«rp» Fate's Eye [7/7] ~arc 3~

I discard what Tovias said.
"Just make sure he doesn't turn into one of those undead." I make a vague gesture with my hand, walking towards Kayde.
I try to mask the sadness in my voice.

 

"Yeah, that's gonna hurt."
Also, if the gun user snorts or makes another witty remark, I'm throwing a dagger at him.

 

Libre and Archibaud fought with their respective weapons. They were evenly matched in terms of skills—but that was without Libre's abilities as a demi-human.

"Ugh....!?" Archibaud suddenly felt a choking feeling in his chest, and he leapt back in alarm.

It's poison! He's producing poison from his body. Izanami warned him. Looking closely, Libre was flicking his tongue and breathing out a translucent green gas from his nose and mouth.

Then I have to avoid it somehow to get close......

As a snakeman, that Libre can regenerate. He has a tail. He can use poison.

A really tough opponent, isn't he, Iza? No wonder Knight Carol was having a hard time....

 

@Enhanced_Human

"Ugh.......gah...." Marcus resisted the ability user's grip, but it was no use. From the information from the elf girl Lienya, the man Rodriguez was an ability user able to take in mana from the atmosphere—very much like Archibaud. With that immense amount of mana, he was able to raise his physical ability drastically high.

There was no way a normal human could resist such strength.

"Let..... him go....!!" Rathius shouted, but a deep pain exploded on his head, and he groaned. Even more blood poured out of the wound.

Rathius collapsed, and at the same moment, he heard his own heartbeat grow louder, so much it was echoing in his ears. steam started to rise from his body.

This is bad, really bad. I can't transform right here, in this tiny corridor....... Rathius tensed from the immense pain that went through his entire body. It was like something inside him was trying to break out from every inch of his skin....

Steam rose even more, and something like electricity cracked. "Damn it, damn it, damn it........."

From his place where he was slumped the wall, he raised a shaking arm at Rodriguez. Rathius had to stop that man, who was slowly choking the hunter Marcus. That man was someone who traded people as objects, who imprisoned people like Lienya as slaves, and killed people without hesitation for his own gains..... and he was surely a large factor in this attack on the Capital.

The worst of the worst. People like him, and the Witch Cult, had to be eliminated.....

I'm..... at my limit........

Rathius saw Marcus sending a desperate look at him.

And everything exploded.

*** *** ***

When Marcus opened his eyes, he was lying on the stone corridor. He coughed and coughed, tasting blood in his mouth. He turned his eyes to the cloud of dust and smoke that was covering the corridor.....

Panting hard, Rathius was leaning against a crack in the wall, steam rising from his entire body, and his skin flushed bright red from the heat. And on the opposite side, where Rodriguez had been standing.......

A giant front leg of a lizard, with bright red scales and height of a meter and a half or so— had crashed into the wall on the other side. Rodriguez was knocked unconscious on the ground, with the giant leg knocked on his chest. Apparently Rodriguez couldn't strengthen his body with the mana quick enough to deal with the explosion of heat.

Rathius looked at his right arm which he had raised at Rodriguez before the explosion. It was still there, though red markings were still present from his transformation. Touching his forehead, he confirmed that his wound had healed, though his entire body felt heavy and tired. And right in front of him, the dragon's arm was slowly evaporating into thin air.

________________________________

They suddenly felt a short explosion erupt—as vibration on the ground and walls.

"What was that?" James turned to the other side of the corridor where the vibration had come from.

"It sounded quite close....." Kayde turned his gaze towards the direction. Angela noticed the yellow pupil on his left eye—was gone.

Tovias, who was leaning against the wall, muttered weakly. "I don't know anything about that. We don't have an ability user who does explosions— except for the witch."

"I was wondering," Angela asked. "Who's the witch?"

".....Sphinx." Day and Kayde said at the same time, and they looked at each other in surprise.

