"Diana!" Rosa cried out. As the falling ruble threatened to bury her, she turned inward, compressing spiritual energy. In seconds, her flesh rapidly hardened into translucent frost as the shadow loomed.
The creature slammed into the crystalline figure, shattering the ice without remorse, but the real Rosa was already gone.
She had used a skill called [Mirror-Step] that allowed her to swap positions with pieces of her ice to get behind the contractee.
Sensing 'Harvey' disappear, the man's perception flickered leaving him momentarily startled.
"Another clone? Where cou-!?" Suddenly, detecting the movement behind him, his instincts flared. He tried to twist his body, but the reaction came a second too late.
As his head swerved around, a blur filled his vision.
With a swift motion, Rosa had woven an illusion spell over her ice-clone skill. A subtle distortion bent his awareness as her figure split into several overlapping images, each moving out of sync.
"Petty tricks" The man's face contorted in rage as the illusion gnawed at his mind. He spat a hasty wind incantation, hurling a blade of cutting air toward her.
But it could not halt Rosa's advance.
'His spiritual energy output has already been suppressed by my mental attack.' Instead of evading, she chose to ignore the damage completely. The wind sliced into Rosa's skin, creating several shallow wounds across her arms, torso and face.
Five more silhouettes crystallized around her. With machetes formed in their hands, she swung her blades down in a cross-slash of blinding white energy.
The slashes cut through the air with a sharp, tearing resonance.
A tremor passed through the man's pupils as sweat gathered along his brow. He attempted to evade, but the distorted senses of his own body betrayed him.
Squelch!!
The machetes carved a deep trench across his chest. The sound of freezing meat filled the silence.
He was blasted backward, rag dolling through the air until his shadow rose up to catch him, wrapping him in a dark embrace. He hit the ground gasping, clutching his chest.
"Ughh… Another curse…kuhk… I'll kill you!" Through frantic breaths the man cursed as his face contorted in pain. He felt the freezing cold beginning to spread from the center of the wound, hungrily seeking his core like a starved beast.
"What are you… Cough!..waiting for?" The man jerked back violently, imploring the shadow to quickly purge the new curse from his body.
Rosa didn't wait for him to recover. She dropped from the air, with her blade angled for a finishing execution. She had to reach him before the Shadow could purge the curse.
But before she could close the distance.
A violent gust tore open the space behind the wounded man. The swirling air compressed into the outline of a giant hawk. Its feathers were pitch-black, threaded with faint green lines that converged at its beak and its wings were roughly 3.8 meters across.
Its six unsettlingly human, pale yellow eyes, snapped open in unison.
With a razor-sharp cry, the manifested beast spread its wings and released a concentrated blast of wind.
Acting quickly, Rosa knelt low, planting her feet firmly within the icy ground. She then created a pillar that erupted from the floor.
Bang!
The air blast slammed into the surface, exploding as it cracked the ice.
Rosa stomped her heel and Pillars of ice erupted at random coordinates across the room, turning the open floor into frozen labyrinth.
'That's his Second Contract? Had he been relying on his summons all this time.' her mind raced, searching for a way to defeat the enemy before her.
Her left hand then flickered, causing two perfect copies of herself to spring into existence. To the Hawk's enhanced perception, all three figures were identically real.
The clones burst into motion, darting between the pillars in erratic patterns.
The six-eyed hawk shrieked in frustration, its head jerking back and forth. It fired blast after blast of cutting wind, shredding ice pillars and dissolving clones into mist, only for the illusions to flicker and reappear elsewhere.
Concealed behind a pillar, Rosa took a moment to stabilize her breathing as she silently observed the scene.
'The situation is bad but not hopeless. His energy reserves are still greater than mine, but if I can have his summons waste it I should be able to last until Diana returns…'
After taking a deep breath, Rosa lept to the top of the pillar then took aim. With a grunt of exertion, her muscles tensed, and she hurled one machete with a fluid spin, not at the bulky hawk, but directly at the man's skull as he struggled to his feet.
The Shadow was faster. It yanked its master sideways, and the machete lodged itself into the ice, a mere hand's breadth from the Hawk's talons.
Simultaneously the Hawk's head snapped toward the pillar. It's six eyes dilated, pinpointing Rosa's true spiritual signature at the source of the attack. It inhaled, its chest swelling with devastating power.
Confronting the Hawks malice, Rosa didn't flinch.
Before the Hawk fired, she smiled tauntingly as [Mirror-Step] was activated once more.
The Hawk's blast obliterated the top of the pillar where she had stood a microsecond ago, hitting nothing but air.
She swapped positions with a discarded shard of ice lying on the ground, right next to where her machete had just landed!
