Chapter 135: The Puppet
At the centre of the hall, which was the same size as the arena where Vlad had fought Marcus, a humanoid figure stood in complete silence.
It was completely covered in dark metallic armour from head to toe. Even its face was hidden behind a helm. But what made Vlad freeze at the entrance were its arms. It had six of them, each one holding a sharp longsword that gleamed under the light of the glowstones.
"I never read about a humanoid creature with six arms," Vlad mumbled as his shock slowly turned into curiosity. "Could it be some kind of mutant?"
Knowing he wouldn’t get any answer just standing there, he stepped inside. The iron doors groaned as they moved back, sealing the room behind him with a heavy thud.
Ding...
[You have entered the first phase of the second floor of Ascension Dungeon!
Defeat the Puppet Knight to enter the second phase.]
"Oh, so it’s a puppet rather than a creature," Vlad sighed, a bit disappointed. But then again, he was also relieved that it was not a living being trapped in the dungeon for who knew how many years only to become a stepping stone in his training.
There was one more thing Vlad was wondering.
"Why is this place named the second floor when I didn’t even climb any stairs?" Vlad mumbled. "Whoever made this place was smart enough to create such a mysterious place but too stupid to know the difference between the second room and the second floor."
Once Vlad was done criticizing the dungeon creator, he moved inward, drawing Eclair out from his storage ring.
When the distance between him and the outer wall increased by over twenty feet, a ring began glowing on the stone floor in a white light around Vlad and the puppet, forming a circle with a radius of fifty metres.
Vlad immediately flinched at the sudden phenomenon.
"I don’t like the feel of th—"
Tang!
"Aren’t you being too restless?" Vlad muttered, his sword crossed against the puppet’s as it suddenly attacked him.
The impact alone told him this was nothing like the previous opponents he had faced.
Vlad tried to push it back. His eyes narrowed when it didn’t even budge. Veins bulged across his forearms as he increased his strength.
Before he could push it back, three more swords came at him from three different directions.
Lightning Step!
Followed by a trail of lightning, he reached the centre of the hall in a quick dash.
"This puppet is too fas—"
Again, he was attacked before he could even take a breath.
However, something was different this time. Various runic symbols glowed across the puppet’s armour with a golden light. A faint veil of golden energy covered its silhouette, the mana even bleeding into the blades themselves, all six of them.
The pressure radiating from those swords instantly rose to another level.
The blades came from every direction, each one moving along an independent path as if he was not fighting one opponent but six different swordsmen at once.
He managed to block two of them, but the other four landed clean hits across his shoulder, forearm, thigh, and leg.
"I-it’s using Mana Blade," Vlad gasped as he tried to create distance between them again. His attempt failed as the puppet arrived before him in an instant once more.
Vlad activated Mana Blade and Foresight Eye at once. He knew better than to hold back.
Yet the attacks proved too much for him to handle. It was insanely fast and skilled for a puppet.
Even with his Foresight Eye, Vlad could not read the paths of six swords being swung at him simultaneously. On the contrary, it only made him dizzier now that he was looking at twelve swords, six illusions of the future and six real ones.
He deactivated the Foresight Eye and put more focus into his defence.
Tang!
Slash!
Tang!
Slash!
Slash!
The grey stone floor slowly turned crimson as the puppet landed several deep wounds across Vlad’s body within a span of less than ten seconds.
Blood dripped steadily from the tip of his sword, splashing onto the stone beneath his feet.
Vlad was confident in his sword skills more than anything. If it was a battle of pure skill without mana, he would always prevail as the victor.
Or that was what he had believed, at least.
The opponent he was currently facing, who was not even a living creature but a literal machine, was easily beating him in the very skills that he had honed for ten years.
For the first time in a training battle, instead of feeling the excitement of improving or the thrill of his opponent’s next move, what Vlad felt was utter frustration and disappointment in himself.
"Hah!!!" he shouted through a bloodied mouth, his cheeks marked by deep slashes, as he suddenly appeared behind the puppet using Lightning Step and thrust his sword forward.
Before his sword could reach the puppet’s armour, one of its arms snapped upward from behind, its blade crashing against his from below and forcing his arms high into the air.
In the very same second, the puppet pivoted on its feet and struck him with another arm, carving a diagonal slash across his torso.
A trail of blood followed across the ground as the impact sent him skidding several feet backward.
"Cough... cough, fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" he muttered, coughing out blood.
The injury did not pain him as much as the frustration of being so pathetic.
What he had been doing since childhood suddenly felt like a joke at this point.
Was all his struggle and training so useless that he couldn’t even land a proper hit on an opponent who was using mana only for Mana Blade?
His grip on Eclair tightened until his knuckles turned white. Crimson lightning danced across the blade, growing more violent and restless, filling the hall with thunderous roars.
Pressing his feet against the floor, he hurled himself into the air and swung the blade down upon the puppet.
The puppet swung it’s own sword, stricking the incoming sword from the side. The blade swept past its head, leaving Vlad completely exposed.
Another blade came from below and struck him beneath the arm.
Slash!
His eyes widened as he watched his severed arm flying high into the air. Before the pain could set in, a kick slammed across his torso, sending him hurtling through the air.
He crashed into the wall outside the ring before falling to the floor with a heavy thud.