Chapter 342: Practical Duel
"Grace, get serious, or I swear I’ll force you to. It’s frustrating hearing you say you’re taking this seriously when you clearly aren’t," Eve says to me, loading magic into the blade of her sword, a weapon that truly is quite durable.
"Eve, I don’t think that’s a good idea, especially with Marie and that girl here," I say to Eve, who’s way too worked up, but that only makes her furrow her brows like I’m being ridiculous.
"They’re fine. How am I supposed to test my strength... I mean, how am I supposed to teach Shizuka properly if you don’t take me seriously?" She lets her real motives slip, and I just sigh.
"Okay, okay, you win. I’ll take this more seriously, then, but don’t complain if I hurt you." Either way, if I don’t take it seriously, I’m the one who’s going to get hurt. Eve’s no longer someone I can go easy on and walk away unscathed.
"If you hurt me, Evelyn-sama will fix me. You don’t need to worry." Her sword’s blade glows purple, releasing a kind of electricity that heats the air around her.
’Well, I guess it’s time to use your magic to reinforce and attack at the same time...’ I think, gripping my sword tighter. The Hikishin it releases emits a faint golden glow as I take a deep breath, steadying myself.
"..."
CRASH
In a swift advance, I slice from the side, hitting Eve’s sword and violently hurling her backward almost out of the arena as she’s caught off guard by my speed. The arena floor beneath her feet cracks from the sheer force she uses to stop herself in place.
Giving her no room to recover, I lunge forward, spinning my sword by the hilt and releasing it to keep it airborne. I drive a punch into Eve’s stomach, lifting her off the ground, then quickly pivot my body, plant my hands on the floor, and use my strength to push myself upward, landing a double flying kick to Eve’s face that launches her even higher.
I snatch my sword before it falls and leap backward, dodging a strike from Eve that splits the arena in two with a deafening boom. She charges at me, recovering faster than I expected, with two heavy blows.
I spin my sword until she gets close, and using the motion, my wrist, and my fist, I bring down a one-handed sword strike, stopping her in place while she barely manages to defend.
"[Sacred Dew]" I cast magic, generating a small sphere of light in my hand as I quickly move it toward Eve’s stomach. She tries to pull away, but the sphere expands violently into an explosion of light that blasts her far back.
She spins through the air to recover and swings her sword, launching a slash of electricity. The strike turns critical — I know it from the sudden shift in power. The purple electricity turns black, and I narrowly dodge it.
The electric slash melts the arena’s rocks and carves a deep cut into the ground that keeps descending vertically. The earth crumbles along the cut’s width, shattering everything around us and turning the arena into something jagged and uneven.
"!!!" Eve swings her sword rapidly, unleashing several of those slashes. Many of them turn critical, which is absurd. I’ve never seen so many consecutive critical strikes in my life. Honestly, I can count on my fingers how many critical hits I’ve ever witnessed.
’That’s insane! She must have some ability that helps her land criticals... I’ve never seen anything like it.’ I grow more cautious of critical strikes. They’re far too dangerous, and even though I’d heard Eve could do this, it’s the first time I’m seeing it firsthand.
I launch golden Hikishin slashes against hers. The collision generates unbearable heat, making me sweat because it’s getting so hot, and the remnants of that strange electricity are leaving small burns on my clothes.
’It’s so... hot.’ The more slashes we fire at each other, the worse the temperature gets. I start to pant as my clothes literally catch fire. My skin is protected by a Hikishin barrier, but the ambient heat still pierces my defenses.
"Y-You’re really strong," I tell her honestly. In raw power, she’s weaker than me, but the cost of fighting her is far too high. Most opponents would die from the current heat alone, which has started melting all the rocks around us.
"Thank you. You’re strong too, very strong," she says, leaping upward to dodge the slashes. Then I feel an immense concentration of Hikishin, as a huge thunderous sound erupts, like a violent storm closing in.
