Divine systems had a lot of functions which normal systems didn't. Similarly, toggle was a function that was exclusive to Ray's divine system.
It practically negated the difference between passive and active skills, but there stayed a slight difference.
Passive skills didn't have any requirement, and could stay active forever, but active skills had to be activated as per their requirement and would enter some sort of cooldowm sooner or later.
To keep a proper disguise, Ray had kept all his passive skills toggled to be turned off.
However right now…
Toggle everything on.
[Strong Body (B) has been activated.]
[Physical and Magical Defense have been slightly increased temporarily]
[Reverence (B) has been activated.]
[Subdued Rage (A) has been activated.]
[Physical stats have slightly increased.]
The woman approaching Ray with the dagger widened her eyes in surprise as the calm aura around her target exploded into a huge storm.
'What is this inhuman aura…'
However she had already gathered too much momentum to stop her attack.
Ray pulled his right leg back and brought his sword forward to parry the attack.
The first dilemma of a swordsman. The parry. Should you use the edge or the flat of the blade? There existed multiple sword styles and a parry was a move every style always had, and it differed depending on the situation.
Parrying with the edge was stronger and provided much more protection than doing the same with its flat; however using the edge caused nicks in the sword, destroying it far quicker.
*Clang*
Ray connected the edge of his sword with the incoming dagger.
Their auras clashed and the cloaked figure was surprised once again.
'I miscalculated! This isn't a normal oracle!'
She had really underestimated the oracle and not applied all her power in that strike, but even then it would have been enough to kill a seasoned adventurer.
"You're in range."
Ray pulled back his sword and changed his stance rapidly, swinging his sword vertically…
'Not good!'
She felt an extreme amount of pressure from that plain looking sword. She didn't know what it was, but she followed her instinct and jumped back out of range.
At least she tried to.
*Slash*
Ray's sword rapidly proceeded towards her neck. The speed was much faster than with which the woman retreated.
*Clang*
Failing to escape, she grit her teeth, bent her body forward and blocked the incoming attack with her dagger.
The impact shook her wrist slightly. She didn't expect such a fast moving sword to be packed with power.
'Thankfully I blocke-'
However that was only the beginning.
*Slash*
The same sword slashed at her hip without letting the previous block slow its momentum.
*Clang*
'Now that I've adjusted to the strength, it's easy for me to block…'
Her battle experience kicked in as she activated a skill that quickened her movements for an hour.
Ray, whose two attacks had been blocked wasn't bothered in the slightest.
He was rather calm. His eyes were completely focused on his opponent's dagger and a playful smile could be seen on his lips.
'First Form.'
*Slash*Slash*Slash*
Ray slashed at her vitals with extreme speed. Neck, chest, abdomen…
*Clang*Clang*Clang*
Number 3 who had her agility boosted by her skill brought her dagger to those same locations with the same speed, preventing any damage.
*Slash*Slash*Slash*
*Clang*Clang*Clang*
A minute... 5 minutes... 10 minutes...20 minutes...
*Slash*Slash*Slash*
*Clang*Clang*Clang*
Number 3 broke into a smile.
"Is that all you have? The same monotonous sword slashes? And you asked me not to underestimate you?"
However Ray didn't speak. He had the same playful smile on his lips.
Seeing her obviously 'weaker' opponent ignoring her and keeping that smile on his face she was extremely irked.
"You know what? Enough of this farce! I'll end this now!"
Number 3 finally decided to break free from the incessant slashing and start attacking him herself. She had waited long enough to see if the target was hiding any strong battle skills or if he was too strong for her, but this felt too boring.
However when she tried breaking free from his attacks she noticed something that made her frown.
'I… can't break free?'
Ray who noticed the frown smiled even wider as he whistled.
"You'll end this now? How scary!"
"You!"
"Is that all you have? Those monotonous blocking skills?"
Number 3 had killed a lot of people before, but this man she wanted to strangle herself.
Trying to calm herself down while she kept blocking the incoming attacks, she tried to analyze why she couldn't break free.
'I'm sure I could have broken free before!'
'Now however…'
The moment she tried to move back, a sword would cleave her head off, if she charged at him, the same sword would pierce her heart and if she slowed down to use her mana her mana core would get pierced instead!
'What is this sword style! Why is a precision type sword style so fast and strong? Who is this?'
