“…I’ll kill you,” Shin muttered quietly, his voice nearly drowned out by the wind. He slashed at me, his face contorted in rage.
“Whoa, there.” I whipped my black sword up diagonally to defend myself, and our blades locked.
“I’m done going easy on you! I’m gonna impose the most unfair rules I can think of and prove I’m the strongest! Rapacious Demon Zeon’s darkness is disabled!” Shin yelled.
He tried to use Imperial Decree to get rid of my darkness, but it didn’t work. That was because the holy darkness blazing cloaking me didn’t originate from Zeon but from myself.
“Dammit! Why didn’t that work…?!” Shin said. Did I get the target of the rule wrong? Yeah, this feeling… This new glowing darkness isn’t coming from Rapacious Demon Zeon! There’s a new source! But what is it?!
Something occurred to me as I watched Shin grow frustrated.
“I finally figured out Imperial Decree’s weakness. You can’t impose rules on things you don’t understand. Right?”
“…”
“You just tried and failed to disable my darkness. Or are you going to claim you failed on purpose again?”
“Allen Rodol… You really are obnoxious, you know that?”
“Ah-ha-ha, I get that a lot. Hah!”
I hit Shin as hard as I could with my sword and sent him flying through the air. The white darkness enveloping my body gave me an overwhelming advantage in close combat.
Okay, next I’m gonna test out the true power of my Soul Attire! I reached for the long-awaited main course, but just then…
“Water explodes!”
…white blanketed my vision, and I felt my body get ravaged by the blast and heat from an explosion.
That was really intense…, I thought once it was over. That hadn’t been a normal explosion, but one strengthened to a fearsome degree by Shin’s bottomless spirit power.
“Haah… I slice up your entire body, and you recover immediately. I stop your heart, and you revive. I blow up your face, and you survive unscathed. What do I have to do to kill you?” Shin asked.
“Beats me. Maybe the king of the dead hates you,” I said, brushing off his question so I could analyze the last sequence. “That last attack… Oh, I see what you did. You imposed a rule that makes the moisture in the air explode.”
“That’s right,” Shin confessed readily. He threw his arms wide. “I took a moment to consider the best way to defeat the monster that is Allen Rodol. I have a brain to match my power, you see. After some thought, I arrived at an answer.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I’m gonna chip away at you. I’m gonna wear down your body, mind, and spirit power until you have nothing left! You’ll be a ragged piece of tissue paper fluttering helplessly in the wind when I’m done with you!”
Shin gave me a carefree smile.
“You’re not invincible, Allen. You bleed when you’re cut, you get knocked down when you’re hit hard enough, and you feel pain when you’re in an explosion. The only thing that sets you apart is your unbelievable toughness. And where does that toughness come from? The defensive and healing capabilities of your darkness, which is maintained by your spirit power. In other words, if you run out of spirit power, you lose your darkness and become a run-of-the-mill swordsman. Do I have that right?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” I admitted.
I was pretty tough, but I was still just an ordinary person. Without the spirit power to fuel my darkness, I wouldn’t last long.
“Ha-ha, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this duel is about to become a living hell for you. I’m gonna torture you with a never-ending chain of the most basic, annoying attacks. They’ll come thick and fast, and you won’t be able to avoid them! I’m gonna cut, crush, tear, and beat you until you can’t take any more! Just like this!”
Shin snapped his fingers. The world turned white again as explosions assaulted me.
“…!”
Making water explode is one of the most annoying rules he could’ve come up with…
The source of the explosions was the small amount of moisture in the air. Shin had essentially planted bombs all around me that were too small for the naked eye to see, and the explosions happened without warning, making them impossible to dodge.
Those explosions are extremely powerful and have endless range, plus they’re impossible to avoid… That’s actually insane.
So why did I still feel confident I was going to win?
“Now dance for me!” Shin yelled.
He pressed me with a tempest of ten, twenty, thirty explosions.
Okay…
I reached out with my consciousness, going deep into my soul and searching for the power I needed to get through this situation.
…Nope, that won’t work. Neither will that.
I wouldn’t have had to take the time to search for solutions every time I got into trouble if I’d already achieved mastery of Rapacious Demon Zeon’s power. This was a first for me, though, so I couldn’t be too hard on myself.
“Eh? What’s with the silence?” Shin asked. “Are you trying to think of another dumb plan?”
“…”
“…What do you think gives you the right to ignore me when I’m speaking to you? Hah!”
Shin swung his left hand down, and a giant ball of light appeared before my eyes. It contained a vast amount of spirit power and was clearly about to explode.
That was when I found the great power I needed to overcome his current assault.
“I’m gonna borrow this, Lia,” I said, concentrating spirit power into my black sword. “Conquer—Dragon King Fafnir!”
Black and white flames swept up around me and vaporized the moisture in the air. With the source of the explosions now gone, the ball of light dissolved.
“Wh-what…?!” Shin said, stepping back with a dumbfounded expression. “Th-that’s impossible… You control darkness, so why are you suddenly able to summon flames?”
The ability of my Soul Attire, Rapacious Demon Zeon, wasn’t the manipulation of darkness, but the power to consume anything and make it a part of my own flesh. It could prey upon anything in the world, including Soul Attires, Spirit Cores, living creatures, inanimate objects, phenomena, and more.
It feels like there are a few steps to copying a Soul Attire ability, though…
Rapacious Demon Zeon matched Imperial Decree in terms of freedom and versatility.
“What the hell is your ability?!” Shin yelled, pointing at me.