The sound of the thunder and lightning is so loud that everything around us vibrates in unison. I can sense the electric charge in the air, and all my hairs stand on end. Up in the air, Eve gathers that violent energy while I decide to match it, charging a massive amount of magic into my sword, using sacred magic at an extremely high potency.
The purple and golden glows collide, blinding everything around us as the temperature rises so high that my vision seems distorted by the heat.
When Eve drops straight toward me, I twist my whole body, swinging my blade in a vertical slash from bottom to top, rising in a swift strike. Eve’s blade collides with mine, generating a monstrous electric explosion.
The air becomes so unbearably hot that my clothes turn to ash, and Eve’s sword melts as if it were iron thrown into a smelting furnace. Eve narrowly avoids being cleaved in half, using magic as a platform to avoid falling face-first onto the molten rocks.
Since Eve lost her sword, she can no longer fight as before — she channels energy into her sword to avoid injuring her body. This puts me at an advantage, and I ready myself to strike and end this quickly.
"YOU STUPID IDIOTS!!!! LOOK AT THE SHIT YOU’VE DONE!!!" We stop trying to strike each other when we hear Marie’s scream. I look at Marie and see her naked, the tips of her hair slightly singed. The girl next to her is fine, but she’s also naked from the heat that torched her clothes.
"YOU STUPID FUCKERS, GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!!" Marie screams as a violent wave of Hikishin erupts from her body. She’s truly furious, not just because her clothes were burned off, but because the heat singed the tips of her hair.
"W-Wait, Marie, this isn’t... AAHHHHHH!!!" Marie uses her blessing to create a massive gravitational field that works like a slingshot, initially pulling us in forcefully toward the sphere, but then the sphere stops generating gravity and simply launches us upward.
"..." Eve and I soar thousands of meters into the air, thrown far off somewhere. Since we were close together when we were launched, we’re still close up here in the sky too.
"You’re really beautiful, Eve," I give Eve a slightly flirtatious smile, more as a reflex from the past than genuine flirting, besides the fact that she really is magnificently beautiful.
"If you keep staring, I’ll gouge your eyes out. This body is similar to Evelyn-sama’s. You have no right to see it naked!!!" She speaks with extreme coldness, sending genuine chills down my spine from her seriousness.
"O-Of course, hahaha, I don’t want to lose my eyes!! Besides, I only have eyes for my wife!! I’m married and faithful!! Marie is my one and only girl!!" I say seriously as I stop looking at her. Either way, I’ve already seen everything I needed to see.
"I think we overdid it," I try to make conversation while we’re still ascending. I’m already used to Marie tossing me around.
"No, it was good. Shizuka generated a Hikishin defense on pure instinct. Her talent is truly monstrous, greater than Evelyn-sama’s, who learns things extremely fast." When Eve says that, I realize it’s true.
Marie didn’t protect Shizuka, but the only thing that burned was Shizuka’s clothes, and she wasn’t even sweating, showing that her Hikishin defense alone already surpasses my barrier.
’...That...’ I’m stunned when I realize that!! I’m a heroine with considerable training, I’m strong, but I know I’m below Marie, Esther, etc.
But still, Evelyn just created this Shizuka, and she’s already capable of defending herself better than me on pure reflex!! This girl is going to be absurd in the future!!
"This new ally is really strong," I say, trying to learn more. Why does Evelyn need someone this absurd? I can no longer trust Evelyn, so I have serious doubts about what Evelyn will do with someone so absurd.
"Yes. Now that I’ve shown her what a Hikishin fight looks like, I no longer need your help. I appreciate what you’ve done, but I’ll be busy for now," Eve says as we finally begin to fall.
"Evelyn-sama will be handling the overall situation, so my orders will decrease for now since I’ll be occupied. I hope you and Marie continue the good work," she says, using Hikishin as a platform to "leap" through the air, starting to head back to where we were before.
’Tsk...’ It seems she won’t say much more, but I understand. It’s not really something I should get involved in. I just hope this war ends soon. I hate seeing so many meaningless deaths. If it weren’t for Marie, I would never help the demons in this senseless slaughter.