[TTIABAD] Chapter 121: Demon VS Fairy

My one working arm cleaved through the air as my blood dripped on the ground. My mind was a razor blade of action and reaction. Air, gravity, sweat, it was all too slow. The last bits of my muscles stretched, slammed, and flew me forward, as beams of death bored past me. My eyes stared, but they were practically useless, Rinkaru never stayed within for a long, a constant stream of instant movement.

It was beautiful to my senses. The sky was full of death, information suddenly appearing saying instant destruction was coming at me, coloring the horizon. And Rinkaru herself, an alien like knowledge everywhere and nowhere all at once. How many could see such beauty? Could experience it first hand? Survive it?

My body bent, turning, my Aura infused through my body. Now I understood Tyler more than I ever expected. I’d been told he’d been taught Aura to slow him down, and for all my ability to read with my Power Gauge, it wasn’t perfect. Not yet. The power was extreme but I had no idea it was so hard to control, to use, like a million muscles were infused into my body all at once. I would run out of my Aura before I ran out of blood.

My foot met the ground and I followed my instincts, both survival and more, throwing myself forward with all my speed and strength, the air pushing against me, trying to stop me as I cut right through it. Rinkaru appeared in front of me a blast of energy like a miniature nuclear reactor blazing through the air towards me as I slid one knee and connected with my leg. She flew and I chased, my heart shuddering, tracing across a tightrope of death. It beat so fast, ringing in my ears, the only thing besides Rinkaru that could keep up with me in this frozen world. My eyes saw leaves and trees, falling, looking like time has stopped.

She went through two of them, before she disappeared again, appearing right behind my left leg. My aura tail slammed into the ground, pushing me up just as it went underneath me. Another blast, chest first, as my wings blasted me back, the beam zooming past my face. I could feel it, pure destruction so close, covering half of my vision as I stared down. A small face with the fiercest of eyes met mine. A true warrior stared me down in that moment so small that seconds had lost their value.

Again and again, dodges were almost all I could do. An endless, constant cycle, as the timer on my life ticked further and further down. Never before had I been so aware of what I had lost. There was no pain, despite all the damage, there was no pain. Just a sense of numbness where once there was feeling. Of emptiness. I could barely feel my blood and heart as they beat and flowed fast enough to keep up with me. Air had become an enemy, my every movement so fast that it felt like pushing through something semi-solid. And in my mind? Adrenaline, hormones, it all takes time to reach the head. All I felt was… nothing. No emotions, not because they weren’t there, but because I was focused and there simply wasn’t time to acknowledge them. I needed to win and that’s all there was. Death waited at every corner and survival meant everything had to go when it mattered the most. But something obvious was becoming obvious as more and more beams fell past me.

Speed could not beat teleportation.

But I was learning. Not getting faster, but Rinkaru… she moved by thought. Instantaneous movement, controlled entirely at her slightest whims. A god of true movement, everything right next to her at all times.

But thoughts move in patterns. And I… was learning.

Whipping so fast the air seemed to reject me, my leg slammed once more into Rinkaru, her energy barrier going up. She teleported-

-And I slammed my foot down where she appeared, sending her smashing into the ground. She teleported away quickly, but it kept happening. Again and again, my Ability picked and poked and prodded, pulling the information apart, feeding it to my head. But my Ability wasn’t able to predict. All it does was give me information. I held it. All the sequences, all the different parts, my brain felt like it was exploding as I traced it out and followed my instincts.

I ran, twisted, slamming my foot into her. Flew myself backwards with my aura wings, feeling the drain, as I slammed my knee against her. My claws flashed to a point the air next to my right ear as I carved out an actual chunk of her barrier.

Again and again, I hit. Not all, Rinkaru was a true warrior and she learned quickly, changing her thoughts, changing her patterns, changing her movements, but I kept pace, never stopping, always moving, always attacking. An eternity of movement so strange as I stopped feeling mortal. My body twisted and attacked, my arm and legs moved, but it was so quick, so instant, it felt like I was playing chess with my whole body at once. I had become a calculator, only decisions.

I slammed my claws across her barrier, sending her skipping across the ground, and I followed up my foot slamming down. But this time was different. My foot hit as fast as I could manage… and Rinkaru’s barrier cracked.

My eyes widened but my body didn’t stop, slamming my foot down and down and down, again and again and again. Like I was trying to crack a diamond with my leg alone. I slammed and-

I leapt back as a wave of energy nearly tore me from existence.

From the divot in the ground floated out Rinkaru, looking tired, feeling exhausted in my senses, and bleeding from her nose and eyes. But she still felt just as dangerous, her eyes screaming her intensity to me.

The battle paused and-

I nearly toppled as a flood of sensations hit me all at once. My body was… worse. A migraine unlike any other nearly slammed me and I felt my actual vision go black for a moment before flashing to white. Blood loss and pure absolute exhaustion swam in me, even as I could feel power flooding from my soul into my nearly spent body. Muscles had torn, I’d lost my other arm at some point somehow, another one of my damns horns was gone, and my right foot was more like a smashed, burnt hammer than an actual foot. Hot and cold swam around me and a million pieces of numbness screamed into my ear. Breathing tried to choke me out as blood seemed to be drowning my lungs. The hormones seemed to catch up as well and panic and fear tried to spread through me before I crushed it.

All at once, that hit me, and yet I had to seem fine as Rinkaru stared me down, waiting for an opening. My entire body tensed but apparently, it wasn’t enough as Rinkaru simply floated there, no energy barrier, no teleportation.

“What… a monster.” Rinkaru said.

“Likewise.” I was shocked I could speak, till I realized that even doing that much had drained some of my aura.

“I will die here today.” Rinkaru said. She stated it, like a fact of reality. But with all the drive and passion of a career soldier. Namely, none. Just a simple reality.

“You could leave. Take your team. I’m open to peace.” I tried. No one could say I didn’t try.

Rinkaru shook her head.

“I will die today. And I hope to take you with me.”

I frowned.

“Petty.”

“You are a threat to my kind and the kind we shepherd and protect. You demons always have been but you… especially are. I saw cities fall, lands be scorched, tens of thousands of my kind reduced to playthings and killed both during, after, and before they were used like sex toys. And that was the norm! You… it is beings like you that would cause my species to go extinct. How much destruction will you cause in passing whim if you grow to A rank? The mythical S rank? I am an adventurer only in hobby. More than anything… I am a Soldier. A Warrior. If I can kill you, if I can remove your soul from this plane, then that is enough for me. I have done my Duty.”

And with that talking was over as I felt something that had my eyes going wide. Energy began to build and build and build. But it wasn’t coming out, it wasn’t forming any beams or showing any signs, it wasn’t an energy barrier or a regular attack. No, perhaps even calling it an attack was wrong in some way.

Because all of that energy was building inside Rinkaru.

My mind sped up and froze all at once. She was going to blow herself up. Every moment I could see the energy reaching new peaks. She must have drained a lot but there was still more than enough to kill me. Fairies… were fucking broken in terms of power. She could still teleport, I could see it almost directly, could see she was going to build up and teleport right in front of me. And when that happened… there wouldn’t be anything left of me.

Think think think think. Fuck. FUCK.

I ran, arriving in front of her in an instant. She smiled up at me, as my foot connected with her body.

And then there was darkness.