"The Undead King's Sacrament, the ability to move an entire organisation that is supposedly a neutral group of ability users." Kayde said, shrugging. "With the word 'witch', Sphinx is the only candidate for such individual."

"....you're right. Sphinx—she took control of a part of our organisation by convincing a few executives to join the plan." Day confirmed.

"Anyway.... what're we doing with that explosion....?" Tovias asked quietly.

 

"I doubt that he'd be able to regenerate without a head"
I run at him while holding my breath to try to decapitate him

 

"Holy shit..."
Marcus muttered, taking out a longsword in order to prop himself up. Seizing the opportunity, he made his way as quickly as he could over to Rodriguez to finish the job.

 

"...what happened? Did we win?"

Looking at his arm, he realises what happened.
"Oh no. No, no, no. I should've controlled it."

 

"I think I speak for both myself and Kayde that, if we tried to fight, we wouldn't be of much help. As much as we want." I say, opening and closing my hands.

 

"So your boss lady made the explosions. We're not gonna have to fight her, are we?"

 

Sorry guys for not replying for a long time, I'm having exams next week and had been studying for the whole time. I'll work on them if I have time, but please forgive me if I don't. It'll be over after next week so then I'll start again.

 

No worries. I'm in the middle of exams aswell. I'm finished after this friday.

 

Spinning his scythe to clear away the gas in front of him, Archibaud charged right towards Libre. The snakeman took a step back, then shot his glaive in a quick jab, managing to stick the blade right through the shield Archibaud was making with his spinning scythe and stopping the pitch-black weapon.

".....you lose." Archibaud muttered, then forcefully brought up his weapon, knocking the glaive out of the demihuman's hand.

Archibaud brandished his scythe to deal a blow to Libre's neck, then swung down—

and was stopped by Libre's palms, clapped down from two sides of Archibaud's scythe.

A chill went down Archibaud's back, sensing imminent danger—to his life. Libre's tail pointed towards his chest, its tip seemingly hardened with grey metal-like scales...

But before the snakeman could attack, another figure rammed into his body from the side, knocking the both of them to the side. A sword was producing from the side of Libre's body.

The figure, right after stabbing Libre from the side, drew back the blade and leapt back to where Archibaud was.

"Thank you, knight Carol."

"Don't mind it, Honoured Scythe." Carol replied with a weak smile, while holding her right hand with the sword, which skin was smoking upon contact with Libre's dark blood.

"Your hand—"

"I'm fine, this is nothing." Carol switched the sword to her left hand, and readied it. "I've trained to fight with both sides."

"What is with Gargur?" Izanami asked, projecting her voice into Carol's mind.

"I've been fighting him, yes. But things got complicated...."

The dust cleared from where Gragur and Carol had been fighting, and the form of the multi-armed man came into vision. Carol had severed two more of the demi-human's arms—and thus he only had an arm left. But what forced Carol to retreat was.....

"What the hell is that?" Archibaud asked, gritting his teeth. In front of them—spikes of earth were rising into the air from the ground around Gragur.

"The multi-armed tribe originally was a part of the great Giant race that existed hundreds of years ago. Legends tell, that the Giants always had a strong connection with the earth......"

"So the reason Gragur was such a threat in the Demi-Human War was because of this power...." Archibaud muttered.

Libre was rising, blood pouring out from the massive hole in his body. But as the snakeman came to straighten up, the wounds had completely closed and the bleeding had all but stopped.

"....but Libre seems weakened also. It seems there's a limit to how much he can regenerate." Carol noted.

 

Rathius groaned from the pain, which was getting smaller, but the fatigue in his muscles were serious. Rathius's ability—to transform into a dragon—healed all his injuries with the regenerative power of the dragon, even if it was a lost limb. However, every time after a transformation, every drop of his energy was always taken away.

"No, Marcus.... stop." Rathius called to the hunter, who was readying the sword over Rodriguez's unconscious body.

"Why...?" Marcus asked, without turning towards the boy.

