from the start!? Who said I was your friend?! Who said you could trust me?! " (Karell)
"Hmpf... Don't get me wrong. It isn't exactly trust that I've put into you. It's faith, and a magical amount of it too.
If you wanted to get rid of old me, you could have left me outside the portal. What, did you want to kill me while no one was looking? Then blame it on the Demon King? Go on, fulfill your destiny here and now. " (Kaede)
She put Karell's tightly clenched fist over her chest, goading her with her own intense gaze.
"..." (Karell)
She pulled her hand away while averting her gaze.
" You've also put your trust in me, that's why you wanted me to come along in the first place. Come, we can fight together. We don't have to obey that shitty prophecy given by who the hell knows." (Kaede)
Was Karell's heart always this shakey? Or was it... With a quick reflex, Kaede jumped at Karell, using the wide length of her arm to lift Karell's waist and swing her across the corridor. As she had leapt at the ground, she rolled alongside Karell before they hit the wall. Her legs landed on the wall as she formed a barrier with her second skill.
"Huh?!" (Karell)
"Enemy attack!!" (Kaede)
Karell smashes her palm into the ground, causing space to erupt under her palm, the recoil blows them away as an enormous hole is torn through both Kaede's shield and the wall that they were laying on. They pick themselves up after returning fire, in front of them was the final Demonic heavenly king.
"It matches the distribution predicted by Ruby. 1 of them guard the Demon King, the other 15 split into 3 groups of 5 to fight off the human factions, their ranks are bolstered by the divine knights to match the numbers... But..." (Karell)
"There's one here fighting us... Because one of our own is getting attacked by what is essentially a natural disaster. The one extra on their side, we have to face it while assisting the heroes." (Kaede)
From a single look, they don't seem to be anything special. A lean build that is secretly packed with dense muscles that are shaped to incomprehensible levels of efficiency that is impossible to attain by humankind. They don a baggy pants with a metallic ring around their ankle along with an armoured coat that exposes their chest. The sleeves of the coat extend to the elbows where it transitions into a thick gauntlet.
His dirty blond hair was swept to a side as it frayed at the ends like a lion's mane, but it was still kept short and combed to small extent. In his arm was a snow white blade that emanated white fog around it as it moved. Despite being packed with an extraordinary amount of muscles, he was still quite lean so it wouldn't give the impression of being weighed down by his muscles. It was quite scary really, he looked a delinquent you would see before The Great Disaster, but with his amount of magic... Normal delinquents would never be a match for him.
He grew a single horn in the centre, his long eyelashes accompanied the horn's lustre.
Name: Yiren
Title: Demonic divine unicorn swordsman, end to all ambition and dreams, final boundary of journeys and wishes
Perimeters:
- Physical: S
- endurance: S
- speed: S
- will: SS
- well: SS
As an ascended being, a superior species compared to most other living organisms on earth, this unicorn bastard... Has access to infinite magic... Well, supply and output is a different matter, but having infinite augmentation in will stat also meant that his magic defence was absolute... Meaning that debuffs and mental attacks would never affect him.
"Uwah... what a monster..." (Karell)
"... A pretty damn nasty combo he got there, heightening our emotions, creating illusions. We thought he was fighting with the heroes, and we would have died if not for you acting weird...
The contents of the conversation itself... Must be part of his illusion. It can affect both visual and audio information... " (Kaede)
Lastly... His attacks wouldn't get frozen in space by her shield... Even Karell's space tearing attacks would be stopped... As long as the concept of motion existed, then the attack can be stopped but... The was 2 scenarios her. She was getting tricked into thinking that the unicorn's attacks which come from his sword's blade could tear through her barrier, causing her to let her guard down by no longer using her barrier.
The alternate scenario was far worse... An attack that didn't obey space nor time, her barrier was essentially something that froze attacks in time by stopping all motion. The phenomena of stagnation. If it could bypass such a thing, a slash that surpassed time wouldn't be so outlandish. This meant that the enemy's blade could tear through the seams of reality itself and unravel physical laws into obstacles to slice through...
It was the perfect tool for both offence and defence. But what she needs to be wary of now... It seemed that the opponent couldn't see forward in time to predict his opponent's and thrust his sword across time... But he might remember the past and start launching attacks spontaneously..
