SL: Chapter 776 – Day 28,402 – The Sword

“Hello, Sword of Ascalon,” I said to it. I infused a small touch of energy into my words. The sword kept floating there. Golden hilt, two edged blade, it was radiating energy and danger as I stared at it.

“Hello, can you understand me?” I asked again. Still no response. I reached out for the sword’s hilt. It moved away from me.

“Really?” I asked, while glaring at it. “I found you all the way out here. You can’t escape,” I told the weapon. No reaction. That was frustrating.

Darted towards it. The sword moved away, floating in the air, keeping out of my grasp. “You want to do this?” I asked out loud and flicked my hand to the side. A large annihilation beam took out a large chunk of this level 8 zone.

I felt that the sword was hesitating. “You either talk or I blow you away,” I said and reached over to grab it. It didn’t resist as my hand closed around the hilt.

“UNAUTHORIZED USER!”

The words slammed into my head. I could feel its energy pushing against my hand. I focused and pushed back on the weapon with my energy. The sword was shuddering in my grip

“You either obey, or be destroyed. You can think,” I demanded of the weapon. It continued to struggle to break free and use its energy to harm my body. I kept a tight grip on the weapon and pushed back with my energy. A minute went by, then another one.

“REFUSAL!”

“If you don’t want to cooperate, then you will break,” I said with frustration. I hit the blade with an annihilation blast. A golden shield appeared just above the blade, blocking the attack.

“Submit or be destroyed you stupid weapon!” I shouted as my frustration grew. The sword emitted a large burst of energy from its hilt, forcing my grip to open up. The weapon shot into the sky, running away from me.

I began chasing after it. I didn’t think it had more energy than me, from what I could tell, otherwise why would it run. If it could beat me, then it would fight.

Letting out a sigh as I chased after the sword, I increased my speed. The sword was moving more quickly. Bringing a hand up to help me focus, I unleashed an annihilation beam. The sword juked to the side, dodging my attack. I unleashed several more attacks, it dodged or created a golden shield to block them.

Forming an energy barrier in front of me, I adjusted the angle of my body and increased my speed. The sword did something similar. It was clearly intent on not getting captured or destroyed. I had tried to be reasonable, but it clearly didn’t want to be reasonable.

This was going to turn into a long chase, I could already tell. We both had large reserves of energy and could regenerate it. While my speed got faster, my energy expenditure also increased. The sword had more power in a smaller package and kept ahead of me.

If I kept attacking I would have had to slow down as I ran low on energy. This was turning into a battle of attrition. I didn’t mind that, but I wasn’t sure I could win. I wouldn’t lose, but winning was different from not losing. The sword clearly didn’t want me wielding it. It wouldn’t submit.

Air Burst.

Adjusting my use of energy, I tried to gain even more speed. It was getting hard to breathe at the speeds we were traveling at, but I refused to give up and let it escape. While I had the compass with me, I wasn’t about to let this weapon get away.

If it got away this time, then I would never be able to catch it. Giving up now, meant giving up in the future as well. While I might improve my skills through training, I had never pushed my absolute speed to such limits.

The air pressure around me had changed greatly. The air around me had grown colder and had distorted. There was a loud bang as I exceeded the speed of sound. My energy barrier in front of me was becoming harder to maintain as more and more pressure was applied to it.

Even with its angled surface, I was struggling to maintain it. I focused more intently, increasing the angle and the cone shape. The small sliver of air behind my barrier was stable, but incredibly small. I could only turn slightly. The sword was barely staying in front of me, but it wasn’t gaining distance.

If anything, the sword was slowly losing distance. I finally catching up to it. Unlike me, it hadn’t created a barrier in front of its blade. While the blade could cut through the air, it wasn’t as efficient as my cone.

I was used up more energy, but it was still sustainable. I kept trying to increase my speed by whatever means I could. I had never traveled this fast relative to the terrain and air. Breathing was incredibly difficult and I could only see the gleam of gold and large amount of energy in front of me, to know that I was following the sword.

The sword released a burst of energy. My danger sense spiked upwards. I quickly expanded my energy barrier in front of me. Air Burst.

Twisting myself to the side, the sword quickly turned around and came to a stop, it had spun around, and its blade was pointing at me. I managed to dodge as it zoomed by me. I unleashed a large annihilation attack, but the sword formed a golden shield, blocking the attack from landing.

I noted that the earlier damage I had done had self-repaired as well. I spun about in the air and zoomed after the sword as the chase started up again. Time to try something different. I created a beam of energy in front of me, managing to hold the energy in place for a single second, before an annihilation effect occurred.

The sword juked to the side, into another blast. I began relentlessly attacking it as it was forced to shield. If it wanted to try and kill me, then I would return the favor. The sword dove down closer to the ground.

I followed relentlessly. There was a team of humans fighting monsters below, the shockwave from our passage sent them tumbling and disrupting the fight. I didn’t care. The sword was my main focus. No matter where it flew, there would be no escape.

It entered a jungle zone, zipping through the trees and vines. I followed the weapon through the foliage while I kept attacking. The sword didn’t try to turn around again. If I saw it slow down for a second, I would blow it apart.

Each attack I landed was doing slightly more damage, as I focused the energy to spin and drill through its shield. The sword might be sentient, but it hadn’t trained itself for decades. It might have power, but it didn’t have technique. That was the difference between us and why I felt confident being this reckless in my pursuit.

There was an airship ahead moving on a perpendicular course. The sword zipped over the deck of the airship. I followed it, without slowing down. I heard the airship explode behind me but didn’t care as people fell towards the ground screaming. If the sword thought that would make me hesitate, it thought wrong.

It had tried to kill me long ago, taking out the Crystal Vortex, and now it had tried to kill me again. Unlike Artifex, it couldn’t communicate clearly. If it just wanted to shout and make trouble, then there was no way to make peace with the sword.

While it would have been a nice weapon to have, an unruly weapon was worse than no weapon at all.

That was a shame, since I had such high hopes. I had also considered this weapon to be an enemy. While it was being annoying, I felt confident in my eventual victory. The sword flew towards a city. I kept following it. I wasn’t going to let it go, even if it threatened countless people.

The sword flew into the city as I pursued it, keeping up my attacks, forcing it to slow down and defend. Having it move too fast would create too large of a risk of it trying to juke me. Better to devote a portion of my energy to destroying it.

My attacks were getting more on point, using less energy, and doing more damage to its shield. This was also another useful form of training.

The sword moved out of the city. And my energy was quite low at around 5% of my total reserves. Moving through low energy zones had reduced my regeneration. That meant I couldn’t keep up anymore.

I came to a stop in the air, watching the sword speed off. “Dammit,” I muttered. I wasn’t about to start drawing in outside energy to try and defeat the sword. The risk was too high and the battle wasn’t going poorly enough to warrant such a risky action.

“Dammit!” I shouted that word again. I was really pissed. I was winning but couldn’t seal the deal. The energy about the sword had decreased and I didn’t think it had that much to outlast me, but apparently it had.

I started flying again, towards the sword, taking it slow, to let my energy come back. Once it was all back, I would pursue the sword relentlessly once more. Chasing it was almost as good as sparring and in some ways better. It forcing me to improve wasn’t something I would look down on, since there weren’t a long list of partners lining up at my combat level that I could train with.

Besides Artifex, the sword was the only thing capable enough to keep me on my toes while we fought. While it had tried to skewer me, the risk had been quite low. The chances of the sword winning by killing me were next to nothing in my mind.