"One of.... Roswaal's orders was to capture any member of the Eight Fingers if it's possible.... much more if it was an executive." Rathius explained, forcing himself to sit up against the wall. "He's unconscious. If we can capture him, we can find out more about the Eight Fingers.... and the Witch's Order."

"He's extremely dangerous." Marcus said, making a bitter expression. "If he does regain consciousness, then—"



"It'll be alright, mister Hunter. There is no need for you to worry."

The somewhat-carefree voice of a man said—and it was familiar to Marcus, and unknown to Rathius.

"Who.... the hell are you?" Rathius growled weakly at the newcomers.

"Why are you here....?" Marcus couldn't hide the shock in his voice.

Three figures were at the passage from where Rodriguez had come from. In the center stood a middle-aged man with a thin stature and long, unmade black hair. He wore a white doctor's overcoat, with neat clothing underneath. He had a pale and haughty look—like a vampire's, Rathius in the past would've described, until he saw a real vampire, Karifer. A real one was much worse.

Anyway—there was no mistaking it. The man was the doctor who had saved Marcus from the hands of «Greed» of the Witch Cult.

And to the smiling doctor's side floated an extremely pretty blond girl — who looked ten or so— who wore an expensive-looking red dress. She was staring annoyedly with her electric blue eyes at Rodriguez.

The other girl was a timid-looking one, around her twenties or so. She wore round spectacles and had a neat and short hairstyle, which was held in place with a ribbon. She seemed ordinal and didn't look too strong— she was narrowing her eyes uncomfortably from the whole conversation.

The doctor in the center spread his arms. "Ah~, it's good to see you again, Marcus. It's been what, an hour?"

"I asked, who are you!? Marcus, you know these people?" Rathius raised his voice, sending an uneasy look to Marcus, who seemed confused. Rathius was feeling panicked, because his instincts were telling him.....

"That man and the floating girl are actual monsters...." Rathius muttered quietly. They were on the level of Roswaal or the Sins, in Rathius's opinion.

The doctor shrugged. "That's not a very good first impression we've made there, Velvet?"

"Hmph." The floating girl, who was called Velvet, looked away.

The man sighed, then clapped his hands together with a sudden smile. "Anyway. We should get out of this place immediately. It's so dark it's giving me the creeps. Miss Louisa, if you will~"

The girl with the glasses looked surprised at the sudden mention of her name, then nodded slowly. "Y-yes, of course, boss."

Louisa raised both her hands to in front of her. "Ability, «Dislocation»....... activate."

At the same time, blue circles appeared beneath all of the people in the area—Rathius, Marcus, Rodriguez, doctor, and Louisa. The circle did not appear beneath Velvet.

"......release." With the words muttered by the ability user, they disappeared from the corridor altogether.

***

Rathius and Marcus found themselves in a much wider and brighter room.

"This is....."

They had been teleported to a prison-like place, filled with iron bars all down the sides of the room. Only, that there were nobody behind any of the cells.

The two of them turned, and saw the doctor, Velvet, and Louisa standing behind them. But... they weren't the only ones. A dozen or more people stood behind the doctor and Velvet, all with differing ages and equipments, but all black-haired; Vorkirians.

Something told Marcus and Rathius that all of them were ability-users.

 

"For now let's focus on libre, since we don't know for how long he'll be weakened"

 

Kayde nodded. "Angela's right. Though, somebody already seems to be fighting her."

"What should we do?" James asked.

Kayde thought for a moment. "Margrave Roswaal must've prepared something with the knights. Either reinforcements are coming, or something. Our best option right now, though, is to find someone able to use healing magic..... to get outside, that's what I'm saying."

"......you know this place, right? Can we get outside?" Angela turned a look to Day.

Day nodded weakly. "I can. This is no time for me to be fighting you. Our top priority is to fix Tovias up."

"I told you. I'm done for." Tovias said. Beads of sweats were appearing on his skin, and his skin was going pale, but still he was talking in a normal tone.

