The fight carried on with me running around constantly while avoiding his arrows and bombs. I need to find a way to bring him down. Why can't I ever have a proper sword fight recently? Damn it!
I turned my gaze upwards. No sign of a thunderstorm tonight. Guess I'll have to depend on summoned lightning then. How strange that no elves came to check up on us when there were literally plenty of explosions happening around me. There are denser amount of trees coming up ahead. How should I play this?
I took a quick peek at Tom flying above, he had already un-summoned his visor somehow. Perfect, time to make use of the darkness around me. Let's show him what a Dark Wanderer can do in his own turf. I made a sudden leap into the trees and activated Concentration. I reached into my potion pouch and pulled out two potions. The first potion is to increase my spells intensity even further with Concentration active. The second is my most treasured potion that increases all of my stats by 5.
I can hear Tom re-summoning his visor to search for me. I used Perfect Concentration to force him to focus on me. Making sure that his vision was on me, I used Illusion on him, turning his vision entirely black. He started panicking and turned his head around, trying to see something. Pressing my advantage, I casted Fear on him as well. He made a loud "Shit!" and started flying backwards. But I was ready for him. Using both Tengu-kaze & Inazuma for climbing, I appeared behind him and got ready to attack him.
Seemingly acting on instinct, he swung his wing behind and managed to hit me with it. This caused me to lose balance and fall to the ground in a crouched position. But my plan sort of worked. I managed to pierce Tengu-kaze through his wings, causing him to immediately crash down to the ground. I quickly ran over to try and deal some more damage to him but he un-summoned his wings which caused Tengu-kaze to drop away with a loud thud. He quickly re-summoned them and flew backwards, avoiding my advance. I continued chasing after him and threw Inazuma at him which he deflected with his bow.
Damn it! What quick reaction speed he have. I couldn't even deal a blow on him after using my spells and potion. What else can I do to bring him down for good? Force him to re-summon his wings? I don't even know how long he can use Rend and how many times he can use it. I need to think of another plan quick!
I felt something pierced my thigh as I was chasing him. One of his arrow managed to hit me, avoiding my spectral cloak through a gap. His arrows must not be strong enough to pierce my spectral cloak directly. But that bow of his must be legendary. I might had made a mistake earlier that he can use magic. His bow should be using the same magic concept as my gauntlets. But does his bow use charges as well?
"Hoo— finally an arrow hit home! There will be plenty more where that came from. You'll be a human pincushion by the end of this," he said with enthusiasm as he placed his foot on the ground.
I reached to my hip pouch and took out my healing gel. I removed the arrow and slapped a hand full of gel on it and glared at him. He was speechless as he started seeing my wound stopped bleeding.
"You're certainly full of surprises, Hawthorn. How long has it been since I enjoyed the thrill of battle? I guess it was when I fought with your old man who put me out of commission," he said.
"I guess my grandfather really put the hurt on you. No wonder you didn't pursue me or John after all these years," I said.
"Bah, it was one thing that I was injured badly for a couple of years, I just felt that it wasn't worth the chore in chasing after two children as the reward was pathetic. Seeing your old man refusing to give me any information made me respect him in some way. I only attacked the three of you as I happened to overheard you three talking about Hawthorns," he explained.
"Trying to act noble? You became my sole purpose in becoming strong. And I intent to finish what you started," I glared at him.
"Haha! You're not the first, Hawthorn. My line of work comes with plenty of people seeking revenge on me. None of them succeeded and so will you. I'm not called one of the Great Powers for nothing," he readied his stance.
"Indeed, you could had been something else instead of an assassin. Yet, you sully the name of the Great Powers by being one of them. Allow me to overwrite your position since I'm in good relationship with two of them," I grinned at him.
"You don't know my story. I didn't choose this line of work because I wanted to. Everything was set for me on the day I was born. You think I wanted to become an assassin?! You and your old man shouldn't stick their noses where it doesn't belong!" he started raising his voice.
"I'm sorry, I didn't come here to listen to your story. I'm just here to kill you," I told him nonchalantly with a shrug.
"You had a happy life with your friends and family. I had nothing but a shitty ass father that beats me into becoming an assassin after I was born. Don't you dare rub it on my face, asshole!" he shouted.