Within the enemy's guard, Rosa pushed her output to its peak. Her spiritual energy spiked, manifesting as a visible aura of freezing light.
She spun on her heel, shifting into a fluid rotation, and delivered a horizontal slash of pure energy at point-blank range.
The Shadow reacted with desperate loyalty. It expanded into a vast, black wall, interposing itself between the attack and its master. The Hawk, sensing the mortal threat to its summoner, dove to intercept.
The man, eyes widened with terror and he made a split-second calculation.
'The attack will obliterate the Hawk and weaken the Shadow. I will die.' without hesitation he made a decisive choice.
The six-eyed hawk vanished in a swirl of unspent wind, forcibly unsummoned. Every ounce of the reclaimed spiritual energy was funneled instantly into the Shadow, reinforcing it as he activated the [Ethereal Guard] skill.
Immediately his shadow ripped across his body, reshaping into visage reminiscent of a metal plated Templar Knight.
In that same breath, the contractee bents his knees then raised both of his arms and tucked them close to his body. Predicting the follow of the attack, he sought to guard his head and chest.
CLANG!!
A deafening, metallic sound, echoed like the strike of a monstrous bell as vibrations travelled through the ravaged storage room.
What follow was a crushing explosion that tore through the already weakened structure. The entire back wall of the building disintegrated into a cloud of pulverized brick and mortar, and a large section of the roof groaned before collapsing inward with a roar.
Rosa skidded backwards across the broken floor, her boots carving grooves in the ice until she came to a shuddering halt perilously close to the jagged edge where Diana had fallen.
Breathing heavily, Rosa felt the cold sweat on her skin begin to freeze. Her eyes remained fixed on her opponent as blue patches began forming on her skin.
'I'm reaching my limit. That was the strongest attack I could output on my own, yet he absorbed most of the force with easy!'
With a feral snarl, the contractee molded the darkness into a sword and rushed forward. He swung the blade in a desperate, decapitating arc aimed at Rosa's neck.
Yet, to her surprise, the next second there was no weight behind the swing!
Confused, the contractee tried to grip the hilt of his sword tighter, but his mind grasped at nothing. A command was sent to his right hand, but the signal vanished completely. 'I can't feel my arm.'
Suddenly his nerves screamed and his eyes widened. For a moment both their hearts skipped a beat.
Feeling something was wrong, Rosa looked behind him as a bone chilling snap rang out.
Crack!
"Diana!" Rosa cried out. As the falling rubble threatened to bury her, she turned inward, compressing spiritual energy. In seconds, her flesh rapidly hardened into translucent frost as the shadow loomed.
The creature slammed into the crystalline figure, shattering the ice without remorse, but the real Rosa was already gone.
She had used a skill called [Mirror-Step] that allowed her to swap positions with pieces of her ice to get behind the contractee.
Sensing 'Harvey' disappear, the man's perception flickered leaving him momentarily startled.
"Another clone? Where cou-!?" Suddenly, detecting the movement behind him, his instincts flared. He tried to twist his body, but the reaction came a second too late.
As his head swerved around, a blur filled his vision.
With a swift motion, Rosa had woven an illusion spell over her ice-clone skill. A subtle distortion bent his awareness as her figure split into several overlapping images, each moving out of sync.
"Petty tricks" The man's face contorted in rage as the illusion gnawed at his mind. He spat a hasty wind incantation, hurling a blade of cutting air toward her.
But it could not halt Rosa's advance.
'His spiritual energy output has already been suppressed by my mental attack.' Instead of evading, she chose to ignore the damage completely. The wind sliced into Rosa's skin, creating several shallow wounds across her arms, torso and face.
Five more silhouettes crystallized around her. With machetes formed in their hands, she swung her blades down in a cross-slash of blinding white energy.
The slashes cut through the air with a sharp, tearing resonance.
A tremor passed through the man's pupils as sweat gathered along his brow. He attempted to evade, but the distorted senses of his own body betrayed him.
Squelch!!
The machetes carved a deep trench across his chest. The sound of freezing meat filled the silence.
He was blasted backward, rag dolling through the air until his shadow rose up to catch him, wrapping him in a dark embrace. He hit the ground gasping, clutching his chest.
"Ughh… Another curse…kuhk… I'll kill you!" Through frantic breaths the man cursed as his face contorted in pain. He felt the freezing cold beginning to spread from the center of the wound, hungrily seeking his core like a starved beast.
"What are you… Cough!..waiting for?" The man jerked back violently, imploring the shadow to quickly purge the new curse from his body.
Rosa didn't wait for him to recover. She dropped from the air, with her blade angled for a finishing execution. She had to reach him before the Shadow could purge the curse.
But before she could close the distance.
