383 - Phantom Winds of Fate Pt. 6 [Sturmblitz]

Leopold suddenly found himself skewered through the chest to the sect’s main doors. It was a pillar of black ice, accursed glyphs thrumming beneath its surface, sapping the strength from his sword-arm. The moment he realized what they were, boiling blood burst from his eyes.

He blinked once more, and he realized he was back in the arena, and his technique was still in motion… For another half-second. The thunderous roar and the flash of black came all the same, tearing through his swordlight. Leopold succeeded in parrying the spear insofar as his sword met its tip, but then he heard his sword’s cry, its metal creaking before it broke. His sword-arm followed with it, and the arena’s barrier shattered like so much glass — and it was Leopold’s sword-arm that ended up pinned to the sect building’s main door.

The only difference between Leopold’s premonition and reality was that he had been spared a certain death, and she had gone out of her way to let him know that. The premonitions, from the sound of his own sword breaking to his own death, had all been the result of his foe’s aura conveying her killing intent to him.

MONUMENT REFUTATION

WALKING WITH DEATH DAY BY DAY

LIVE FOR A THOUSAND YEARS

SKEWER THE SUN WITH AN ICICLE

HALT A FALLING MOON WITH A CLOUD

WALKING WAY OF THE ETERNAL SOLDIER

HEADPIERCER ARTS: TWISTING SPEAR OF LOST HYPERBOREA

The courtyard fell silent. Out of the disciples surrounding the arena, only one was still conscious, the others having succumbed to the backlash from the barrier.

Zefaris and Leopold stared one another down as the gory geyser that was the Stillwind Branch Elder’s shoulder died down, his body plugging the hole long before he could bleed out. Her form flickered as she skipped forward in time once again, reloading her weapon.

“Concede,” she demanded, raising her gun to her bleeding, disarmed opponent. She knew better than to assume he couldn’t fight anymore. “You saw it. I know you did. I could’ve killed you just as easily as I can kill you right now. Concede, or die.”

A hideous grimace gripped his face.

“My name is Leopold Ritter Branstein the Third…” he said, raising his remaining arm to his chest, pointing at his heard with his thumb. Imperceptibly, he marshalled a thread of armament aura inside it, and pierced his own heart. Leopold’s aura rampaged out of control, shredding his body and the ground around him all the same. His clothing exploded off of him, and his skin became as tattered rags. The blood which he had already bled instantly returned to his side, formed into the shape of an enormous, floating sword by the sheer force of his presence. In the same manner, the blood now gushing from his flayed flesh armored him in a new skin of scarlet blades — even his hair formed itself into this form. Zefaris knew that he was already dead — she saw the life flee his eyes the moment that sword took shape by his side.

“...AND I SHALL NEVER KNOW SURRENDER!”

SIGN OF SELF-SACRIFICE

UNRIVALED IN THE SWORD

EVEN IN THE FACE OF DEATH

SEVERING SCRIPTURE FRAGMENT

LIFE SEVERANCE AVATAR INCARNATION

He charged headlong at Zefaris, thunder roaring in his wake as he broke the sound barrier. Bullets flew past him as he skidded left and right, dodging attacks he had no way to see or hear. Shots from Pentacle’s weapon-spirit tore into his soul, but he still continued on in his suicidal charge. 

Out of the blue, from the base of one of the arena’s pillars, from the gun of a nameless, forgotten phantom, there came a ghostly bullet, and it smashed straight into the side of Leopold’s head. And he crumpled. His eyes glazed over, and he fell forward face-first, skidding along the ground like a ragdoll, his blood-sword smearing along the way. Were his body not reinforced through long decades of cultivation, he would have no longer had a face by the time his corpse stopped at Zefaris’ feet.

Zefaris did not holster her gun and walk away.

She drew forth more and more of her deathly strength, pouring it out through her eye as the full breadth of her phantom contingent once more manifested, encircling her. The arena’s barrier, compromised as it was, became as a wall of ice.

Among the Stillwind Black Horse Sect’s members, few could find it within themselves to even move after what they had witnessed, and a number of them looked to flee, assuming the worst. Before all else, Zefaris drew back to herself the dragonsteel core 

One by one, Zefaris carved ritual glyphs around Leopold’s corpse, and with each glyph, a shape came into view above the spot where he had died. It was not the flayed form he had in his death, but it was also not the form he had held in life — Leopold’s vestige bore a gaping hole through his right shoulder, and a pinpoint of light burned in the crater of his left eye. Amplified and clarified in this manner, like a lost aetherwave signal, she could almost feel as if he was alive again — so razor-like had the man’s aura been that all presence as a living thing had been eradicated from him, even in life. Now that Zefaris could think on it, if only for just a moment, it was truly remarkable. One could reasonably mistake his presence for the presence of a legendary sword.

There was no sword in his hand.

And yet, somehow, he felt no less armed than when he had lived.

Zefaris understood. His skill had been so pure that the sword in his hand meant little. If he had a sword, he could fight. If he didn’t have a sword, he could simply will one into existence. It was not particularly different from the phenomena she could bring about, even if her method was less direct.

The formation circle was finished, having taken longer due to being far more complex than necessary for this purpose. At this point, the arena’s barrier failed completely, the pillars falling back into place, flush with the ground. This was of no consequence — the small army of phantoms that surrounded Zefaris was more than enough deterrent for those who could get past the passive effects of her mere presence.