He was truly the worse opponent one could ask for, long range and short range did not matter, debuffs and mental attacks are futile, he launches his own myriad of mental attacks such as illusions and emotion intensification... And lastly, he has an absurd reality destroying sword that's not even part of his skills...
But with some new information here and there, Kaede gained a little hope. No one could hope to pull off what she was about to attempt, heck even she herself had an infinitesimally small chance of succeeding, it was simply unprecedented and insane, made only possible because of the uniqueness of her skills.
Not all of her words may make it to Karell, in fact none of it might have reached her. But one thing was for certain, her trust in herself. If it's too much to ask for a teamate... She wouldn't mind fighting by herself.
"... Refined technique, Fully Retained Magia." (Kaede)
Her aura struck the ceiling with sheer ferocity as it began to spread out from the point of collision towards everywhere at once, like an upside down spill. Her combat dress fluttered as she materialised a familiar rapier. Her void rapier was merely the weaponisation of her first skill, the shifting of gradients... It doesn't break any laws, it just pushes them around... There's no way her rapier would match up to that sword...
Even at its best, it was a blade that 'pushed' past any defence like butter. With magic, it was easy to sever the chemical bonds of anything and seperate them, it was the magic reinforcement that she needed to 'push' away the most in order to break through. But from what she could see, the opponent's blade would simply cut her rapier in half then slice through her body. He has a tough body of his own, he doesn't need to care about defence.
Think... What could she use... Karell is here. First and foremost, she has a teamate that could possibly cover for her. But she can't trust if what she is seeing is real. The opponent's illusion isn't a narcotic producing magic or generic brain wash, it's localised to the area where it is casted. It was something like an Oblivion Magia, a territory that an intruder steps into and gets confused by.
So far, it's not as if the illusions were absolute either. There was always a sense of incongruity, a weird sensation at the back of her nape warning her... The first sign was when she noticed their emotions began to get out of control, the second was... The illusion near the throne. She had no reason to suspect it, but she still did. Ah, it was her will stat. It was resisting the illusion by telling her what was unconvincing.
Jeez, just how many of these has she been through at this point? She sliced the air with her void rapier.
"Move" (Kaede)
Like a screen door, it began to bisect into 2,moving into opposite directions to reveal the 'room' behind. Karell was finally uncovered from its veil but... Yiren the unicorn wasn't. He was long gone, if he could trick the opponent, why bother standing in front of them? She swung her left arm back as she hopped away from where she stood.
Sure enough, her wrist was lopped off next to her head as she barely escaped with her head intact, save for a few locks of hair. In a way, it was similar to her void rapier in how it severs things. Wherever the sword moved, there is a hole in reality wrapping around it, much like how her weapons contain a vacuum.
Right after escaping with her life, Kaede ducked to make way for a black ball to fly past her head at the heavenly king. The black ball expands instantaneously, releasing energy amplified by Karell's magic. After a certain level, even atomic bombs would have no effect on such monstrous beings, who are themselves as powerful or stronger than such man made weapons.
Kaede stabbed her rapier into the ground to form an all purpose barrier to block off the energy and radiation. Her rapier wriggled before expanding to form a bowl shape with the bowl's indent facing the opponent. A hole in space opens up on the space next to her, she cranes her neck to stare at it in silence. It shows up as a dark spot on her radar, she can't tell what it was since she was caught offguard.
"Ah." (Kaede)
A burst of energy coursed through the hole, throwing her body into the wall as she covers herself with her arms. Freezing the motion of the air in front of her, she subsequently created a new barrier that blocked every direction.
"Urghh...!! It hurts so bad... My left arm isn't regenerating... Shit... The hole in space is preventing the regeneration, it'll just keep losing blood and magic needlessly..." (Kaede)
A shining tip slices through the previous barrier that she built, Yiren calmly walks through the opening that he made.
" [Heaven breacher], compress. " (Karell)
All of matter, energy and magic surrounding Yiren is crushed into his body at once, smashing into him at high speeds while leaving behind an area devoid of space, akin to a vacuum but still not the same. There is nothing there, but it can sustain itself unlike a vacuum which needs Kaede's magical energy to be sustained. The stray magic and debris that struck Yiren had already disintegrated, with a single swing, he breaks past the restriction of compressed space.
With a single arm, Kaede lifts her rapier, pointing it at Yiren.