Heavenly tempest talon strike.
The great tempest prepared it's claws, and engaged the proud skies in combat. He clawed and clawed, till he found the one attack that shattered the heaven's above.
That was the epiphany of the sword technique, a system message followed soon after Kim's quick recalling.
[
You have activated the skill. Heavenly tempest talon strike lv.3!
]
The skill had leveled up by now.
Faint sparks along with Qi energy gathered around Kim's sword, signifying the successful activation of the skill. But he wasn't the only one preparing a skill, the horned demonic bear's claws were now glowing a deep red, as if it had just come out hot from the furnace. The beast charged at Kim, Kim followed this up with a charge of his own.
The two creatures collided, Kim's sword against the beast's claws. The ground shook, then shattered under the sheer force of the collision. Dust and debris flew up everywhere and the pillars in the room shook violently.
"Ugh.." Kim spat, before flying way back and colliding with the barricade of the duel circle behind him.
*Boom*
A loud boom resounded as Kim's back made contact with the hard surface of the barricade, blood spilled from his mouth.
The heavenly talon strike was just a single powerful attack, but the creature prepared both of it's claws for an attack. After performing the attack with one, it used the other to mercilessly strike the unguarded Kim which led up to his current state.
Kim let out a little grunt as he stood up, he wiped the blood from his lips and focused his gaze on the creature that was now walking towards him. The beast picked up speed and in a matter of moments, the creature had switched from walking to a full blown running charge, it's claws spread out wide for the attack.
Kim quickly responded by activating a skill.
[
You have activated the skill, Heavenly Tempest swordsmanship lv.4
]
The Qi gathered and Kim's movement pattern changed as he started dodging and parrying the claw attacks of the horned demonic bear but the beast's attacks were so powerful that even while using such a powerful sword skill, he sustained damage each time he parried or defended an attack.
In less than thirty minutes of fighting, if you would consider constantly blocking and dodging claw attacks fighting, Kim had already been reduced to a bloody pulp of a swordsman.
All of his previous wounds had already completely opened and he still sustained some more during the process of blocking the horned demonic bear's attacks. He was now covered in serious bruises and deep gashes from which his blood flowed.
"Huff...huff..pant. Damn it". He said out loud, he attributed his still standing to the passive skill Adapt which activated some time ago and had already given him the healing buff, but he was still barely standing and assuming a sword stance, it remained to be seen if he could actually move in such a state.
The beast, Kim's opponent was now treading leisurely towards his prey. It was apparent that Kim had already been defeated, so the beast's leisurely arrogance was justified. The creature stopped and stood before it's prey with it's blood red eyes.
Kim studied the creatures body for some time, and the he realized that he had only barely managed to create some shallow wounds on his opponent.
"Tch.... I can't lose like this". Kim said to himself while looking up to return the creature's arrogant gaze.
"Tch". He just couldn't take it that a monster was looking down on him like that, so he decided to throw one last attack. And then, a particular epiphany came to mind.
After a long day of constantly, unceasingly attacking the heavens above, the great tempest was rewarded with failure. His failure frustrated him, the hunger from a full day of continued attacking assaulted him and his own personal dignity gnawed at him. He gathered all these factors to create an unrefined and desperate attack sequence, driven by pure rage and desperation. He attacked this way until he finally managed to destroy the heavens.
"Heavenly tempest, ravaging sword dance!" Kim screamed.
[
You have activated the skill, Heavenly Tempest ravaging sword dance lv.3
]
Qi surrounded Kim's sword, and he started attacking. He slashed and stabbed continuously at any part of the creature's flesh that he could get a hold of, it was to the point where the desperation could literally be felt from his swordsmanship.
"Haaaa!!" He yelled as he continued the random flurry of sword attacks for some time before landing the final stab.
"Kuek..!" Blood spilled from the demonic bear's maw and body as Kim's sword pierced through the thick fur on it's right shoulder. The beast whimpered before retreated backwards, and almost immediately afterwards, Kim fell.
On his face he fell, his body had already accumulated far too much damage fom this fight alone and he couldn't move anymore.
'shit!'. He thought to himself as he could no longer move his limbs due to the excess fatigue, all the while his opponent carefully watched on from a safe distance. It had sustained quite a lot of wounds from Kim's previous attack, some deep some shallow, but in all, it wanted to prevent such a thing from happening again. It started moving towards Kim's body, slowly and carefully until it determined that Kim was no longer capable of moving.
He activated a skill. The skill he activated was to ensure that Kim goes down for good this time, but the Kim in question was already losing consciousness and was almost completely unaware of what was going on around him.
'uh... I can't lose it here. If I pass out now, I'll die for sure'. He thought to himself as his consciousness began to wane, he was slowly fading. The beast continued charging up the skill, it was going to use the strongest skill in it's arsenal to finish off Kim.
Demon bear bloody claw strike.
'n-no!'. He thought, as he sighted the beast charging up the attack from the corner of his eyes. He knew that the attack was coming, but his body was too tired that it didn't respond to any of Kim's prompts.
*Tsuchht*
The skill activation was accompanied by loud sparks.
'move'. He thought, trying to somehow will his body to get up and run away. All to no avail.
*Tsuccccht*
'move! Damn it'. He screamed inwardly. As the sparks grew stronger, Kim could already sense that he was at death's door.
Out of the corner of his eyes, Kim was able to catch a glimpse of the tendrils of red lightening which were as a result of the demonic bear already initiating the attack before he finally gave in to his fatigue, his eyes dimmed and after one last push to stay awake he lost consciousness.
Immediately Kim lost consciousness, time seemed to slow down and something even more unprecedented happened.
"Do you-----". He heard a voice.
The voice initially came out as unintelligible whispers to Kim's inner consciousness, it was a feminine voice but Kim was sure that it didn't belong to rem or anybody that he knew. He concentrated harder on the source of the sound before the words finally became clearer. He heard;
'Do you want to live?'
.
.
.
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