“What are you? Are you really human?” he uttered.
“Shut up!”
I spun around and threw an axe kick, my heel screaming down through the air toward him. But Nero dodged this, too, and slipped away out of reach. My boot collided with the ground. Nero tripped as the ground fractured beneath his feet. He was knocked out of position, his face a mix of confusion and joy.
“Now I know what you are,” he said. “You’re a monster!”
“Yeah, I worked that out a long time ago!”
I leaped forward and closed the distance between us in a flash, launching a flying kick straight into Nero’s guts. He was sent careening into the forest, but I didn’t feel much impact in my foot.
“So he uses the wind as a kind of armor too, huh? And he’s capable enough to deflect my attacks. What a pain.”
Should I break through with a combination of strikes? Or put everything I’ve got into a single killing shot? Either way, I’ve got to keep up the attack.
But as I pushed off my right foot to move, blood spurted from my leg.
“The instant I kicked him, he used wind magic to counterattack . . .” I muttered.
My leg was opened as if it had been slashed by the air itself. My specially made boots were fine, but the middle of my thigh down was a patchwork of open wounds. I didn’t give it much thought and healed it immediately, then turned to Aul.
“You lot!” Aul shouted at them. “Let’s give these damned demons a taste of our teamwork!”
“Don’t have to tell me twice!” shouted a knight.
“It’s the same as always!” shouted another.
They’ll be fine.
We were outnumbered, but our unit was clearly more skilled than the opposition. I’d be able to back them up as long as I finished my own fight quickly and decisively.
“I’m counting on you, guys,” I said, my mind made up.
Trusting my companions, I sped toward the depths of the forest in pursuit of my enemy. If the two of us had gone all-out in the open field, my knights might have gotten pulled into the fray. To avoid that, I’d kicked Nero deeper into the forest. Judging by his counterattack, it looked to be the right call. No ordinary warrior could respond at such speed. If it had been anyone else but me, she might have already died in a pool of her own blood.
I can’t let him get near the others.
“I bet he’s thinking exactly the same thing,” I muttered to myself.
To a certain extent, Nero had let me kick him. He’d let his wind magic act as armor and then let it carry him with the momentum of my kick. As far as I could tell, the only reason to do that was to move the battlefield. That meant that both of us were gunning for a one-on-one battle.
As soon as I entered the forest, the trees to my side split in half as an invisible blade cut through them and headed straight for me.
“Resorting to tricks and traps now?!” I shouted.
I leaped over the wind blade, kicking off the trees to get closer to the source of the attack.
“Found you!” I yelled.
“That wind blade didn’t even make a sound!” exclaimed Nero.
His sword was wrapped in wind as he brought it down in a diagonal slice. A huge crescent shaped wind blade filled my vision cutting down the surrounding trees as it sped toward me.
“You’ll have to do better than that!” I shouted.
I kicked hard off a tree and barreled toward the ground, bouncing off it as a felled tree collapsed where I’d landed. But it didn’t matter; I was far quicker. I raced to Nero. The demon wasn’t going to just sit and wait, however. He launched more wind blades.
Nero’s attacks were slow. I easily evaded them. I grabbed hold of one of the falling trees in one hand and roared as I threw it at Nero. It was about seven meters long and as thick as a bear. I launched it with brute strength alone. Nero laughed, incredulous. Before that tree collided with him, I launched others about the same size and kept running.
In the next instant, the forest filled with the sound of those trees colliding with Nero. I took hold of another falling tree, this one bigger than the others, and brought it down hard with everything I had on the pile of trees that Nero was now buried under.
“Just to make sure you’re good and dead,” I said.
The attack would have killed anyone else. But now I watched as the trees were sliced into pieces and thrown through the air. In the middle of them all was Nero, his sword slicing around him with ease. I didn’t even blink, however; I merely clenched my fists and continued to close the distance between us. A smile crept over Nero’s face as he readied his sword to meet my attack.
“Rose, was it?” he said.
I ignored him and brought my fist back. I slipped around the wind that whipped and sliced the air around me and threw a punch that should have gone straight through Nero’s defenses.
But it was never going to be that simple. His movements were extremely light and quick with the wind supporting them. It didn’t just speed up his footwork, it boosted everything: his speed, his defenses, and even his evasive movements.
“You humans are impressive,” he said.
I knocked the tip of his red sword away with my fist.
That sword.
I knew that there was a very good chance that it was imbued with a curse. Even if I could survive a wind blade hitting me, I had to avoid that blade.
“I’ve never seen a human as strong as you,” Nero continued. “It’s astounding to think you match me with just physical strength alone. I may be your enemy, but you have my praise.”
We had been fighting at a relentless pace, and yet Nero had yet to break a sweat. That was just as true for me too, though. I had been right to keep my knights away from him. Nero would have been far too much for them.
“Shut up,” I said. “If you want to talk, do it after I’ve smacked you in the head.”
“Harsh one, aren’t you?”
I launched a kick powerful enough to knock Nero’s head clean from his shoulders, so the relaxed look disappeared from his face. The kick was strong enough to blast straight through his wind armor; that was not something he could let the wind take care of on its own.
“You won’t kill me with your cheap tricks!” I shouted.
“So it would seem!”
Nero barely dodged my kick, then stood with his sword at the ready in one hand. He pointed the palm of his other hand straight at me. A fierce whirlwind surrounded me. It had the size and force of a tornado. I heard metal clangs as it whipped around with me at its center.
“He’s put blades in this thing,” I muttered.
The blades made it clear that the whirlwind was a cage designed to trap the target. Attempt to escape and get sliced into bits. But to me, this was just another of Nero’s cheap tricks. I locked on to Nero’s silhouette, just barely visible through the wind, and charged through the wall of blades.
“You will not trap me!” I shouted.
My body was wrapped in healing magic, so even though the wind sliced across me, my wounds closed just as soon as they opened.
“You’re prepared to critically wound yourself just to— No! Your magic! It’s—”
I launched myself at Nero and fired another kick right into his gut. He just barely managed to defend himself but went sliding some ten meters away. His voice rasped as he let out a chuckle.
“Never would I have thought you’d be a healer,” he said. “So your pure physicality and your incredible healing rates allow you to launch hugely destructive attacks. I’ll bet you make for a fine healer aside from all of that, too. Heh. You really are something else.”
“So? Are we done here, then?”
“Don’t be daft. All you left was a little rumble in my stomach. I don’t even consider it a scratch.”
Nero raised his sword again. I felt an incredible pressure emanating from his stance. I got the strong sensation that he had been holding back until now.
“I am going to slay you right here,” he said.
“I’d like to see you try,” I replied. “I’ll bash your skull in before that happens.”
“Then let’s make it clear who’s stronger!”
We leaped toward one another. Both of us threw all caution to the wind. Now it would simply come down to who was more powerful. We roared as our arms and heads collided. We were out to kill one another. The forest around us was our arena in this battle to the death.