The explosion was catastrophic as well as bright, so much so that the feudal lords and their opponents stopped in their tracks to gaze at the massive light that reached the sky.
'Good grief, he's really something else.' Junhyung chuckled. His golden yellow irises exuded both sadness and a bit of excitement in them. These emotions did not go unnoticed by the feudal lord of Min-ae.
"Don't take your eyes off your enemy!"
Both fighters clashed again in their injured state. Dae drew back her sword and thrust it sharply at Junhyung. He flipped his staff around, blocking the attack, and spun the staff at Dae's neck. She bent low quickly and struck Junhyung across his stomach with her sword, sending him into the air.
In midair, he twisted his body around, landing on his feet on the tail of a huge black serpent. The serpent hissed violently and lunged out at Dae. She readied her sword to block the offensive motion, but an enormous tail deflected the attack away from her. A large black and white striped tiger of similar size to the serpent, with speed unfitting of its size, in a flash of lightning, stood before Dae. It leapt at the serpent and took a hold of the animal's jugular. The serpent hissed out in scorching pain as it was trapped between the teeth of the feline. Its razor-like teeth sunk deep into the neck of the snake, drawing huge amounts of blood from it.
Junhyung jumped, leaving his summoned creature at the jaws of the tiger, and swung his staff powerfully at Dae. She blocked, and the two clashed together, each trying to use brute strength to overpower the other. Dae succeeded and pushed him back. Junhyung slid backwards and steadied himself by stabbing his staff into the ground.
"Dang, you're tougher than before. Nothing I can't handle but I'm honestly curious, is it because you have an extra trick up your sleeve?" Junhyung asked, grinning like a fool.
"Trick? Don't refer to my miracles as a mere trick." Replied Dae, unamused.
"Sorry, sorry," Junhyung put up his hands in defence, "but you haven't answered my question. Is it?"
"Don't get ahead of yourself, kid."
"Ahead of myself? Oh my, I didn't realise. 'Cause, it's funny how both you and Yeong-ji fell prey to the palm of a 'kid' like me."
"Don't lump yourself together with Aosaki, he's different from the likes of you."
Junhyung left his staff standing in the earth and stretched out his arms. "Then tell me, what's so different between me and Aosaki!? How is he so different from us!? Haven't you seen his eyes!? Those are the eyes of a man who has seen pain, suffering,... death. He's no different from I am!"
Dae was becoming stupefied by this talk of his. "Then what do you want with him!? Why are you so obsessed with fighting against him!?"
"Why wouldn't I? Do you know how it feels getting to understand something you've never understood? It's intriguing, it's exciting, it's... exhilarating! We're the same but he wants to live while I want to die. Why is that? What does he have that I don't? What makes him strive to live despite everything that has happened to him? I want to know, I need to know."
"So that's it," Dae said, bending her head. "Then the greatest way to make you suffer would be to deny you that opportunity."
He scoffed with a grin. "Just try it?"
She held her sword in both hands horizontally and spoke,
"The sea bares its fangs against the land,
The land bares its fangs against the wind,
The wind bares its fangs against the firmament,
And the firmament bares its fangs against the heavens,"
Junhyung widened his eyes.
"Way of the Tiger: Act 2; Claws Of Rebellion!!"
...
"Air Creation: Flying Spear!"
"Ice Creation: Zero Platform!"
Spear-like torrents of wind, multiple of them, at least thirty or so, Azahel counted, fired at him at the speed of lightning. A large platform made of solid ice appeared before him, blocking each and every single one of the spears.
The mist caused by the collision gradually vanished, but Yeong-ji was nowhere to be seen.
A finger to the back of his head made Azahel realise.
'He's behind me!'
"Air Creation: Tumour!"
Wind in the shape of a hollow pipe shot out from his finger. Azahel swiftly moved his head to the side and disappeared, reappearing a few metres away from Yeong-ji, facing him.
His breath was heavy. Blood trickled down the back of his head, staining his pale blue hair. He had dodged the attack but it still managed to scrape him, though just barely.
Azahel placed his hand at the back of his head where the injury was and touched it. Instantly, a thin layer of ice covered the wound and stopped the bleeding.
"I'm impressed, Azahel. I never thought you would also be adept at using the flash step." Yeong-ji said.
"It's not my style," replied Azahel, standing upright with his hands in the pocket of his coat. "I mean, I prefer to just take out the entire battlefield than scurrying from one place to another. Like this," He removed his left hand from his pocket and snapped his fingers.
The entire town became frozen. Houses, buildings, even the soldiers he had arranged, were frozen entirely. Yeong-ji's legs were caught in the ice. The ice stretched on till it covered his entire body, leaving him an ice statue of his former self.
Placing his hand back into his pocket, he walked towards the statue that was Yeong-ji, admiring the cool atmosphere that rested over the town.
Touching the surface of the iced statue with gloved hands, he said,
"It's a shame really. I wish it had never come to this, but looking back, I'm sure we would have eventually butted heads. If only... If only, you could remember the past, Yeong-ji."
*Crack*
A tiny crack, barely visible, appeared on the ice statue.
...
Dae's body was covered brightly in silver-white energy, and a powerfully burst of silver lightning shot out straight of her towards Junhyung.
