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~ I'm planning to increase the number of advanced chapters to +18 this weekend!
~ I've edited some of the previous chapters to remove anything you might consider "cringe" or "unnecessary." I'll continue reviewing them from time to time!
~ Very soon, we'll return to releasing two chapters daily, including bonus privileges for Power Stone contributions!
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I smell his scent upon your skin…
The voice purred into his conscience, but its words were directed his opponent.
Issei came at him from the front, a charging blur. The crimson gauntlet rose in a fist. He frowned.
I feel his air on your flesh…
His own glove batted aside the blow, and his palm, the one unarmored by the False Gear sneaked below the devil's guard.
He pushed and Issei flew back, tossed through the air like a rag doll. The boy somehow managed to land upright, though his eyes were wide with surprise.
I taste his power in your soul…
He wondered idly if the being within the Boosted Gear could hear. He had no doubt it probably could; it just lacked a means of retorting back.
Issei came at him again. He planted a kick squarely on the boy's chest and sent him flying back once more. Such was the power of a Persona. Once summoned in any form, its strength became his strength. And this one's was most prodigious.
This was no longer a fight. It hadn't ever been a fight since it had demanded to surface.
I know what you are…
He noticed that Issei was hanging back this time, no doubt having learned his lesson from the previous two encounters. To his surprise, the boy knelt down and extended his arm. The opened palm of Boosted Gear greeted him and he raised an eyebrow as the gauntlet began to glow.
This should prove interesting.
A beam of strobing red light seared into existence, spitting from Issei's hand like a hurled spear.
What you hold…
The armored glove that was his False Gear moved to intercept. The beam connected with black metal, and he could feel the fiery strength that had been behind the blow as it was absorbed. There was strength, but there was no power, no substance. He clenched the gauntlet into a fist, watching as bronze talons clacked against his palm. When he opened them, a throbbing sphere of red energy floated in his palm, the very beam that had been shot at him, reshaped to his will.
He showed it to his opponent who stared back in astonishment.
What you carry…
He crushed the sphere in his hand, and the world around him exploded in white heat. Flames buffeted his body, a raging conflagration that should have scorched the skin off his flesh and then the flesh from bone. He walked through it like it was nothing.
He flung his arm out, and from his palm a great blast of frost spewed out, spreading sleet-like ice onto his surroundings, freezing the very air with its unnatural chill. Issei barely managed to leap back in time, and he could see the thin layer of frost that had settled over portions of the boy's clothes where the blast had caught him.
A weapon made of steel…
He stomped on the ground, and currents of ice spikes ripped their way up, shooting from the frozen earth in jagged, rugged formations. He gestured, and they rolled in a great wave towards his distant foe, an unstoppable tide of serrated protrusions. Boosted Gear smashed into the oncoming formations and shattered them into chunks of ice. But he could see the weariness that was starting to set in on his opponent's face, and that particular blow had taxed him even more.
But merged with a soul…
Orbs of shimmering frost appeared by his side, each twice the width of a man's torso. He sent them churning towards his opponent, spinning on their axis in blurs of motion. Shards of ice were shed from their pulsating bodies as they spun, filling the air with barbed splinters, shredding the surroundings with barrages of shrapnel. One orb deviated from its path, and exploded into a copse of trees, detonating with all the force of an artillery round.
A soul that once burned brightly…
Issei managed to avoid the worst of the barrage, but the tears in his clothing and the gashes on his skin told him the devil had not escaped unscathed. With a loud cry, the boy launched himself against him, with predictable results.
But now chained and shackled…
Red gauntlet met black vambrace, and as his bronze claws grappled with ones of crimson, he could feel the anger that raged underneath, a mirror to the vehemence in his mind. But even then, that anger was muted, subdued, and as a result, easily overpowered.
Ah… Ddraig…
Boosted Gear recoiled, as if surprised, and he seized that opportunity. His free hand reached out, grabbed Issei by the collar, spun on his heel, and hurled the boy back. The wall of ice was already there waiting, a thick slab of rime, conjured by the False Gear. Issei smashed into it, denting the frozen surface, and slid down lifelessly, head lowered onto his chest.
He grimaced. The wall was originally meant to have great spikes protruding from it when it was formed, to impale and skewer. At the last second he had rescinded that order.
It had never been a fight. He was preventing it from being a slaughter.
Issei grunted and blinked groggily. That was all the reprieve he would receive. A gesture from the False Gear sent an immense wave of force crashing into the conjured wall, splitting it in two and sending the boy careening through the crack.
The Great Welsh…
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