"We don't know that." Kayde growled. He used his sword to lift himself up. "We have to move quickly. It will be bad if someone———"


Another explosion shook the ground. Everyone tensed—something was different about the previous ones and this one.

It was closer.

"Shit, they've found——"

"Al Claristaaaa——!!!"

A familiar voice shouted from the end of the dark corridor where Tovias had came from. In that moment, a brilliant rainbow-coloured light flashed and exploded, destroying the entire corridor and making a figure drop to the level all of them were in, a few distance away. A young man wearing silver armour rose from the debris while holding his shoulder painfully.

"....Diabel!" Angela shouted.

"....! What are you doing there!? Go! Go the other direction while I hold him off....!!"

An immense shock and a presence of a newcomer further away down the corridor. As if to mock the panicked cries of the blue-haired knight, the voice laughed.

Kayde felt his body go cold from the terrible foreboding.

"Aaaaha. Actually, not bad at all, Arcuntar knight. Without a weapon, you've held up against me this much. Impressive, impressive. Meaningless, but impressive."

"«Greed».... Kavenhaitos...!!"

 

Marcus used his longsword as a cane as he stood in amazement for a few seconds before saying anything.
“One of these days you’re going to tell me just who the hell you are, doc.”
He shook his head lightly.

 

"Wait. You're the one who's been teleporting us everywhere? Why did you throw us into a river?!"
He looks at Louisa, frowning.

"We could have died down there!"

 

I back off to Kayde and James, standing in front of Kayde.
"And what are you doing here?" I ask, trying to sound more angry than scared.

 

I conjure a spear. Don't do anything yet, jist armed and alert.

 

The Sin shrugged lightly at Angela's question. "And what obligation do I have to answer that question, seraph? I'm here on my free will, on my own right, and you have no authority to deny my actions in any way, isn't that right?"

"You really don't stop talking, don't you!?" Diabel growled, then swung his hand. His six spirits appeared, circling through the air—and each conducting magic attacks towards Rikuld.

The Sin narrowed his eyes and snapped his fingers; dozens of tower shields appeared beneath him and covering the entire corridor and protecting him from the attacks.

"Now!" Diabel shouted, and on cue all of them started dashing the other way. Diabel continued his attacks at the Sin to stop him from using his Authority. However——

Daggers and swords materialised in between the swords, and shot through the air after the six of them even as they ran. Angela spun through the air and fired a wall of wind to slow them down, and James's hardened ice spear knocked them all away. Diabel released his spirits from their attacks as they were too far away now— and in that moment when Diabel's spirits disappeared, the shield wall vanished and revealed Rikuld behind it.

He clicked his fingers——and hundreds of swords that had already materialised in the atmosphere flew down the entire corridor and filling it fully.

Day, while holding Megan's body, leapt in front of the oncoming wave of blades. "«Unarm»!!"

The blades all stopped in their motion and fell to the ground. But.......

"Jump back as far as you can!!" Kayde shouted, and instinctively Day followed the order. From the ground where he had been standing a second before, an enormous greatsword came flying up and sank into the ceiling.

"Wha——!!" Day stumbled back, but James caught him and supported him.

"—your dirty little 'abilities' won't work against mine, Vorkirian. Yours is a failed attempt at recreating our Authorities; against our real power, you don't stand a chance."

The swords Day had knocked down all floated into the air again. Rikuld, who had already caught up with them, smiled behind the wall of weapons in the air. Diabel, Angela and James all started to activate their magics, but they were too late.

"This is the end." The Sin said—then released the blades.

But the weapons never reached Day—instead, they had all stopped mid-air in front of a figure who had appeared in front of the ability user.

"Kayde!! Get back!" Diabel shouted, but the boy did not answer. Instead, he was glaring at the Sin on the other side of the wall of weapons.

His left eye again was turning gold in colour.

Rikuld widened his eyes upon seeing Kayde, then—

then———

A shock seemed to run through them as the two of them stumbled forward suddenly, panting hard and blood trailing from the sides of their mouths.

***