A violent gust tore open the space behind the wounded man. The swirling air compressed into the outline of a giant hawk. Its feathers were pitch-black, threaded with faint green lines that converged at its beak and its wings were roughly 3.8 meters across.
Its six unsettlingly human, pale yellow eyes, snapped open in unison.
With a razor-sharp cry, the manifested beast spread its wings and released a concentrated blast of wind.
Acting quickly, Rosa knelt low, planting her feet firmly within the icy ground. She then created a pillar that erupted from the floor.
Bang!
The air blast slammed into the surface, exploding as it cracked the ice.
Rosa stomped her heel and Pillars of ice erupted at random coordinates across the room, turning the open floor into frozen labyrinth.
'That's his Second Contract? Had he been relying on his summons all this time.' her mind raced, searching for a way to defeat the enemy before her.
Her left hand then flickered, causing two perfect copies of herself to spring into existence. To the Hawk's enhanced perception, all three figures were identically real.
The clones burst into motion, darting between the pillars in erratic patterns.
The six-eyed hawk shrieked in frustration, its head jerking back and forth. It fired blast after blast of cutting wind, shredding ice pillars and dissolving clones into mist, only for the illusions to flicker and reappear elsewhere.
Concealed behind a pillar, Rosa took a moment to stabilize her breathing as she silently observed the scene.
'The situation is bad but not hopeless. His energy reserves are still greater than mine, but if I can have his summons waste it I should be able to last until Diana returns…'
After taking a deep breath, Rosa lept to the top of the pillar then took aim. With a grunt of exertion, her muscles tensed, and she hurled one machete with a fluid spin, not at the bulky hawk, but directly at the man's skull as he struggled to his feet.
The Shadow was faster. It yanked its master sideways, and the machete lodged itself into the ice, only two feet from the Hawk.
Simultaneously the Hawk's head snapped toward the pillar. It's six eyes dilated, pinpointing Rosa's true spiritual signature at the source of the attack. It inhaled, its chest swelling with devastating power.
Confronting the Hawks malice, Rosa didn't flinch.
Before the Hawk fired, she smiled tauntingly as [Mirror-Step] was activated once more.
The Hawk's blast obliterated the top of the pillar where she had stood a microsecond ago, hitting nothing but air.
She swapped positions with a discarded shard of ice lying on the ground, right next to where her machete had just landed!
Within the enemy's guard, Rosa pushed her output to its peak. Her spiritual energy spiked, manifesting as a visible aura of freezing light.
She spun on her heel, shifting into a fluid rotation, and delivered a horizontal slash of pure energy at point-blank range.
The Shadow reacted with desperate loyalty. It expanded into a vast, black wall, interposing itself between the attack and its master. The Hawk, sensing the mortal threat to its summoner, dove to intercept.
The man, eyes widened with terror and he made a split-second calculation.
'The attack will obliterate the Hawk and weaken the Shadow. I will die.' without hesitation he made a decisive choice.
The six-eyed hawk vanished in a swirl of unspent wind, forcibly unsummoned. Every ounce of the reclaimed spiritual energy was funneled instantly into the Shadow, reinforcing it as he activated the [Ethereal Guard] skill.
Immediately his shadow ripped across his body, reshaping into visage reminiscent of a metal plated Templar Knight.
In that same breath, the contractee bents his knees then raised both of his arms and tucked them close to his body. Predicting the follow of the attack, he sought to guard his head and chest.
CLANG!!
A deafening, metallic sound, echoed like the strike of a monstrous bell as vibrations travelled through the ravaged storage room.
What follow was a crushing explosion that tore through the already weakened structure. The entire back wall of the building disintegrated into a cloud of pulverized brick and mortar, and a large section of the roof groaned before collapsing inward with a roar.
Rosa skidded backwards across the broken floor, her boots carving grooves in the ice until she came to a shuddering halt perilously close to the jagged edge where Diana had fallen.
Breathing heavily, Rosa felt the cold sweat on her skin begin to freeze. Her eyes remained fixed on her opponent as blue patches began forming on her skin.
'I'm reaching my limit. That was the strongest attack I could output on my own, yet he absorbed most of the force with easy!'
With a feral snarl, the contractee molded the darkness into a sword and rushed forward. He swung the blade in a desperate, decapitating arc aimed at Rosa's neck.
Yet, to her surprise, the next second there was no weight behind the swing!
Confused, the contractee tried to grip the hilt of his sword tighter, but his mind grasped at nothing. A command was sent to his right hand, but the signal vanished completely. 'I can't feel my arm.'
Suddenly his nerves screamed and his eyes widened. For a moment both their hearts skipped a beat.
Feeling something was wrong, Rosa looked behind him as a bone chilling snap rang out.
Crack!