"I beg your pardon, but you are dead wrong. My family was murdered by the Queen that you served and then YOU murdered my one and only family member that I had left. Don't place your self pity in front of others as though your tragedy is the worst. You still had a father," I spat at him.
"Hah! I would had rather be an orphan than to live with him. Luckily, the graduation ceremony had me killing him. I felt incredibly satisfied when I shot an arrow through his heart. It was an ecstasy of joy for me. I guess I should thank him for handing me this bow as well," he closed his eyes as though he was basking in his memories.
"I'm sorry, but are we still talking? Because I'm getting bored listening to your ramblings," I glared at him.
He somehow took that personally and got angry. He exhaled loudly and readied himself.
"I see you can only use Concentration. Too bad though, if you're able to use Higher State of Mind then perhaps you stand a chance. But as of now, you lose," he said as he activated his Concentration.
Hang on, why is his iris changing colour to glowing red instead? I don't recall Concentration changing your iris colour.
"Let me show you the strongest version of Concentration ever existed! I call this, Maximum Concentration!" he shouted as he flew up.
Once again he drew his bow and blue particles started accumulating at the tip. I got ready and expected him to shoot upwards but he released it towards me. Three large homing arrows flew towards me at high speed which made me started running again. I quickly took cover behind a large tree but the arrows pierced through the branches and continued homing on me. Fuck! I was forced to run again when showers of arrows started pouring from above along with those homing arrows. It was not until the homing arrows got stuck on a boulder that it finally stopped chasing me. Damn it, he is just spamming his spells now! And it felt like his spells were stronger, thanks to his Max Concentration or whatever he called it. I have never heard of this such a thing before. Is Tom unable to use Higher State of Mind that forced him to find such an alternative? Will I be able to win this?
Rend had ended a while ago when we were talking. I only have two more chances to use it today. Tom seems to have his wings up for a long time yet it doesn't seems to be running out of duration. Now that's just unfair. How long am I going to keep running from his barrage of arrows?!
***
I rubbed myself with mud as much as I could. Surprisingly, he seems to be having difficulty in finding me after I applied mud on myself. Did I guessed correctly that his visor is for detecting heat? Hmm.
I hid myself in between the some roots of a giant tree. I needed to regain my bearing and get some rest from all the running that I did. It would seemed that Rend's duration had ended for him as he was forced to land. By my estimation, it took about 20 minutes for him as opposed to my 10 minutes duration. Damn it, I'm at a disadvantage here. The most damage I did to him was his arm from his own bombs. For my case, an injured left arm and thigh. Things are not looking good for me at all. I hate to admit it, but he's certainly stronger than me.
Alright, let's keep calm and access the situation. His Rend is not strong enough to stop my physical attacks. Perhaps this is a trade off for extreme light armour in order for him to fly. But strangely though, it was strong enough to stop a direct Lightning Strike from my gauntlets. Can it be that Rend is actually more effective at blocking spells rather than physical attack? Now that's something I'm interested in checking out.
I kept Concentration active as it was too risky to put myself at ease. I can never predict what he's up to after he started using Max Concentration. Not only am I hopeless against his ranged attacks, all I could do was run around like some headless jikentette. I used Conceal and peeked out of the roots. Strange, I don't see him anywhere. Where exactly did he go? I climbed out of the roots and maintained myself in a prone position to search for him. All of a sudden, something pierced through the huge tree that I was hiding in just a second ago, leaving a huge gaping hole in the middle of the trunk. What the hell was that?!
The tree stood firm but seeing the huge hole in the middle made me sweat buckets. I am certain I won't survive if I get struck by such an attack. I peeked around at the other trees behind the trail and many smaller trees had fallen down. What in the world just happened? And what exactly pierced through those trees?
I started crawling towards the direction of where that attack came from. That piercing capability is insanely destructive. I'm not about to test whether my spectral cloak is capable of withstanding such an attack. What are the elves even doing allowing Tom to destroy their borders like this? Where the fuck are they?!
The sound of someone could be heard, "Come out come out wherever you are~ There's no use hiding!". Must be Tom with that horrible voice, and I guess he can't see where I am. Who knew that using mud would work so well in hiding your heat source. Now that I have the element of surprise, I should make full use of it.