'Wait… fast and strong?'
She suddenly realized why she couldn't break free.
She had been instinctively blocking all her vitals from the slashed adjusting her power and speed to stop the sword harming her.
These simple slashes had appeared so simple to her that leaving the blocking to her instinct, she instead focused on other hidden weapons or sudden tricks that her opponent might try to pull.
Now focusing back on the sword itself she found that it was much faster and stronger than before.
The speed was so fast, that she was almost at her limit. If it went any faster, small injuries would start appearing on her. And after that… bigger injuries… and she didn't want to think what would happen if this kept going.
She didn't know what she should do.
Looking at her status window she noticed that it had been around twenty minutes since she started blocking.
She had another forty minutes for her skill to stay active.
'Should I keep blocking? Should I attempt to break free risking an injury?'
Ray could feel that Number 3 was in a dilemma.
He had the same playful smile on his face.
However internally he was thinking intensely.
'It has already been twenty minutes of my first form, my stamina can only support another twenty minutes… If she keeps blocking, the battle will become long drawn.'
Thus, he decided to make a decision for the woman in front of her.
As Number 3 was thinking, her opponent seemed to laugh slightly at her predicament.
"You piec-"
Ray didn't let her say whatever she was going to.
"You do have something other than your monotonous blocking skills…"
"..?"
"Your monotonous way of thinking!"
'Activate Positive Envy!'
[Positive Envy has been activated.]
[Taunting opponent. Target's negative emotions towards host have been amplified slightly!]
Number 3 wanted to rip apart that smug smile from this guy's face.
"You cocky bastard!"
Never in her life had she felt this insulted.
Without hesitating any more, she immediately put all her force in her legs and pierced forward with the dagger in her right hand.
With her left hand she took out another dagger from her spatial ring to block the incoming attack to her heart.
However, the speed and strength of the attack had grown once more, which caught her off guard as with a loud clang the new dagger flew out of her hand.
As quickly as she could, she transferred some of her momentum from piercing forward into rotating her body anticlockwise, lowering herself, to avoid a fatal blow.
*Slash*
She seemed to have somehow avoided the fatal attack, but the sword slashed past her left shoulder, leaving a deep gash which splattered blood in the air.
"Aghh…"
Suppressing her pain, she maintained her momentum as she was determined to kill the guy in front of her.
With her left hand slightly limp and dripping blood from the shoulder, her right hand aimed the dagger towards the man's heart with pin point accuracy.
A sword was much longer than a dagger… as such even after both of them aimed their attacks at the same time, Ray's attack hit her first, but there were still a few inches between her dagger's tip and his heart.
After his slash, Ray had but a fraction of a second to dodge and Number 3 knew that even if he could, she would deeply injure him just like he did to her shoulder.
However what she expected didn't happen.
Ray did indeed move his body sideways to dodge the attack, but unlike how the woman expected, he succeeded quite easily, moving out of the dagger's path in that minimal time frame and avoid any sort of injury.
She widened her eyes in surprise once again.
'How the hell does a human move like that!!'
As her attack missed the target, her body stumbled forward with the momentum.
Her left shoulder which was slightly limp made it further difficult to maintain her balance.
Ray's expression didn't change a bit throughout the battle, as the same smile remained on his face.
'Resistance Negation footsteps can indeed ignore momentum to a certain extent…'
The sole reason people stumbled; people took time dodging and changing their imminent state of motion… their momentum.
Changing one's state of motion while it was in motion posed resistance to its existing momentum.
However, Ray's footwork almost negated this resistance, allowing him to change his state or direction of motion almost instantaneously.
This was why he could easily dodge the dagger even from such a close distance.
Using the same movement, Ray swiftly aimed his sword at Number 3 who was stumbling and almost defenseless.
But at this moment another smile appeared on the woman's face.
'Finally my skill cooldown ended!'
And as Ray's sword touched her skin, instead of piercing it and drawing blood, it seemed to phase through, as her body dissipated in a black mist.
Within moments she disappeared from Ray's sight.
Ray didn't lose his smile, but internally he was cursing.
'Tch. This annoying skill had to end its cooldown now!'
Since Ray has already appraised her status screen, he knew exactly what this skill was.
While Ray was cursing, a dagger was launched from somewhere which was traveling towards his neck at a speed faster than he could block.