“My father was a politician. I know this is coming from me, his son...but I assure you he was a fine man.” With a Skill-crafted coat of flames hanging from his shoulders, Hero surrounded the spear he wielded with a repulsive force field using his psychokinesis.
Dill raised his shield and bore the brunt of Hero’s spear—the blow was heavy, the spear imbued with an unnatural weight. Dill’s bones creaked, and he felt like the assault might blow off his arm as well as his shield. However, he managed to swiftly jump back to his feet and prepare to receive another impact. His body was sent flying like a cannonball, grinding against the stone pavement as he touched back down a good distance away from where he had stood only a moment ago. This was fine with him—if he tried to stand firm in the face of this power, his arms would be easily broken.
Dill only had a moment of relief. Hero’s follow-up attack arrived immediately as he closed the distance between them with a teleportation gate.
“My father is dead,” Hero went on. “He was abandoned and ignored by a society that had tired of him. People spread baseless rumors of corruption about him as though they were fact. My father was a righteous man...but he was too righteous. The people of our time couldn’t live up to his standard of integrity.” This time, Dill dodged the force-field-enhanced spear instead of weathering the blow, retaliating with a thrust from his sword. Hero tilted his head to one side, dodging the strike. He then proceeded to lower his stance, planted a hand on the ground and executed an inverted roundhouse kick, which Dill blocked using his shield. Neither man would back down from the other. Dill held his sword overhand and moved to stab Hero before he could recover his stance.
“Your speech back there reminded me of the demagoguery of my father’s political opponents.”
This statement made Dill suddenly feel uneasy, and he halted his attack. It was at that moment he realized something had changed. It was no longer there—Hero no longer wore the coat of flames he had created.
The coat had left Hero’s shoulders and flew into the air, transforming into a swarm of butterflies which fluttered back down to earth. Beset on all sides by wings of flame, Dill shrouded himself in his chain mail cloak and endured the assault. Spinning around, he spread his cloak again, and the resulting gust scattering the butterflies.
As his field of vision opened up once more, Dill saw Hero waiting for him, prepared to strike him with his spear with all his might. “Aegisthus. I really don’t like you.”
The force field spear came at Dill, impossible to defend against. It was utterly impossible now to block with his shield or to deflect with a blow to its side. Could he dodge it? It was already too late for that!
“You are fated to die, Dill Steel-Link!”
Nevertheless, Dill stepped forward. Before the spear achieved the peak of its momentum, he struck Hero with a preemptive shield bash, forcing the Reincarnator back. The tip of the spear pierced Dill’s shoulder, but it did not go all the way through, so the weapon was pulled free of his flesh as Hero flew backward.
Dill groaned and dropped to his knees. The spear might not have stabbed completely through his shoulder, but it was certainly no shallow wound.
“Aegisthus... Resourceful as ever, I see. No, rather...it was my failure. I held my spear in a short overhand grip with the intent of finishing you off. If I had made full use of my reach, I could have more reliably dealt you a mortal blow. I was too eager to win.” Hero did not seem to be addressing Dill as he said all this. “...In this way, I am still immature. But there is one ability I have that my father didn’t: I am a Reincarnator. I will never die. I can start over as many times as I need, so I will continue to develop endlessly.”
To buy time to staunch his wound, Dill decided to humor Hero. “I wonder. For my part, I think people are able to live diligently precisely because there are limits to their lives.”
“We’d call that living fast and dying young. It’s always instigators like you who fool, cajole, and light a fire under the masses—those who are pressed upon by their work and the passing days, and whose ignorance has not yet been banished by the light of knowledge.” Hero spat the words at Dill, his hatred laid bare. “Though I suppose if every member of that great crowd was a Socrates or a Plato, I guess there would never be an opportunity for a Hitler to rise to power... Looks like you’ve stopped your bleeding. Let’s continue.”
Dill turned one side of his body away from Hero, carefully concealing his wounded shoulder as he prepared to resume fighting. He now cursed at Hero in response. “Stop toying with me.”
“Once I have thoroughly beaten you into the ground in a fair fight, right in front of the citizens of Vulcan, their eyes will be opened for the first time. Now, come at me.”
Dill assumed a low stance and dashed forward, while Hero struck the ground with the butt of his spear. What sort of Skill is this? Dill gazed at the place where Hero’s spear had struck as murky shadows erupted from the ground and covered the area between them in the blink of an eye. Dill halted his charge and retreated from Hero, jumping back another step, but he couldn’t escape the shadows. The darkness had oozed across far too much of the ground.
The shadow was actually an extremely broad teleportation gate. Dill remained motionless. With his feet sinking into the surface of the newly opened black lake, it was as though he was standing in a thick layer of mud. He couldn’t move.