I continued crawling towards the direction of the voice. I saw a silhouette of someone crouching behind some bushes. I crawled closer slowly in an attempt to perform some sort of steal kill but, something wasn't right, there appears to be two silhouettes. And they appears to be— much slender and shorter than Tom even though they were crouching. Are these elves from the elven forest on reconnaissance? They are just sitting here stalking at me instead of helping?!
I managed to sneak behind them and attempted to cover both of their mouths. Strange though, elves should had heard me sneaking closer to them. Is this some form of trap by Tom?
"Don't, move. Are you two on reconnaissance?" I whispered to them as I covered their mouths.
Both of them turned their heads slowly towards me. It was Lily and Rose. What the bloody devil are they doing here?!
"W— what are you two doing here??" I whispered softly to them.
Lily quickly pushed all of us down as something flew pass us and destroyed more trees. Is that why she didn't noticed me crawling closer? She was focused on whatever that thing was?
"We followed you here because we were worried about you, Onii-chan," whispered Rose.
"What are you talking about? Get out of here right now! It's extremely dangerous fighting with Tom!" I scolded both of them as softly as I could.
What were they thinking? The sole reason I didn't want to tell them is because I knew it would put them in danger. Tom is one of the Great Powers that I wasn't entirely confident that I could win.
As I dragged them away, I heard something dropped nearby us. It was bombs. Shit! Tom must had heard our commotion and found our location.
Multiple bombs exploded which was insanely deafening. When the dust finally settled, I can see a blurry vision of someone walking closer towards me laughing. I couldn't hear properly as I suspected my eardrums might had been ruptured by the sounds of the explosions. I was in a daze when Tom placed his feet on my left arm. Ugh, that hurts bad. Did I lose a limb or something from the explosion? I don't even know whether Rose or Lily are safe. All I remember was tossing them among some trees before the explosions happened.
Tom crouched directly on top of me, trying to taunt me or something. He was playing with a spectral arrow with his right hand. He poked the arrow lightly on where my heart is located while mumbling something to me which I couldn't hear properly. He raised his right hand holding the arrow. Is this the end for me? I couldn't even kill the guy who murdered my grandfather. No, I refuse to let things end here! I'm not about to lie down here and die to him!
Something jumped from out of my vision and bit Tom on the arm. It was Q! What's he doing here?! Tom was struggling to pull Q apart as he bit him tightly. I can see blood dripping from Tom's arm where Q had bit him. Still in a daze, I reached into my hip pouch and pulled out a syringe, stabbing it directly at my thigh. It was an emergency solution that gives me a form of adrenaline rush. I snapped out of my daze with a roar, quickly unsheathed my dagger and stabbed Tom above the pelvis bone where his spectral light armour didn't protect.
He shouted a loud "Fuck" and stabbed Q in the belly area with his arrow. Blood started flowing from Q as I saw him falling to the ground in slow motion with a pain expression. I thought their kind were indestructible. Why— why is he bleeding?! Why is he writhing in pain on the ground as more blood pooled around him? Is Q going to die? For trying to save me? What the fuck am I doing that even Q was willing to protect me?! Why the fuck am I so weak that I needed my precious pet to save me?!
I started breathing harder and noticed steam flowing out of my mouth. I didn't even realised that I was still clutching Inazuma on my right hand until it started shaking vigorously. I un-summoned Inazuma and swapped with Tengu-kaze instinctively. I can feel my sanity losing it's grip as I continued glaring at Tom with killing intent. He only noticed me after as he was done checking his wounds. He left my dagger in his pelvis as he realised that pulling it out will cause him to bleed to death.
After seeing that I stood up, he started panicking. Perhaps he realised that I was using Bloodlust. He leapt back in an attempt to gain distance between us but at this point, I had already lost my sanity. I had no idea what I did in the next few moments but when I finally regained my sanity, I was choking in my own blood with Lily pressing her hands on what looked like an arrow on the left side of my chest. She was panicking and crying as she called out for Rose who was nowhere to be seen. I tried to call out to Lily but I couldn't as blood kept gushing out of my mouth. I reached out my right hand to hold her cheek as my consciousness started fading. I wiped her tears and did my best to smile for her. Then darkness overtook my vision entirely. Zen Hawthorn, had died.