'It's fast!' Just before it could touch him, he shouted,
"RAAJAH!"
The black serpent crawled swiftly into his front, receiving the impact of the lightning attack.
The result of the collision was a mighty explosion that disrupted their entire surrounding, accompanied by a blinding light.
"Act 2, huh."
It was expected but still surprising to Dae. She was impressed by the toughness of the black-haired male.
The light subsided, revealing the damaged body of the black serpent, though it was still standing. Junhyung's clothes were dishevelled and some parts torn, he removed his arms from his face with a smile written on it.
"You know, I also have an Act or two I haven't used."
'Crap!' Dae thought, 'I messed up!'
In a quick succession of events, Junhyung took up his staff, rotated it around, snaked his right arm onto it, and held it behind his back. He bent low, his hair fell before his eyes, and his grin grew wider.
"And I will cause hostility between you and the woman,
And between your offspring and her offspring,
He will strike your head,
And you will strike his heels,
Way of the Serpent: Act 2; Jeojubad-eun dog!"
{
A greyish-black aura enveloped him. The enormous black serpent disappeared, like a crystal scattering into pieces. The 'pieces' were absorbed by Junhyung's staff and it radiated a shade of black energy.
He slashed the staff at Dae. A crescent-shaped wave of black and grey energy came out of it and headed straight towards her.
'What is that?'
The striped tiger swiftly ran to her front, in a bid to defend her against the attack, but the attack was much more powerful than she realized and it dispelled the creature the moment it made contact, scattering it like broken pieces of crystal.
"Creta!" shouted Dae in horror, seeing her summoned creature disappear. The attack hit her head-on and knocked her off her feet. The attack not only damaged her but encompassed her entire body as well. The feeling was bitter and feverish, her skin turned pale as waves of greyish-black substance touched her all over. Gritting her teeth, she turned over in the air, stabbed her sword into the ground, and landed on her feet, although shaky as she leaned heavily on her weapon in the ground.
"What,"— she panted— "What did you do to me?"
Junhyung stood up and walked towards her, grinning all the way. He stopped in her front and put his right hand on top of her head. Bending down to her level, with his golden-yellow eyes shining with delight, he said to her,
"The poison of the black mamba attacks the nerves. Just two drops of an ordinary black mamba would kill a human being, so imagine if that poison was heightened with divine energy and injected directly into the blood."
"No... that's,"
"That's right, Dae~chan." He placed his palm on her cheek. It felt cold on her skin, her complexion turning pale green with each stroke his palm did on her cheek.
"Just go to sleep, Dae. It will all be over soon."
The world seemed dark and blurry, her eyes couldn't hold out any longer. Each passing heartbeat only told her that her time was up... and, she failed.
'I'm so sorry, Raynell.'
Her body gave out and fell to the ground... with tears on her pale cheeks.
...
Away in the palace, in the room given to the adventurer boy and his companion, Raynell sat on the edge of her bed... with tears streaming down from her eyes.
'Mother...'
...
'Maybe it was my imagination, but I could have sworn I felt a crack in the statue.'
Elementals, as one of the five branches of divine energy, was a part of its user's life force. The elements were split into four main sources; Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. Each of these, however, had other elements under them which could be utilised by anyone with divine energy. In Azahel's case, Ice was a direct product of the element, Water. But he discarded his control over water years ago and focused his skill on ice manipulation, honing them almost to perfection.
'And it was supposed to be flawless. My Zero Space, should have rendered everything within its vicinity null and immobile, but is it just possible that it can be broken?'
He narrowed his gaze at the statue as if waiting for something to happen.
"Just to make sure..." He placed his hand on the ice structure and covered it with another thick layer of ice. "That should do it."
He took his gloved hand off it and put it back in his pocket. Taking one last glance at Yeong-ji, he looked away and walked towards Junhyung who stood over the lifeless body of Dae Chun-ja, the feudal lord of Min-ae.
"You look disappointed, Junhyung," Azahel said, approaching him.
The black-haired teen sighed, then lifted his head. "Well, what can I say? It's pretty sad. Honestly, this line of work makes me feel down sometimes. Really wished I died earlier, you know, maybe she would have lived a couple of decades later."
"Do you feel regret? For her or 'her'?" asked Azahel.
"Hey, hey, there are some lines that shouldn't be crossed." A poisonous black aura gripped the whole town, making Azahel feel like he was being held by the jugular.
"I apologize." He said.
"It's alright," replied Junhyung with a smile, the aura dispersed as quickly as it had come.
"Let's go going. We still have one more person we need to eliminate."
"Oh, you mean me?"
Alarmed, Junhyung held up his staff and Azahel removed his hands from his pockets, stretching out his right arm.
On a pile of rubble, the remains of one of the numerous destroyed buildings in the town, there their final enemy sat. Winter-blue hair that flew in the wind with deep blue highlights that glowed in the cold sun, and blue azure eyes that seemed to sparkle with crystals and diamonds, yet held a certain emptiness and coldness within them. Toshirou looked down on the two males from on high, sitting with his hands between his legs, and a smirk plastered on his mouth.
"Yo... I've come to take your head."